game over

The semester is over and class is thusly over as well, so I’m collecting my posts from here and adding them to my personal blog over here.

Obviously there will be no further posts here from here out…

structure of the audio

Audio track format for narration:

• “Lead in” directions: these are the directions you receive after skipping tracks, because they’re the first part of the audio. They will inform the player to do one of several tasks to determine the change in direction, some examples being:
  • think of a number – if it’s odd, turn left, etc.
  • if you can turn right, go right. if not, go forward.

  Some mapping will have to be added: right or up, left or down, forward. The possible directions to turn are slightly limited, so this rule helps to compensate for the number of directions or possible ways of movement. The fact that this audio occurs at the beginning of the track allows for more use of the shuffle function: you can tell the player to skip 4 tracks and follow those instructions. The instructions will always be random. It’s like rolling dice.

• Storytelling: The next part of the audio will consist of the “storytelling” element that connects the player with the game world. The story will be able to be told in any order (shuffled) and possibly in more than one tense – see previous notes on present-tense storytelling. Included here could be some kind of task for the player, but I haven’t given it much thought yet.
• “Lead out” Directions: These directions end the track and tell the player how to continue. They instruct the player to skip to another track, or to skip a certain number of tracks. This way the number of possible combinations of directions is greatly multiplied, increasing the chances that you won’t (hopefully) get the same track multiple times in a row, etc.

Other considerations:

• The “Ending:” I haven’t figured out how the game will end yet. I could include one track which excludes the “lead out” directions, thus ending the game. This would make the length of the game entirely random – you might play through 3 tracks before the game ends, or you might play through for hours before you come to it. I haven’t decided the importance of this yet. It would make sense, as the game is primarily about random decisions and this would make the game entirely random.

word gets around

Apparently, UBSecrets is spreading.

Someone made a post with a link to us on the UB LiveJournal community this evening.

UB @ LJ is a community of 537+ UB students/alumni/other consisting primarily of discussion, passing along interesting links and information, etc. It’s pretty interesting that it turned up there so quickly.