Location-Based Narrative: Welcome to Downtown Johnstown!

     For my narrative, I wanted to design an online "then-and-now" tour of Johnstown, featuring several of its famous landmarks. It is meant to resemble a feature that many museums now offer: an interactive addition to exhibits which gives small pieces of information about the display it's near. Combine that with a search for key words pertaining to another location and clickable links that take you to those locations, and Welcome to Downtown was born. Users start on a welcome page that has links to all of the pages hidden in the paragraph of text. When a user clicks on one of the words (for example, "shopping") they will be directed to the corresponding page (Glosser Brothers, which involves shopping). I kept the links only slightly lighter than the rest of the text because I wanted users to read for the information, and then notice the words they thought might stand out based on their own knowledge of the city. Each page includes a brief write-up of facts about the location, both what it was and what it is now. My hope is that users will see a glimpse of character and hope in a city plagued by drug use and economic downturns.
     This assignment was plagued by several difficulties over its development. For one, it was more difficult to find information on the locations in question than I had imagined it would be. Many of the locations don't have their own websites, and those that have one don't include much on the history of the business or service. Historical websites, such as JAHA, offer as much information as I may have included in my write-ups. This led me to want to explore the locations in person, in order to gain first hand knowledge. However, and much more unexpectedly than lack of information, I was hit with sudden serious illness near the beginning of this project. This left me bedridden and unable to concentrate or stay awake when attempting to research or put the project together. As previously mentioned, I had planned to visit at least a few of the locations in my project in order to get original photographs and firsthand knowledge, which would have made the project much longer and fleshed out in terms of information included. In the future, I would love to continue this search of my city, and put this location-based walkabout to the test.

Receipts in Location-Based Narratives

     This week, I added a receipt to my journal, detailing everything I remember from the day I went to that store. I feel like it would be interesting to see what this could become in a location-based narrative. To start the narrative, perhaps users are given a certain receipt from a local store that can only be found in a certain city, such as Press Bistro in Johnstown. From there, the user would search around in Press Bistro until they found another receipt for another restaurant. Maybe there would be a receipt for Lambcakes on a bulletin board. Then the user would go to Lambcakes, and the game would continue in this fashion, with the player searching the new business for the next receipt. This would allow the user to explore the city and learn about its culture, while possibly bringing more business to small local businesses.
     This could function with smartphones as an application. As users find the receipts, they might take a picture of them in their locations. Once the receipt has been found, the app would check it off the player's list, and set a new checkpoint on a map at the next business to continue the narrative. Players could interact with one another as they get within reach of each other by joining in group searches for new receipts. Users could even add their own receipts or businesses to the game at will by adding the business's name, the name on the receipt, and where in the business the receipt could be found. I feel as though an app like this would have a positive impact on the community in much the same way as the short-lived Pokemon Go, by getting people out and enjoying a past time together when they otherwise would not be so inclined.

Interactive Fiction Project: Harmony! (or Death)

     This project was based on a combination of the Space Quest games from the 1980s and '90s, and the "Letter to the Aliens" page from Steal Like an Artist. Space Quest is a short-burst, text-based animated adventure game that is known for it's random, misleading deaths when you make a single wrong move. I attempted to emulate this in a "choose your own adventure" type format by incorporating brief passages of text before every life or death choice. I attempted to make each "game over" death humorous, as in the example photo at the right from Space Quest 5. In addition to these deaths, I included four different possible endings to achieve, plus two "joke endings", depending on the choices you make (or if you survive, of course). This enhances replayability in an otherwise short experience, keeping the player thinking and engaged throughout.

     In Harmony! (or Death), you are tasked with heading the greeting party for a recently discovered alien race, known as the Estrons. Your choices will lead to peace with both of your races, or a war for domination. The story is full of B.S. deaths (13 at my last count, which was totally unintentional), humor, and a surprise ending. My biggest challenge was honestly just following all the strings to make sure I had a decent body and an ending for every pathway. I knew the story I wanted to tell, but each pathway started to blend together with the others after working on the bigger picture for so long. It would've been much harder to track if Inklewriter didn't highlight loose ends in red! I had a blast working with this story and interactive fiction in general, and feel like this project allowed me to create a "game" even though I have no background in game design.

10 Questions I Have

     This week, I completed another piece of the Journal, and decided on my Interactive Narrative topic.
     The pages I completed relate to questions I think about. I got a little comical with them towards the end, and probably went into slight meme territory with the Chef Boyardee and Dr. Pepper questions. These pages immediately made me think of a Magic 8 Ball. I often asked stupid questions like these to my Yoda Magic 8 Ball when I was younger, and the toy would respond back with "Later, you must ask," or another similar Yoda-like phrase. Although it's probably already been done, some sort of interactive narrative centered around asking questions to a Magic 8 Ball could be interesting. Perhaps your questions or its answers could unlock new areas of the narrative.
     Speaking of interactive narratives, I've decided to use a previous journal entry as the topic of my project: writing a letter to an alien. The story will be a mix between Zork and Space Quest, and will make you the ambassador to incoming alien visitors. You will start the adventure with several items, which you may use throughout the story. Much like Space Quest, the game will focus on a variety of stupidly punishing deaths and "wrong place at the wrong time" mechanics. Bad endings will lead to your death or the aliens leaving, while one good ending will make the aliens live in peace with humans.
     I will more than likely be using Inklewriter for this project, due to the easily developed branching path system. I haven't yet determined the total amount of possible endings, but it will be at least five (four bad and one good). I hope to create an entertaining and challenging puzzle-solving quest by the time users are able to play around with the story.