So I haven't progressed much on the script... but I've ended up creating some sort of "engine" to display this type of story. I doubt it will be the next internet trend. If you read the final script... you can see how I've done some of the stuff. I'm including a zip file because a certain structure must be maintained in order for things to work correctly.
As far as the actual story goes
I've fleshed out some characters and their role in the story:
(probably in this order)
Various friends of John (the character... not the teacher... but essentially friend of mine)
The Mad Hatter
John Wayne Gacy
Various musical artist will be interjected through lyrics
Al The Killer (from Coheed and Cambria's story The Amory Wars)
Paul Tibbets (I dunno why the font just changed but I'm not going to mess with it)
Benedict Arnold
Albert Einstein
Frankenstein's Monster
Kurt Vonnegut
Tyler Durden
God (Irvine Welsh's God in the Acid House)
Abram Hoffer
Buddha
You have to first download the file I published... change the extension from txt to zip (you can thank google for this). If somehow the formatting gets messed up... email me chris.john.wal@gmail.com and I'll send you the files.
The script is written in such a manner that (#) the # being a number before a line is a time out (in seconds - it has to be a whole number).
If (action) starts the line you can interject various (#) through out the line to change the speed of the text. (doesn't have to be a whole number)
If (read) is placed at the start of a line... then the line looks like it's being printed out.
If (c) is placed in the file... it will clear the screen.
(img:[name of the image in the img directory]) will print out an image to the terminal in ASCII format
(movie:[folder name of the sequence of images you want to display in the movie directory]) will print out a sequence of images to create a motion sequence.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dd3trsps_4czg42mgb&hl=en
2 comments:
I like the engine. I'm not a Perl programmer - I've had to occasionally debug Perl, but never really written in it - but it was perfectly easy to follow your code. It's also a nice demonstration of how much substance you can give your engine with a little bit of code. Anyway, I odn't doubt that you have some features to add to it, but I like it pretty well as is.
I also think the idea is good. Texting as a metaphor for inner consciousness (or whatever) works for me. The story isn't terribly coherent yet - I'm tempted to suggest that you add short bursts of conventional narrative, or at least _more_ conventional narrative, to establish the situation. I could be wrong, but you need _something_ to establish, minimally, a stronger sense of character and setting (despite the fact that your central metaphor is good, and you shouldn't by any means abandon your focus on it - I tend to think that adding a few more conventional touches would actually strengthen your central metaphor).
I had trouble catching on to what the images were - I've tried a couple different terminal sizes, and it hasn't helped. I'm not even sure it's important - just saying.
I think it would be helpful to fool around a little bit with the timing. For instance, it might be interesting, if you want to deal with the subconscious mind, to actually have more text on the screen than the viewer can read before it's replaced - forcing us to skim, or take it in piecemeal.
For some reason I've never bothered to work with text attributes or ANSI colors in a terminal window, but I think coloring or bolding or something the names would _really_ help in reading. Color might be easiest.
Short version - I like the engine and the concept, but the story seems to really just be started
As I said, the story is just in it's beginning stages... I have plenty of other conversations lined up. It should be good.
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