Looking back on my most recent inquiry, I think I was pretty successful, but not fully.

You see, my inquiry was the programming of a text based game with a compelling storyline and well developed characters, which, though it took time, I really got somewhere with. I got the idea for it when playing a really old but really fun text based game entitled “Zork”. After a while I realized the code must be moderately simple, and got to thinking, maybe I could make one? So I went straight to Nolan – the only person I’d ever seen program even a simple text based game – and asked him if he would be able to help me and he told me he was. After that I told Mr. Soiseth about my idea and he helped me form it into an inquiry question:

“I will program a text based game with a compelling storyline and well developed characters”.

I personally thought it was a pretty good question, but at the time I didn’t know where to start, so I started with writing the storyline. What I came up with was a unique, one of a kind story in a unique, one of a kind setting. You see the setting takes place 500 years into the future after an apocalypse wipes out all of humanity with the exception of 43 survivors. In the years after, the 43 formed a new city, the last city. They built great metal 100 foot walls around the borders of the city. These walls had no doors, windows, or even ladders in it, the city was completely sealed off. The 43 named this great walled city “Wattville”, after their leader, Lucius Watt. Ironically enough to the city’s name, the main thing that was lost in the apocalypse was electricity, the new city was run purely by steam and coal. The second was modern fashion, Top hats and Trench Coats came back into style, yet shorts never left style and etc, causing a very strange era of style. The third thing lost was democracy, this new city was ruled in the form of an Monarchy, Lucius Watt and his descendants having ultimate power.

Eventually, after many generations all information on the apocalypse was forgotten, and only the direct descendants of Lucius Watt knew the truth about what happened. But that didn’t stop anyone from honoring Lucius Watt as their savior and founder. But all was not well in this new world, Great coal mines had to be built built under the city to power the rich (who lived in the central, more luxurious part of the city)’s luxuries, such as heating and lighting, whereas the poor were left to fend for themselves in the rundown areas between the luxury areas and the wall.

Anyone who was poor hated the king by the time of King Lucius Watt XII, because of the way he and the nobles treated the poor. They treated the poor as disposable; sending them into the coal mines not expecting them all to come out, hardly giving any money to them. This caused a terrible chain reaction, The King and Nobles had servants doing everything for them, so they never paid the shopkeepers of the city any money, which caused them to go poor, so they had to raise the prices of all of their wares to afford to live, but because of the raised prices the poor couldn’t afford anything. And soon the King started taxing people, just so that he could have money to pay for all of his luxuries.

You play as an orphan in this world, and you choose your gender and name, and every choice you make will affect the game, and who your character becomes as a person.

Okay, so I had a great storyline and all at that point, which was about halfway through the time we had to do the inquiry, and I still had the programming to do, so, I went back to Nolan. Nolan explained to me lots about Java and showed me a couple online forums about programming that can really help me out, then he introduced me to a Java compiler entitled Eclipse.

In the following week and a half, with much help from Nolan and online forums, I programmed Wattville, but I still couldn’t get it working! There was some sort of flaw I was missing, something very important…

I spent a lot of time over spring break trying to get it to work, but I just couldn’t get it working. Eventually I will get Wattville working, but it will probably still be a while. From now on, since it’s no longer my inquiry, I will work on it in my own free time.

Wattville will eventually run properly, but not today.