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92KiB, 668x1063, choose_your_own_adventure.jpg

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 04:17:08 No.51088180 View Reply Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51088686 >>51088702 >>51089480 >>51090019 >>51090149 >>51093108

I have made a web app that simulates that "Choose your own adventure" books. You can read and also write your own stories.

https://adventurecave.herokuapp.com/

Would you take a look at it, and give me some feedback.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 04:45:28 No.51088448 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51088471

It seems like it would be very tedious to create a lengthly story because each page is added one at a time. You should try to work on the interface to allow the user to add and connect pages from a single view.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 04:46:53 No.51088459 Report Delete

Quoted By:

What the fuck is wrong with the white guy's face in that image? It's like a more detailed version of how they shat out old Scooby-Doo episodes by tracing over 60's fashion magazine models.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 04:48:00 No.51088471 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51088596

>>51088448
That is a good point indeed. I could definitely work on the way pages are interconnected.

But about making several pages on one single view... how do you think that should work? Could you give me an idea or example?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 04:58:18 No.51088596 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51088614

>>51088471

I would allow the user to upload multiple files and display them in a list. Then let them enter the text to be associated with each image right there in the same view. I'm not sure about actually linking them all together at once. I'd try to sketch out a few ideas on paper to figure that out.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:00:27 No.51088614 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51088666

>>51088596
The idea is cool, but what about pages that do not have images?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:05:01 No.51088666 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51088678 >>51088812

>>51088614

That is a good point, I didn't realize that was something you could do. I guess then that you should have some kind of "page" model. The user can create these pages, then add images and or text to them.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:06:25 No.51088678 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51088784

>>51088666
So you think that story creation should come in 2 stages? First "page writing", and afterwards "choice writing"? Or even do all together in one view?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:06:52 No.51088686 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51088180
he's making the
>you like krabby patties don't you, squidward?
face

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:08:55 No.51088702 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51088180
>"why these white people gotta be messin' wit' mah fro?"

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:18:24 No.51088784 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51088791

>>51088678

All at once would be better for complex flows. You should persist the pages to the server after they are created, even if it is before the choices have been added though. Maybe divide the view in to a few sections, one for creating a page and setting its attributes, one to show all of the pages that have been created, and then another to connect them together.

You definitely want it all on one view because a user will probably want to be able to rearrange them easily. For a complex story they might create a few pages and then realize they want to change something on a previous page. Showing them all together will make it easy for the author to see the large scale layout of the story.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:19:36 No.51088791 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51088839

>>51088784
How about using this component for the pages creation view?

http://materializecss.com/collapsible.html

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:21:26 No.51088812 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51089900

>>51088666

I'm picturing some kind of graph or tree-like structure on the page that shows all of the pages and the connections between them. The user should be able to rearrange them easily.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:23:59 No.51088839 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51089298

>>51088791

Well that looks like it would only support a linear flow of one page directly to the next. I'm not sure how easy it would be to make that support the association between the multiple choices that each page may have.

However if you just mean to use this to display a list of all of the pages than it may work nicely.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:24:48 No.51088846 Report Delete

Quoted By:

> not using twine

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 06:07:48 No.51089298 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51089537

>>51088839
I have made some adjustments to the page view. What do you think of it now?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 06:25:48 No.51089480 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51088180
>niggers with guns
This is not the adventure I chose.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 06:30:58 No.51089537 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51089571 >>51089628

>>51089298

I don't know man. I can edit pages easier now because they are in the list, but I still have to create them all individually. I don't think you should have to go back and forth between the list and create page view. Why can't the create view appear next to the list when I click create? Or if you can't do that then just add an empty page to the list and expand the list element so they can update it right there.

I can read the story I created before, but I can't read any new stories that I create now. It's also pretty confusing that you set the choices on the read page. I actually cant figure out how to set a choice at all.

Honestly the whole thing is very confusing to use. You need to really spend some time thinking about how the interface is layed out. It would probably help you a lot to use some kind of front-end framework instead of having everything load as separate pages. Reading someone else's story as a multi page process is fine, but if you want the creation tool part of it to be intuitive and powerful then youre going to need to actually write some front-end code. I would use Backbone.js, but Angular is pretty popular these days too.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 06:35:08 No.51089571 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51089537
it was a partial fix, that comes next :) I just wanted to know if the direction looks good to you

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 06:41:56 No.51089628 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51089537
There you go, now you can do everything in the pages index view. Change content, delete and create new pages.

What do you think?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 06:52:11 No.51089705 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51089733 >>51089799

I am unable to add pages at all now.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 06:56:50 No.51089733 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51089705
Silly me, I forgot the case when the numbers of pages is 0.

Fixed! ;)

Thanks!

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:06:25 No.51089799 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51089705
I also added some funcitonality, so that the transitions between pages is more Angular-y like

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:17:31 No.51089900 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51089916

>>51088812
This could be really great.

It coud be great if you could have a "bird eye view", where every episode is a little square on a large map. To create a link, you'd have to drag and drop a wire between the two littles squares that are episodes. If you put your mouse over a square, you'd see a pop up about the episode's informations.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:19:50 No.51089916 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51089900
definitely a graph view would be a good idea, but I need to find the right plugin for it

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:23:36 No.51089944 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51089961

So like a visual novel?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:26:26 No.51089961 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51089944
It is not that visual overall. It is just a book (which might have a picture in some pages).

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:28:37 No.51089975 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090000

I get an error after creating the page now but yea, I like this a lot. It's a nice improvement to have it right there.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:31:06 No.51089998 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>tfw still have deathtrap dungeon the book
I wish my scanner was working.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:31:12 No.51090000 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51089975
Yeah, the changes I have made are giving problems, when you upload a picture. I am trying to find a way around it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:33:17 No.51090019 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090057 >>51092876

>>51088180
What do you think of this http://chyoa.com/

Unfortunately you have to sign up to do shit.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:37:19 No.51090057 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090111

>>51090019
Interesting! I will take a look at that! Am I seeing that visitors are capable of adding threads to a story??

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:44:30 No.51090111 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090122

>>51090057
afaik, but I never signed up so I don't know how it works other that it turns some stories into complete unintelligible heaps.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:46:15 No.51090122 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090139

>>51090111
That is what I was thinking. It would be too easy to vandalize

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:47:42 No.51090139 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090147

By the way OP, the design is really smooth ! I like it. It stands out from many adventure sites that have the same spirit of yours.

>>51090122
could it be an option to set up in the story ?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:48:45 No.51090147 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090229

>>51090139
You mean, when you set up your story, to have the possibility to set it as "open for public editing"?

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 1392804299286.jpg, 131KiB, 640x831

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:49:08 No.51090149 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090163

>>51088180
There aint no stories on there!

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:50:43 No.51090163 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51090149
Go ahead and contribute :)

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 07:58:29 No.51090229 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090245

>>51090147
yes

You'd still have full admin rights on the episodes. Contributors could not delete any episode.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 08:01:01 No.51090245 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090277

>>51090229
It is an interesting idea. Allowing other users to extend your stories. I write it in the to do list :)

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 08:05:33 No.51090277 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090301

>>51090245
It would be nice to have an indication of who contributed what branch, i.e. if I know 94HGF9T7 is a troll/moron I want to know which branch to not click on.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 08:08:03 No.51090301 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51090277
That will be done, after I add "usernames" to the User model. So far all there is, is your email and password, and you probably don't want that info shown

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 08:17:51 No.51090376 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51090540 >>51090996 >>51092133

I've written a little story ("once upon a time") and I can say that there's a few things that makes me mad :

- you can't put any "return to the line", no wonder how many times you press enter to add blank lines, it will still be formated as a single paragraph.
- there isn't any formating option. It'd be nice at least to have "itaiics" to make cool looking dialogs, or bold to make titles/long episodes
- the workflow is totally unnatural. Implementing episodes in choices is rather difficult : if I want to add a choice to a previous episode, I must redo the aventure from the begining, or press 5 or 6 times the "back" button in my browser. Adding an (admin only) "return" button, to go into the episode that leads you to this one, would be golden.
- When you add a choice, I can't figure out the episodes' order in the list. It is not chronological, nor alphabetical... It would be almost impossible to organize yourself if you have hundreds of episodes.

But these are just details.

It could be pretty usefull to add somekind of variable management. You would be able to make a lifebar system this way, or interestings puzzles (you need to click three times on that choice that says "wait a bit more" in order to makes a choice appear, the author could check if the player has truly got the object from a few episodes ago, etc.). Tbh, it seems pretty difficult, and maybe you should fix the workflow before.

Anyway, keep the good job !

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 08:35:22 No.51090540 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51090376
True, there is no formatiing. I have to add markdown editor later on. (it is on the todo list ;)

I will think about the workflow. Thanks for the input!

The lifebar is an interesting concept, but would just complicate more the development. I will leave it at the bottom of the list :)

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 09:19:13 No.51090996 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51091187

>>51090376
I have added Markdown. Now you can have jumplines, italic (using *word*) and bold (**word**), between others.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 09:36:47 No.51091187 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51091202 >>51092133

>>51090996
Nice ! It works greatly :)

By the way I thought about workflow a bit more, and a simple idea came to my mind : could it be possible, when adding a choice, to have a "Add an episode" button ? It would simply let you create an episode right from the "add a choice" page.

I think it could be really more friendly to easily pursue a fork this way, you won't have to go back and forth between the list of episodes and the episodes itself.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 09:38:36 No.51091202 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51091187
I am working right now on a concept, so you can tell me what you think. Ill post here again in a few minutes, when I have it online.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 11:11:35 No.51092133 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51092507

>>51091187
>>51090376
Plenty of changes made on the UI. Do you guys like it better like this?

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO anissueeasilyfixed.png, 15KiB, 596x260

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 11:43:06 No.51092507 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51092573 >>51092686 >>51092770

>>51092133
I've got only three words to describe it :

SO MUCH BETTER

That's excellent ! I think you've got a much greater basis for the rest of your concept. I do appreciate the fact that episodes are now listed in what seems to be chronological order (in which I created them). Also much much better choice system, really nice compromise.

Imho there still a few stuff that could be really usefull if you implemented them :
- when there is a lot of episode, the "This page" in the "create choice" menu tends to be quite lost. Maybe you can try to always put it a the top or bottom of the selection dialog ?
- I can create a lot of episodes with the same name. It is also possible to create an episode without any title. In these case, it is pretty complex to distinguish them. However i've seen in the adress bar that every episode has an ID. For example : https://adventurecave.herokuapp.com/stories/4/pages/11# here the ID seems to be 11. It could be nice to have that ID indicated near the title in selection menus, so writers don't mess up !

Also speaking about these page ID : is it normal that the story "One upon a time" starts with the page ID 24, and yours with ID 9 ? It seems like the ID is global for the whole website.

The whole stuff has a lot of potential !

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO Adventure cave.png, 115KiB, 1905x980

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 11:49:14 No.51092573 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51092646

>>51092507
Im reworking a little the layout, to use better the space.
What do you think if it were like this?

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 1445406631958.png, 169KiB, 600x2291

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 11:55:34 No.51092646 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51092573
much sexier.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 11:58:56 No.51092686 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51092876

>>51092507
Indeed, "This page" is lost if the dropdown is huge. But that is why "This page" is preselected by default. That way you do not need to search for it. Doesn't that solve your issue?

Im going to fix so that "pages" cant have empty title.

Also if people write the same title for the episode, it becomes hard to manage, but that is sort of a bad practice, that should be disencouraged, no? Im not sure I can implement thatt.

Crazy thought: How about making choices that bring you to the start of ANOTHER story? That way you could think of your story as "modules", and would be easier to manage.

Sounds good?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 11:59:49 No.51092695 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51092759

Just an idea, but wouldn't it be best to assemble these in flow chart format? That's really what these things are.

Granted you can literally just link the fuck out of a huge powerpoint presentation and now it's the same thing.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:04:37 No.51092759 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51092828

>>51092695
Indeed would be easier. The problem there is that you actually have to build the "flow chart editor", which I do not know how to build...

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:05:48 No.51092770 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51092876

>>51092507
About the IDs numbers, those numbers are because there were many "test stories" that were deleted. Their IDs are not reused, in case of "soft deletes", and someone wants to bring it back from the bin (even though the option is not implemented yet)

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO advcavefavicon.png, 47KiB, 500x500

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:10:33 No.51092828 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51092877

>>51092759
Yeah, sounds like a bit of an undertaking.

Here, have a favicon though.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:14:48 No.51092876 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51093049

>>51092686
If it is too hard, don't add it. I thought you could easily display the ID by adding a filename, a database number to a string or something like that, but nevermind if you can't.

(and as you said, the writer can still write himself the numbers !)

Just as you fixed the empty title issue, maybe you could prevent creating two pages with the same name ?

Considering stories as modules is a great thing I think. Not only managing, but also collaborating would be much more easier t,han in a wild system like this one >>51090019

>>51092770
oh ok, well it's okay I guess. It indicates some kind of a global database ID ? Generally, what kin of framework do you use to do this web app ?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:14:51 No.51092877 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51093188

>>51092828
I love you. Uploaded!

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:30:30 No.51093049 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51092876
I am building it with Ruby on Rails :)

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:37:05 No.51093108 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51093225

>>51088180
Source?
I've been looking for something simple like this for my shitty VN.

Does it allow sound, video and gifs (maybe webm to save banwidth)?

good responsive design

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:43:52 No.51093188 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51093225

>>51092877
I'm by no means a graphic designer, but it's at least a decent placeholder

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:43:53 No.51093190 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51093225 >>51093327 >>51095047

turns out I click "submit" to create a new story and nothing.

Good try, OP

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:46:16 No.51093225 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51093327

>>51093188
It was awesome :)

>>51093190
Works for me... can you describe exactly what happens?

>>51093108
So far only images. Lets see in the future, maybe webm is a good idea

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 12:54:53 No.51093327 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51095047

>>51093225
>>51093190
I can't create any new story either. Hitting submit do nothing at all...

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 15:21:21 No.51095047 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>51095694

>>51093327
>>51093190

I just found out the problem. Something with turbolinks. I have disabled it until I find out why it is failing.

Sorry for the trouble...

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 16:08:06 No.51095694 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>51095047
that's ok fam don't worry tbh keep having a life outside the computer

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