The Founding IdeaAftering doing a beta program with SpotLife involving publishing videos to the web, I wondered how else I could put my QuickCam to use.The QuickCam is small and mobile, allowing me to take snap shots of stuff on my desk from odd angles. I saw this no different that very lo-tech claymation stills, and therefore it would be possible to wrap a story around it, where the players wander like an adventure game through the images. But that involved having a cohertent story, so I called upon the efforts of my good friend Danny Adams, who was patient enough to sit with me at 2:AM while I started to figure out how this was possible. Using PHPI have quickly grown to love PHP and a tool for web design.I figured if I could concentrate on the technical mechanics, Danny could be writing the story part while I worked. PHP fit nicely into this scheme, allowing headers and footers to pages. Meanwhile Danny started chugging text. Instead of having a ton of web files, I figured it would be easier to make one PHP page which knew how to selectively present the story and the controls for making decisions. As Danny needed choices, he would call a function which would add the choice and encode a destination. When the page is reloaded, the destination is resolved to present the portions of text he needed. The advantage to this system is that it makes it possible for the author to write text, HTML, or PHP. State can be added to stories, along with elaborate presentation if desired. Automatic illustrations, if available, are handled by the system. Unlike book-versions of choose your own adveture, it is possible to re-visit previous screens and have different text, and different choices, presented.
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