Inspiration
I personally have great difficulty focusing in certain classes, and textbooks tend to be extremely difficult to digest for me. A lot of other people I know express the same sentiments—the way that information is presented can make it almost impossible to learn for certain types of people. However, interestingly enough, the same people—including myself—are able to memorize pages of lore from books, novels, and games. In fact, I would argue that I know the history of Teyvat better than actual history. If historical information could be presented in a game-like format, it would make learning much easier for me and many others.
What it does
This particular project is about the French Revolution. It is a website that tells the story of the French Revolution, set in a different world called Elysia. The user is able to make a few choices to change where they travel and what they see in the revolution. Images, or more accurately, paintings, from the time are included, and so are primary sources.
How we built it
The website itself is very simple, made with basic HTML and CSS. The bulk of the project is the writing—this choice was made deliberately, as I am more comfortable writing words than I am writing code. As of right now, the project contains about a thousand words of plain English text, not including the primary sources.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge I ran into was writer's block. The bulk of this project is writing out the novel, and making each and every scene both emotionally appealing and historically accurate. I was not able to spend as much time on the writing as I hoped, and I was also not able to get enough accomplished. Unfortunately, the novel remains unfinished as of writing this description.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I am personally proud of making a website from scratch, as it is something I am extremely unfamiliar with. I have not programmed anything in the past year or so, so despite the fact that I have made websites from scratch before, it felt foreign and I did not know what I was doing most of the time. Fortunately, the website is currently functional, and everything works so far.
What we learned
I learned that I did not know as much about the French Revolution as I thought I did, and I did learn quite a bit of how HTML and CSS worked while creating the website.
What's next for Shattered Worlds, Unbroken Dreams—History Novelized
I wish to finish the writing portion, of course, and I also wish to add an audio recording of the text to each page so users can listen to the story.
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