A new addons & resources section of the website was added where we will be posting several useful scripts and addons written by ourselves as well as other Chat Mapper customers. We will be adding content throughout the coming months, so be sure to check back often!

Chat Mapper 1.2 has officially been released and is now available from the download page!  This version brings several new features and improvements to make writing and sharing non-linear dialogue much easier including:

• New Feature: Project packager to export and import all associated media assets automatically
• New Feature: Template system allows you to create starting points for your project
• New Feature: Improved WMV video support including embedded marker support
• Improved XML export! Fields can now be excluded for up to 50% file size reduction

For a full list of changes, check out the what’s new section of our website.

We wanted to let you know that we have ditched the discussion forums in favor of a shiny new online help desk.  There you will find an ever-growing knowledge base of solutions, suggestions, and tips.  If you have any nagging questions or great ideas, now is the time to pass them along to the development team!

John Hattan from GameDev.net has recently posted a review of Chat Mapper so if you want to learn more about the features, what it can do for you, and what people are saying about it, head over to the review and take a look. John says, “Chat Mapper breaks the stereotype by being able to solve a targeted problem effectively and for a low price. If you think Chat Mapper can help you out, it probably can.”

In other news, our technical director, Ben McIntosh, has recently teamed up with Randi Cohn, game designer, and Lindsay Grace, professor of game design at Miami University, to write a new article on the theory behind writing nonlinear narrative and some of the associated problems and solutions. If you have an interest in writing nonlinear narrative, be sure to head over GameCareerGuide.com and check it out.

We are happy to announce that Chat Mapper version 1.0 is now ready for download! If you are using Chat Mapper for personal hobby use only, it will always be free, but there are also two new licenses for commercial applications. If you tried the beta, we encourage you to try out version 1.0 because there have been substantial changes.

The most notable change is that Chat Mapper now supports Lua scripts for flow control. Each dialogue node contains a logical Lua statement to determine whether or not it should be offered. Each dialogue node also contains a Lua script that is executed in order to set variables. In addition to variables, you can also set asset properties and define relationships. The asset system is now very flexible with each asset having a set of custom fields accessible through the properties editor as well as Lua.

The conversation tree now supports multiple selection, cut, copy, paste, insertion, and more. The tree also now supports dialogue node groups, which define sub-trees within the conversation. Groups can also have conditions defined to block or show sections of the tree during the game. We have also introduced condition priorities, which adds endless possibilities for how you design the conversation flow.

Finally, the simulator was completely overhauled and now supports command-line Lua execution, variable tracking, valid condition debugging, and most importantly, saved states. At any point you can save a state, which is a snapshot of the current simulation. At a later time, you can load either the variables only, or the entire state. Commercial license holders can also save a list of states to a file for later use.

As always, we are excited to hear feedback via our forums. Happy Chat Mapping!