I’ve begun working on my interactive story file in Animate. Thanks to some coding help, I’ve got the detour narrative function working as per the plan. Tested it out and works. Next step from there was to refine the story and create the detour elements of the plot. Also keeping in mind to keep the interactivity at a minimum to ensure a good balance of engagement.
Take one small step back, I’ve changed the story to an old book I created back in high school, called Witch’s Brew (1992).
I spent this week fighting writer’s block while trying to create detour scenes in my story. To add to the challenge, the original Witch’s Brew was a poem, so I had to think of rhyming words. I watched a few fantasy movies to see if it helped any with the creativity element – not really, but it gave the brain a rest for a bit, which I think is what it needed. I walked away from the project for a few days to see if it helped. Lo and behold, yesterday I managed to create a viable result. I had to alter the original story a little to help match the plot, but it still retains it’s essence and theme, and seems to marry well into the existing plot. Well, I think so anyway.
I now needed to visually see this story in the detour narrative structure. The best way to do this was to create the 9 panels in Illustrator and write onto each panel to see how the text flows from one scene to another. Once happy with the adapted text I then copied it into the Animate file frames to make sure the flow still worked upon clicking the correct buttons. It did, except for one thing. The buttons created in the ‘A’ frame that determine which detour to take were copied and coded to the C and E frames. This sounds OK, but what happens is any change made to the ‘A’ frame buttons, occurs in all buttons, so I need to customise the C and E frame buttons and code in order to avoid this issue. Hopefully this will work out today.
From there, I also need to work on my goToAndPlay functions plus the mouse over actions. Thankfully Scott has provided me with coding tips once again. If I can’t get these to work over the break, I can at least work on the file’s aesthetics until I get a chance to work on the functions again.
Slowly coming together, although the deadline is looming closer too. Better get back to it.