Mind mapping tool

[erico]

I have been looking for a very visual mind mapping tool, preferably free.
So far nothing really useful, if I can´t find any better I guess VUE will make do.

CAYRA seems to be the best choice, but can´t make it run on win 7.

Anyone uses any mind mapping tool (other then pen and paper)?

Vue can be seen here:
http://vue.tufts.edu/

[Hatonastick]

I tried one of those once.  It had a built-in evaluator that politely informed me that I needed to seek psychiatric help immediately.  Haven't used one again since. 

[BlitzBuff]

You can try http://www.xmind.net/ .

[matchy]

I tried one of those once.  It had a built-in evaluator that politely informed me that I needed to seek psychiatric help immediately.  Haven't used one again since. 

Now that's funny. 

[erico]

he he, the point is to flowchart an adventure game.
Charts/cards to be around 100. It can be done on the likes of power point but, what if I could use an specialized  tool for that?

It would be nice if cards could be represented by some media types and that it could hold a set of documents inside, easy and fast to browse. Similar to scriptwriting, like you have a storyboard of them and shuffles them out to rearrange the story/narrative but having multiple connections so you also layout the interactions.

Those mindmapping tools seems to be the closest choice.
Out of a google research, these seemed better:
VUE, CAYRA, STICKY SORTER
Cayra refuses to run on win 7, sticky is a microsoft tool on the labs.
Vue seems to more or less attend some of those needs.

Objective is to create an adventure template code with one working title.

[Hatonastick]

Honestly I've never found anything to replace lots of blank, loose-leaf paper.  For me the problem is using something that involves having to think about how to interact with it, immediately gets in the way of my thinking processes.

Still having said that I'm also looking into trying such software and like you VUE looks to be the best of the free ones.  Seems to be the only free one that handles pictures from what I could see too which is 100% necessary for me (suspect you too actually).  My biggest annoyance thus far with VUE is having to make an account to download it.  This seems to be an increasingly common occurance and it bugs the crap out of me for a number of reasons.

[erico]

I agree with you Hat,

but the biggest problem on paper here is the amount of rooms, it is like 100 to 120 more or less.
The workload to come up with paper cards for it is quite big, so I though a program that can handle a few assets (pics and text) could help out.

My biggest annoyance thus far with VUE is having to make an account to download it.  This seems to be an increasingly common occurance and it bugs the crap out of me for a number of reasons.

It bugs me too, so does the ´collecting your info´ thing. I didn´t try MS choice yet couse of this.

[doimus]

Have you considered plain old HTML.

I'm currently designing an adventure game myself and I'm using BlueGriffon html editor to "link" rooms, characters, ideas, etc.

It's not very visual approach, but I have a header section for each room page that lists all entrances, exits, objects, characters in that room.
The plus side is having everything included in simple folder structure with all images, etc.

[erico]

Can be too,
thanks all hints so far.

It seems all solutions have a well defined sets of good and bad.
This wiki was resource full:
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Alternatives_to_FreeMind

Researching further it seems to be zillions of these programs around.

One particular problem with why I need it to be nodes(with a screen shot and switchable texts) is that certain story texts will have to match each other after nodes shuffled... like the story will have to make sense

This RAIONALE seems perfect and also do cicles, but it´s paied($70).
http://rationale.austhink.com/

I also can´t spare time to code a dev tool on my needs for this, not to count that coding more then 1 thing for me is a sure brain fryier.
I´ll go on VUE