DyNaMo

Dynamic Narrative Modelling

DyNaMo is a set of tools to help game developers design and create multinarrative stories, games where the player's descisions affect the outcome of the story and change how a game plays out. This is alongside a runtime library to let game engines hook into a designed story, so this system can calculate's a player's state in the story for the engine. Example include a bundled 'choose your own adventure' example featuring Scooby-Doo* and DyNaDeMo a more sophisticated 3D tech demo to show the flexibility of the tools.

Building, Running and Testing

You must have Java 1.8.0_74 or above installed. The project is built using Gradle.

Linux/Unix/OS X

To run gradle tasks, open the root project directory in the terminal and do the follwing:

Assemble and test the project:

./gradlew build

Assemble the project:

./gradlew assemble

To create assemble a jar file with all the dependencies:

./gradlew fatJar

To run the DyNaMo editor simply use the following:

./gradlew runEditor

To run the Scooby-Doo HTML example:

./gradlew runScoobyDooHTML

To run the Scooby-Doo Text example:

./gradlew runScoobyDooText

To run the Scooby-Doo HTML example, using explicit directory (can look at source to write your own):

./gradlew runHTMLPreview -Pdirectory="../../../examples/ScoobyDooHTML"

Similarly for text:

./gradlew runTextPreview -Pdirectory="../../../examples/ScoobyDooText"

To test:

./gradlew check

To clean:

./gradlew clean

Windows

Windows is similar to Linux, but without the "./".

Specifying JDK path

If you wish to specify the jdk path for gradle, add the following to a gradle.properties file in the home directory.

org.gradle.java.home=/path/to/jdk1.8.0_72

Logging

By default, every single debug message with a priority of 4 and above will be logged. To customise how things are logged, create a config.json file in src/main/java as follows:

{
  "log": {
    "console": {
      "1" : [
        "all"  
      ],
      "2" : [
        "io"  
      ],
      "4" : [
        "gui"            
      ],
      "5" : [
        "error"
      ]
    }
  }
}

This example will log the following to the output console; everything of the highest priority will be logged, everything related to I/O operations of level 2 and above (so levels 1 & 2) will be logged. Everything related to the GUI of levels 4-1 will be logged and all errors will be logged.

To view all the available systems that can be logged, refer to java uk.ac.cam.echo2016.multinarrative.dev.Debug for all constants starting with java SYSTEM_.

Project Style Guide

Java

Indentation

Indentation must be done with 4 spaces. NOT tabs.

Class Member Ordering

It is advised that class members are ordered as follows:

• Fields
• Constructors
• Methods Then the next level of subordering must be:
• static members
• instance members Finally, within these catagories order things as follows:
• public
• protected
• package
• private

Refer to the following example:

class TestClass {
    public static int publicStaticField = 0;
    protected static int protectedStaticField = 0;

    public int publicInstanceMember;
    private int privateInstanceMember;

    public TestClass() {
        privateInstanceMember = 0;
    }

    public static int publicStaticMethod() {
        return publicStaticField;
    }

    int packageInstanceMethod() {
        return privateInstanceMember;
    }
}

Abiding by this is up to the programmer's discretion, but don't diverge from this format unless you have a good reason.

Maximum Line Length

Lines must not be longer the 120 characters each.

Commits

These are rough guidelines to how developers should commit to the repository.

Messages

Git messages should have the following format:

Write imperatively, write less than 50 characters

The body should be separated from the title by a blank line like this.
Each line should be a maximum of 72 characters wide. You should explain
in detail WHY the changes you made were made, not necessarily WHAT has
changed. You don't need this though, just a title is ok as well!

Further paragraphs can appear after blank lines, and you can go into as
much depth as you want!

 - Woo bullet points!

 - Seriously, bullet points are a great way of listing information.

And that is how commit messages should be formatted, although this is a
rough guideline and by no means required as we are but humble student
developers.

© James Riordan, Angus Hammond, Elise Xue, Robin McFarland, Tim Ringland and Tom Read Cutting.

*SCOOBY-DOO and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © Hanna-Barbera. WB SHIELD: TM & © WBEI. (s16) This piece of software is not endorsed by or associated with the copyright and trademark holders of SCOOBY-DOO in any way.