Interactive Narrative Evaluation

Over the last 7 weeks I have been working on my interactive narrative with Simon Perkins. This was the first time I had ever used Dreamweaver and worked with HTML/Java Script. Although Simon had shown us the basics of Java Script programming, in order to increase my knowledge of Dreamweaver, I had to do a lot of experimenting and research myself. This involved a lot of problem saving in order to deal with any problems that occur whilst designing and making the narrative, which is a key element of being a multimedia designer.



The narrative brief was very broad, which allowed us to be as creative with our ideas. The only requirement limitation was that the interactive narrative had to be a place that was deemed special to us. Here in Nottingham, that 'place' was my room at my halls as it is the only private place where I can relax and has "personal identity" which has "vital entities, with ownership and belonging". This is what was defined as a 'place' according to Marc Augé, which was mentioned in our narrative brief.

Although the room was personal to me, I felt that it would make very boring narrative if all you had to do was look around the room; after all, there are only four walls. As it had to be interactive, I though it would be good to control certain objects such as turning the lamp on and off and opening draws to allow the user to explore the room in more depth and give the user more control of the narrative. I then developed the idea further, and decided to make an interactive narrative game, where the user had to search the room for items. I thought that I am always loosing things and am always late in the mornings because I can never find anything. Therefore, to make the whole narrative a personal account of me, I decided to base it on me, and allow the user to be me as they try and find the items. The idea was slightly based on the 360 degree photography that allows you look around a certain area from all angles. Some examples can be found at http://www.360spin.co.uk/3sixtyMedia/soapstar.htm which lets you look around various television studios.



I had little trouble designing the narrative however, one problem occurred when I used the roll over function. I used java programming to create roll over points which meant that if you roll off the side of the page, then the next section of the room will be shown. For example, if you move the mouse to the far left of the image, the image showing the next part of the room will be shown. Also, if you move onto the TV it would turn on, and as soon as you move off, it will turn off. This created many problems and it became very frustrating to navigate. If you were to move the pointer completely off the image, when you moved it back on the image would change again as you roll over the sides. Also, when you went to click on the lap top for example, you might accidentally roll over a draw. Movement had to be very restricted; therefore I changed it back to clicking on the objects.

Another problem occurred once the narrative had been uploaded onto the lab constellation website as some of the images did not load correctly. (This problem is not yet solved and I am currently working on a solution).

One thing that I wanted to do was to create a time limit for the user to find all the items, however this was not possible to do in HTML, because as soon as you clicked to the next page the time would start again as information can not carry on to other pages. To do this, I could use flash as you can have a time limit running whilst navigating.

Another idea that I wanted to do was to create a final screen that would allow the user to enter the location of all the items once they had found them all, which would take them to a final ‘congratulations’ screen. Simon and I experimented with various methods which could potentially have worked but would take a lot of time and involve some complex programming, which was perhaps too advanced for a learner like me. One step at a time eh! One solution involved various drop down menus for each of the four items, which contained various possible locations. Once the correct locations were selected, the ‘congratulation’ screen will be shown.



Overall the narrative works well. The only small problem is that it does not run as smoothly when posted on the internet. As each image has to download, there is a slight delay between each image so it’s not as continuous as it is when all the pages are downloaded on to the computer. If the narrative was done in flash, this problem again, would be solved.





Overall, I enjoyed this exercise and I have learnt a lot about java programming. I have also increased my problem solving skills and improved my photography skills have also developed. Finally I now have a greater understanding of what the limitations of HTML are.