Final Project Writeup

My Final Project can be found here (need to be on a Brown University google account to view):
 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IOAkrvK49gDC2O34E18l8m_ybd6oVrtcVeo6L022O6U/edit?usp=sharing

The code repository can be found here:
https://github.com/jramos70/DLA-Project

The final project can be found here:
https://jramos70.github.io/final_project/intro.html

Project Update (pt 2)

A link to my progress is here: https://jramos70.github.io/final_project/intro

What I have done so far is starting to create the html files for the text game. In it I have written different scenarios that tell the story. I also experimented with adding interactivity to it. For example, one scenario has 3 different choices and only 1 lead to the next scenario (the other 2 lead to a game over screen). I used javascript to randomly choose which one is successful, so it will be different each time. I also added a scenario where you are in a space battle with another ship and you need to fire your "weapons" (in this case, clicking a button") at the other ship to progress to the next round.

I think my progress is a good example of what the game will look like. My next steps will be to add a lot more scenarios to the game and add some css for visual aesthetics. However, I do not want the game to look too polished, because I really want to make it feel more personal and hand-crafted, like the hand-written web article we read in class. Additionally, I played around with making random text from a dataset, but I didn't really like the results, so I decided to write the story myself.

Project Update

For my project update, I have started to put some initial thought into how my game will be structured. I have decided that for the decisions players have to make,  the outcome will not always be the same in every game. For example, if a player is given choice A and choice B, choice A will give different outcomes each time.

Another thing I am planning to add is items or companions for the player. Once again, these things will be randomized throughout the game so players will receive different items for each run.

I think the randomization of the project makes it more interesting as it isn't always the same game throughout each run. Additionally, I hope that by adding items to the game, it adds a layer of strategy to it.

Week 10 Experiment

My Experiment was to translate "Through the Park" by Nick Monfort (found here: http://nickm.com/poems/through_the_park.html)

Below are the results:

Durch den Park
Das Mädchen grinst und schnappt sich einen Müsliriegel. ... Das Mädchen zieht sich ein schlampiges Kleid an. ... Eine Wolfspfeife ertönt. ... Eine Wildblume nickt, fest umklammert. ... ein Kichern weht durch die Luft. ... Der Mann stürzt ab und hinterlässt den Vorwand. ... Tauben streuen. ... das Grün des Parks ist grau. ...

I chose German because it was a language I am somewhat familiar with. Overall, the translation ended up being fairly accurate and kept a lot of the original meaning behind it.

I then decided to translate it into Tagalog:

Sa pamamagitan ng parke
Ang batang babae ay nanunuya at nakakuha ng granola bar. ... Ang batang babae ay naglalagay sa isang slutty na damit. ... Isang lobo sumisipol tunog. ... Isang wildflower nods, mahigpit gripped. ... Isang giggle weaves sa pamamagitan ng hangin. ... Ang lalaki ay nagtagas, na iniiwan ang pagkukunwari. ... Pigeons scatter. ... Ang berdeng parke ay kulay-abo. ...

In this translation, some of meaning gets lost/convoluted. From this experiment, I can see that perhaps certain languages translate better into others, which makes sense given the origins of English and German compared to English and Tagalog.

Final Project Proposal

Project Title (Temporary): Space Adventure

Summary: Space Adventure is an interactive web story that allows users to walk through a science fiction story online. At each prompt, users will be given a set of choices. Each choice they make will determine how the story progresses for them. Because of this, no two storylines will be exactly the same, which will lead to a more interactive experience!

Keywords: Interactive, randomized

Would I like to present: Unsure at the moment

Details:
Concept: The concept is somewhat of a continuation of my Week 8 Experiment. I find story driven games to be very fascinating and I think making them interactive adds an additional layer of immersion. I believe combining language and technology makes the storyline more exciting and allows for the story to be non-linear.

Implementation: I primarily will be using HTML/CSS/Javscript to create the game. I am also looking into the possibility of using a GAN or Markov Models to generate the story prompts so that no two games will be the same.

Inspiration: My inspiration is text games I have played in the past, such as Zork: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWQDccL0aXM

Project Plan: My plan is to create a simple web app using HTML/CSS/Javascript to display the game and add visuals and interactive buttons. The main challenge will be to dynamically generate story prompts (if I decide to go that route).

Week 9 Readings

I thought that the "Machine Translation and Global English" paper brought up really good points about the state of NLP projects and the problems we are trying to solve using NLP. I like the idea of having a "Global English" language because it solves some of the big problems in translation, mainly, meanings get lost through translation. I thought that this was interesting because in my week 1 experiment, the meaning of the lyrics got lost after I translated it multiple times through Google Translate.

Similarly, I thought "Algorithmic Adaptations" was pretty cool because it was similar to my project as well. It explores how the translation algorithm translates things by utilizing blanks. I thought it was a pretty cool idea because I didn't realize before how missing words can drastically change the meaning of a sentence and that by excluding them, it can be tricky for the translation algorithm to get a proper read on the meaning of the sentence.

Week 8 Reading Response

I thought that the "Handmade Web" article was very interesting because the culture of the web today is much different than it was 20 years ago. In the past, the internet was a lot less commercialized and there wasn't many frameworks/libraries available to create websites. Many of the websites were crafted using basic HTML/CSS/Javascript. In the present, the web is so commercialized with ads on every site. Additionally, there are so many web frameworks available that standardizes the way the web is programmed, which is some ways can hinder creativity.

Reading "Aesthetic Animism" there is a thought that perhaps AI could replace human creativity. However, I believe that human thought is special and cannot be 100% replicated. Most of machine learning is learning from past human examples and really only represents what the AI thinks humans think rather than what the AI actually thinks. The conversation of whether AI is thinking for itself is an interesting one, but I believe that because poetry requires human thoughts and emotions, AI could never truly replace human poetry.