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Show HN: StoryStak – Exquisite Corpse/Telephone-esque story creation

4 points by espityle 11y ago

espityle 11y ago
I recently finished my first website built with Python and Flask. I'm fairly new to programming and would love to hear about how many mistakes I made and all of the ways that I could make it better. Basically it's Exquisite Corpse and Telephone rolled into a website that lets you create stories with people. I initially just made it for my friends and myself as an experiment and a learning tool, but I'd like to see what others think about it. It saves stories and keeps track of "story trees", randomly fetching a story piece from the tree each time you read it. People can add new branches to the story or add to an existing branch. I'm hoping that as the number of stories increases you'll get to read some pretty weird stuff and that the chance of reading the exact same thing twice will decrease. Also I'm a terrible writer so mostly I'm looking for more interesting prompts.
- e12e 11y ago
  For one, you probably want to add some kind of background to the text -- the large text for the story bits is readable -- but eg: http://www.storystak.com/about http://www.storystak.com/about is unreadable. Perhaps something along the lines of: #content { color: white; margin: 0.5%; padding-top: 2.5%; padding-bottom: 2.5%; border-radius:10px; background: #fff; /* fallback for browsers that don't understand rgba */ background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.4)/* transparent white */ } See also eg: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4855348/how-can-i-make-div-rounded-corners-with-transparent-background http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4855348/how-can-i-make-di...
  - espityle 11y ago
    Oh that's wonderful. Thanks for the tip. I was trying to figure out how to do something similar.
- rexpop 11y ago
  Love the concept! One suggestion: get rid of registration and login. It's an impediment to participation.
pixellab 11y ago
I really like the concept. I know there are other sites that do it too, but I like the simplicity of your site. One comment, the white text can be hard to read with the background image you're using — I like it as a textural element, but maybe it doesn't need to underlay the story.
- espityle 11y ago
  Ah, I hadn't seen another site similar to this, but I'm not surprised they exist. Thanks for the feedback, that's definitely the number one piece of criticism I keep hearing.
rexpop 11y ago
Get rid of registration & login. It's an impediment to participation, and it's unnecessary for the experience.

4 points by espityle 11y ago

I recently finished my first website built with Python and Flask. I'm fairly new to programming and would love to hear about how many mistakes I made and all of the ways that I could make it better. Basically it's Exquisite Corpse and Telephone rolled into a website that lets you create stories with people. I initially just made it for my friends and myself as an experiment and a learning tool, but I'd like to see what others think about it. It saves stories and keeps track of "story trees", randomly fetching a story piece from the tree each time you read it. People can add new branches to the story or add to an existing branch. I'm hoping that as the number of stories increases you'll get to read some pretty weird stuff and that the chance of reading the exact same thing twice will decrease. Also I'm a terrible writer so mostly I'm looking for more interesting prompts.

e12e 11y ago
For one, you probably want to add some kind of background to the text -- the large text for the story bits is readable -- but eg: http://www.storystak.com/about http://www.storystak.com/about is unreadable. Perhaps something along the lines of: #content { color: white; margin: 0.5%; padding-top: 2.5%; padding-bottom: 2.5%; border-radius:10px; background: #fff; /* fallback for browsers that don't understand rgba */ background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.4)/* transparent white */ } See also eg: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4855348/how-can-i-make-div-rounded-corners-with-transparent-background http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4855348/how-can-i-make-di...
- espityle 11y ago
  Oh that's wonderful. Thanks for the tip. I was trying to figure out how to do something similar.
rexpop 11y ago
Love the concept! One suggestion: get rid of registration and login. It's an impediment to participation.

pixellab 11y ago

I really like the concept. I know there are other sites that do it too, but I like the simplicity of your site. One comment, the white text can be hard to read with the background image you're using — I like it as a textural element, but maybe it doesn't need to underlay the story.

espityle 11y ago
Ah, I hadn't seen another site similar to this, but I'm not surprised they exist. Thanks for the feedback, that's definitely the number one piece of criticism I keep hearing.

rexpop 11y ago

Get rid of registration & login. It's an impediment to participation, and it's unnecessary for the experience.