The chakras test I was thinking of is
http://www.eclecticenergies.com/chakras/...dotest.php. The form is created by client-side javascript. The final scoring is done by a server-side script. The client side script is visible with view source. It writes out values from -2 through +2 for the radio buttons representing "not at all" to "definitely." The score for each question is part of the form submission.
To calculate the results, the server side script must have some connection of which questions correspond with which chakra. That server side script might for instance know that questions 2, 9, 16, 38 and 43 were for the first chakra. I don't know for sure which questions go where. This is just for an example with made up numbers.
The server side script needs to have some data structure to map the individual questions for each chakra. This could just be an array. With that definition somewhere in the server side script, it could add up the total score and then calculate a percentage score for each chakra. Those normalized scores would then go to the chart generation script to make the bar graph. All of this is routine for any multiple choice test with the subtotal items interleaved or shuffled.
You could make your own list of keywords or concepts related to each chakra. Just go through any discussion of the rays or chakras and note down what is discussed about each one. For example,
http://www.rickrichards.com/chakras/Chakras2.html, describes an open root chakra as a life in harmony with security on the earth as a place of shelter, while an unbalanced root chakra could make someone anxious, indulgent or angry regarding physical safety.
With a few days to go through the Ra books and also search Google for articles about chakras, you should be able to get a hundred keywords or concepts about the chakras. If you put each idea on its own index card, then you could use a big corkboard to arrange the cards into scenes for your game.
You could use different color cards to represent the different chakras, and try to make each scene in your game include at least one element from each chakra. This is a technique that screenwriters sometimes use to make sure that their themes and plot elements are represented throughout their story. They have cards representing characters, situations, conflicts, etc. This way the writers can see at a glance that the scenes include everything they wanted to have in the story. If the writers forgot to include a character in some part of the movie, the absence of that color card will show that they need to put that character into those scenes. Or they will need have some other character explain what happened to the person, so the audience knows that person wasn't overlooked in the storytelling.
The question is, how would you visualize each of these concepts with a scene or choice in your game, in a way that is fun, interesting, emotionally compelling, entertaining, thought provoking? To put it in storytelling terms, how would your game offer a voyage of discovery?
I think the real key to success for the project is how the scenarios and interactivity are designed. How can that design offer something fresh and unique for players? If the storyline and game play are excellent, then the graphics and sound might not have to be very elaborate. There's simply no way for a small shop to compete with the kind of lush visual production of something like Halo or GTA, with countless photorealistic scenes and combat physics. But there is a chance to outdo them on the level of thoughtfulness that goes into the story and learning process for the player.
The business book "Blue Ocean Strategy" explains how to evaluate what features are important to make something new for overlooked buyers within an industry. The idea is that there are some factors everyone assumes are important or not important, but an ingenious new idea can overturn all of that with a fresh strategy.
Here are a couple of articles that apply "blue ocean" concepts to the success of Nintendo's Wii console:
http://internationalbs.wordpress.com/200...lue-ocean/ and
http://www.valueinnovation.net/2008/04/n...ategy.html. These articles point out that Nintendo plays a totally different game in business than Sony and Microsoft. While the xbox and ps3 battle for superiority of realistic graphics processing and physics calculations and movie playback capability, the Wii totally ignores all of those to offer simpler hands-on fun at a lower price.
What could be a "blue ocean strategy" in the game world? Perhaps an iPhone app that people could play any time, even for a few minutes waiting in line? Log on to the server, see what changes others players have made, respond with some choices of your own, log off and the game continues with all the other players? Perhaps an open source game for PC and Mac, and the business profits come from subscribing to a server that integrates the multi-player functionality? Perhaps a Java game on a cell phone that would give you different scenes depending where you are in the world? Maybe the music soundtrack uses an ever-changing range of songs licensed for the game from up and coming "new age" musicians, with new music downloaded automatically every month? What fresh approach could transcend the current limitations of video games, the way that the fun of the Wii transcends its limited graphics hardware?
None of the ideas I just mentioned might be a winning business model, but they do show some examples of alternatives to fancy first-person graphics - which a small shop can't match anyway.
In my own opinion, until there is some clarity about the storyline and gameplay - and the business requirements - it would be premature to try to pick a coding model for implementation.
But we've got client, server, 3d visualisation with simple shaders. The required model loaders. A working heads up gui. And a nifty json inspired object language I use to define game data in.