Well, here was an example of an ITP project that didn’t get as far in execution as my colorful hopes for it.
My plan was to make an amusing, very capricious, and very simple pirate game. You make a handful of choices at the beginning on how to equip yourself, and then a bunch of random rolls plus look-up tables would send you on a different journey each time. I was hoping to tap into that old-school Dungeons & Dragons vibe, where characters were prone to suffer horrible, grisly deaths from sheer bad luck, and consequently merely surviving an adventure was an occasion to gloat to ones friends and bask in the brief favor of the polynomial gods. So I had planned entries like having boulders from nearby volcanoes crashing through the deckboards, having the crew cannibalize the captain after falling under the sway of a creepy jungle cult, and finding the body of Blackbeard in a coffin in the belly of a shark.
Alas it was not to be. Not enough time. Instead, we have a game which does two things – chides you if you’ve overspent your outfitting funds, and if you have not, sends you on a journey which simply reduces the food supply on the ship until the crew starves and mutinies. Fun!
This is built on Sinatra, which was brand new to me. I hope to learn more about this framework next semester.