iOS Version for Dramatica Pro

technology
#1

Hi, is there an iOS version planned or available for Dramatica? It would be very cool especially if you are traveling to brainstorm some stories in dramatica directly - either on the ipad or on the iphone. One or two tabs would be - in my opinion - sufficient. 1 tab with full access to the story engine and 1 tab for notes and synopsis (characters, logline, …)

On ipad today I working a lot with the structure chart (PDF) which works for me. Would be interested if there is any better way how to do dramatica on mobile devices.

Thanks for sharing.
Gernot

#2

I would love that. No idea if and when that would ever come. So much you could do with touch interface that would make it easier for people to get how Dramatica works and why you can’t make certain choices. Imagine trying to drag the MC Domain of a Do-er down into Fixed Attitude or Manipulation only to have it snap back into place in Situation or Activity … Or dragging and dropping characters into the Build Characters window … Or being able to rotate around the model in 3D … Ugh, if only there was an extra me I would do it in a second!

I do pretty much what you do. Structure chart in PDF in Dropbox and then write in text. I covered my whole screenwriting process with Dramatica and mobile here.

Update: My apologies to anyone who clicked on the above and found nothing - instead try this: Always Be Writing. Gives a good idea of the apps I use to work Dramatica with my iPhone.

#3

@jhull: Your “Screenwriting process with Dramatica and mobile” is of great help. I commute a lot on my way to work and I want to use this time to write. Without the actual software I can figure out what the story points are for the 4 throughlines and the static plot points just from looking at the Dramatica table.

My question is, how do you come up with the order of signposts (just from looking at the Dramatica table) to develop your plot. I know that the software, through some internal logic, gives us the progression of these signposts to express our full argument. How do I find this order, lets say, when Im on a long train ride and Im done developing the summaries for each througline and I want to do plot development (for which I need to know the right signpost progression for each throughline)

#4

You really can’t do it without the software. I’ve tried a couple times to figure out the order, but it’s dependent on so many different variables that you really can’t figure it out in your head. That’s why they made the software.

Just have to hope they make a mobile version someday!

#5

Jim,

Reading the Theory of Dramatica it states creating cards, which I have done using PS and Illustrator. I then upload pics to Instagram and using a Script, I am able to move the main 16 cards around. It was a pain to create, but I have found having the cards in a tactile form also helpful.

Dramatica NEEDS to be ported to iPad etc so it can stay current otherwise it will loose out to others that have already done this, i.e. …Cat. :grin:

#6

@Doobie
Curio might be your thing. It’s a virtual whiteboard which you can pin index cards to. There’s no iOS version, but it exports to PDF, so you could put that into Dropbox.
Scapple would be a simpler (and cheaper) version of the same concept.

#7

I think it might not be easy to port Dramatica to iOS. On my 27" iMac Retina it is obvious that Dramatica Story Expert is not optimized for retina screens. That means it is not a regular xCode project written in Objective C or Swift, but there has been some rapid application development environment used to create it. There is nothing wrong with that; I myself use Livecode, an environment that might be somewhat similar to what has been used. But sometimes a rapid application development environment can not keep up with the changes Apple makes. Then it expires and it is hard for developers to port it to other platforms, such as iOS or Windows.

So it either needs to make the big leap and rebuild it using xCode, or it needs to do a smaller transfer to another rapid application development environment that is up-to-date, such as Livecode. Both have their down sides. xCode projects are more future-savvy compared to rapid application development environments. It is relatively easy to make an iOS app, but not a Windows exe. Livecode can easily make versions for Mac OS X, iOS, Windows and Linux, but is an independent rapid application development environment that can eventually run into the same problems the current platform of choice ran into.

Porting DSE to Livecode is a project I would love to work on, btw…