StudyCrafter

Some notes on how the project is organized…

(created by andy on 10/24/17)

-PLAYING THE PROJECTS-

The page where you can navigate through and try out different projects is here: http://www.neumadscience.com/explore_manual.html

The game files for the 'Scenario Runner' are here: http://www.neumadscience.com/experiments/ScenarioRunner3/

This is just a single game, and is used for playing through any project. It accesses the the proper script files based on the user name and the project name (both found from the URL). The scripts are in a filetree on the server here: http://neumadscience.com/game-assets/users/

So each user has a folder, and in that they've got folders for their projects. A good example script to look at might be MadTeam's Decoy Effect: http://neumadscience.com/game-assets/users/madteam/00_Decoy%20Effect/

Each project has an overarching json file (00_projectname.json) that contains things like the project title, description, starting scene, user-set variables, etc. An example would be here: http://neumadscience.com/game-assets/users/madteam/00_Decoy%20Effect/00_Decoy%20Effect.json

Then each scene within the project has its own json file (XX_scenename.json) - where XX is just an incrementor to keep the files ordered nicely. These files are separated into two main parts. First are the 'dictNodes' which are basically a list of the 'nodes' from the scriptor. In Scene 1 of our Decoy Effect example, node '6,' for instance, is a dialogue node where Barnacle Bob(1) says “Welcome to … How can I help you?” The second part of this json, 'scene', contains the scene info of where all the objects are placed, their positions, scale, etc. (The Decoy Effect example scene would be here: http://neumadscience.com/game-assets/users/madteam/00_Decoy%20Effect/01_Scene%201.json)

When people are playing the games, first the proper scripts are loaded up – then the game grabs the assets (art and sounds) it needs. The art is sorted into a filetree here: http://neumadscience.com/game-assets/art/

The sounds are sorted into a filetree here: http://neumadscience.com/game-assets/sound/

-CREATING THE PROJECTS-

You can grab the latest (standalone) build of the authoring tools, and see some basic info, in the dokuwiki: http://neumadscience.com/dokuwiki/doku.php

Right now, you can find the files for the online 'Authoring Tools' (the webgl tool that folks use to create their projects) here: http://www.neumadscience.com/experiments/AuthoringTools/

When someone loads up the authoring tools online, the WebGl queries the server for the location and names of their projects, and then loads the json files into the tools. As they are editing and creating, new json files get saved back onto the server.