The end-to-end flow for getting one piece of content from an idea to a node players can actually reach on the map.
1. Decide What You're Making
Provide knowledge, or test it. Providing it means a Milestone; testing it means a Challenge. Everything below is the Milestone route — see How to Build a Challenge for the other one.
2. Create the Milestone and Save It
Give it a name, a colour, an icon, and a main image. Save it before going any further — the Steps section only opens once the Milestone exists, because every Step is attached to a Milestone that already has an ID.
3. Build the Steps the Player Will Follow
This is the real work, and where the design happens. A Milestone is a sequence of Steps, and each Step has a type that decides what the player does at that moment — read a character's dialogue, watch a video, answer a question correctly, upload something, pick a path. There are over twenty types across four groups, and picking the right one is most of what makes a Milestone good rather than flat.
- Add a Step. It appears in the list with a default type.
- Choose the type. The editor changes to show only the settings that type actually needs — a Multiple Choice step asks for options and correct answers, a Video step asks for a file, a Cryptex step asks for accepted answers and a wheel count.
- Fill it in — including the admin-only Label (so you can find it later), whether the Step is required, an optional background image, and any XP/BLOO/EP/item/achievement it should pay out on its own.
- Update the Step, then add the next one. Steps can be dragged to reorder at any time.
Full detail on every type is in The Full Step Library, and there's a one-screen lookup in the Step Type Quick Reference.
A note on pacing: alternate the groups. A run of four Deliver steps reads like a slide deck; a run of four Validate steps reads like an exam. Deliver, then ask; deliver, then ask.
4. Set the Requirements and Rewards
Now that the content exists, decide what it takes to reach it (level, prerequisites, item, achievement, dates) and what it pays out. See Designing Milestones.
5. Update the Milestone
Save. At this point the Milestone is complete as a piece of content — it just isn't anywhere useful yet.
6. Put It on the Map
Two ways, and most Adventures use both:
- Group it into a Tabi — a Tabi is a visual region on the Journey Map that holds a set of Milestones. Tabis are how you chunk an Adventure into "Week One", "Fundamentals", "Advanced Track", and they can carry their own prerequisites, so a whole region unlocks at once.
- Use the Journey Builder — drag the Milestone into the exact position you want on the canvas, and resize it if it deserves more visual weight than its neighbours.
7. Repeat
Add as many Milestones as the program needs, grouped into as many Tabis as the shape of the content calls for. Build one end-to-end first and play it yourself before mass-producing the rest — pacing problems are much cheaper to find in the first Milestone than in the twelfth.