We are live

Hello!

Welcome to Boundless Sagas! This is officially the first (non-testing) blogpost to mark the deployment of the BoundlessSagas website! Let's dive a little deeper in the process and, of course, the future of the site.

Site Status

So, where are we at right now? At this point in time, I have not added a single story (other then some testing stories, but those will be removed very shortly). The site itself is quite barebones, but honestly, it is looking decently fancy already. I (with some incredible help of AI) added some nice transitions, colours, gradients, and animations, and I have to say, it really spices things up a lot. The initial site as it looked about 3 days ago was a whole lot less exciting..

At this point in time, we are deployed under Vercel, which is a website hoster that is built by the same people as Next.js (which is the framework I used for this website). This all made it very easy to configure and setup. I had my repository already live on GitHub, so it was simply a matter of connecting GitHub to Vercel, and boom, there we go.

The domain under which the site is live is currently "boundless-sagas.vercel.app". Not the most exciting one, but if this grows into something bigger, may that be either on a personal level or through external encouragement, I will absolutely look into securing a nicer domain name. But, let's leave that up to the future for now.

The site navigation and pages are pretty much all accessible. I might have something more in mind which is not visible yet, but I'll leave that for the imagination. All pages can be accessed through the navigation bar, but only a few of them have actual content. At the moment, the "Newsletter Saga", "Create Your Own Story", and "Seasonal Stories" pages are still under construction. The "Boundless Saga", "Vault", and "Blog" page however, are already up and running, as well as the general "About" and "Contact" page.

The Path Behind Us

I think it was about 5 days ago that I came up with the idea for "Boundless Sagas". The ideas came relatively quick, but the development of the website went so much quicker than I ever could have imagined. Part of it is thanks to the built-in GPT-4.1 version in VSCode, but I feel like my previous experience in web development has also been of great value.

Boundless Sagas came about because I wanted to make something interactive, a platform where you could read stories, sure, but you could also experience them, influence them, or simply read them in a slightly different way.
The most prominent idea here comes about in "The Boundless Saga". This is going to be an endless story. How far I'll be able to stretch storylines or keep things fresh but understandable enough for new readers, we have yet to see, but the idea is there.
My main inspiration comes from the ever increasing popularity of series and TV-shows as opposed to films. Where streaming services such as Netflix used to be flooded with films, now the series are increasingly dominating. And it makes sense, once you start watching, there is no more need to go through the tiring process of selecting a film, you just put on the next episode.
And within the series, I feel like the biggest contributing factor of its addictiveness and attractiveness is the cliffhanger concept. The idea that right at the end of an episode, something is shown, or something happens, that simply piques your curiousity enough for you to switch to a mindset of: "One more then"

To be honest, I have not been as invested in the transcription of this series concept into books and literary works, but, if executed properly, I do see the potential of it. And if "The Boundless Saga" ever reaches this level of appeal, bound to cliffhangers and obviously also an interesting setting, I hope to see similar results of excitement over upcoming episodes and investment from the reader.

Another concept through which I would like to make "The Boundless Saga" unique and interesting is through audience interactions. I had the idea of adding general polls to guide me into certain themes, genres, or characters as the saga goes on. This will allow you to vote on what you'll be reading next, sounds cool right?

Storytelling from a Different Perspective

But that is not where the ideas stopped for "Boundless" as a whole. I wanted to go deeper, explore some different techniques as well, from which I think 2 are interesting enough to explicitly point out: "The Newsletter Saga" and "Create Your Own Story". Important is to note that I haven't constructed anything for either of these concepts yet, but nevertheless, they are ideas I am excited about exploring.

"The Newsletter Saga" continues to build upon the "Saga" idea of series and episodes. A new episode every once in a while to construct a continuous story. However, I thought about switching up the format a little. When the idea crossed my mind of making a newsletter, the saga idea simply popped up with it. It is quite simple, instead of a regular newsletter (which I am also considering still), "The Newsletter Saga" is about delivering a story straight to you. You won't need to come back to the website, rather, I come deliver the story to you.
"The Newsletter Saga" is all about creating a continuous story that gets delivered in episodes (newsletters) straight to your inbox, available for you to read whenever you've got the time.

In terms of programming, I have yet to explore what would work and how I'll be able to set it up practically, but I honestly don't think it should be much of a challenge. On the other hand, the storyline is something I am a little bit scared of. In such a context, the setting is quite important. Am I going to do it fantasy-styled, like "The Boundless Saga"? Or maybe more Sci-Fi? Horror? Or everyday drama? I should sit down and have a proper deep thought about it.

Next to "The Newsletter Saga", there was also the idea for a "Create Your Own Story". This idea is not new, in fact, it is very popular in many ways and forms. Among the earliest computer games were the famous commandline-based adventure games, where you might crawl through a dungeon or explore an abandoned ruin. And the concept was simple: Some event happens, and you choose to respond in a certain way.

The "Create Your Own Story" could also be made in many different ways, consisting of different genres and endless possibilities. My vision for the "Create Your Own Story" was a choice-based story, which rotates every once in a while. This also creates a sense of limitedness, where stories can only be played for a certain amount of time.
I honestly don't think these would be too hard to implement either, but I'll see how far I'll be able to get with the idea over the next couple of days/weeks.

The Path Ahead

To summarise, I have got a LOT of ideas still locked inside my head, waiting to project themselves within "Boundless". Over the next couple of days I will start with directing my attention towards filling the categories and pages with the first stories, and I will begin the endless story of "The Boundless Saga". When that is done, I'll be very excited to start working on these concepts I elaborated on above.

For now, I would like to thank you dearly for visiting the site and reading the blog. Feel free to have a look around, I hope there is enough interesting content available at this time, and otherwise, Stay tuned

That's all for now,
Cya!