Story Builder
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Description & Goals
Summary
Story Builder is a graphical story constructor tool. Drag & drop a variety of characters (stamps) into a background, and create an imaginative scene. Simple word-processing capability is included to encourage and facilitate free-form creative writing and the saving of original stories. When finalized, users will also be able to add their own images (created with Paint, Camera, etc.) and share their stories via the mesh. This is a WorldWideWorkshop project - see the WorldWideWorkshop wiki page.
Beta 1.3 update:
HELP! A couple of OLPCgames bugs have indefinitely stalled production on Story Builder since August. We cannot complete the project without this fix. Lincoln Quirk was working on it, but no one has taken it on since he left. Check out the 'projects/games-misc' git repository in dev.laptop.org. The file you want is olpcgames-src/olpcgames/eventwrap.py. The priority of the issue was downgraded recently, but we hope you will reconsider and try to address it for FR1. Please let us know if this is possible. Once that is done, we can complete the full functionality (Scroll to see "Full Functionality" list below).
Beta 1.2 update (Aug 24, 2007): Story Builder v1.0b launches in Sugar and has sound, thanks to recent enhancements made to the olpcgames wrapper by Lincoln Quirk. However, the ability to type in your title and story is not working correctly under Sugar yet. While this bug is being addressed, you can test the writing and saving of text by running the application from the Developer's console on your XO. We recommend looking at it both ways.
To test the activity outside of Sugar:
- Alt+0 and select Terminal tab, then type the following:
- su
- mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
- cd /mnt
- cp StoryBuilder-8.xo.zip /home/olpc
- cd /home/olpc
- su olpc
- unzip StoryBuilder-8.xo.zip
- sugar-install-bundle StoryBuilder-8.xo
- cd Activities/StoryBuilder.activity/
- python ./StoryBuilder.py
- Alt 0 to see the activity
- Press Esc to quit Story Builder
Full Functionality List:
DONE:
- Select a background / theme (from fixed set of provided themes and images)
- Place the animated characters freely on the background
- Select placed characters and move them around or remove them
- Selecting a character which overlaps with others brings it to the front
- Clear Picture
PENDING:
- Add the story title and text
- Save (Store the story in the Journal)– a file format will need to be developed which stores the story as compactly as possible so that the graphic components are not duplicated multiple times on the Data Store, if possible.
- Allow students to take drawings created with the XO painting tool and use them as background images.
- Allow students to take photos with the XO camera and use the photo files as background images.
- Friends can share saved stories and read them together over the mesh. A group of students will be able to look at a story together simultaneously.
- Students should also be able to save story asset files (images, sounds) onto thier clipboard and use them in new stories.
- Print (if possible in current version of Sugar – otherwise printing may be deferred)
IDEAS:
- Campfire Stories - Allow friends over the mesh to each take turns telling the story
