Well they all use ZVM, but the iplayif.com version of ZVM is much outdated.
I thought that I’d fixed all the status line issues. So maybe it’s print_table, as it’s so rarely used?
Is there any way for an author to find out the number of times a game has been accessed?
Could that value be made public and displayed near a game’s icon?
Edited to add:
It’d be nice if some other information could be displayed, too, like the size of the game.
Thanks a lot for providing this service!
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I’m debugging it now. It doesn’t seem to be print_table or get_cursor. I’m getting some very strange results now, but I’m sure I’ll get to the bottom of this.
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Found it. The interpreter clears bit 1 of byte 1 in the header. This bit bears the meaning “Should the statusline show time?”. For z3 its value is read and used by the intpreter. For z4, z5, z7 and z8 the interpreter should just leave the bit alone, since both Inform 6 and PunyInform games use it to remember whether to show time or not. PunyInform will show the time anyway, but it won’t increase the time if this flag is clear.
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It doesn’t count the plays yet, but when it does it’s a good idea to show it to the author. The count probably won’t be shown publicly because I’m a bit concerned it would encourage trying to artificially increase the number.
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Hmmm. I didn’t know they used it after version 3. I kind of don’t like that, but it must have been like it for decades by now. I’ll fix it in ZVM, and also raise a ticket for the Z-Machine spec saying it should be noted that Inform uses it so don’t reset it.
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The standard v1.1 leaves the bit undefined for v4,v5,v7,v8 really, and just like with bytes in the header that are undefined, the interpreter should never change them. The bits and bytes marked with * in the Int column are the only parts of the header that the interpreter may alter.
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I noted a little issue with the site. This is run on Chrome under Windows 7.
If you, as in this case, use the fixed font in the game. It works correct from the start but reverts to the default font for session 2 onward. I don’t know how the site remembers where I was in the game but it doesn’t remember the font preference. The game sets the font when starting and don’t touch the settings anymore. See screenshot.
Update: It’s the same in Lectrote so I guess that it’s a ZVM problem.
Borogove
Lectrote 1.3.5
Isn’t the font information also stored in the header of the Z-machine?
It’s easy to fix the games by resetting the prefered font everytime the prompt is printed. So it’s not a big issue.
The only text formatting option that is part of the save state is the header bit, which is deprecated and shouldn’t be used.
However those look like autosaves, which can store more info. I thought I was storing all the IO state, so I’ll have to check again.
Edit: Actually I am storing all the IO state, I just need to use it when autorestoring. Ooops!
Edit 2: Hmm, but actually, I thought GlkOte should be taking care of it all. So I’m not sure what the actual problem is.
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This is wonderful. Good job. I remember when the IFTF was advertising for someone to create this and I was SORELY tempted to do it, but just had too much on my plate at the time. I’m glad they found someone competent who cares about IF and also that it ended up being a host for more than Twine.
Have you, or do you plan to, do a post-mortem for the project?
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Thanks! I don’t think a post mortem would be very exciting, it’s mostly a bog standard web app and any description would be just technical details. It would probably be of very limited interest to most people.
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I cannot fully agree! I’d love, personally to know more. Why you bid on the job, what relationship you have to the org, why you decided to expand it well past twine games, what types of games didn’t make the cut and why… etc. I bet a lot of people would be interested. Also, I’m very glad I have a new thing to recommend when people on the IF/Twine subreddits come asking what the best hosting solutions are.
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I agree with Daniel. I know far too little about the community and facilities supporting IF authoring and would be delighted to learn more of the technical details.
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Just a short clarifying answer for now: this wasn’t directly related to IFTF’s request for proposals to replace the Philome.la service last year. I was already planning this at the same time as the RFP came out and I suggested to IFTF that if resurrecting the Philome.la site didn’t work out, we could collaborate on this one. Which is what ultimately happened. So I wasn’t paid to build the service and it’s not owned by IFTF at least for now. Current collaboration consists of IFTF’s Twine committee acting in an advisory role and contingency planning if the service happens to become popular.
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That’s awesome. Thanks for taking the time to reply. That’s really cool and I’m glad you were able to partner and do this alongside IFTF and even expand what they were hoping for! I will be glad to have this service to recommend when people frequently ask for Twine and Inform hosting solutions on Reddit.
Is there any progress on this feature? (Seeing how many times an upload has been accessed) I’d really like to know if anybody has actually interacted with whatever I’ve uploaded, for example.
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It’s still on the roadmap but unfortunately it’s not to be expected in the near future.
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Thanks. Understood.
You might consider adding borogove.io to the topic “IF Resources” at IF Resource Links
That’s a “wiki” post recently mentioned in the recent topic about wiki posts at How to make a post into a Wiki