Alright. I'm having some troubles focusing at the moment. I've just started getting some R.E.M. sleep again, but I have put together some of the design document. It's Haphazard at the moment, but I'm going to put it up for now.
Nothing here should be considered finalized and the launch version can be feature lite, with features planned to be added as things go along.
The Interactive Fiction Project
It's time to dream! This is the initial design document of my, Terranvoid, proposed Interactive Fiction(IF) site. Largely listing features that I think should be well possible to have in such an online site.
I suspect that trying to include all these features up front is too work intensive for an initial site, given the scale of resources I anticipate on having, but future design goals in place will hopefully make building towards a more robust IF over time all the easier.
Basic Design
Format:
The sites that have the format I prefer the best are Choose your Own Change(CyOC) and Fiction Branches(), although the Breast Expansion Archive's BEAddventure (BEA) has a nice, clean look.
Ad space is not planned.
One feature I would like to have is accounts and to be able to turn on and off the ability for unregistered viewers to be able to add chapters. This can be vital when faced with certain spam attacks.
As is detailed further into the document, I do want some functionality to be built into the accounts.
The IF's Body
The basic page of the IF should be a short page header with the site name, a standard account bar at the top of the page, followed by the main body of the chapter, with a clearly separate section below for the choices to be added.
Chapter Features
Each chapter page should have several features, including easy click location to see the choices, in a yet to be determined format, as well as a clickable branch outline.
Page tags should be included and usable by other features of the IF.
The BEA's current use of a comments link for individual pages is a tempting idea as well.
A rating system for each chapter sounds like a useful feature to include.
Admin ability of being able to flag a chapter with a state of “Non-Continuation” for certain site functionality that may be implemented early or late in the sites feature development.
The added choices should eventually be sortable from the chapter view.
Sorting including by number of sub-chapters, depth of branches, rating of next chapter, and possible average weighting of further branches.
A togglable “Depth” display next to the chapter option may also be a good user-friendly move to include.
Picture frames should be a feature easily implemented in the future. Planned is for only site approved pictures to display.
A frame at the top of the chapter for Popout/Tooltip style rollover. Largely to allow notes to be postable in the frame. Such as a characters current form.
Site Features
Site features should include:
Account based favorites of chapters
The creation of “Books” out of a particular set of chapters, to be displayed on a library shelf style page. With both official books and user-created books, the display of them to be toggleable between either official, user, or both.
User accounts will have their own library page where they can put their favorite “Books” on the page. Books should have a display option of showing the story in a linear fashion, or showing the chapter choices in each chapter.