Obviously, web-based games will be the downfall of civilisation [emote];)[/emote]
Thanks for the heads-up, Stephen!
In your opinion, do the rules require authors to distribute their games to IFComp and the archive? If an author were unable to provide files, would they be in compliance with the rules?
No, and yes.
I say web-based games are a menace. I’ve just checked, and none of them work on my (unpopular but fairly standards-compliant) browser. What the hey, folks? Infocom solved the platform problem aeons ago; why do we want to go back to the bad old days?
It’s especially bad that Jim Munroe’s Guilded Youth is apparently a zblorb–so what’s the excuse?
Vorple.
And I’m still hoping that we’ll be able to download Vorple games at some point.
I’ve long ago decided not to play anything I can’t save on my hard drive.
Nathan, which browser do you use?
Konqueror, but that’s really not the point.
I’m surprised they don’t work in Konqueror. Do Parchment and Quixe work (i.e., the Z-Machine and Glulx Play Online links)?
So I tried a few, but not all, and found that the Glulx ones work and the Z-machine ones don’t (never give a response to my first command).
That’s not particularly important to me. Just please, everybody, keep releasing IF in downloadable formats playable by free-as-in-speech interpreters.
Which rendering engine are you using in Konqueror? Did you try both KHTML and WebKit on the games that you tested?
I always use KHTML, but you’re addressing the wrong problem.
Your problem is that Parchment doesn’t run on your browser. The Parchment guy is trying to find out why this is, in order to fix Parchment to better ensure that it is, in fact, a truly cross-browser interpreter. I do not see how this differs from a situation in which a non-web-based interpreter has a bug on certain systems.
Trying to fix interpreter bugs is great; I’m all for that, but it’s off topic.
The real problem here is authors not releasing story files.
Sidetracking the discussion into fixing incompatibilities with one platform out of hundreds doesn’t address this.
With the great interpreter work people have done recently, all the leading IF VMs (Z-machine, Glulx, TADS, Hugo) are now truly cross-platform. You can compile interpreters for any of these from source, on some pretty obscure systems–and they even include good multimedia support. The reasons for even wanting web-based interpreters are disappearing.
This is like complaining that someone gave you a free egg salad sandwich but the no-account bastard put it in a wax-paper wrapper. Authors are free to distribute a game however they like. If it’s in a format you can’t–or won’t–use, you won’t be able to play it. That’s too bad, but it’s not a problem. The only problem is the one that Dannii is trying fix–that the author’s chosen format should work on your system but doesn’t.
–Erik
No, it’s like complaining that someone entered a photo of an egg salad sandwich in a sandwich-making contest, to be judged against the edible sandwiches.
Really, no. Most people can play these games. Many more people can play these games than can play the Windows-only games that are occasionally entered into the IFComp (and that are ubiquitous elsewhere in indie gaming). It’s too bad for you that you can’t play the games on your browser, but projecting your situation onto everyone else isn’t helping your cause.
And you’re decidedly projecting your situation on everyone else when you say “the reasons for even wanting web-based interpreters are disappearing.” People want web-based interpreters because they want to be able to play IF over the web. Not too hard to understand, is it?
As I’ve said many times before: people bitching about free stuff is the true essence of the Internet.
That’s a strange way to put it. Do you think those people really care that these games are hosted on a remote server? Or that they’re interpreted by a JavaScript program? Or that they appear in a frame with a back button and an address bar?
I suspect they care more that the games are playable on their platforms of choice by clicking once or twice on a site like IFDB. You don’t need JavaScript to make that happen.