Hello,
I just discovered your software and I am evaluating it a bit to know if it will do for a workflow of a series of books. Looks awesome and I can see a bit what I could do with it, although it's a bit rough and confusing at first.
So, what can we expect? Is there a roadmap somewhere, a list of features you are working on? I would be interested to see where it will go and what is your update frequency (there are no dates on the previous releases so I don't know).
My main usage right now would be to put an entire series of books (5-6) on the same file/workflow (separated as 'episodes'). It's mainly for outlining right now.
Just thinking about it, will there be theming, something to change extensively the UI?
Also, more examples of workflows and an idea of the scope of what can be achieved would be nice to see. As far as I am concerned right now, I don't really know how to organize my workflow but I'm working on it.
By the way, I've found some bugs I think:
The options at the top of the scenario panel are still clickable even when hidden by the timeline (scenario in condensed views for example).
And I don't know you but I don't have the text of the beats in my timeline snippets like I see in every screenshot of the software 🤔.
Here is a screenshot of what I'm talking about (it's in French but it's not important):
Hope this helps.
Edit: Forgot about the system. I'm running Windows 10 21H1.
Hi Per,
thanks for the prompt reply! Ok that sounds great. :)
Regards
Cathy
Hi,
Character development is actually already there in terms of an unlimited folder structure underneath each character for beats and text. We will have a feature where you can re-use entire structures of folders or questions to ask yourself, i.e. a Character Model, so that you can give each character a do-over. I don't have an ETA, but it's not a difficult feature, so it's sooner rather than later.
But there are a lot of new character features in 3.0, and you'll find dealing with characters to be more front and center.
The only difference between Book and Novel is that Book is a sans serif font with different margins, and Novel tries to align with a standard Times New Roman and standard margins. The whole concept of a document having a "type" will go away, and be replaced with multiple types side by side, e.g. a screenplay version and a novel version of the same story.
Hi Per,
just downloaded Causality and I am so excited! This is exactly what I have been looking for, something that manages multiple story arcs! I love it. Just wanted to know if the character extensions will be in version 3.0 or after that? I am a novelist (though thinking of doing a TV series at some point), so I am particularly keen to see the additional features for fleshing out characters. That said, I can make the current functionality work for what I need I think. Love the relationships tracking feature for characters.
One question I couldn't find an answer to, what is the difference between Book and Novel in the app?
thanks very excited about the potential of this app.
regards
Cathy
It's not a total rework, but it is a very deep cleaning, to set the app on the right path to a much bigger future.
I don't see Causality ever running as a browser app. A browser app will never have the snappiness and power of an installed app, it'll never have the freedom to pull gigabytes in from the filesystem, it's difficult to run offline, it's harder to do rigorous security, it can't run multiple windows, and on mobile it's always an installed app anyway. I think a browser app is inferior in countless ways. It has been discussed, and I don't see any upside except that it's easier to be cross-platform.
Hello and thanks for your answer.
I see you are doing a total rework then, I can't wait to see that!
This is all interesting to me.
So it will be more collaboration oriented, which is a nice feature (not that it concerns me right now though). Is it still a local installation? "Browser apps only" suck.
Hi,
There have been no updates for a while because we brought the app to a place of very few bugs in order to afford working on a deep overhaul, which results in Causality 3.0 in probably less than a month.
This is a big cleanup to remove every bad idea from the last 7 years that were holding us back. We had already been pretending that many of these underlying changes were real, but now they are. This is necessary for sync, collaboration, stability and ease of use, as there now are basically no cracks to fall into, and the app actually has fewer buttons. Especially tags are becoming first-class citizens, with a number of new visualizations that make storylines really clear and tasty-looking.
Beyond 3.0, the priority is to get to collaboration, where the app is 50% through its transition and the servers are 80% done. But now that we're through the great simplification, there will also be a number rapid-fire features that are now easy, for example emotion tracking, and multiple side-by-side expressions of the same script, for example Screenplay + Storyboard + Novel + French Screenplay. And things like copy/paste between or within documents also can be done. I'm expressly not promising this or that feature, just saying that we've cleared the road for them.
After a feature-burst post 3.0, there will again be a quiet period where we finalize collaboration, which is most important to most people. This is <100ms real-time collaboration with everyone in the same space on the same timeline with robust security.
We don't maintain a public roadmap, because it's bad for development. The moment somebody feels that a certain feature has been promised, it puts a wrong pressure on development to not be free to reevaluate what's the most important thing to work on.
I hope this helps!