December 5, 2024

Building One Path in a Storyline Branching Scenario

Author: Christy Tucker
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When I write scenarios, I usually write the ideal path first. I find it’s easiest to have one complete path with the most correct answers, and then branch off from that later. When I build branching scenarios, I also prefer to build a single path first. Then, I can go back and fill in the rest of the decisions later.

Building One Path in a Storyline Branching Scenario

Slide Naming Convention

Each decision point in this scenario has three choices. When I wrote the scenario in Twine, I tagged each decision as Good, OK, or Bad. Once everything was written, I added tags for numbers.

Screen shot of Twine showing two tags for a decision: Good and 1.

That gives me an easy naming convention.

  • Good 1
  • Good 2 etc.
  • OK 1
  • OK 2 etc.
  • Bad 1
  • Bad 2 etc.

The exact naming convention you use isn’t important, as long as it’s consistent. I prefer using a method like this to using overall slide numbers. If you have to rearrange things, this is more flexible.

Build the Ideal Path in Storyline

I previously built the layouts and the first phone conversation. I built 6 more slides to complete the ideal path.

  • Intro
  • 2 Emails
  • 2 Phone conversations
  • Conclusion

Normally, I would leave the triggers empty for any decisions to slides I haven’t built yet. For purposes of this demo, I built a “Stay Tuned” slide that lets you click through to test and return to the ideal path.

Try the Scenario So Far

Try out the scenario yourself (just remember that not everything is built yet, so if you pick a wrong answer, you’ll have to go back to the right path). Click the image below to get started.

Branching Scenario Process

In the next post, I’ll describe building the remaining decision points in the scenario.

Read the previous posts to see my process for creating this scenario.

The post Building One Path in a Storyline Branching Scenario appeared first on Experiencing eLearning.

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