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VCB424 Advanced Interactive Design IV

Mystery!

Assignment

Working in groups of 2 or 3, create an interactive mystery game using Flash. Here are some examples (these were crated by several Flash classes at the U of M...can you improve on them?):

Procedure

  1. Form groups.
  2. Working together, come up with a plot for your mystery. What happened? Whodunit? Why? Where? When? How? Who are the suspects? What are their motive? What are their alibis?
  3. Now determine how you want the "investigator" to go about solving the crime. What are the clues and how should you reveal them? How much information will you reveal and when? How should the investigator go about finding information? Work out a detailed story board and flowchart that lay out all of the steps involved in the process.
  4. Design an interface. What should the screen look like? What sort of controls will you give the user? How will the information be arranged on screen? Create a mock-up using Photoshop or Illustrator that approximates what the interface will look like and how it will behave (if you plan on having several radically different page designs, create separate mock-ups for all of them).
  5. Collect your assets: shoot photos, create artwork, find sounds, music, etc. Try not to use any copyrighted material—be as original as you can.
  6. Build your mystery game in Flash. There is no one right way to do this, but there should be multiple screens (pages), and user control (the user should be able to make choices as to where he/she goes, not simply be led through a sequential story like a novel). You can determine how fancy or complex you wish to make it.
  7. Export the file as a .swf. Embed the .swf into an xhtml page and upload it to the server. Make links to it from your home pages (everyone in the group should link to it). Back sure you give me the story boards & mock-ups as well!

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