WIP and a thought.

Here's a quick view of what I'm working on for the demo. It's starting to strongly seem like a simple interactive story. Sure, there will be a few games, maybe, and there will be animations between the questions... but... well it really is a simple interactive story. Can I get by with that? or do I need to go further?


There's a possibility if I steer just slightly off this road, that I might find a better path. I have an idea, that the story is about 10 animations long on average... but by going negatively it could last for a long time. Or positively it might go even shorter. For example, if the user kept going negatively, soon, the character would be running around the cave in the dark, alone, and afraid. The positive route would lead them to their mother or the source of all the scary stuff. Maybe even the little dragon would defeat the ghost.

There are 3 different basic levels of fear. Unafraid, cautious, and frightened. The fear factor ranges -13 to 13 with -13 being utterly frightened and 13 superman brave. -13 : -5 is frightened, -4 : 4 is cautious, and 5 : 13 is unafraid. In the beginning, the game starts with 0.

Each "pause" will have three plot directions. One will take the player towards frightened, one towards cautious, the other towards brave.

If the player is in "Brave":
Direction A will be -3
Direction B will be -1
Direction C will be +1

If the player is in cautious
Direction A will be -1
Direction B will be +0
Direction C will be +1

If the player is in frightened
Direction A will be -1
Direction B will be +1
Direction C will be +3

Storyline

Start
(0)Story of hero will begin as a book. Zoom in to find Slag walking through the happy forest. It is almost twilight. He meets up with his friends who are poking at a human campfire. They explain that the humans ran off when they saw them. They also begin to start to tell stories. The sky gets darker and the tell one particular scary story. Half way through it  Slag wonders if he should make an excuse to leave.
A: Listen more to the story (-1)
B: stop listening and go home before the sun sets (+1)

A: He continues to listen more to the story and the world around him continues to get darker and darker. Soon his friends disperse from hearing their mother's call. Yet Slag didn't hear his, for he was too far away.
C: Ask a friend to come home with him. (+1)
D: Head back home. (-1) 
E: Stay outside and play in the dark. (-2) 


C: After a bit of badgering, his best friend, Smaug decides to travel with him to his home. It is getting darker and darker. The sun is barely seen on the horizon. Despite the darkness, Smaug is distracted and talks with his friend. They finally appear at his home. His friend leaves and flies off towards his own cave. Slag moves towards his home, only to find that the fireflies are no longer lighting up the cave entrance. Was no one home? He calls out, but there's no answer.
F: Go outside to catch more fireflies (+2)
G: Venture further into the dark (-2)
H: Stay and call out one more time (-1)

D: Slag returns home, constantly plaged on his way back through twilight that something was following or watching him.Slag moves towards his home, only to find that the fireflies are no longer lighting up the cave entrance. Someone must of let them go!
F: Go outside to catch more fireflies (+2)
G: Venture further into the dark (-2)
H: Stay and call out one more time (-1)



To be continued....

Brainstorming once more...

Slag is a young red dragon yerns to prove to his friends that he isn't afraid of anything. They tell him, he must face the Darkness. 

"Slag, have you heard of the Darkness?"
He laughs, "You mean the normal darkness that we see when the lights go out?"
"No, no... the true Darkness. It is mischievious but at most of all evil. It prays on drakes with little courage."
"Not quite sure what you're talking about..."
"You should know it though! I heard your dam talking to mine about how you sleep with fireflies at night."
Slag grew silent.

"To master the Darkness, you must confront it

__________________________________

My dam told me that a century ago, when she was a drake, a ruthless human traveled across the mountains with his friends killing all the dragons. They did it for fun! No dragon could stand up to Nakrol the Dragonsbane. There was also something more terribly evil about him, he couldn't be hurt by claws. But eventually he died of old age, thankfully. However, he still roams the mountains... OUR mountains, searching for more dragons to kill. I heard that he likes to loom in the darkness, hides behind rocks or under roosts! Just waiting for an insuspecting dragon or drake to come across his path and then he slices them up! They don't even see it coming!

(Listen more to the story -1) (stop listening +1) (Deny it being true +2 or -2?)

Slag returns home, constantly plaged on his way back through twilight that something was following or watching him.

(Turn around to face it +1) (start to run away -1)

He returns home to an empty den.

(Enters +1) or (stay outside -1)

Three "rooms" are available to enter. The Hoard, the sleeping chambers, ... and brain fart....
Enters the hoard room, trips on something. A few moments later, something crashes and starts to make a scratchy/screechy sound.

(Investigate +1) (Stare at the direction of the sound -1)

What needs to be done

Sure, I should of talked to Natalia before all this and I was wrong to avoid it thinking I knew what I was doing. Now that's over with, it's time to get back into action. But now I need to figure out what I need to do. And not only that, but to have some good stuff to show and demo by the end of this semester.

Maybe instead of the child choosing where it is, I chose it for them, based on increased fright.

The beginnings... change them up a bit. Still keep the Scary movie and storm, but take out the news and add in a friend's tale.

Scary movie will most probably be the least of the three in terms of scariness. Not because of itself but mainly because the others have more reasons to be frightening. Storms are a common fright amongst children and even adults. Storms can also cause things to look not like they normally would in the dark. A friend's tale could be even worse. Children believe wholeheartedly in the things that they are told. It's natural. Most children do not develop disbelief until an earlier age. So to hear a story from another child, could most likely cause the imagination to go wild per say. They would come home and find themselves alert and afraid.

So lets go with an initial three stages of fright level.

As far as the "middle" part of the story. Initially it might start off with under the bed or closet.... or maybe just sounds. Second level would be feeling more of the presence. Seeing shapes made out of the lightning from the storm. Then the last one would include the bed, the closet, and mirrors.

In the end, the change would be the gradual ... fix... to the problem. The parent could denounce the story. They could frighten away the "monsters". Defeat the monster itself.

Either way, I'm going to stay with a "room" as the main scene while changing the character to a dragon possibly. The question is, how do I keep the Imaginary Friend stuff in all of this? I'm sure it'll be simple at some point.


What else is there to do...
Develop the new system... or finalize it.
Model characters
animate the story
learn to animate in maya
record voices

Deep Actionscripting?? LOL no

So I was stupid. I bought this book only to realize (after I kept falling asleep reading) that this wasn't going to help me. In fact, why did I have to know so much actionscripting in the first place?

Here are the "actions" that will need to take place

Stop
Play
Next Scene
Buttons
Randomization

That's it. That's all I can think of and everything is solved within that. All I truely need to know is if I should go stills or pure video. Possibly it will be stills.

So there goes my money.

Now that I've settled that, what's the next action?
Well... what do I need to do?

Model basic characters
develop storyline
Decide if continuing current direction
Prove methods
Should I include the increasing fright factor?

I need to talk to Natalia but I'll talk to her next Tuesday. Since that is the case, what now?

Learn to animate in Maya or Max would be good probably. I don't want to take an animation class not from a teacher I trust is adequate.

The Pit Hole

There's always those times where a giant pit hole in the road of your project goal will show up. Sometimes, if you're going fast enough (with confidence) you'll take it and just breeze right over it. Sometimes you might even see it before you get to it so you'll slow down not to hurt yourself. Yet even then sometimes you might even get stuck in such a pit hole that you can't see your way out even though in the end you realized it was simply as forcing yourself out of it.

This is what happened to me yesterday. I hit a block. A point in time where I start to worry if what I'm doing is really what I want to do. Or of I'm doing it correctly or it will comply with restrictions set in stone in some place at some time.

Yesterday, I talked with Natalia, our present psychology guru. She brought up many points that encourged me and developed more ideas but yet when I walked away, I felt like I lost something. Sleeping on it, I realized that my project can still work, and that I will find a way to work this out. Natalia had enough faith in me that she wanted to meet every week to discuss my project.

A few things that will initially be addressed is if I want to stay with realism or venture into a more imaginative spectrum. Natalia believes that replacing the main character with a creature will allow the child to associate more with the story instead of another child. I agree with her mostly, yet also without a certain realism, how can I truly get my point across. I can't have this project be all smiles and rainbows, that isn't what it is addressing. This project is addressing the feeling of fear, dread, or alarm that one might get when they see something in the corner of their eye in the darkness. The feeling when you're watching a scary movie that you just want to turn off but you can not because you don't want to leave the safety of the sofa or bed.

This project needs to gradually get darker and darker. The creature needs to become scarier and scarier each time the child plays it. That is my thinking. It is supplying the child gently to their fears. Not throwing them in there and hope they survive. It would break instead of build them.

A note I'd like to keep...

"You" is referring to my teacher.

So pretty much I don't think this project is even possible or innovative. Let me recap with my post on the Faculty Meetings section.


---------------
The difference between my meeting with you and my meeting with Natalia are drastic. At least with the end feeling.
With our review and discussion of what I had I done and what I was doing gave me confidence that I was going in the right direction.

Now I don't think I can even do this project or that this project will be innovative at least.

My conversation with Natalia is summarized with this.
*Instead of the child helping another child, have them help a creature or animal. Children feel more connected with friendly animals than with other children. (Interesting...)
*Develop a heartwarming story with adventure.
*Fear of darkness is hard to address with a game because of the light that the screen gives off does not set the child in the right environment.
*Fears/Phobias are cured by constant repetition towards the source of the phobia.
*Make even more choices in the story available to the child.
*I have not researched as much as I thought I have.
*This doesn't seem very innovating because it has probably been done. Just like the (?)th Grade adventures game I used to play as a kid.

Did some research and there is one article zooming around since 2003 that video games might help phobias. These don't address fear of the dark, but they say that fears of spiders and heights can be solved this way. However, I'm afraid of 'moving' heights or the such and I've flown over stuff in World of Warcraft, I've literally fallen to my death in these games on purpose just to see how long it'd take. Yet never was I afraid of heights as I would of if I stood on the edge of a cliff or jumped off a flying creature/plane. Video games can't fix phobias.

So in conclusion and excuse my language... I think I'm fucked. Natalia opened my eyes.
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Now it comes back down to, should I continue? Pretend it will work to appease the SIP Gods who appraise us. Which by the way, who accepts our ideas or not in the end. Could someone figuratively do an entire project only in the end be turned down because the deans or whoever it is decided that it wasn't innovative while the teacher and friends thought it was.

To me, logically, this project, while slightly innovative, will not work. Children won't get over their fears of the dark through a video game as much as they would being directly exposed to it. I could address other fears but each can be solved the same way or is best solved that way.

Going back to my previous project is silly as well. It's innovative, sure, but heavy heavy programming. I'd have to find someone... maybe....

I could look back at my past ideas but most weren't as innovative.

I really do NOT want to work on a SIP that has zero animation. Yet I can not think of a new project idea because, I'm not an idea generator, I'm an idea enhancer. I build well off of other peoples ideas.
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