Final project

So this final project went better than the other two because I chose to use googlesites and hyperlinks which can lead to more lexia, pictures, and networked sites. The most frustrating aspect of making this project where the links on the photos. Originally I wanted to create links on certain parts of the photo but it would not work and I did not have enough time to figure it out.

The files I used for this project are in my Dropbox here.

Navigation tips: There is more than one path to this story make sure to follow all the links and you'll get teh whole picture. 

Link to story: Home

Final Project Ideas

I'm thinking of using hypertext because it's a genre I am comfortable with. I have been playing around with a few programs to test their versatility so I could also use another genre but It's tough to find a program that is easy to understand and grants the user various possibilities.
As far as the story goes I am planning on using a prose piece that I used for another class. I'm still very unsure how I'm going to tell this story because I have not decided on a program yet. By the end of tonight's class I will (hopefully) have a program chosen.

Galatea by Emily Short Review

Galatea by Emily Short is an interactive piece in which the reader is presented with an image of a woman facing away from them and they ask her a series of questions in order to find out more about her. The game retells the story of a sculptor,Pygmalion, whose statue came to life, but instead of interacting with the artist or playing through the actual myth, this game has the reader interact with the sculpture. The reader is playing a character who is a critic of animate art and Galatea is one of the exhibits of AI technology art, however, as the player examines her you realize she is not an AI.

There are over twenty possible stories you can get depending on the questions you ask and the order you ask them in. Galatea is available for download with the image of Galatea but is also hosted on People's republic of Interactive fiction pr-if.org for readers to play online without the image.

Emily Short, a  pseudonym the author uses, provided a walkthrough on mindspring.com that covered about 23 stories that you can play through. However, she states that she didn't want to provide a walk-through of the game because  Galatea is "a dispenser of stories, customized to the individual who is playing at the moment." Galatea responds to the same questions in different ways depending on the order in which it was asked and in what context, however, sometimes she responds differently for no known reason. In her review of the work  on emshort.wordpress.com Emily Short states that "Galatea has what I call a multilinear plot: unlike traditional IF, it has no single path to victory. Instead there are a large number of endings, some more satisfactory than others, of which many could be considered “win” states. It takes only a few minutes of play to arrive at an ending, but considerably longer to find all of them."

The game itself takes about ten minutes to finish one story, however, if you do not focus on one story line you could end up playing it for hours without reaching an ending. A transcript of various endings is available at allthingsjacq.com which shows how complicated it is to get a response from Galatea that leads to an ending considering the variations there are in the order a player can ask the questions. While Galatea is limited as she is the only character you interact with, it is still a complex interactive e-lit piece which requires the reader/player to ask her questions until an ending is reached.

Emily Short published Galatea in 2000 and was her first piece of E-lit. Since then she has published over a dozen other e-lit pieces but continues to get feedback on her first piece, Galatea. Some reviews on Galatea are available on ifdb.tads.org.

Project #2

After trying out a lot of different programs and rage quitting several of them I decided that it would be easier to work with PowerPoint to get my project as close to what I would like it to be. I tried to upload it to GoogleDocs and found out that it basically renders a lot of the interactive functions useless and the layout is a mess. Instead of uploading a faulty project I will have my computer with me in class so that the project can be viewed by the class.

My project is a prose piece and I integrated sound and interactive elements for the reader. Each slide has a link that the reader presses to continue to the next slide. That is the only input the reader needs to do, the sound and the animation plays automatically. I had hoped to do more but sometimes technological issues and time get in the way of the creative process.

Blog Assignment #8

For Project #2 I've been playing around with Movie Edit Touch for Windows. The program is pretty straight forward and there are a few tutorials online that would guide me through anything I can't figure out how to do on my own. I will be using a poem for this project and I'm planning on using the transitions to emphasize key parts of the poem. I would like to try out different ways to transition from each part of the poem. Ideally I would like to work with flash and create something like the work "Faith" we looked at a few weeks ago, but with my limited experience with it there has not been enough time to tackle it and figure out how to create such a text.

Question(s) for Dr. Flores: What are your preferred programs to use when creating electronic literature? What inspired you to create a blog to respond to e-lit poetry?

Blog Post #7

Spine Poetry

Blog Assignment #5

Project #1: Hypertext

Seeing Red

Abstract: This story is about how a man, Charlie, and his wife, Laura, and how their lives fall apart due to events beyond their control and partly due to the decisions (bad or good) that they choose to make. It has murder mixed with family drama that the reader must piece together and figure out because the text will not explicitly say it.

Tips: The hyperlinks are pretty much straight forward but if a reader finds themselves at a dead end do they may have to go back and make sure they didn't miss anything.
The end is never the end.

Blog Assignment #4

Write about your work on the Hypertext Assignment thus far. Post a map of your site (so far) and your writing/plans for how you are going to create your hypertext. The more you post - the more your classmates and I can give you feedback on.

I have an outline of the story and basic character descriptions. Mostly I have written out the major plot points and the ending so I know where the story is going. 

On the site the first page the reader will encounter will ask them to choose one of four perspectives for the story and will be told that in order to get the full story they would have to go through each of the characters and connect their different experiences to discover what really happened. Both the reader and one of the main characters (Elizabeth) are on a search for the truth and in the end the reader will have to determine if Elizabeth actually achieved her goal. 

Blog Assignment #3

A) Post your early ideas for the Hypertext Assignment (Project 1).

I'm thinking of making a story with three or four differnet character point of views and the readre chooses which one to pursue but they will not get the full story unless the go through each of the characters because perspectives might be off, interpretations could be wrong, and each character will not be present at each scene.

B) Post your experiences with your demo google.site thus far - try to identify what kind of help you are going to need.

So far I think I have the hang of the google.site, I've been working through trial and error and when all else fails I google how to solve my problem(s).

C) Also, start to collect images you might want to incorporate into Project 1. Think of this week as the "image blog" -start collecting images on your Google Drive.

I don't think I will be using images for project 1 but I have collected a few that I could use if I change my mind later. I still need to develop the story more in order to determine if and how I will use images. 

Blog Assignment #2

1) Write about some of the pieces you have been exploring in the ELC.

In the ELC I looked at Galatea, Everybody Dies and those two stuck out to me because it was like a text based video game. Very interesting stories that developed through the interaction between the text and the reader. Although it was a bit frustrating because for the story to progress specific commands have to be entered that elicit a response, if you don't give the right command then you're basically stuck. I liked this challenge because it was more engaging and made it all the more satisfying once I figured out how to keep the story going.

2) My story will have four characters: 

Elizabeth- the reader will be able to follow her search for her mothers killer and view the world through her eager and frantic eyes. 

Robert- Elizabeth's step brother who is a recluse so he only sees the events that occur inside the house. 

Charles- Roberts father and Elizabeth's adoptive father. His persepctive will take the reader back in time before Robert and Elizabeth were babies and the reader will get a back story for the events that Elizabeth is investigating. 


Laura- Roberts mother, this perspective will be truncated at her death but the reader will get a different perspective on motives and also new information that will be relevant to how the characters in the present time of the story will proceed with the information they discover when investigating her death. 

Blog assignment #1

Describe some of the strategies you used to "read" Twelve Blue. Indicate what you did + what you hoped to achieve - and what you got out of doing whatever you did.

The first time I read through Twelve Blue I clicked on the hyperlinks that led to new pages until there were no more links to follow. I hoped this would create a cohesive narrative and that it would expose me to all the pieces of the work. I was wrong. The second time I read through it I clicked on the lines to the left of the screen and read through each page one  by one. As I read each piece I was not sure if they were connected, if I was supposed to make the connections or if attempting to connect them was not even supposed to be part of going through it.