Proposal 



*	i. Title:

	Choose Your Own Adventure / Create Your Own Adventure 

*	ii. Name: 

	Alice Sewall and Punit Shah

*	iii. Abstract: 

	Our project will use XML technologies to make and play a web based game in the spirit of Choose Your Own Adventure books we read as kids, expanded to be more interactive. 

*	iv. What: 

	The story begins with a paragraph ending with a series of action choices for the reader (in our case, these will be web links). The player chooses one of the links, and goes to another web page based on his or her choice. The game continues in this style, and provides multiple storylines. An XML file will contain a story, and web site pages will be generated using XSLT. The XML file will contain information about which links the user can go to next. Mini games can be played along the way, with objects for rewards, which can be stored as cookies. The overall goal would be to allow children to write their own stories, so a Create wizard would be available. If time allows, a web page charging fees (such as $1 or 50 cents) would be made to create and view stories. 

*	v. Why: 

	It sounds like fun and fulfills the requirements for the project. It is also is expandable and contractible in terms of the amount of work. Creating a website for storytelling will encourage children to read, write, use the web, and share stories with friends. We also think it will be fun for us to write a story, and complete it with graphics and user interaction.

*	vi. How: 

	We will use JAXP and XSLT to read and dynamically generate the files. We will also use servlet, session, and cookie classes and/or JSP. The XML files will be verified using DTD or XSD. Ideally, we will allow the user to add various sound and graphic/movie files using different XML tags. Mini games could be executed on the server side using the Java's RunTime class.

	For the mini games, we would like to have the user have 5 tries to guess a number between 1 and 100, and be told whether the number is higher or lower each time. Another example of a mini game could be a memory game, showing the user a video clip and asking questions such as "What color car was being driven?" or "What station was the car radio set to?" Right now whether it is possible to prevent the user from rewatching a video, or what pitfalls we may run into if the user tries to cheat the session.

	Division of Work: Alice and Punit will divide the work on this, mostly 50/50. Alice will concentrate on the vision and requirements, XML/DTD/XSD layout, and documentation. Punit will concentrate on the design of the web portal, the create wizard, and researching which Java APIs to use. The actual Java coding and story development will be evenly split.

*	vii. Questions: 

	What do you see as a more viable choice between the use of DTDs or XML Schema given the project domain? 

	Should we limit the story length, or is there a way to setup restrictions to guarentee that there is an ending? Should we employ the feature of allowing a player to save their game and continue later?

	We expect more questions to come up about the details, such as possibly preventing the use of the Back Button or restricting what the user can do in one session. We may also need advice on the scope of this project, so we don't fall into the trap of doing too much or too little work.