Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Midterm Idea(s)

So, I'm having issues with my initial idea of creating a forum-based Choose-Your-Adventure story-- mainly in gathering resources (i.e. people) to partake in it before the midterms are due. I think at this point, I am giving up the idea of starting that up. Oh well, no big loss.

The idea that I'm moving onto is doing a Create-Your-Own Adventure and seeing if maybe one or two other people want to do it with me. This would make 3 distinctive voices in a story that someone could choose from and with more people we could actually get around to writing something that has some sort of plot. I'm a Writing major and all I've been doing recently is writing short stories, so I don't think with one or two other people it'd be difficult to come up with something. The only incentive here that I could give is my... uh... thanks? I also like to think that in a group, we probably will not experience as much stress/work and it's always cool to have a well-connected shady type like me oweing you a favor. Eh? Eh?

Otherwise, if I'm feeling really suicidal, I'm thinking about designing a tactical RPG game and play up to mine and Adam's video game genre fetish. I'm not really any good with the deeply technical stuff, but as far as writing the story, biographies for each character, a write up on the technical and magical aspects to all the weapons in the game... that I can do. Plus, I have enough experience with the genre that I could also probably describe how I'd want the gameplay to be. I think that I'd be the MOST interested in this idea (and therefore wish to hear the most amount of feedback on it) although it will also require MORE work. It'd be cool if someone wanted to join me in a group with this too... I mean, how can it not be fun designing a video game?

I realize that these ideas are fairly general/vague, and they're meant to be, at this point I just need a start. If I went with option number two, I would definitely design the story of the game along a distorted version of a fable (probably Japanese or Chinese in origin) because you can combine technical elements with supernatural elements. I always found that interesting about games; where the technical realm meets the magical realm and the two balance each other out. Think everything from an RTS like Starcraft to an FPS like BioShock to an RPG format like Final Fantasy. Anyway, I'm done with my fairly disjointed explosion of midterm ideas. Comments, Questions, Insults, Invitations, Propositions all are welcome!

1 comment:

Adam Johns said...

Better to give up right away than to realize that you need to give up when it's almost due, I guess...

The idea of a multi-voiced CYOA is great, if you can get other people to do it. You might want to propose a plot or theme or something first, and see if anyone wants to jump on board; maybe the most interesting problem is how the voices/parts would be divided. (If you want to go with character x, turn to page 50; if with character y, to page 67).

Re: the video game. One thing I don't want to see is a division of labor where one person is doing the narrative parts and one the technological parts -- since this is a W class, after all, and everyone is supposed to be writing.

Since you lack technical skills, you might look into game-making tools designed for those lacking technological skills. One person last year used RPG maker; there may be other good tools as well. There are also numerous tools for making/writing interactive fiction.