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Character Concept Picker – Creating Literary and Video-Game Characters

April 25, 2022

Programming

characters, fiction, javascript, narrative, programming, video games, writing

From Narrative Nods to Word Journey, I’ve made a lot of programs that one way or another revolve around words, writing, and fictional worlds. Character Concept Picker is such an app. It’s open-source, free for all, and it can help you come up with ideas for building characters for your next novel or video game.

It all started when, browsing LinkedIn, I discovered an Excel table with some character traits and other characteristics, meant as a guide for creating characters. It was the work of Jacob Conner Harris, a narrative designer.

I messaged him and asked whether he’d be interested in teaming up and creating a little app using the data he’d come up with. He said yes, and Character Concept Picker is the result.

character concept picker
The results generated by Character Concept Picker
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Forbidden Island JavaScript App: An Experiment in Creation

March 21, 2022

Programming

art, game, javascript, programming

First of all, a necessary disclaimer: If you came here expecting to find a ready video game version of the popular board game, Forbidden Island, I’m afraid I’ll disappoint you. This post does show my efforts in creating a Forbidden Island JavaScript app, but I can’t share the program with you. I can’t even share the JavaScript code with you.

You see, the game is – obviously enough – copyrighted. It would be both illegal and unethical to the creator of the game, Matt Leacock, to offer anything I’ve made (even for free).

However, worry not. Not only will I describe my thought process behind turning Forbidden Island into a JavaScript/PHP app – which might help you code one yourself, if you so wish – but, more importantly, I’ll share with you a discovery I’ve made.

This discovery is useful to all of us, gamers or not, coders or not.

I discovered that the most genuine form of creation comes when not only do you have no expectations, but when you can’t even have any expectations. In other words, the most genuine way to create something artistic is a result of knowing it will only be made for the sake of making it.

Forbidden Island JavaScript app
Here’s what the main screen of my Forbidden Island JavaScript app looks like. Notice that neither images nor (most) of the locations correspond to the actual game.
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A JavaScript Haiku Generator with User Input

January 24, 2022

Programming

haiku, javascript, poetry, programming

My iambic pentameter generator is among the most popular posts on Home for Fiction – and the most popular in the programming category. For a long time I’ve been meaning to make a JavaScript haiku generator as well, but I kept postponing it. Well, no more! In other words…

I thought to offer
a haiku generator
in chilly winter

And since I got into the trouble of doing all that, I thought, what the heck; let’s add user input to the mix. So, let’s see what a JavaScript haiku generator looks like.

JavaScript Haiku Generator
What would a JavaScript haiku generator be without images from Japan!
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