I have to say that, as a complete non-programmer, I’ve never found this forum and other forums anything other than helpful and courteous (but, you know, there are a***holes everywhere if you look hard enough).
I wrote a game in Quest earlier this year, having absolutely no coding experience whatsoever (literally none). I chose Quest because a quick Google search told me that it had a GUI and could create games with no coding required. It quickly became apparent that a lot of the things I wanted to do did require code and the folks there seemed infinitely patient with my many, very basic questions (of the ‘what are these curly brackets and what does this mean?’ variety). Same with the Adventuron gurus here. So availability of friendly help is definitely a factor I think, but of course you have to be brave enough to ask in the first place. These waters, seemingly full of experienced programmers as they are, can be quite intimidating for non-technical people who just want to write a story.
I want to begin by saying that I’m by no means discouraging this project. I would never do that.
However, to go along with the others a bit, I agree that this engine is asking quite a bit of users that don’t already know JS. You’re asking them to learn JS and then learn your language, when there are easier and more complete engines already out there. People are willing to learn new languages if it provides functionality over the ones that they already know, but I don’t see that with this engine (at the moment). To be perfectly honest, this implementation even looks extremely similar to other JS text adventure engines I’ve seen on this board.
So I guess what I’m saying is at the very least you need to provide a hook. Give me a reason to use yours over the other parser engines. “Made for HTML” is unfortunately not a good reason because there are a ton of engines that already do that.
And finally, if you do intend to bring users to your engine, you’ll want to come up with a new name, because right now it’s rivaling Ink as “language most difficult to Google information for”.
One of the reasons I picked Sadako as a name (other than being a shameless weeb) is that if you Google it, pretty much nothing tech related comes up. It’s just Sadako Yamamura from The Ring and the story of Sadako and the paper cranes. “sadako text adventure” currently has my engine listed as the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Google result.
I’m hoping I’m not one of those people you’re referring to. But I’ll admit that there have been posts where I’m just like “Sorry, no. I’m not answering that,” which I’m sure is really frustrating to the user. I like to be helpful, but there are limits to the lengths I’m willing to go. I don’t want to be one of those “RTFM” guys… But holy cow, RTFM please. You don’t need to read everyone word. Just control+F to find the item related to what you need help on. It’s exactly what I do to answer your question. If I or any of the other people seem irritated that’s most likely the cause.
I really do enjoy helping people, but it’s not like it benefits me in any way. It’s really frustrating when users are demanding and act like we owe them something. As if it wasn’t enough that the devs put thousands of hours into creating their free engine, they and their users are now also required to offer free 24/7 tech support with a smile or else be accused of being a toxic community. It’s a bit unfair.
Sorry about being rant-ish, but I wanted to offer a perspective from the other side.
Except, perhaps, people are more likely to use your thing? If that is the primary reason for developing it in the first place (not rhetorical; not being a developer myself, I don’t really know what the motivations are).
I take you point, but if someone like me asks a question here it’s usually because they have RTFM and still don’t know! Sometimes because it is over their heads or sometimes because the FM is just not F clear enough.
I haven’t written a language. The only language you need to know to do, well, anything, is JavaScript. And again, even that isn’t required for certain types of games.
I want to thank everyone who’s participated for their feedback.
I wasn’t expecting just how much the discussion would revolve around marketing and barriers to entry for text adventure tools generally.
The impression I’m gathering is that the target audience for me is likely to be folks who haven’t made a text adventure before, especially those who already have some experience with web development. This much is unsurprising, but our conversation here has certainly reinforced that idea and helped me understand better where I should be focusing my energy in terms of outreach, and how I should tailor my documentation going forward.
While I mostly agree with what was said above, I just want to add that I know someone that was looking for an IF engine in JS, and he stumbled on Text-engine (before this announcement) while searching one.
So I guess there’s a public, even if it’s a small one.
We also have to be aware of sample bias on this forum. Most people here are already experienced in at least one system and will prefer it for that reason.
So unlikely to move many established IF’ers here, but where do the IF curious hang out?
They’re probably not hanging out in the “technical development” category of this forum, but IF-curious writers are players first. That’s why making an admirable game is so important. (As for where to find players if you’re new: uh, the competitions, mostly.)
But I’ll admit that there have been posts where I’m just like “Sorry, no. I’m not answering that,” which I’m sure is really frustrating to the user. I like to be helpful, but there are limits to the lengths I’m willing to go. I don’t want to be one of those “RTFM” guys… But holy cow, RTFM please. You don’t need to read everyone word. Just control+F to find the item related to what you need help on. It’s exactly what I do to answer your question. If I or any of the other people seem irritated that’s most likely the cause.