As a partner in the development, you’d need to run the Plain English IDE that I’m using for the prototype – a file manager/text editor/compiler that lets you test your story with a single command key. It runs on Windows, but it’s remarkably simple, surprisingly small (less than a megabyte), and very fast: a 10,000-line story file compiles in less than a second on a bottom-of-the-line computer from Walmart.
The production version of the system will initially take the form of a similar but even simpler Windows IDE that will generate a file that can be loaded and run on any browser. So the stories you write will be available to pretty much everyone on pretty much every kind of device from just a single “.html” file. We’ll set up a web site of our own for both authors and players/readers. (We really need a nice short term for those who interact with interactive fiction.) We’ll be posting links to our own stories on the site, and the stories of others who use our system as well: kind of an iTunes for Conversational Storytellers; iConverse or “The Story Store” or something.
I’ll be working full-time on the project, but my partner will probably be able to keep up working just ten or twelve hours a week on evenings and weekends. We’ll communicate, hopefully at least once daily, via email and/or phone. As I mentioned in a previous post, a story long enough for the 2014 Interactive Fiction Competition could be written in as little as 100 hours; it will, of course, take us much longer than that since it’s our first time out, and since we’ll have to allow for a great deal of experimental beta-testing as well.
The heavy lifting on the Windows side is well along. The heavy lifting necessary to produce browser-compatible output is not a problem, but will require three or four weeks; I have a browser expert on call for that part of the project.
Thanks, I’ll take a look.