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Hypothetical : New gamebook platform requirements
Villain Mastermind:
A gamebook is a work of fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making effective choices. The narrative branches along various paths through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. (From Wikipedia)
Please excuse any typos... This post was written in a bit of a rush...
Hypothetically... If someone was to make an alternative to Twee/Twine, what would the minimum requirements be for a working alpha?
My idea is to expand upon the precedent set by Twee/Twine and start sketching out a design. I have a couple of models kicking around in my head and I've been leisurely playing with them for months, but I want to get some suggestions from the community.
At this stage, I am merely looking for requirements at the "application-level"... specifically, what the end-user should be able to do and/or experience with the program. And just to clarify, the "end-user" (we can use the acronym, EU) in this case is the reader/player.
To keep this from devolving into a list of "it would be cool if x did y", I have a simple form I suggest for responses:
* Feature/requirement
* Description/clarification
* Percieved priority (Chrome, Very Low, Low, Medium, High, Very High, Critical)As an example, here is the first two requirements that cover the basic definition of a "Gamebook" -
* Requirement: EU should be able to view text and/or images that convey a narrative
* Description: The text and/or images would by default be displayed in a format remenicent to a page in a book
* Priority: CriticalAnd the next one -
* Requirement: EU should be able to make choices and/or interact with the narrative
* Descripion: The EU should be able to effect the narrative through various means, thus determining the path of the narrative to an extent determined by the author
* Priority: CriticalThat is about as "high-level" as it gets...
"Wish list" items are fine, but keep in mind that the requirements are for the creation of the desired experience in the reader/player.
Chris:
My instinctive response is 1) Choices, 2) Inventory, 3) Logic
We should pass this on to more people - perhaps I'll send out an email!
HarmlessTrouble:
Lightweight core. But robust API for more specific requirements.
Requirement: Extensible through API.
Description:
API for both the authoring tools and story engine.
Want to make a dungeon crawler? grab the quest tools.
Find the verb? grab the parser module.
Old media / CYOA? Pick a format generator.
Feature doesn't exist? Write it!
Priority: High
Which language should the Api use? meh... What's trending right now? Python?
Villain Mastermind:
Off to a good start... A little confusion as to which set of project stakeholders I wanted to gather requirements from, but I was going to ask for Dev-centric requirements next anyway.
No matter... Maybe I should have just asked for requirements for the Devs in the first place. Alls well that ends well...
Currently, I am researching software/API's similar to what I have in mind to take a survey of how they tackled various problems.
Chris:
Well it's a good idea to define some stakeholders here:
* Writers (probably want something easy to write with, with easy ways to manage standard gamebook logic/inventory/choices, as well as publishing options)
* Programmers (probably want something extensible and easy to modify)
* Readers (probably want something that looks good)
Are you building something?
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