Chapters & Scenes

Stories in Talescape are organized into chapters and scenes. Together, they define the structure of your project and how players progress through it.

A chapter is a container that groups related scenes. It helps organize your story into logical sections such as Prologue, The Forest or Return Home.

Chapters can also define events that trigger when the chapter starts, ends or when specific conditions are met. These are often used to initialize variables, coordinate music or manage background logic shared by all scenes within that chapter.

Typical uses:

• Structuring long stories into acts or major locations
• Setting up variables, music or shared background logic
• Controlling pacing and tone between sections
• Keeping complex storylines organized

Chapters themselves do not display content; they control and coordinate the scenes inside them.

Chapter Settings

Chapters always have a title and an optional description. You can decide, if you want to show a title screen when a new chapter is starting. Either display the chapter's title or a dedicated chapter screen designed by you. Use "Show Title Screen" to enable this feature.

Chapters also have some built-in convenience features. Right now you can clear the dreamer's inventory, before he or she enters the next scene. More settings will be located here once added.

Free Demo Chapters

The first chapter of a paid story can optionally be marked as a free demo. When enabled, Dreamers can play this chapter without purchasing the full story. This allows Bards to give players a preview while keeping later chapters behind the paywall.

A scene is the smallest playable unit in a story. Scenes contain the actual content the player interacts with: dialogue, visuals, triggers and logic. They are where storytelling, media and interaction come together.

Talescape supports two scene types:

Normal Scenes

Used for the main story flow. They fill the full screen and connect to other scenes or chapters. Normal scenes define the backbone of the story structure.

Examples:

• “Arrival at the Harbor”
• “The Old Library”
• “Escape Through the Forest”

Detail Scenes

Detail scenes are small, self-contained overlays that open on top of a normal scene. They can be closed by the player at any time and do not pause the main scene. They're ideal for short, contextual interactions or optional details.

Examples:

• Inspecting an object (e.g., opening a chest or reading a note)
• Viewing a short flashback or memory
• Solving a small puzzle or item interaction

Detail scenes must be opened through an Open Detail Scene action or an Open random Detail Scene stack action. They cannot be reached through normal navigation. They can also not act as start scenes in a chapter.

Scene Settings

Scenes have a title a type (as explained before) and several other settings. Detail scenes have dimensions. Those will normally be automatically set to the dimensions of the background image. As Talescape targets a resolution of 1920 x 1080, they can not exceed these values.

Only normal scenes can have music and an atmosphere. Music is the background track for the scene. It starts when the Dreamer enters the scene, and if different scenes share the same music, it can keep playing without interruption between scene transitions.

Atmospheres define the scene’s mood. They can add visual ambience and optional environmental audio, such as crashing waves, distant chatter or wind through trees. You can attach an Atmosphere Preset or create a custom one for a single scene.

A chapter can have an optional hub scene in addition to its start scene. Dreamers can open the hub from elsewhere in the chapter, so it can serve as a recurring location, map or return point.

To assign one, edit the chapter and select a scene under Hub Scene. A hub scene must:

• be a normal scene
• belong to the same chapter
• be different from the chapter's start scene

Assigning a hub does not change where the chapter begins. The start scene remains the first scene used when the chapter starts, while the hub is available as a separate destination during play.

Each scene is made up of elements, such as text, images and triggers. Elements define what happens visually and interactively within that scene.

Typical elements include:

• Dialogue and narration
• Backgrounds and overlays
• Sound or music triggers
• Interactive objects or inline links

The details of how to add and configure scene elements are explained in the Scene Editor article.

Scenes and chapters are connected using actions that determine how the player moves through the story.

Common navigation methods:

• Go to Scene – Move directly to another scene.
• Open Detail Scene – Open a detail overlay and return when closed.
• Change to random Scene – Move to a random normal scene from a scene stack.
• Open random Detail Scene – Open a random detail scene from a stack.
• Chapter Success – Mark the current chapter as completed and trigger the transition.

Normal scene changes can use a crossfade, a fade through black or white, a blur dissolve, a left or right shift, or no transition. The transition is selected on the relevant action.

A chapter transition only occurs when a Chapter Success action is triggered. If the chapter is not the last one, Talescape loads the next chapter and executes its start events. If it is the final chapter, the story ends and the credits roll.

Unreachable or unused scenes are automatically detected by the Checks System.

Use short, descriptive names for both chapters and scenes. Avoid duplicates and keep naming consistent across large projects. Prefixes like 1_Intro, 2_Forest or 2_Forest_Inline_Chest help maintain clarity in the editor.

Keep scenes modular: smaller, focused units are easier to debug and reuse.

Use the Story Preview to verify scene transitions, random scene stacks, detail interactions and chapter flow. Triggering a Chapter Success action during testing will simulate chapter completion and advance the story. If it's the final chapter, the preview end.

The Checks System automatically flags any unreachable or missing scenes.

With your chapters and scenes set up, you can now move on to configuring metadata, content warnings and collaborator permissions.