Lucifer 42.5

“Code of Laws of the Seven Circles, Article 42-5: If a mafioso, who is also the second cousin of the spouse, is murdered by another mafioso during a wedding, they may be eligible for resurrection administered by Lucifer himself in order to re-evaluate their choices leading to their demise. [...]”

Lucifer 42.5 was my first group project with game designers at Bellecour Ecole. The goal was to create a narrative game book in C++, only displayed in the console with using sounds and images.

Lucifer 42.5 functions as an XML reader (see Figure 1.1), capable of reading any .xml file that adheres to the established conventions.

I designed it specifically to align seamlessly with the workflow of the writers. Initially, the writers composed the 407 scenes using Twine, which provided them with enhanced visibility and control over the narrative structure. Upon completing a chapter, they would transfer the content into an Excel spreadsheet that I had customized to conform to the application's conventions.

Given that Excel offers an XML export feature, integrating and testing the scene connections within the application became a straightforward process. Each scene was assigned a unique Global Unique Identifier (GUID), and a link was simply a reference to a specific scene's GUID.

To further streamline the process and ensure accuracy, I developed an Excel macro. This macro was designed to alert the designers whenever a link pointed to an invalid or non-existent scene GUID, thereby maintaining the integrity of the scene connections.