Plot without holes
Learning paths through this topic
Size a rescue supply drop to what the player is actually missing
A story rescue that refills everything makes careful play pointless, and one that gives too little ends the run it was meant to save. Here is how to work out, item by item, what to hand over, in whole crates, and why it should never be more than a fixed ceiling.
Keep a defeated story enemy from coming back like an ordinary monster
Worlds refill with creatures over time, and that same refill can bring back the one enemy whose defeat was the end of a chapter. Here is how to separate the creatures that return from the ones that must stay gone, and the few that may return for a reason.
Spread story facts over the levels without a wall of exposition
The designer needs the player to know twelve things about the conspiracy by the end, and the draft tells five of them in one briefing before the last level. Here is how your AI plans which fact goes into which level, keeps each level light, and shows the facts that would arrive too late.
Stop the player from losing the one item the story still needs
Players sell, drop, burn and trade almost everything, and one day the thing a late scene depends on is gone for good. Here is how to list every way an important item can leave the player, and which of them truly leave no way back.
Let story lines talk about the player's base even if they never built one
In a sandbox the player may live in a castle, a tent, a cave or nowhere in particular, and a line that says "your fortress" sounds absurd in a hole in the ground. Here is how to fill such lines from what exists, with a sensible fallback at the end.
Find stretches where the story goes silent or the player cannot act
Action games lose people in two ways: ten minutes of shooting without a hint of plot, and a cutscene run that takes the controller away for too long. Here is how your AI lays out a route as a list of beats and flags each stretch that breaks a limit, with the beat numbers to fix.
Detect a timeline whose dates cannot all be true at once
Chapter by chapter the dates look fine, but taken together the war ends before it starts or the heir is born after the funeral. Here is how your AI turns your story's time statements into something it can test, and which part it points at.
Find story events the player can jump over with travel or sleep
A contact waits at the docks for a short part of the evening, but one boat ride moves the clock past that moment, and the player never meets them. Here is how your AI compares every time-skipping action with every time window in your story and tells you which windows are too short.
Find the characters a stray bullet could kill before the story needs them
In a shooter the player can hit anyone on screen, including the informant who must give the password two levels later. Here is how your AI lists every spot where such a character is in the line of fire and later needed, so you know exactly where protection is required.
Give a stuck player a hint at the right time, not after a pause
The hero says "maybe try the vent" when the player has simply gone to make tea, or stays silent for ten minutes of real struggle because a cutscene ate the clock. Here is how your AI measures how long the player has actually been stuck and steps up the hint in stages.
Give every line of a fast cutscene enough time to be read
In a cutscene full of quick shouts, subtitles vanish before a normal reader finishes them, or a long line sits on screen long after it was spoken. Here is how your AI times each caption by its length, never lets it run into the next speaker, and names the lines that cannot be read in time at all.
Switch the story when the player rules most of the land, without flickering
A story that changes once the player controls the majority of the map can flip back and forth every time a village changes hands near the halfway mark. Here is how to weigh the regions by people, use two different lines for winning and losing, and wait a moment before believing it.