April 9 Class Notes

Presentation Slides

• Dynamic narratives aren't necessarily moving from one to the other; object oriented notion of narrative is based off of object oriented programming; classes have variables. When you collected enough variables of a class you can enter another class (trigger that class). Having a certain inventory system triggers certain elements
• fire - important for many things; fighting and cooking and etc. Making food made us smarter (cascading effect); benefit of warmth, protection, striking fear, hurting oneself.
• What if we made it more object oriented; make it less like a series of linear narratives
• first person world puzzles issues?
• what does the player DO at each painting?
• One interaction per painting where users can choose to activate that bit of story -- more paintings needed, easier to manage
• OR multiple interactions per painting that unlock different parts of the story? -- fewer paintings needed, harder to manage
• CONCERN: this could turn into a bunch of little minigames and that's a bad thing. needs a basic mechanic that is relevant in all paintings
• walk, run, pick up stuff, choose direction, engage/not engage :
• sneak (not run) from a predator
• try to kill a predator that might fail, or go back to village to gather peeps
• characters dying might have issues down the line for the plot
• node sets ('classes') can be a collection of variables
• takeaway - come up with VERY simple mechanisms that work. simple things to do at various points.
• kill an animal, your pickup motion can "eat" it
• boss battle at the end is a bit meh.
• maybe the reason why this thing appears is because something has desecrated sacred ground - what if player can undo it?
• maybe if you do fight, you realize that fighting was the wrong answer
• what if beast has a baby?
• something that uncovers what the thing is
• class input -
• single input system to represent life is "gamey" but interesting
• varied gameplay isn't possible with limited time and limited resources
• what does the player KNOW at the beginning of the cave? why do they know they're in a cave?
• how does the viewer know that you're trying to tell them the story of the first person character?
• symbol on the wall matches symbol on the hand?
• letter to open the story?
• first painting needs to be important
• jpatt sidenote - what if first painting is map-like; what if there's some sort of painting cue along the walls to imply walking direction.
• How do they know to interact with the walls?
• how does the player know what the goal is?
• platforming permanence - doing things has impact on how you can progress (failure to get food in first person platforming sequence, etc). do these things also happen in paintings?
• decide how we want player to play through experience