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ADDP: A Dark and Deadly Path
Version 1.02.01 - December 29, 2006
by mouser@donationcoder.com
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ADDP (A Dark And Deadly Path) is a tiny little interactive story game engine.

It works like the old Dragon's Lair LaserDisc game [1], or like those "choose
 your own adventure games [2], but is audio only and involves no graphics.

Basically an ADDP story/game is an audio story where the reader/play must
 choices along the way by pressing a key on the keyboard.
The chioces may have to be made rapidly in quick succession within a narrow
 time window which can add an element of panic to the story - and make it a
 particular appropriate device for for suspense stories.

Audio files are normal .mp3 files that an author records with standard
 software.  The game script is an .xml file with a format to be described
 in a separate file.
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NOTE:
 Currently the first and only test client for ADDP is a Microsoft Windows
 executable, but a cross-platform online playable Flash version will be
 written if there is any interest in this project whatsoever.
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The easiest way to make a story/game with addp is to write a record a single
 main storyline audio track as a single file.  This audio file represents
 the story when all of the right decisions are made by the reader.

The author then figures out small decision point time windows where choices
 must be made by the reader/player.  These decision windows may be as short
 as half a second, or as long as a few seconds (or author can even choose to
 have game pause while reader decides).

In the simplest kind of game, there will only be one right answer at each
 decision window, and all other choices (including making no choice within
 a time window), will lead to game ending (death of player?).

Part of what makes the stories fun to read are the amusing endgame (death)
 audio segments played for the user when the wrong choice is made.  The
 author of a story will record each such endgame audio segment as a separate
 file.

Once the main audio timeline file, and all alternate endgame audio files
 are recorded (all in .mp3 format), and the time windows noted for each
 decision on the main timeline, the author is ready to create an .xml
 story script which describes the decision windows and what actions cause
 what effects.

For details on the script file format see the AuthorsManual.txt
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REFERENCES

[1] Dragon's Lair Laserdisc Game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Lair
[2] Choose Your Own Adventure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure
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