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    benjamin.landorff
    May 30

    How to replace subtext dependencies?

    in Causality Story Sequencer

    THE feature that made me buy Causality was the way subtext beats worked, in particular that you could define dependencies between them. For the more complex scripts this is SUPER important to get right.

    Now it seems with 3.0, and the transition to Tags, that feature is simply gone; tags are not first class citizens and cannot be part of dependencies, or am I missing something? And no, beats as proxies don't work, obviously.

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    7 Comments
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    Per Holmes
    May 30

    Here is the last 2.4.x version: https://releases.hollywoodcamerawork.com/cau/2.4.14-61cc394f/Causality%202.4.14%20Installer.exe


    To be clear, I think this is a killer feature as well. We were surprised at launch that this wasn't a widely held view. People just thought our whiteboard was weird. It wasn't a whiteboard at all, it was a pure dependency graph.


    Consider yourself ahead of the curve. I'm convinced that thinking in dependencies is the way you get a handle on a complex story before you've written it, and then having the app enforce the rules you've defined. So it's a very high priority to get this back in a proper way. The old way was baby steps, and incompatible with also being a whiteboard. I'm only being cognizant that this isn't (yet) central for most users, and then the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.



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    benjamin.landorff
    May 30

    I understand the advice regarding 3.0 being the better version, but that missing feature made me buy it in the first place, so I'd like to at least have a look, if possible


    I'm on Windows

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    Per Holmes
    May 30

    We won't delete previous tutorials, we'll only mark them as relating to a previous version.


    I'm happy to send a 2.x, although I would suggest to not be too blinded by one missing feature where overall 3.0 is a more powerful app, and practically bug free as well. What platform are you on?

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    benjamin.landorff
    May 30

    Ok, I understand, thanks for the explanation!

    I'm afraid that makes it unusable for me atm (until the dependency graph gets implemented). So may I suggest to remove the respective video tutorial and documentation, to avoid that going forward?

    Also, is there a way to download 2.x? (I'm aware that it's not going to be supported going forward)

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    Per Holmes
    May 30

    I agree, it's super important, enough that the app is actually named after it. The problem was that it was always an ugly hack to have this in the whiteboard, and it was literally holding back everything else. 2.4 was basically a dead end without making the changes made in 3.0. Statistically speaking, the features gained in 3.0 are about 100 times more important to people than being able to map dependencies between subtext beats, which is disappointing, because I also think it's a core feature. But we couldn't realistically tell all users that they can't have the features that matter the most to them in order to give continuity to a feature very few people use.


    What is coming is a proper dependency graph, which was actually where the whiteboard started some years back, and this was the only reason that you could ever make dependencies in the whiteboard. It wasn't a timeline to begin with. The more the whiteboard became a timeline, the more wrong it was to have alternative-timeline stuff living in the same space.


    That said, I think that the people who aren't desperate for a dependency graph are wrong, because mapping dependencies is the most succinct way to map the rules of a story, and to be able to manipulate that story while everything is in a flux. It allows you to define the rules of the story before you know anything else about the story, and a ton of the story's structure flows from it.


    But a proper dependency graph is larger, and it would have meant holding 3.0 back for another very long time for a feature that we know that very few people use, and that the collective consciousness hasn't yet arrived at.


    How this dependency graph will work is that it'll replace the relationship canvas, and will become a combo way of expressing relationships between things, of which some of those relationships are dependencies. The underlying code transition is already in 3.0 in anticipation of this. It's only missing a UI.


    Then it'll simply be liked a node-editor in any compositing program. You can of course make connections between beats, but you can also make a beat dependent on a tag (subtext), so that certain plot is only allowed to happen when certain character traits have been established. It'll also work with targets on emotions (tying into upcoming emotion tracking), so that certain plot depends on certain emotions being at certain levels. You'll also be able to make dependencies between research folders, allowing you to divide up groups of beats into character arcs etc. This is where it belongs.


    Until then, your best option is to put subtext beats into successive folders, and then set In A Sequence on the parent folder. This was a feature made a couple of years ago in the absence of a proper dependency graph, and this will will go away when we have one, as it's a poor-man's version.


    I don't have an ETA, because collaboration is the #1 feature request and is getting most of the love. You'll have to go through a period without this feature, but it is coming, and what's coming is more what you want than you imagine.



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    drunkpierro
    Jun 07
    Replying to

    I only used subtext beat to develop characters and character lines. But I can't say that it was comfortable.

    Indeed, the timeline and cause-and-effect relationships are the most important thing.

    But in the research area, more thoughtful tools are needed, because the creation of script beats is preceded by a large amount of work.

    Usually, by the beginning of a detailed construction of a story, its structure already exists, the roles of each character in the story, the arcs of characters, their character traits are described and situations where these character traits can manifest themselves are selected, a system of interaction between characters is built.

    Now I do all this outside of Causality, because it is inconvenient to do such work in it.

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    Per Holmes
    Jun 07
    Replying to

    @drunkpierro Hi, that's too unspecific to do anything with, though. I fully agree with abstract goals of working such things out, but I can't tell anything specific about what you do in other apps and what is missing in Causality.

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    7 comments