WATS 3020 Text Adventure

In this project, you will be asked to create a simple text adventure game that allows a user to make choices that influence the outcome. To accomplish this goal, you will use functions that can execute whenever an Event is triggered. (Note: You will not be required to create the Events.)

Here is the interaction that we're going for:

1. User arrives on page, sees first page of story.
2. User selects a choice.
3. User sees the next page based on their choice.
4. User continues to make choices on each page until they reach an ending to the story.

This fits the typical "choose-your-own-adventure" template, so if you're familiar with those kinds of stories, then you should be able to imagine what this will look like.

A functional outline of how the program works and an explanation of the structure of the story data can be found here.

Basic Requirements

In order to complete this project successfully, you will need to fulfill these requirements:

1. Add a function to get the current page.
2. Add a function that records the user's choice.
3. Add a function that will undo the last choice.
4. Add a function to update the text in the DOM.
5. Add a function that advances to the next page.

Guide and Tutorial

For assistance with specific components of this assignment, consult this text tutorial for guidance. In the alternative, a video walkthrough of the assignment can be found here. Timestamps for specific parts of the assignment (with associated links) are as follows:

• 3:20 - Overview of the Story Data
• 7:15 - Updating the Page Content
• 17:07 - Loading a New Page
• 23:07 - Finishing the Undo Button

Stretch Goals

If this project is too easy, attempt these stretch goals to make it more challenging.

• Add a link to some image data and display that when you're on the page associated with that image
• Enhance the undo mechanism by making it reset when the user restarts the story or reaches the end. (This may require you to determine that fact in the getCurrentPage() function and then create a new function to reset the choiceList.)
• Enhance the project with an original story, or a more ambitious story, or one that explores allowing for more than two choices. (You might consult some resources like "How to Write Your Own Choose Your Own Adventure Story" by Karen Woodward, or "Designing Branching Narratives" by Paul Nelson.)
• In your new story you could add additional characters that the User could name. Write functions to prompt the user for those names and then manage their insertion into the text in appropriate places.
• ADVANCED: Log the time started so that you can provide a "total time played" update on each page (you will need to edit the updatePage() function to add this output). (Look into the JS Date object to make that happen.)
• ADVANCED: Enhance the storyData object to use a property called timeLimit on pages: If there is a timeLimit for a page, then edit the updatePage() function to use a setTimeout command that will send the user to a failure page if they don't make a choice within the allotted time.