Crafting a Case: Behind the Scenes of Jury Trial
Now that the first testing phase is approaching, we thought it was a good time to give you all a look behind the scenes, providing insight into how a case in a Jury Trial can be constructed. We use the term 'can be made' because, as you will see, the Case Editor does not impose a specific structure; instead, it provides broad boundaries within which you can work.
While we won't delve into every detail of what the Case Creator has to offer today, our goal is to provide you with a comprehensive overview of its possibilities. This information will serve as a solid foundation for those interested in testing the game, offering insights into how the game functions behind the scenes. It's important to note that the Case Editor is still in development and won't be available in the upcoming testing phase. The Editor will undergo its testing phase separately, and as a result, it is currently in an unpolished state.
General Information
The first tab you'll encounter in the Case Editor, after assigning a working title to your project, is the general information tab. Here, you can input essential details such as the case name, pre-trial phase scheduling, trial type (civil / criminal), and among other factors, the situation of the player's client.
While not visible in the screenshot, you also have the option to set up fixed meetings for your player and craft custom messages that the player will receive throughout the trial. These messages can be scheduled for a specific date of your choosing or triggered by the player unlocking a particular piece of evidence. The purpose of these messages is entirely up to you. You can use them to guide the player, enhance your storytelling, or even conceal crucial evidence that the player can uncover by highlighting a text passage within your narrative.
Persons
The next tab is the person tab, where you establish all the individuals involved in your case. This includes protagonists (plaintiff, defendant, judge, opponent counsel), the jury pool, witnesses, and experts. If you choose to incorporate options such as dismissing the judge or filing a change of venue motion in your case, you will be prompted to create an alternative judge and jury pool.
In addition to providing general information, appearance, and traits for each character, you also have the ability to establish a default meeting for every person you create. Each character can have a default meeting, allowing the player to interact with the NPC outside of the courtroom with a separate dialogue. These meetings offer a high degree of customization:
You can control the availability of meetings (lock & unlock) throughout the trial, specify a maximum number of possible meetings, and craft a custom denial message for the player when the NPC declines a meeting for the first time and more.
Evidence
Evidence brings your case to life, and the Case Editor allows you to decide what kind of evidence your case features. Evidence is divided into normal evidence and evidence material (e.g., a police report) where the player can highlight text passages to unlock further evidence. The evidence material system has undergone a recent rework, allowing for the addition of as many templates as needed. The evidence is used in various places within Jury Trial, with its most prominent role being in dialogue.
Dialog
Whether it's meetings, the pre-trial conference, or the trial itself, the Case Editor offers extensive customization options for your dialogue, providing a wide array of choices. All the dialogue for your case is crafted by you, except for the Jury Questioning dialogue. If you would like to learn more about Jury Questioning, you can find the link to our latest update here.
As shown in the screenshot, questions and answers offer a variety of options, including GUI optimizations, visibility settings, and the ability to influence the jurors' opinions. Each question can have as many answers as you like, leading to as many subsequent questions as you desire. The extent to which you want to branch out in your case is entirely up to you.
If you're curious about the small number in front of each answer, that's the roll range. When an NPC provides an answer, the system rolls a one-hundred-sided die, determining which answer the NPC will give. If you wish to introduce randomness into your trial, this is the way to go.
Trial Days
Each trial day may come with its unique dialogue. For every day, you can create a custom intro (before and after the jurors enter the courtroom) and an outro. Alongside this storytelling mechanic, you have the option to craft dialogue between the judge, the NPC opponent and the player. In this optional dialogue, you could, for example, let the parties and the player argue about something that happened in your case and whether or not it should be brought to the attention of the jurors.
In addition to that, you determine the date for each trial day, including an alternate date in case the trial is delayed. You also decide which witnesses are heard, who starts the interrogation, and whether or not the player can influence the order of witnesses. Controlling whether or not the player's witnesses will be added to the next trial day with an available spot gives you another way to shape the narrative and provides more control over how a case may play out.
Events
To add excitement to your cases, it's possible for you to incorporate custom events. Each case is unique, and thus, a set of fixed events could never accommodate the multitude of possibilities. Consequently, you can manually craft your own events, infusing them with different outcomes and numerous options.
Events may occur on a fixed date or be triggered by developments in your case. In this context, randomness is also possible. As seen in the screenshot, similar to the dialogue, events and their outcomes are associated with two roll ranges: one determining if the event happens at all and another deciding which outcome will occur if you choose to include more than one possibility. Each outcome can be customized to unlock various elements or manipulate your case, the jury and more.
Counts and Laws
However, a trial hardly exists without its foundation: laws. Similar to events, a fixed set of laws would never suit the multitude of possible cases, ranging from recreating real cases to fictional or even quirky scenarios.
Therefore, it's up to you to determine why a defendant got indicted and on the basis of which law. Counts, for example, come in two forms. A count can either be an individual count or, as highlighted in blue in the screenshot, a group count. Counts grouped together will be decided by the jury based on their order. Once the jury reaches a guilty verdict for a group count, all subsequent counts will be ignored. For instance, if the jury reaches a three-quarter majority for the count of murder, there's no need to reach a decision for the count of manslaughter.
Laws are divided into two categories (pro-conviction / contra-conviction) and in a form of tactics. Especially when the player takes on the role of a defense attorney, they may prefer to base their defense on a tactic rather than focusing on a specific law to prove the innocence of their client. Therefore, the Case Editor allows you to create your own custom laws and tactics, including compulsory arguments, and add evidence that you've created as supporting arguments.
In summary, you can see that the Case Editor provides numerous options for how you want to structure and play out your case. There are multiple approaches, and we are genuinely excited to see what the community will come up with.
For the upcoming test phase, the case you will play is crafted with an approach that places the player’s decisions and ability to find evidence at the center. The dialogue options in the opening argument, for instance, depend on how much evidence the player gathered during the pre-trial phase. While there is overall little randomness within the dialogue, as we focused on the player choosing the right question, the Case Editor easily allows, as you know now, for any other approach.
More details on the upcoming test phase will be in our next post, which will come once we have taken care of the remaining tickets. In it, we will outline the entire process of the test phase and explain how you can apply to be a part of the early testing. Rest assured, even if you don’t get selected right away, the demo will be released for everyone to play once it has been properly tried and tested.
Thank you so much for your interest and ongoing support. If you would like more frequent updates or want to have a chat, here’s our discord.
While we won't delve into every detail of what the Case Creator has to offer today, our goal is to provide you with a comprehensive overview of its possibilities. This information will serve as a solid foundation for those interested in testing the game, offering insights into how the game functions behind the scenes. It's important to note that the Case Editor is still in development and won't be available in the upcoming testing phase. The Editor will undergo its testing phase separately, and as a result, it is currently in an unpolished state.
General Information
The first tab you'll encounter in the Case Editor, after assigning a working title to your project, is the general information tab. Here, you can input essential details such as the case name, pre-trial phase scheduling, trial type (civil / criminal), and among other factors, the situation of the player's client.
While not visible in the screenshot, you also have the option to set up fixed meetings for your player and craft custom messages that the player will receive throughout the trial. These messages can be scheduled for a specific date of your choosing or triggered by the player unlocking a particular piece of evidence. The purpose of these messages is entirely up to you. You can use them to guide the player, enhance your storytelling, or even conceal crucial evidence that the player can uncover by highlighting a text passage within your narrative.
Persons
The next tab is the person tab, where you establish all the individuals involved in your case. This includes protagonists (plaintiff, defendant, judge, opponent counsel), the jury pool, witnesses, and experts. If you choose to incorporate options such as dismissing the judge or filing a change of venue motion in your case, you will be prompted to create an alternative judge and jury pool.
In addition to providing general information, appearance, and traits for each character, you also have the ability to establish a default meeting for every person you create. Each character can have a default meeting, allowing the player to interact with the NPC outside of the courtroom with a separate dialogue. These meetings offer a high degree of customization:
You can control the availability of meetings (lock & unlock) throughout the trial, specify a maximum number of possible meetings, and craft a custom denial message for the player when the NPC declines a meeting for the first time and more.
Evidence
Evidence brings your case to life, and the Case Editor allows you to decide what kind of evidence your case features. Evidence is divided into normal evidence and evidence material (e.g., a police report) where the player can highlight text passages to unlock further evidence. The evidence material system has undergone a recent rework, allowing for the addition of as many templates as needed. The evidence is used in various places within Jury Trial, with its most prominent role being in dialogue.
Dialog
Whether it's meetings, the pre-trial conference, or the trial itself, the Case Editor offers extensive customization options for your dialogue, providing a wide array of choices. All the dialogue for your case is crafted by you, except for the Jury Questioning dialogue. If you would like to learn more about Jury Questioning, you can find the link to our latest update here.
As shown in the screenshot, questions and answers offer a variety of options, including GUI optimizations, visibility settings, and the ability to influence the jurors' opinions. Each question can have as many answers as you like, leading to as many subsequent questions as you desire. The extent to which you want to branch out in your case is entirely up to you.
If you're curious about the small number in front of each answer, that's the roll range. When an NPC provides an answer, the system rolls a one-hundred-sided die, determining which answer the NPC will give. If you wish to introduce randomness into your trial, this is the way to go.
Trial Days
Each trial day may come with its unique dialogue. For every day, you can create a custom intro (before and after the jurors enter the courtroom) and an outro. Alongside this storytelling mechanic, you have the option to craft dialogue between the judge, the NPC opponent and the player. In this optional dialogue, you could, for example, let the parties and the player argue about something that happened in your case and whether or not it should be brought to the attention of the jurors.
In addition to that, you determine the date for each trial day, including an alternate date in case the trial is delayed. You also decide which witnesses are heard, who starts the interrogation, and whether or not the player can influence the order of witnesses. Controlling whether or not the player's witnesses will be added to the next trial day with an available spot gives you another way to shape the narrative and provides more control over how a case may play out.
Events
To add excitement to your cases, it's possible for you to incorporate custom events. Each case is unique, and thus, a set of fixed events could never accommodate the multitude of possibilities. Consequently, you can manually craft your own events, infusing them with different outcomes and numerous options.
Events may occur on a fixed date or be triggered by developments in your case. In this context, randomness is also possible. As seen in the screenshot, similar to the dialogue, events and their outcomes are associated with two roll ranges: one determining if the event happens at all and another deciding which outcome will occur if you choose to include more than one possibility. Each outcome can be customized to unlock various elements or manipulate your case, the jury and more.
Counts and Laws
However, a trial hardly exists without its foundation: laws. Similar to events, a fixed set of laws would never suit the multitude of possible cases, ranging from recreating real cases to fictional or even quirky scenarios.
Therefore, it's up to you to determine why a defendant got indicted and on the basis of which law. Counts, for example, come in two forms. A count can either be an individual count or, as highlighted in blue in the screenshot, a group count. Counts grouped together will be decided by the jury based on their order. Once the jury reaches a guilty verdict for a group count, all subsequent counts will be ignored. For instance, if the jury reaches a three-quarter majority for the count of murder, there's no need to reach a decision for the count of manslaughter.
Laws are divided into two categories (pro-conviction / contra-conviction) and in a form of tactics. Especially when the player takes on the role of a defense attorney, they may prefer to base their defense on a tactic rather than focusing on a specific law to prove the innocence of their client. Therefore, the Case Editor allows you to create your own custom laws and tactics, including compulsory arguments, and add evidence that you've created as supporting arguments.
In summary, you can see that the Case Editor provides numerous options for how you want to structure and play out your case. There are multiple approaches, and we are genuinely excited to see what the community will come up with.
For the upcoming test phase, the case you will play is crafted with an approach that places the player’s decisions and ability to find evidence at the center. The dialogue options in the opening argument, for instance, depend on how much evidence the player gathered during the pre-trial phase. While there is overall little randomness within the dialogue, as we focused on the player choosing the right question, the Case Editor easily allows, as you know now, for any other approach.
More details on the upcoming test phase will be in our next post, which will come once we have taken care of the remaining tickets. In it, we will outline the entire process of the test phase and explain how you can apply to be a part of the early testing. Rest assured, even if you don’t get selected right away, the demo will be released for everyone to play once it has been properly tried and tested.
Thank you so much for your interest and ongoing support. If you would like more frequent updates or want to have a chat, here’s our discord.