when I am finishing my adventure I will export it as a Z8-file. Then I can publish this file, of course, and everybody is able to play it with an interpreter.
I would like to know, if it is possible to release the game with an integrated interpreter. Because a lot of people do not know how to handle a Z8-file, they dont know that they will need an interpreter to play the game.
Is it possible to integrate the Z8-file together with an interpreter into a single exe-file (for Windows user)? This would be perfect because I want to bring the game to some people never played text adventures before and they dont know about the interpreters.
If you have your own website or other place where you can set up web pages, you can release the game along with a web interpreter (see ch. 23.11. in the manual). You could also upload the .z8 somewhere and point Parchment at it (http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/zcode.html).
If you want to give the file for offline play, I guess it’s just a matter of giving the interpreter and instructions along with the story file (most interpreters are stand-alone .exe:s so it’s just a matter of opening the interpreter and choosing the story file). I don’t know of any tool that could bundle the story file and an offline interpreter together.
I see. It was also my idea to publish a package consisting of an free interpreter and the game file (maybe with a batch-file to start the interpreter along with the game file by one click). I just thought there might another possibility.
The online game with parchment is also a good idea!
The package/batch might be your best bet. On the subject, if you were using Glulx instead of the ZMachine, it might interest you to know that if you rename “Glulxe.exe” to the name of your game, i.e. “My game.exe”, it will automatically open any story file with that name in the current directory (be it “My game.ulx”, “.gblorb”, or whatnot).
And, I suppose, the web-page you get by adding “Release along with an interpreter” to the source text should be equally playable off-line in any reasonably modern browser.
I have downloaded Glulxe and it seems to be perfect for releasing a “out-of-the-box-playable” game for windows. Renaming the exe to the same name es the game file also works perfect. Great idea, thanks!
And I also created a cfg file with some settings (removing the title bar from Glulxe) so nobody is bothered by settings, options, etc.
But I still have two questions about Glulxe:
How to load a previously saved game state file?
Is it possible to rename the word “Glulxe” that appears in the Windows task bar? Because: If people double-click on AdventureGame.exe, for example, nobody will understand why this window is identified als “Glulxe” in the task bar.
You see, I would like to make game play as easy as possible for people who never played interactive fiction before.
You’d probably have to recompile the interpreter after changing the value of the window title in the source. I wonder if this could be a cfg setting though, that’d be nice.
Bear in mind that you do this at your own peril. Even people who have no idea what they’re playing can want to change settings - even if it’s just the fonts. I certainly don’t use the default font, for instance. “Baskerville Old Face” is easier on my eyes.
