I think it’s important to say I’m not in any way trying to disrupt existing paradigms.
I’m just experimenting with different approaches based on my experience as a software architect in the business world.
I have an inkling that this approach will significantly speed up my own authoring of IF stories, something I find extremely intriguing.
6 posts were merged into an existing topic: JavaScript, browsers, and interactivity
3 posts were merged into an existing topic: JavaScript, browsers, and interactivity
This isn’t really a hot take on anything, or perhaps it is. But i wanted to air something to think about in the mix of story-file distribution vs native;
Even if you have one, your game isn’t always just your story file!
So I’ll just talk about what i do rather than opinionate. I do have a story file, but i also have a shed-load of media for any game. The different targets do not usually get the same media. So the idea of a huge universal bundle of story+media does not work. I’ll illustrate with some cases:
All my digital art is authored at 4k (usually 4000x3000 pixels). These are like “source code” in that they are converted to platform deployment versions. Videos are authored at 8Mb/s and work the same. Audio is Wav or FLAC.
Binary distros get 4k art images, mobiles get 2k, web is worse;
Web gets a selection of 800,1600 and 2000 pixels. This is to facilitate dynamic bandwidth streaming. The “interpreter” downloads media on-the-fly and will measure bandwidth and choose accordingly. You got broadband? ok 2k for you. You got cell phone? Maybe only 800 pixels. Your downloads are struggling? go down a notch to 1600. Same deal for video. Audio tends to be ok, since it streams. But it also needs priority.
So the distro packages are different. There is not a universal solution that works well on all targets. Some “busy” images comes out a bit heavy, so I need to adjust their compression factors to be in line with size/bandwidth targets.
All this is crucial for working well on the web, for example.
A post was merged into an existing topic: JavaScript, browsers, and interactivity
12 posts were merged into an existing topic: JavaScript, browsers, and interactivity
Sure, but to produce a hot take (if perhaps not an unpopular opinion): how many expanded IF works are going to use those? Images and sound are already usable in modern interpreter IF and hardly get a lot of use (aside from cover art in the case of images). I’m not sure any parser game in this year’s IF Comp made much use of audio other than Jim Nelson’s Cognomen, Damon L. Wakes’s game, and The Curse (at least according to the blurb).
I would imagine that the major beneficiary of native executables becoming more common, or IF tools targeting a general runtime becoming more common, or Vorple, WebUI, and the like becoming more common, or some JS-based parser environment becoming more common and so on, would not be the sort of multimedia experience discussed by you but UI tweaks, stylings, and alterations. These would still probably require tuning for different platforms but perhaps not as much.
Just because the browser might not be able to handle, say, Discourse, doesn’t mean that the browser would be unable to handle Twine games.
A post was merged into an existing topic: JavaScript, browsers, and interactivity
A post was merged into an existing topic: JavaScript, browsers, and interactivity
A post was merged into an existing topic: JavaScript, browsers, and interactivity
@moderators maybe split the JavaScript discussion away from here?
Would you please provide a link where you’d like this split to start?
In general I don’t personally read and keep up with every discussion on this forum, so “Split the JavaScript discussion away from here” is not helpful. There are 195 messages in this topic. If you can provide a link to the message where you’d like the split to start it’s very helpful.
Note that there is a chain-link icon on every message that will let you copy the link specifically to it.
Also, a topic title suggestion is appreciated.
Just putting my (maybe not so) “hot take” back into this thread…
The text rendering options, scalable layout and cross-platform, cross-device code base of browser content is unmatched. Dynamic webpages should be given consideration for all new IF engines moving forward. Especially considering that, at its core, a webpage is all about displaying text.
Honestly I’m not a fan of webpage-based IF. I’m already using my browser for too much, it’s bursting at the seams with tabs. I prefer to be able to play IF seperately from my browser.
I’ve used Ink + Godot + JavaScript to make an IF game where the text changes when the player blinks (detected using the webcam). That’s definitely not possible with the platform-agnostic story file paradigm.
Totally understandable. I actually feel the same way. I go to a new window and full screen it most of the time when playing IF online, but it’s a weird hoop to have to jump through.
There are ways to package a Chromium browser as an executable that can launch without any browser address bars and without standard browser functionality, like in kiosk mode.
I guess another of my “hot takes” is that even if you hate webpages, you could technically play an IF game without even knowing it was a webpage.
(In practice I have a second browser that I use for IF.)
That’s what Lectrote does, by the way.
Even if I wasn’t often annoyed by websites that overcomplicate things, I still much prefer running things from the Linux console… Also, I am not a fan of the trend of apps that essentially install extra copies of one of the bloated, big name web browsers and serve a web site pretending to be something else… especially with how often said apps are just a crappier version of a website that can be accessed from a normal browser… Also hate how some websites are constantly harassing users to download their app, especially when the app isn’t even available for the platform the website is being accessed from.
