This project uses Facebook posts to tell a fantasy story. The purpose of this is to bring to life the stories created by my brothers and I, as well as to demonstrate the storytelling capabilities of a minimalist medium, as well as dialog-only, character focused storytelling methodology.
This project was created using Simitator's Facebook Status generator, the game Terraria by Re-Logic, and html files. The goal is was to simulate a Facebook conversation between fictional characters. When you click on the Facebook post, a new comment is added along with a ping sound that simulates social media. Minute details such as changes in avatars, presence or absence of typos, and time since a comment was posted add to the story. Meanwhile, the Terraria screenshots, in addition to serving as the setting for the story, allow for great customization and diversity of setting through custom builds. The html docs serve merely as the glue to hold everything else together and simulate the mechanics of social media.
I have no idea what this means. Honestly I just wanted to recreate my brothers and my stupid video game roleplaying.
My first step was to get together with my younger brothers and work out the "script." The story was centered around our made-up characterizations of our Terraria characters, with plenty of alterations in the hopes of not trampling copyright laws any more than the project necessitates. The very first draft had additional parts, but they were cut for length and to keep a singular "plot" (although it's really just the story of these three's daily lives). It also was originally designed around Skype, not Facebook, since that's what we actually use to talk during our games. Thus, everyone was supposed to have status updates that changed every time. However, my choices for message fakers was limited to either Facebook or text messages, and Facebook offered more details. The next step was the slow, painful process of copy-pasting the script (which was still VERY long) into the simulator. A lot of photoshopping was necessary to fix oversights such as incorrect timestamps and to fit in the screenshots. The screenshots were actually also originally going to be drawings to again avoid copyright and to allow more dynamic poses, but I honestly just don't have enough confidence in my art skills, plus this was faster. Nearly all of the structures were pre-built in our savefile, in order to keep with the theme of reflecting our real life roleplaying, and those that weren't could be quickly thrown together (the exception is the second Ruby Castle, which I had to find online as I'd accidentally deleted the one I was going to use). Finally, once all the Facebook posts were edited, they had to be set up to simulate an actual Facebook conversation. I had originally planned to use Processing, but html would (I thought) allow me to embed the project straight into a website. I eventually managed to track down enough tutorials to show me how to swap out the image sources, and from that it was just copy-pasting a lot of function code for each picture. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to actually embed this into a website, so I'm just turning it in like this.
Description - Didn't I already describe it up in the overview and details?
Statement of Purpose - 1) To bring to life the stories my brothers and I come up with while playing games together, and hopefully encourage others to be creative in their play as well. Roleplaying is easy and fun, and allows you to play absolutely ridiculous characters like the ones presented. 2)To demonstrate the capabilities of what is thought to be a minimalist medium in communicating complex situations though character dialog and details. 3)To endorse storytelling methodologies that emphasize strong characters and dynamic character interactions. 4)To provide a humorous contrast by mixing a bizzare fantasy world with modern technology, as well as depicting powerful beings in a casual, relatable manner.
Influences - Again, my brothers, Terraria, and sheer lack of will, skill, and resources. That one video that told a story entirely through the view of a phone helped too by inspiring the Facebook style.
Fit with Larger Notion of Aesthetics - I have no clue what this means. I'm not trying to redefine anything here, it's just a stupid story about my brothers and I playing Terraria.
Materials - Simitator's Facebook Status generator, the game Terraria by Re-Logic, and html files, as mentioned. If you want to be picky, also a LOT of Paint.NET, a Word document for the script, and an mp3 file of a beeping sound.
Methodologies - I don't know, didn't we cover this in the background?
Outcomes - The project is finished after several days of just pasting in script lines and editing Facebook Posts together, and I'm completely worn out and never want to do this again.
I regret half the ideas I had, particularly the ones that I apparently couldn't do. All I really learned is that I bit off far more than I could chew, and I really don't belong working with digital media. I'm mainly just glad I didn't follow all my other ideas (such as having the messages be automated or something) and make it worse. As much as I like to think I can come up with great ideas, I rarely have the skills or resources to make them work. I have no idea how this will be valuable in the future, except maybe discouraging me from ever trying something like this again. I should have just did one of those Machinama things (recording gameplay and editing it into a story).