Okay, not yet…but I’m working on it…and for all you Windows 8 haters, please refrain from commentary…take the OS-Wars to Usenet where it belongs…
I’m porting Shadow to a Windows 8 Store App and this is the progress so far…I think it works pretty well. As you can see, I’ve adopted some of he UI feel of some of the iPad inventions…
Let me know what you think…I will be looking for testers eventually, but I’m a ways away from that…I still need to implement paging, save/restore, hints, and help. The basics are in place though.
The subset of .NET used in WinRT works on ARM and Intel, so I didn’t really do that much. I had a few small changes to make in FyreVM, but most of those were already done from the Silverlight version from the old Secret Letter implementation. Some of the methods moved around in the API, which is annoying, but not a deal-breaker.
I’m using the C#/XAML method as opposed to the HTML5 methods…for whatever reason, the HTML5+WinRT solution scares me…
That’s quite pretty. I think you said you were still todo scroll-back, which was the first thing I came to think of. Other questions - if you type something wrong, does it leave you with a screen with a big error message taking up the entire left panel? That would be… unwelcoming. Or can Fyre mark-up [at least some] parser errors and put them somewhere else?
I found having the command entry on the right distracting; you’ll get a nice flow if the command line is underneath the page of text.
When the tutorial finishes, does its box sit there empty? Or can it be removed, and the map expanded / vertically centred?
I’d put the chapter title and location title in a slightly different font size / weight (actually; I’d change them to look like the small headers you get in printed novel, but whatever.)
I’m sort of stuck on paging/scroll-back UI mechanism…I plan to simply store the channel data to files so it’s always available, but how to make it seamless is important.
I’m also torn about the tutorial box. It actually started as a debug window, but now I’ve gotten used to it telling me things, so it’s sort of useful.
Error messages go into that tutorial box as well and no, they do not wipe out the main text.
I like the idea of the main text being like a piece of paper and off to the side…I’ll do some tests, but I think having the command entry point off to the right is much more usable for most non-IF people.
The chapter and location centered in bold at the top is entirely doable. Makes sense.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit…from a visual perspective how do I pull it off and keep the parchment effect I have now?
I may have a solution. If I have an artist create a sort of TV tray like wooden graphic that stands out 3Dish, the parchment could stay as is and flow “under” this tray when you push it down. When you push it up it would come up to a margin’s height above the tray.
The “command line” would be on top of the tray and therefore remain in line with the parchment…
I’m going to put this together and upload a new video for review…but it seems like it might be possible to have my cake…
It’s the Star Trek rule - every other one comes out poorly. 95 was bad, 98 was ok; ME was terrible, but XP was quite good; Vista sucked, but 7 was fine; 8 will do badly, but 9 will be great.
An interesting comparison since it may predict Windows’s demise. If your analogy holds, the first time Microsoft produces two awful operating systems in a row, they will be toast. To come back from that, they’d have to reboot the whole franchise in a new Unixverse – and blow up Vulcan.
