Title: Ditch !
Genre: Drama, philosophy
Story: Skyle escapes from reality to find reality itself
Game: Explore and find the way out of a maze of questions

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And the point of this thread is?

ok

Quote: Original post by Hudaw
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And the point of this thread is?

Good question. Is this an art post to show off the cool picture? Or is this a story post to announce a new story you're writing? Or is this a game design post and you're actually going to say something about the game?

Re:

Purpose:

The point of this thread is to see whether a dramatic structure naturally emerges and intensifies in a philosophical exploration, whether the setting can support interactive, open-ended game story free from the overhead in the designs of world building, backstory, events and plots.


Motivation:

If the message of a story is so important, why not focus on the message and ditch the extras that an author must create to turn a concept into a story?

Is it possible for the player to interact with the message directly?


Questions I face at this stage:

1) What is the genre of this design?

I put it as drama, but there is nothing actually happening in the story. The drama of the story happens in the realm of thoughts. The antagonists in the story are not people, but concepts and unknowns. These concepts can be visualized and personified, similar to how an author might materialize story characters. But in this game, the personifed concepts do not materialize to form coherent stories, because that step is unnecessary.


2) What game/presentation structure should this design have?

It is good to start with a plan.
The current plan:

0.1 - Start with a question
0.3 - List possible answers
0.5 - Commit to an answer
0.7a - End the game if that answer is not possible
0.7b - Turn the selected answer into a question and return to 0.1
0.7c - Proceed if the answer is the truth
0.9 - Backtrack to show the path of the exploration
1.0 - Completion: Answer is obtained

3) How should the game present a question?

Option A: Question statement
Option B: Narration
Option C: Illustrative cutscene

hmm....So is this open ended- basically a study of yours, or are you actually accepting thoughts?

Why 7a 7b 7c, why scale from .1 to 1 I am already sorry I asked...

Re: Hudaw

Accepting thoughts

Re: mrchrismnh

The numbers are the normalized timemarks in the course of the story. The times 0 and 1 denote the absolute begining and ending of the presentation. The numbering allows me to refer to an event in the presentation with some sense of where in the plot the event occurs. Usually a story approximately has this structure:

Time
0.1 - Introduction
0.3 - Planning
0.5 - Immediacy
0.7 - Climax
0.9 - Resolution
1.0 - Closing

The design as a game has three possible states during the climax. I was using the letters to distinguish them.

Structure of the story

[ State Diagram (PNG) ]

Here is the state diagram for the story. These are state that normally occurs when someone tries to think through a problem. I added two states for switching question the so that switching is managed within the story (as opposed to providing it as an option outside the context of the story).


The emotional/mental state of each story state

To present thought as a story, my plan is to assign at least one emotion to each state, and then create an emotion state diagram. I will first list the possible emotions of each state, and then get a diagram to document how each emotion may transit to the emotion of another state. An example sequence if bolded

State: Question Introduction
o Angry, Argumentative, Curious, Emergency, Mischievous, Motivated, Preplexed, Routine, Sorrowful, Wild

State: Answer Generation
o Alert, Casual, Confused, Creative, Devious, Meticulous, Stressed, Systematic

State: Answer Selection
o Confrontational, Confident, Disapproving, Distracted, Hesitant, Indifferent, Yielding

State: Revelation
o Confident, Contempt, Disbelief, Excitment, Grateful, Loss, Lost, Pride, Progress, Remiss, Resentful, Respect, Surprised, Worth

State: Conclusion
o Admiration, Ambitious, Growth, Hopeful, liberated, Satisfied, Unsatisfied

State: Question not answered
o Accepting, Defeated, Denial, Hopeless, Overwhelmed, Shame, Strategic, Understanding

State: Question Selection
o Avoidant, Casual, Courageous, Motivated, Unmotivated

When I first read the title I thought this was going to be a game about digging ditches. And the I saw the picture and I thought "hey, maybe he misspelled the D, when it should've been a B." After reading further down the thread, I don't know what to think anymore. :(