Textfyre presents Eric Eve's Nightfall

On Dec 18, 4:01 am, James Jolley <james.jol....RemoveThis@homecall.co.uk> wrote:
> I can't comment myself as it's inaccessible as would be expected. All I
> will say is that i'm assuming your works will be accessible to blind
> players. This is often becoming a concern for me, as we get more into
> graphics and other things, are we leaving out a demographic?

Textfyre will release text-only versions alongside the fancier
versions that are 100% compatible with standard Accessibility
features.

David C.

On 2008-12-18 08:30:00 +0000, Damien Neil <neild DeleteThis @misago.org> said:

> ChicagoDave <david.cornelson DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote:
>> Without further ado, here is an Interactive Fiction presented in
>> Textfyre's FyreVM using Channel IO published in Microsoft Silverlight
>> and of course thanks to Eric Eve for the gracious use of his second
>> place IFComp 2008 game.
>
> My first impression: That's a *huge* font. I feel like I'm trying to
> read a book while peering through a narrow cardboard tube.
>
> - Damien

I can't comment myself as it's inaccessible as would be expected. All I
will say is that i'm assuming your works will be accessible to blind
players. This is often becoming a concern for me, as we get more into
graphics and other things, are we leaving out a demographic?

"Peter Pears" <peter_pears.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:d23f239f-6a21-45cf-9d90-05ebfb474602@p2g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
>> -- if you try to go through a locked door, you get a custom
>> message
>> from the game, then a y-umlaut (’), and then the default "(first
>> trying to open the street door)" sort of message. I'm not sure
>> what's
>> going on there, but I don't think anything like that happened in
>> the
>> comp version of the game.

> Actually, I get that a lot in my WIP - got it ever since I added
> the
> ASCII automap. It's surely the extension, and I don't know why
> it's
> happening. At any rate, it's not a FyreVM issue.

I'm pretty sure it is a FyreVM issue; it's being caused, at least in
part, by the fact that FyreVM doesn't handle text capture the way
standard Glulx does, so the text capture routine used by the
Implicit Actions extension doesn't work properly. I think the
y-umlaut is caused by the print char(255) that Text Capture uses to
mark the end of a captured string; it's being displayed on the
screen instead of added to the text buffer. The stuff that's being
printed before the "(first trying to open the street door)" is
probably text that should have been captured but wasn't.

I've now sent David Cornelson an update which *may* fix this (I
can't be sure until he tests it).

I'm not sure why it would be happening in your WIP if you're WIP
isn't using the FyreVM, unless the implementation of your ASCII
automap is incompatible with Text Capture. Does the ASCII automap do
anything with output text capturing?

-- Eric

"glibworm" <jon.ingold DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote in message
news:db2db8f2-18c7-4c1e-88f5-c20b2eed4fa4@u18g2000pro.googlegroups.com...

> I've had this bug when trying to blend Text Capture and Flexible
> Windows. The umlaut character is one printed by Text Capture to
> mark
> the end of the captured text: the problem is [something like] when
> a
> change of window is issed, the capturing process stops silently,
> so
> when the end capture is reached, it prints the character to the
> screen
> rather to the buffer. I managed to get round it by ending streams
> before changing windows, but I never solved it.

That would explain it.

> For the pathfinding: could you do a "go to <X> silently" at
> start-up?
> Presumably the problem is that the particular path-finding routine
> needs to be fired, so all you need to do is ensure that when you
> call
> it during startup it's going through the same line of I7 code?

I've tried this but it doesn't seem to help. It simply introduces an
additional delay at startup without reducing the delay from the
first GO TO command. I have no idea why that should be, since
logically your suggestion ought to work.

-- Eric

"Peter Pears" <peter_pears.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:d7f3caa7-1085-4709-8cc9-e87e0f92015d@l33g2000pri.googlegroups.com...
>> I think the
>> y-umlaut is caused by the print char(255) that Text Capture uses
>> to
>> mark the end of a captured string; it's being displayed on the
>> screen instead of added to the text buffer. The stuff that's
>> being
>> printed before the "(first trying to open the street door)" is
>> probably text that should have been captured but wasn't.
>
> The y-umlaut *is* the stuff being printed before the text, and
> since
> there's no time at all in my WIP where I display such a character
> (or
> even in your extension - I browsed through), I don't know why it
> appears at all.

See the separate reply from glibworm elsewhere in this thread.

>> I'm not sure why it would be happening in your WIP if you're WIP
>> isn't using the FyreVM, unless the implementation of your ASCII
>> automap is incompatible with Text Capture. Does the ASCII automap
>> do
>> anything with output text capturing?
>
> Very simply, I fire a set of rules when the player moves or opens/
> closes a door, and those rules set the focus to a separate window
> (using Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold), which is a text grid, and
> then
> I write a bunch of stuff on the text grid.

From what glibworm says in his post, it looks like it's the
combination of Text Capture (used by Implicit Actions) and Flexible
Windows that's the culprit.

-- Eric

> Textfyre will release text-only versions alongside the fancier
> versions that are 100% compatible with standard Accessibility
> features.

Groovy.

"ChicagoDave" <david.cornelson.RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:2714289a-e9a6-436f-b47d-71359b140b10@r27g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
On Dec 18, 5:26 am, "Eric Eve" <eric.....RemoveThis@NOSPAMhmc.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> I've now sent David Cornelson an update which *may* fix this (I
> can't be sure until he tests it).

> Revision 8 is up.

Great! It's almost solved the two problems it was meant to, but I
see it's cutting off the "The" at the start of failure messages
following failed implicit actions. I'll email you about that
off-list.

-- Eric

On 2008-12-18 17:13:24 +0000, ChicagoDave <david.cornelson DeleteThis @gmail.com> said:

> On Dec 18, 4:01 am, James Jolley <james.jol... DeleteThis @homecall.co.uk> wrote:
>> I can't comment myself as it's inaccessible as would be expected. All I
>> will say is that i'm assuming your works will be accessible to blind
>> players. This is often becoming a concern for me, as we get more into
>> graphics and other things, are we leaving out a demographic?
>
> Textfyre will release text-only versions alongside the fancier
> versions that are 100% compatible with standard Accessibility
> features.
>
> David C.

Thanks Dave, good to know and don't take my remarks as whining. I just
love my IF that's all.

On Dec 19, 5:43 am, Victor Gijsbers <vic....TakeThisOut@lilith.gotdns.org> wrote:
> I caved in an installed Novell's Moonlight as a Firefox plug-in. The
> result is an error message:
>
> "Moonlight was compiled with 1.0 support only.
> This page requires 2.0 support."

My understanding from Miguel is that Moonlight will be 2.0 compatible
in Q109. MS and Novell are pushing very hard on making this happen.

> (Great error message, Novell. What about telling me the 2.0 version of
> _WHAT_ you need?)
>
> So far for Microsoft's promise to make their proprietary technologies
> available cross-platform. (As if we ever believed them.)

I think MS has gone out of their way to make Silverlight work on OS X,
Windows, FireFox, Safari, IE, and Chrome. The fact that they're even
thinking about making it work on Linux with mono and Moonlight should
dispel any crazy conspiracy theories.

> I don't understand why Textfyre didn't use something like Flash instead.
> Flash is as closed and proprietary as Silverlight, but at least there
> are relatively good Flash interpreters for a wide range of systems. (And
> isn't there some real cross-platform way to do this stuff?)

I would have used Flash, but couldn't find anyone to do the work on a
back-ended contract. Heck, I would have used any technology. I'm using
Silverlight because Tenteo was interested in the project from a
technological perspective.

The overriding aspect of all of this is that the existing UI is a
prototype first and a product second. It's going to transition to a
product for some users, but obviously not for desktop Mac users,
iPhone, and other devices. We have more tech work ahead of us.

David C.

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ChicagoDave wrote:

> Note: Silverlight works on Windows XP, Vista, and Intel Mac's using
> any of the common browsers.

I caved in an installed Novell's Moonlight as a Firefox plug-in. The
result is an error message:

"Moonlight was compiled with 1.0 support only.
This page requires 2.0 support."

(Great error message, Novell. What about telling me the 2.0 version of
_WHAT_ you need?)



So far for Microsoft's promise to make their proprietary technologies
available cross-platform. (As if we ever believed them.)



I don't understand why Textfyre didn't use something like Flash instead.
Flash is as closed and proprietary as Silverlight, but at least there
are relatively good Flash interpreters for a wide range of systems. (And
isn't there some real cross-platform way to do this stuff?)


Regards,
Victor
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On 2008-12-19 06:43:09 -0500, Victor Gijsbers <victor.DeleteThis@lilith.gotdns.org> said:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> [...]
>
> I don't understand why Textfyre didn't use something like Flash instead.
> Flash is as closed and proprietary as Silverlight, but at least there
> are relatively good Flash interpreters for a wide range of systems. (And
> isn't there some real cross-platform way to do this stuff?)

I can't speak for Dave, but Silverlight offers a nicer development
environment---who wants to use ActionScript?---and, in my experience,
*faaar* better performance characteristics on OS X. (Nothing revs my
fan up quite like youtube videos. Really.)

>
> Regards,
> Victor

Best,
James

On Dec 19, 10:43 am, Martin Read <mpr....RemoveThis@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
wrote:
> ChicagoDave <david.cornel....RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:
> >I think MS has gone out of their way to make Silverlight work on OS X,
> >Windows, FireFox, Safari, IE, and Chrome. The fact that they're even
> >thinking about making it work on Linux with mono and Moonlight should
> >dispel any crazy conspiracy theories.
>
> On the contrary, it's prime fodder for most conspiracy theorists.
>
> If Microsoft offer you a gift, start looking for the patent encumbrances
> and subtle incompatiblities.

I would have agreed a few years ago. It seems nowadays MS is bending
over backwards to please everyone that will listen to them, which to
their horror is a gradually smaller audience.

David C.

On Dec 19, 4:36 pm, Otto Grimwald
<contact_is_on_webs... DeleteThis @anamnese.fr.st> wrote:
> In addition, the mono implementation will always
> lag far behind the microsoft one.

Silverlight 2.0 was released at PDC in October.

Moonlight 2.0 will be released within 4-5 months of that date.

Doesn't seem like a huge lag to me. Since the desktop Linux
marketshare is fairly small, I'd say this is a fairly impressive
achievement.

In any case, using C# via the .NET Framework and Mono is a cost-
efficient methodology. Looking for cross-platform C++ developers to
work on back-ended contracts for text games would simply be
impossible. You have to understand what I'm trying to accomplish and
take that into the context of the resulting product and its available
platforms. In this case, Tenteo offered to help by building a UI in
Silverlight. What was I supposed to do, turn them down? Even if I held
some personal disdain for Microsoft, as a businessman, I'd be an idiot
to turn away from any viable solution.

But the decision to use Silverlight was a good one in all cases. If
one of my target markets is middle schools, then Silverlight might be
a great solution. I can provide access to an entire school system
without any major installations. We can either host it externally or
we can drop a server in the school system that hosts our games and
then it's just a matter of having the SL plug-in installed on all
desktops, no different than Flash is installed. A hosted system also
provides us the ability to implement market-testing and product-
testing without installation issues. Of course Flash would have
potnetially done the same, but I simply couldn't find anyone that
understood the complexities of marrying a VM to a flash front-end. I
could only find the people that knew how to make animations and
websites. That's not good enough for what the things I envision for
Textfyre games.

Of course if you're hell bent on avoiding MS technologies, there's
nothing I can do about that except make such a cool game that you
decide to hold your nose and install Silverlight or Moonlight
_anyway_.

David C.