We are looking for content on our site (MyAdventureGame.com) and 
figured, who better than the talented writers and researches at GA to 
help us with this task! MyAdventureGame.com is the source for playing, 
creating, and sharing "choose-your-own-adventure"-style games.  For 
more information on the web-site, please read the Frequently Asked 
Questions. 
  
Answering this question should be fun and challenging.  Before you 
begin, please make sure that you are up for the task ... this question 
certainly is not for everyone.  If making a game on our website sounds 
is something you’d WOULDN'T do in your spare time, then this question 
may NOT be for you. 
   
The Question:   
Go to our website (http://MyAdventureGame.com), create an account (or 
use your existing account), and make a game which that is both 
interesting and educational.  The main idea behind this game is that 
you have fun playing it and walk away learning something. 
   
The game needs to be based on Native American Culture and deal with 
history, modern culture, or mythology.  This game also must have at 
least 35 pages with at least 10 different pictures spread throughout 
the game.  These pictures should have some relevance to the page they 
are on and can be photographs, illustrations, or animated GIFs -- 
whatever you deem appropriate.  Remember, the system allows only one 
picture per page.  Also, more pictures add to the game, and good games 
get great tips! 
   
Most good games have most pages with 100-150 words, but that’s just a 
rule of thumb.  Pages too short don't get the player in the story, 
pages too long remove interactivity.  This game must feel interactive. 
   
The history, modern culture, or mythology elements need to be 
accurate.  Your game shouldn't read like a textbook (remember, it 
should be fun) but at the same time shouldn't contain inaccuracies 
(such as all of the Iroquois pray to Kachina dolls, for example).  If 
you're not interested in this topic, or would like to learn about it, 
you really should consider trying to grab one of our other questions.   
We will have other topics. 
  
The game must NOT stereotype Native Americans as on big group of 
people.  Feel free to cover any group or groups you’d like, there are 
more than enough to consider.  Seneca, Dakota, Seminole, Inca, Maya 
are just a few of the many.  We just don’t want you to lump all of 
them into one.  If you are going to have more than one, make sure to 
distinguish between the two. 
  
The plot of the game could really be anything, from being about North 
American individuals, or events such as legal battles, conflicts, etc. 
 The kind folks at http://maltwood.finearts.uvic.ca/nwcp/central/intro.html 
have created an excellent Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game, however it 
is in HTML format, not on the MyAdventureGame.com website. 
   
Unfortunately, there very limited, if any, instructions available.  We 
have, however, tried to make the game editor as easy to use as 
possible.  Assuming you have an up-to-date internet browser (IE4+, 
NS4+), there will be Pop-Up help on many of the buttons on the 
website.  If you have any specific questions about it, we would be 
more than happy to answer them for you. 
  
**** IMPORTANT GAME TIP ****  
Also note, it is important to have a good idea of the Start and End of 
your game before creating it on the website.  Planning before hand 
will not only save time but will create a much better end product.  
You will thank yourself later if you do this. 
   
I apologize for the novella of a question here, but I wanted to make 
things clear.  Please do not hesitate to ask for clarification or to 
email me.  I can be reached by emailing info(at)MyAdventureGame.com.  
I really look forward to experiencing your game. 
   
Don't forget, the game will be eligible for the $100 contest (see the 
website) and I tip (fairly well) for a job well done. 
   
Again thanks in advance.

Hi, 

That was fun. Hope you post more of these. My game is Adventures with Raven
http://myadventuregame.com/preview.asp?g=346

Thanks for the question. 

webadept-ga

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Clarification of Answer by webadept-ga on 17 Nov 2002 23:29 PST

Just a tip on this. I'm working on one of your other questions and it
has crossed my mind more than once that there is no easy way to go
through a final edit using your program. If there was a function that
would list say 25 of the pages in a game at one time in separate text
edit boxes, down a single page on the screen, then it would be much
easier to go through the tale and do spell checking and grammar
checks, using block and copy. As it is, every page must be gone
through individually. Which is fine for simple stories, but not so
good if your game has several threads running around like the one I
made (which would have been a lot more complex if I had a means of
editing like I am describing here).

The trouble is if you have a few sub-plots and extra goals or what I
like to call "side treks" going on, like the whale plot is simply a
side trek, then finding all the pages and going through all of them
becomes a burden on the editor, and it's easy to over look simple
things. To compensate for this, simplicity becomes the primary tool,
which makes the game less fun and much less interactive.

What would really be good is a "site map" view of the game, so that
you could see the story board layout. Having a beginning in mind and
an ending is fine, again, for the simple stories. But most of the
"good" ideas come when you are half way through the game.

I haven't looked at the advanced features yet but another thing I was
thinking as I made this first game what that I couldn't "easily" keep
track of "level" goals. For instance. If Raven takes the hat from Fog
man, then he can finish the game, if he doesn't then a separate, but
almost identical set of story screens are displayed to the last point
of the encounter with the giant. Now, I really wanted to be able to do
it this way, it was more "fun" and a good puzzle. But in order to do
this I had to make all the screens twice and name them differently
enough to be "new" but the same enough not to tip the player off on
what was going on. It was a lot of extra work, when if I could have
just checked to see if a "switch variable" had been thrown, then I
could have saved a lot of time, and even thrown a few more of those in
there. Just having some simple logic to check "if hat = true then show
this screen, if not then show this one" would make the games much
better. Again, you may already have this in the advanced features
which I'm going to try using on one of your other questions.

Over all the interface is wonderful and rather appealing. The floating
yellow boxes get a bit annoying after the 30th screen and they are
still showing up. A way of turning those off would be nice. I didn't
mind the re-typing of the screen names when choosing existing ones,
because I could change some of the links to sound more in line with
what was happening at that point in the story. For instance at one
point in the story "Continue up the shore" worked where later it
sounded better using "Go back to the shore", but having the same
screen pointed too.

Anyway, I saw you had asked for this type of info before so I thought
I would save you some time and point these out.

Thanks. 

webadept-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by myadventuregame-ga on 18 Nov 2002 09:13 PST

Hello Webadept!

First and foremost, we just wanted to say thank you so much writing
this game.  It is an excellent story and really gives the player an
interesting perspective from the Raven's point of view.  Good job,
seriously.

We feel that it is definately a 5-star game and deserving of a $5.00
tip.  However, the game does appear to be incomlete -- there are a
number of pages that link to "A New Page," a few pages with no links,
and, although you uploaded 14 pictures, only 7 of them are used
throughout the game.  Please correct these few things, shouldn't take
you that long at all.

Other than that, we truly do feel you made a superb game.  Really, it
was very entertaining and educational.  We are actually working on
implementing some of the features and comments you described (the
game-map, for example).  We will need to make this clear in the
future, but, you actually are able to turn off the PopUp Help by going
to the HELP button in the upper-right hand corner and selecting TURN
OFF POP UP HELP.

You may want to consider playing around with the ADvanced Game editor.
 There are a few ways that you could have implemented the Hat
Function.  I personally would have created a Hat Object that the user
would pick up from the Fog Man.  Then, on a link, you could specify
that the player can only use the link if he/she has the Hat Object. 
I'd be happy to explain more of the features of the Advanced Editor,
if you have specific questions, perhaps then I could develop some
documentaiton on the editor.

In anycase, we really appreaciate the effort you put into the game --
it is a masterpieces 95% completed.  Thanks for your effort, and we
look forward to seeing it completed.  No rush, perhaps within a few
days if you get time.

Thanks again,
Alex and the Myadventuregame.com crew

---

Clarification of Answer by webadept-ga on 19 Nov 2002 10:46 PST

Hi, 

I went back last night, loaded a few more pictures and was going to
clean out the "A New Page," pages, but they don't seem to exist any
where I can get at them. I went through the whole game and all the
little nooks and crannies, but they don't show up in the page list or
as links on the game. There appear to be 5 of them, at least that's
what it says when I try to publish it, but it looks like you have some
type of bug in the indexing function of this program.

I did make far more pages than I needed at times and deleted those
when I decided not to add that many options. So there may be a problem
with the deletion function if you've added a new page or a link to an
existing page and then tell it to delete.

Deleting the images from the list is extremely slow as well. I thought
it was done on a few of them and then noticed the slow blue line at
the bottom of the browser and discovered they weren't gone yet.

Feels like some indexing problems in the database. But since I don't
have access to that area I'm only guessing. I'm assuming you are using
the MSQL database for this and that is a common problem especially for
deletions on tables that have more than two indexes or combo indexes.

Thanks, let me know if there is anything I am missing with the pages
and where I could find them if I am missing them. If I am, then you
might want to look into documenting that better.

I would like to answer one of your other questions using the Advanced
features. Think I'll do that today, and see what you have in there.

webadept-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by myadventuregame-ga on 19 Nov 2002 11:48 PST

Hello again!

Thanks for the response.  I did notice the bug you were talking about
and it's solution was simply to change the text of the error message. 
You did not have any pages titled "This is a new page", as the message
indicated, but the Content of the pages contained that (indicating
that it was an unedited page).  I also had it print off the Titles of
the pages that had no content.  Sorry about that!

It should be a lot easier to go back and fix these.  They are
basically dead ends.  You should be able to edit them by clicking the
PAGE LIST button in the options there.

Let me know if there is any other way I can clarify this.  If not, let
me knwo when you fix that and I'll go ahead and rate&tip you :-)

I do hope you get an opportunity to answer this question.  We will be
posting more soon!

-- Alex

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Clarification of Answer by webadept-ga on 19 Nov 2002 12:46 PST

Okay, that was much better. I never would have found those without the
error message change. Well done there. Even when I saw the pages that
were listed my first thought was "What? No way" but then it proved to
be accurate.

Thanks, and I'm glad you like the game. I've thought of a few others,
wrote out some scripts on some napkins.. :-) Should be better than
this one if I can use the Advanced features. Kind of a nice challenge.

webadept-ga

Awesome! Thanks for the superb answer.  Best one yet!