Hello, and welcome to Create Your Own Choose-Your-Own-Adventures!
Here, you may browse literally tens of exciting adventures, or register and create your very own!
Still on hiatus this last month due to work and personal obligations. Apologies!
Hi, all!
Progress this past month has been very slow due to buying and then moving into a new house.
Turned in the keys to the old apartment today, however, so it should be possible to get back into the swing of things now!
Greetings one and all! April is upon us, and with it a bunch of people and websites who believe they can trick you. We have not partaken of that particular ritual this year, and I hope you all appreciate it.
Before going any further, let's quickly discuss the update from February to support registration for children under the age of 13. This was posted as a minor update, but it seems like a good idea to mention it here too: anyone younger than 13 may not sign up for the site without parental permission. They will need to email admin@cyocyoa.com to provide this consent. In conjunction with that change, the Privacy Policy has also been updated to address users under 13.
In any case, what's been going on with the site this month? Well, apart from the Design Post from a couple weeks ago, work has been progressing on the visual editor. The "Connect To..." and "Disconnect From..." functionality is now fully implemented, and the actual Screen Editor (where you can change the text of the screens) is now in progress, beginning with a slick animation:
In addition, the loading animations have been tightened up and navigation throughout the site feels a lot smoother. With the "macro" portion of the Visual Editor (where you create and move around screens) feature-complete, and the "micro" portion (where you edit their contents) relatively straightforward, we are getting noticeably closer to launching this monster of a project! Thanks, as always, for bearing with me and remaining patient!
Hello, and welcome to the second Design Post! This month, I'll be discussing the new Choosology "achievements" system, Degrees and Elements.
While there's still some design work to be done, the basics of this system are as follows: Each user will be able to view their own personal "Periodic Table of Achievements." Much like the Periodic Table of Elements, the PToA is organized such that each column contains achievements related to each other. For example, the first column will contain the "Membership" achievements, ranging from just having signed up (Registerium) to being a user for three years (Triannium). Users will automatically "discover" these elements for themselves when the conditions are met. Other columns will include achievements related to writing adventures (or "experiments"), being rated highly, having an experiment published, working with others, and other such activities. There would also be room to expand the table for new permanent achievements or the occasional temporary special achievement (maybe a "week of mysteries" where users are encouraged to submit a new experiment with a mystery theme).
Once a user has discovered every element in a column, a Degree will be conferred unto them. These will be something like medals; users can display them on their profile and can even choose one as an icon next to their username when it appears anywhere on the site. A Degree will be quite meaningful; to get one may require many years or an intense amount of work, much like in real life. Currently there aren't any plans to allow Degrees to unlock new functionality, but it wouldn't be out of the question. Primarily, though, they're just meant to give users something to work towards, and maybe show off a little.
That's pretty much the extent of what Degrees and Elements will look like. If you have any questions or ideas for good Degrees, please share them in the comments!
Until next time... may all your choices lead you to the best possible ending!
Hey, everyone! Our shortest month is over, and finally it doesn't feel like it's just dark all the time...
This past month has been busy indeed! I've been working with a graphics-savvy colleague (the one who designed the Choosology logo and backgrounds you've seen) to try to tighten up the design of the new site before it gets too far gone in one ugly direction. We've been working on improving the colors, adding some new foreground-background flair (it'll make sense when you see it), and adding smoother/faster loading animations. Plus I added the ability to connect two pre-existing screens in the visual editor as well.
Unfortunately, everything is in a bit of an in-between stage right now, so I don't have much of a screenshot for you. Next time!
As well, I hope you saw the Design Post from the middle of the month. This month, I'll delve into a new topic: Degrees! Degrees are basically the achievements of Choosology, and I'll tell you all about them somewhere around the Ides of March (beware!).
Goodbye for now, and may your choices always lead to the end screen with the most exclamation points!
PS: I realize the month labels on these things stopped being about the last month and started being about the just-started one. Well, it's too late to turn back now! Also, it's a lot easier to make fun titles with the spring months...