Norse Graphics wrote : I can relate to what Squeeky says, as I had the same thoughts about creating games more in vein of movies. The reason is that it would look better with animations instead of still pictures.
The basic idea was to use a combination of looping animations for the decision-points, and use non-repeatable animations for the "filler" inbetween. The problem is the amount of work that would increase. Say a decision-point need about 3-4 seconds to make a decent loop, that's 72-96 frames for one point only. Then you'd need from 3-10 seconds (72-240 frames) for the fillers.
Now, combine this with the idea of having several different endings, good or bad ones. Sure, you can recycle some of these animations, especially early on were the storylines hasn't diverged too much. For the ArianeB-game, it uses 1246 pictures. Imagine rendering 1246 animations...
It's not the idea is bad, it's just the sheer workload.
I'm not quite sure that you have my concept completely in context. In an earlier post (up a few comments) I mentioned full page animations.
Tlaero and
phreaky have used them within the AC tool.
I had in mind to replace a whole page animation where something like the winking of an eye, or puckering to a kiss, might be reduced to localised animated image and imposed within an HTML page of static images.
I think I can see potential value in my proposal in savings if one wanted to draw the story into a Flash environment, but then I have insufficient knowledge of what is required there.
I'm trusting upon tlaero's advice to me re the current genre application.