The first step in my porject was to get the user input using prompts and store them in variables ready for use throughout the story. When I first wrote this I used cin << which only reas the first word of the input. I kept writing 'ice cream' for food and wondered why it only used ice and then used cream for my next answer. After a little research and asking my Codecademy classmates for help, I found out about getline(cin, variable) which reads the whole line including spaces.

    //Collecting variables from user
    //colour
    std::string colour;
    std::cout << "Input a colour: ";
    std::getline(std::cin, colour);
    //weather
    std::string weather;
    std::cout << "Input a description of a day (cold, windy, etc.): ";
    std::getline(std::cin, weather);
    //animals and names
    std::string animal1;
    std::cout << "Input your first animal: ";
    std::getline(std::cin, animal1);
    std::string name1;
    std::cout << "Name your first animal: ";
    std::getline(std::cin, name1);  
    std::string animal2;
    std::cout << "Input your second animal: ";
    std::getline(std::cin, animal2);
            

The next part was to write the story itself, I knew at certain points in the story I had to give the user options which allowed for multiple outcomes.

    //First fork in the story
    int option1;
    std::cout << "What does " << name1 << " decide to do? ";
    std::cin >> option1;
    //check for valid response
    while(option1 != 1 && option1 !=2){
        std::cout << "Invalid response. Try again: ";
        std::cin >> option1;
    }
            

Then each option needed its own outcome, so I used if and else if conditionals to create the different paths the story could take.

    if (option1 == 1) { //bed
        std::cout << "\n"<< name1 << " decided to go back to bed. \n";
        std::cout << "While " << name1 << " slept, they had the most unusual dream. They were in a world where everything was made out of " << food << ".\n";
        std::cout << "The first thing " << name1 << " did was take a massive bite out of the " << item << ".\n"; 
        std::cout << name1 << " hears footsteps coming from behind. " << name1 << " turns around and screams as a " << size << " " << animal2 << " is running towards them trying to escape from the " << food << " monster! \n";
        std::cout << "They both hide under a bridge and hear the monster stomp away.\n";
        std::cout << name1 << " turns to the " << animal2 << " and introduces themself, the " << animal2 << " then introduces themself as " << name2 << ".\n";
        std::cout << "Suddenly, " << name1 << "jolts awake and smile while thinking about their new friend " << name2 << " the " << animal2 <<".\nThe End.\n";
        return 0;
    } else { //outside
        std::cout << "\n" << name1 << " puts on their favourite " << colour << " coat and visits a nature park.\n";
        std::cout << "The nature park is very busy today and " << name1 << " doesn't like crowds so decided to go find a quiet place to read.\n";
        std::cout << name1 << " sees two possible locations, the treehouse (1) or rent a boat and go on the lake (2).\n";
        //fork number two in story
        int option2;
        std::cout << "Where does " << name1 << " decide to go? ";
        std::cin >> option2;
            

This process of giving options and creating different outcomes was repeated throughout the story to make it as interactive as possible.

Another problem I encountered when getting my mother to run through the story was that she kept entering invalid options such as Y or N instead of 1 or 2. To fix this I added a while loop to check if the input was valid and if not, it would keep asking until a valid option was given.

    //check if valid response
    while(option2 != 1 && option2 !=2){
        std::cout << "Invalid response. Try again: ";
        std::cin >> option2;
    }
            

After this everything worked perfectly and I was happy with how the story turned out.