Tools

Quest3D is the authoring tool we use to develop The Path. As a realtime visual programming environment, it allows us to play the game while we develop it, and vice versa. There’s no need for compiling: the game is always playable and editable within the same authoring environment.

But because the game is relatively complex and because it can sometimes take some time to get to a certain state where you want to edit things, we have created tools to do certain tasks. These tools are also made with Quest3D and they use the exact same code as the game. So any change we make, will be applied to the game automatically.

The names of the tools speak for themselves, mostly. There’s a Cut Scene Editor, a Forest  Tile Editor, a Motion Viewer, a Rooms Editor, a Music Composer, an Opening Titles Editor, a Drama Princess Configuration tool, a Drama Princess Test environment, and even a dedicated Safe Ending Editor. I’m sure we’ll end up making a Bad Ending Editor as well. 😈

Sometimes several days go by when I don’t look at the game but only edit through these tools. Then Auriea tells me about something that happened in the game, as a result of these changes. These is usually quite fun and surprising. Like the characters suddenly starting to do certain things. Or a special event suddenly happening. But I’m always afraid I’m going to break something. 😕