System User Guide
Understanding the Cosmic Story Engine & the QR Story Generator
The Two-Part System
This system consists of two distinct but connected applications:
- Blueprint of the Cosmos: A powerful tool for creators to design the foundational rules, themes, and keys for a narrative universe. This is where you generate the special QR codes.
- QR Story Generator: An interactive web app for players to scan QR codes and experience the story, play a game, and generate their own narrative content.
The Blueprint creates the "seeds" (QR codes) that are "planted" in the QR Story Generator to grow into unique experiences.
Blueprint of the Cosmos: The Creator's Tool
This is your mission control for generating unique narrative universes. You will define the core parameters (the "Blueprint") which produce a set of unique Runic and QR Keys. These keys are the entry point for the player experience.
The top half of the page contains several cards that form the foundational "Blueprint" of your story. Every choice here influences the final output.
- Cosmic Theme: Select a visual color scheme for the application interface.
- Cosmic Axioms: A list of unchangeable philosophies that guide the AI's narrative choices.
- Temporal Coordinate: This uses your current date and time by default. You can pause the live clock or manually set a different date and time to create a key based on a specific moment.
- Spatial Coordinate: This uses your browser's GPS location. You can refresh it or enter manual latitude/longitude coordinates to root your story in a specific place.
- Crypto Wallet Key: Optionally, include a crypto wallet address. This adds another layer of unique data to the final composite key.
- Glossary & Inspirations: Define key characters and terms for the AI to use. Add inspirational works (books, songs, movies) to guide the story's tone and themes.
- Prompt Options: Fine-tune the AI's behavior, such as play length, dialogue style, and how often it includes image descriptions or director's notes.
Based on your selections in the Blueprint, the system generates a single, 100-digit numerical key. This key is then processed through four different algorithms to produce four unique "Composite Keys": Direct, Expanded, Shifted, and Reversed.
For each key, you are given:
- A Runic Sequence: A visual representation of the key using Elder Futhark runes. You can download this as an SVG image using the button.
- A QR Code: A scannable QR code that contains the runic sequence's underlying English words. You can download this as a PNG image using the QR button.
These QR codes are what you share with players to use in the QR Story Generator application. Each of the four QR codes will start the same "Keyword Hunt" game.
Once your Blueprint is set, you can generate the story.
- Review Cost: The "Cost & Donation Estimator" provides a rough estimate of the API cost for generating the full play.
- Generate: Click the Generate Full Screenplay button. A progress bar will show the AI weaving the narrative scene by scene.
- Read: The final screenplay appears in the "Generated Star Chart" section. Each scene is in a collapsible accordion item for easy reading. Glossary terms are highlighted and show definitions on hover.
- Listen: Click Listen to Play to have the screenplay read aloud via Text-to-Speech. The currently spoken sentence will be highlighted.
- Revise: After the first draft is complete, you can enter notes and generate a "Second Draft" and then a "Final Draft".
- Export:
- Export Codex: Downloads the entire screenplay as a professionally formatted PDF.
- Download All Assets: Downloads a ZIP file containing all generated runic keys (SVGs) and QR codes (PNGs).
QR Story Generator: The Player's Experience
Welcome, player! This app is your portal to an interactive narrative experience. Your journey begins by scanning a QR code.
Step 1: Getting Started
When the page loads, you will be prompted to grant camera permission. This is required for scanning QR codes.
Click the Start Scan button to activate your device's camera. Point it at a QR code to begin.
Step 2: Two Types of Journeys
What happens next depends on the type of QR code you scan:
A) The Simple Story
If you scan a standard QR code (e.g., one containing a simple phrase like "a mysterious forest"), the system will use that phrase as a prompt to generate a short story for you to read.
B) The Keyword Hunt (Main Quest)
If you scan one of the special QR codes from the Blueprint of the Cosmos page, a "Keyword Hunt" game will begin. You will be presented with a list of 10 words. Your goal is to "find" 5 of them.
How to Find Keywords:
- Tapping: Simply tap the word on the screen.
- Voice: Click Start Listening and say a sentence containing one of the keywords.
Step 3: The Runic Voucher & Story
Once you have found 5 keywords, you will unlock a Runic Voucher. This screen shows you the full list of 10 keywords and their transliteration into ancient runes. From here, you have several options:
- Copy: Copies the English and Runic words to your clipboard.
- Download SVG: Downloads a vector image of the runic voucher.
- Generate Runic Story: This is the final step of the quest! The system will generate a new, longer story where each of the 10 keywords is woven into the narrative.
Step 4: The Runic Story and Sharing
After generating the Runic Story, you can read it or listen to it using the Text-to-Speech controls (âĒ âļī¸ âšī¸). As the story is read, the current sentence will be highlighted.
A Share QR Code button will appear. Clicking this generates a brand new QR code based on the story you just created. Share this code with a friend so they can begin their own Keyword Hunt, continuing the cycle of creation!