codenature Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 Hi, I want to make people be able to make their own choose your own adventure game for other people. I want the database to hold each "scene" that the writer makes, then let the user put in a choice. For example here is one scene with a choice. "You are in a forest. You see a castle, a house, and a road before you. Which will you choose?" Then in the text field the user submits the keyword of either "castle", "house", or "road", and it goes to the appropriate next scene. The problem is, when the game writer is typing in his adventure, I have no clue how I should make up the User interface creating the game or linking up the "scenes". It is kind of like a tree format. Like this. Forest | | House Road Castle | | | hermit fence dragon I know I want the user to type in each scene like "forest" into the text field and submit it to the database, but I have no idea how to link lets say "House" to "Forest" or "Hermit" to House text. Or how I would echo out the next appropriate scene from the Database when the user enters the name of a new scene like "House". Ideally the page would not reload when the user types a new scene, maybe ajax for that? I have no clue, Thank you in advance for any ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scootstah Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 Each scene should have a unique ID in the database, as well as a list of acceptable keywords to advance the scene. Ideally you would normalize that data into two tables. A crude example might look like: scenes -------------------- id | name 1 | forest keywords -------------------- scene_id | id | name 1 | 1 | castle 1 | 2 | house 1 | 3 | road So now you know that the scene "forest" will only accept the keywords "castle", "house", and "road". You can grab this data with a quick JOIN: SELECT s.id AS scene_id, s.name AS scene_name, k.id AS keyword_id, k.name AS keyword_name FROM scenes AS s LEFT JOIN keywords AS k ON k.scene_id = s.id Is that what you were looking for? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
codenature Posted June 7, 2012 Author Share Posted June 7, 2012 Great! Thank you. Also, do you know how I would have the description for each scene in the database? Like if for Forest, I had " You see a beautiful forest with the sun shining through the trees." Please. Thank you so much for the code. Also, do those aliases in your SQL run like that? like s... for "scene"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
codenature Posted June 7, 2012 Author Share Posted June 7, 2012 I am having a database structure problem. If I have scene Forest->options to go to [house] [tree] [road], then each of those 3 needs more links, so that if fI have 2 keywords for new scenes for house, tree and road, that immediately turns into 6 different scenes I have to account for in the database, here is my problem. Database ID|Story|Scene| Description|Keyword1|Keyword2| (keywords=actions the user types to display a new scene) 1 Mike | Forest | You see a..| House | Road 2 Mike | House |You see.. | Chair | Hermit how to do Road??? Now I have a problem. I am able to make the new information for the House keyword, but I cannot make an entry for the Road Keyword. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
codenature Posted June 7, 2012 Author Share Posted June 7, 2012 Nevermind, I just drew it out, and the growth of the scenes grows to a power of 2 if 2 scenes are added to each subsequent scene. My problem is not the database, the problem is my linear design that would create an insanely large database in just a few rooms. room 1 | | 2 3 4|5|6|7 etc etc first room 2 options room 2 , 2 options, room 3, 2 options, so that makes four options. next rooms, are 8 options. next rooms are 16 options. So unless I am wrong, the problem is the linear way I am doing to story, or something else. I don't know anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scootstah Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 At this point you basically need "infinite categories". There are a couple of methods to deal with that, and I recommend you read this article. Hopefully that points you in the right direction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
codenature Posted June 7, 2012 Author Share Posted June 7, 2012 Ok thank you!. I will read it. Also, I decided to ditch the linear "story board" method, to a simpler x,y location method. It is more like the real world, and can be just as descriptive as linear narratives. But the article should be interesting. Thank you. By the way I like your signature. LOL. If you don't succeed, or while you are not succeeding, try again(). haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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