Textfyre - Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter - Online Demo
ChicagoDave
I'm still busily putting the website together for sales and digital
downloads. If you pre-ordered, I'll be sending e-mails out shortly to
download the game.
In the meantime, you can play the online demo at http://www.textfyre.com/sldemo.
Please report issues to the forums at http://forums.textfyre.com.
Enjoy!
David C.
S. John Ross
I know you're swamped right now, but just a gentle nudge: will the
promised FAQ be going up soon? Some of the questions you said would be
addressed in the FAQ really are burning ones ...
S. John Ross
> Please report issues to the forums athttp://forums.textfyre.com.
Where do we report issues with registering _at_ the forums?
It keeps telling me to pick a more complex password with punctuation
or numbers, when the passwords I've entered already qualify :/
David C.
Looks like you need letters, numbers, _and_ punctuation.
Sorry - I can't see how to lower the requirements.
David C.
S. John Ross
> > It keeps telling me to pick a more complex password with punctuation
> > or numbers, when the passwords I've entered already qualify :/
>
> Looks like you need letters, numbers, _and_ punctuation.
Ah, no problem then. Either I misread the error message (I don't think
so; I saw it four or five times before giving up) or the error message
itself (rather than the registration process) is the only snag.
> Sorry - I can't see how to lower the requirements.
No need. S'all good.
So ... FAQ soon?
David C.
Does this link work?
http://forums.textfyre.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=1
I need to add a lot more detail, but it's a start.
David C.
Otto Grimwald
> In the meantime, you can play the online demo at http://www.textfyre.com/sldemo.
> Please report issues to the forums at http://forums.textfyre.com.
>
Sorry to come again with this issue, but I've tried to install
silverlight using this link:
http://go-mono.com/moonlight-preview/ (it's the 2.0 preview)
and when loading the sldemo page it just froze my browser (firefox).
I know you don't owe anything to linux users, but I think we'll never be
able to read your book properly:
"A Linux version called Moonlight 2.0 will become available this year
and will allow us to provide Linux versions of our products. We will
upgrade Silverlight to 3.0 when it becomes available in July."
I guess when the silverlight 3 version will be available, the
"moonlight" implementation will lag behind and it will take a few more
months to be eventually compatible.
Until there is a version 4 of silverlight...
and it's a pity, because what I've seen (using a windows XP in a virtual
machine) looked very good.
David C.
<contact_is_on_webs...@anamnese.fr.st> wrote:
> ChicagoDave wrote:
> > In the meantime, you can play the online demo athttp://www.textfyre.com/sldemo.
> > Please report issues to the forums athttp://forums.textfyre.com.
>
> Sorry to come again with this issue, but I've tried to install
> silverlight using this link:
>
>
> and when loading the sldemo page it just froze my browser (firefox).
Yeah - we're aware it's not ready yet.
> I know you don't owe anything to linux users, but I think we'll never be
> able to read your book properly:
Not true. We want you to be able to play the game too!
> "A Linux version called Moonlight 2.0 will become available this year
> and will allow us to provide Linux versions of our products. We will
> upgrade Silverlight to 3.0 when it becomes available in July."
>
> I guess when the silverlight 3 version will be available, the
> "moonlight" implementation will lag behind and it will take a few more
> months to be eventually compatible.
If we move to Silverlight 3, it won't have any impact on whether we
deliver to Linux or not. When Moonlight 2.0 is capable of running
Secret Letter, we may simply move all of the installations to it and
skip Silverlight. I'd rather try to have one set of code than several.
Even so, I'm going to poke the Moonlight dev team to see if they can
get it working with Secret Letter now. And we would never _develop_ UI
things that required Silverlight 3 and therefore could not be ported
to Moonlight 2. That would be entirely counter-productive.
> and it's a pity, because what I've seen (using a windows XP in a virtual
> machine) looked very good.
Thanks!
David C.
Benjamin Caplan
> And we would never _develop_ UI
> things that required Silverlight 3 and therefore could not be ported
> to Moonlight 2. That would be entirely counter-productive.
Obviously it's too late to change this now, but by the same reasoning,
shouldn't you have used *light 1 rather than 2? Moonlight 1 exists right
now.
Or was the particular version of Silverlight one of Tenteo's considerations?
S. John Ross
> In the meantime, you can play the online demo athttp://www.textfyre.com/sldemo.
> Please report issues to the forums athttp://forums.textfyre.com.
I attempted describing a technical issue on the forums, but it seems
to have been swallowed up in moderation.
From now on I'll just post here, where things can be above-board.
S. John Ross
It works for me, sure, but I'm registered with the forums now. You had
mentioned that you'd be posting a FAQ on the actual TextFyre website
soon ...
> I need to add a lot more detail, but it's a start.
It's a start. Still eager to see at least one more Big Question
addressed :/
David C.
You hit the nail on the head, but Silverlight 1 was really just a
video wrapper. It wasn't really capable of any significant RIA
programming.
David C.
David C.
The forums is sort of a part of the website and that's where it will
reside. Eventually the website will be redesigned and the forums will
be integrated with that new design.
In any case, I'd prefer we move all Textfyre questions to the forums
so we can take it off of r*if. I really can't remember all of the
burgeoning questions, so if you could re-ask (on the forums), I'll be
happy to answer there.
Thanks,
David C.
Damien Neil
> In the meantime, you can play the online demo at
> http://www.textfyre.com/sldemo.
> Please report issues to the forums at http://forums.textfyre.com.
I really wish you luck.
However, I'm pretty certain I'm not going to be buying any of your
games. I know you've put a huge amount of effort into making a nice
interface for them--unfortunately, for me, the result is nigh unusable.
The font is gargantuan, and just plain difficult to read.
I start a new game, and am faced with several pages of text which, to
the best of my ability to determine, can only be moved through by
clicking on the small 'next page' button in the corner. The button is
animated. I wish that the effort put into making that button had gone
into supporting the "page down" key.
...wait, "page down" works. That's *something*, I suppose. Of course,
using "page down" causes the (very low frame count, and rather ugly)
page flip animation to be three times as slow as clicking on the button,
for no readily apparent reason.
If I want to scroll back to previous text, I need to laborously flip
back one page at a time. Why can't I just have a scrolling window with
a normal scrollbar, like every other text display interface I use?
Mouse wheel, of course, does nothing.
The game is slow. Not quite as slow as The Legend Lives! when it was
first released, or Suspended on my C64 , but slower than I really want
to deal with in this decade. I might be forgiving if the interface
hadn't already cheesed me off, but...
So, yeah. Not for me, I'm afraid.
- Damien
S. John Ross
> In any case, I'd prefer we move all Textfyre questions to the forums
> so we can take it off of r*if. I really can't remember all of the
> burgeoning questions, so if you could re-ask (on the forums), I'll be
> happy to answer there.
I already posted once (detailing a technical problem), offering to
take screenshots to show it off, etc), last night before I went
a'snooze. Seeing how that went, it's difficult to justify wasting the
effort on the other matter.
I wish you guys all the luck and I hope the game rocks, but I think
I'll check in in a month or two once you've got the bugs ironed
out. :/
David C.
The reason for the moderation is because eventually there may be 10
year old kids reading the forums and I can't have trolls messing with
the kids.
If you don't want to post on the forums, send me an e-mail. This will
get really old on Usenet really fast.
David C.
S. John Ross
> year old kids reading the forums and I can't have trolls messing with
> the kids.
I entirely respect the reasons for/need for moderation. But my post is
a day old now and still AWOL, and it was entirely technical in nature;
it contained no comment on the game itself and certainly wouldn't be a
"troll" by any definition ... I described the issue, mentioned the
software I'm using, etc. Dull as dishwater, certainly nothing that
might be controversial.
> If you don't want to post on the forums, send me an e-mail. This will
> get really old on Usenet really fast.
I've already posted on the forums. There's nothing about the issue
that would benefit from private conversation, and potentially much to
be gained from people comparing experiences.
(and the lingering big-deal FAQ question is the one about how
standalone Jack's story is in relation to the promised series ... is
this the first in a series in the "Fellowship of the Ring" sense [not
a complete story at all, but the beginnings of a big saga], a "Harry
Potter" sense [a mostly-complete story with multiple unresolved
threads setting up the sequels] a "Stainless Steel Rat" sense
[complete story, future entries will follow the same character on
other, equally standalone adventures] or a "Xanth" sense [complete
story and maybe the last time we see this particular protagonist in
the lead, future entries in the series will be about other characters
in the same world]?)
Jerome West
> (and the lingering big-deal FAQ question is the one about how
> standalone Jack's story is in relation to the promised series ... is
> this the first in a series in the "Fellowship of the Ring" sense [not
> a complete story at all, but the beginnings of a big saga], a "Harry
> Potter" sense [a mostly-complete story with multiple unresolved
> threads setting up the sequels] a "Stainless Steel Rat" sense
> [complete story, future entries will follow the same character on
> other, equally standalone adventures] or a "Xanth" sense [complete
> story and maybe the last time we see this particular protagonist in
> the lead, future entries in the series will be about other characters
> in the same world]?)
Certainly not the latter of those senses, since the forums give away the
title of the next episode in the series, "Jack Toresal and the Trial of
the Vedd". I'd lay good money on it being a standalone story in the
Harry Potter sense... not that my musings are in any way a substitute
for an answer from the horse's mouth.
James Jolley
Same here then. If you're not going out of your way to make the work
accessible to blind users, forget it. Why should I pay for something I
can't access?
S. John Ross
> Certainly not the latter of those senses, since the forums give away the
> title of the next episode in the series, "Jack Toresal and the Trial of
> the Vedd".
Oh, good catch :) That definitely eliminates one of the four ... but
I'd still like to know for sure which of the other three we're looking
at :/
Mike Snyder
news:d6c1f5fe-77c0-4ade...@r37g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
I believe it works like Harry Potter, where each story is self-contained,
but with an overarching master plot that they all fit into. It would be
better to play them all, and in order, to get the most out of it, but my
understanding is that enough backstory will be included in each game to make
it not strictly necessary. I gather the same from The Shadow in the
Cathedral based on part of the design, but that's my unofficial take on it.
Anything more, I can't say. I'm under the NDA.
---- Mike.
Thomas Insel
>If you don't want to post on the forums, send me an e-mail. This will
>get really old on Usenet really fast.
Discussion of your games is certainly in-charter at least for
rec.games.int-fiction. I don't see how anyone benefits from trying to
limit such, nor does it make any more sense than, for example, a
publisher telling the New York Times that they can only publish reviews
on the publisher's web site.
Tom
S. John Ross
> I believe it works like Harry Potter, where each story is self-contained,
> but with an overarching master plot that they all fit into. It would be
> better to play them all, and in order, to get the most out of it
Cool. If that's the case, I'll probably wait 'til it's all done before
diving in.
James Jolley
Funny, David never offered blind users the chance to test for
accessibility, choosing to use the ever so useable Silverlight. Testing
isn't just about playing the game as we know, it's about making sure
the system is accessible to all markets if possible.
Best
-James-
James Jolley
He doesn't like the fact that not everyone wants to pay 25 dollars for
a work of IF. I'm guessing that's his problem anyway.
David C.
> (and the lingering big-deal FAQ question is the one about how
> standalone Jack's story is in relation to the promised series
Each game is stand-alone, but at the end we kind of kick off the next
game with a bit of a cliffhanger. It's not a true cliffhanger since
the story has several questions answered, but leaves a few unanswered.
The games are being written by really smart authors. They know how to
develop mini-arcs and such. I wouldn't worry at all about missing out
on anything if you play each game as they're published.
David C.
S. John Ross
> Each game is stand-alone, but at the end we kind of kick off the next
> game with a bit of a cliffhanger. It's not a true cliffhanger since
> the story has several questions answered, but leaves a few unanswered.
I'll parse that as approximately the Harry Potter level then, as Mike
Snyder suggested.
> I wouldn't worry at all about missing out
> on anything if you play each game as they're published.
I certainly hope you wouldn't :)
S. John Ross
> He doesn't like the fact that not everyone wants to pay 25 dollars for
> a work of IF. I'm guessing that's his problem anyway.
Possibly, but the person he's been brushing off (raises hand) would be
positively thrilled to pay $25 for an awesome text adventure. I'm just
struggling to find out if that's what this is :/
Someone finally responded to the technical issue that's preventing me
from giving the demo a whirl, and it was like a cut-and-paste response
that indicated they never really read the post :( So, not encouraging.
But maybe the intended audience (parents and teachers) aren't the
question-asking kind? Dunno.
David C.
> On 2009-06-28 05:20:01 +0100, Damien Neil <ne...@misago.org> said:
>
>
>
>
>
> > ChicagoDave <david.cornel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> In the meantime, you can play the online demo at
> >>http://www.textfyre.com/sldemo.
>
> - Show quoted text -
I'm working on a vanilla WinForms interpreter this week. Anyone that
wants to play Secret Letter without all the fancy features and in a
plain text program will have that ability. It will be Mono based, but
should work fine with text readers. And it will work in Linux.
Another one for the FAQ page.
David C.
James Jolley
Fair enough. I'm a bit put out that Dave's gone with this Silverlight
deal without considering issues of access. Blind players don't seem to
have been consulted. Shame really.
James Jolley
What about mac? I use Zoom myself because it's just amazing as a
frontend to my 300 or so IF collection.
S. John Ross
> Fair enough. I'm a bit put out that Dave's gone with this Silverlight
> deal without considering issues of access. Blind players don't seem to
> have been consulted. Shame really.
I agree that it's a shame. Hopefully they'll take steps to address it.
David C.
>
> - Show quoted text -
Mono WinForms is very stable and although there are issues surrounding
the mac ui api's, it shouldn't be too difficult to implement it.
David C.
Thomas Insel
>He doesn't like the fact that not everyone wants to pay 25 dollars for
>a work of IF. I'm guessing that's his problem anyway.
I'm not touching that argument with a very long thing.
I've no Windows system convenient at the moment, but I'll give the game
reasonable consideration if the promised Mac version appears. There's
a higher bar for me to register with yet another online forum, remember
one more password, etc.
Tom
Andrew Plotkin
I pre-ordered, and I was able to download the Mac/Silverlight version
of the game this weekend. It's installed on my Mac laptop now.
(It runs, but I haven't looked past the title screen. I figure I'll
pull it out at the Boston IF meet-up tonight.)
I have not looked at the web forum at all.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Thomas Insel
>Here, Thomas Insel <tin...@tinsel.org> wrote:
>> I've no Windows system convenient at the moment, but I'll give the game
>> reasonable consideration if the promised Mac version appears.
>
>of the game this weekend. It's installed on my Mac laptop now.
Thanks. The mail I got said the Mac version would be coming soon, so I
assumed there would be a second message when it was ready.
My initial impressions of the game itself are good, at least within the
category of fairly easy quite linear games. Professionally done, very
few implementation glitches, nice gradual revealing of plot points,
etc. I wouldn't want to play this sort of game too often, because it
seems just a touch bland and easy, but the difficulty and writing
style may very well be appropriate for the young adult market.
Unfortunately, the UI is painful. Discounting the fact that I apparently
just hung the game by typing "version", typing and responses got
painfully slow by sometime in the second chapter. Saved games are tied
to the Silverlight VM, so there's no obvious way to copy them between
computers. This really is disappointing -- I don't think the book
interface adds much value, so I'd much prefer a nice Glulx interface
like City of Secrets, or even plain text.
Tom
Tom
Adam Thornton
Thomas Insel <tin...@tinsel.org> wrote:
>Unfortunately, the UI is painful. Discounting the fact that I apparently
>just hung the game by typing "version", typing and responses got
>painfully slow by sometime in the second chapter.
Yeah, this is making my CPUs spin madly on the online demo version, too.
Adam
James Jolley
This is what I don't understand. Why? Why is the game not using
standards? I know you can't expect kids to download an interpreter, but
they're quick enough to download steam.
S. John Ross
> This is what I don't understand. Why? Why is the game not using
> standards? I know you can't expect kids to download an interpreter, but
> they're quick enough to download steam.
Plus, the need for Silverlight pretty much levels the equation :/
James Jolley
Yeah I can see that. I'm all for quality products but these standards
have been introduced for a reason.
Conrad
I haven't looked at the trial version -- I'm reluctant at the moment
to install anything on my computer; I have all this stuff I downloaded
on a whim that needs to be cleared out -- but all the talk about it
running slowly makes me curious:
What is it doing that's so computationally intensive? What's causing
it to run slow?
C.
Andrew Plotkin
The slowness people are talking about (I ran into it too) is at the
input line. Typing lags at a rate proportional to the amount of text
that's been displayed in the game so far. So it probably isn't game
computation, but rather the layout engine.
Without knowing anything about the layout code, I imagine this is a
fixable bug. The UI doesn't update anything before the current page of
text, so it should be possible to rewrite whatever it's doing to look
at one page, rather than the entire game scrollback.
Conrad
C.
Francesco Cordella
start for a commercial text game in 2009! :-)
David Whyld
two? I looked for an option but in terms of customisation there
doesn't seem to be any.
David C.
<francesco_levaque...@nospamm.net> wrote:
> I'm still not able to play the Demo, my browsers freeze: not a good
> start for a commercial text game in 2009! :-)
What OS and Browser are you using. We've only heard of this in Linux,
not Mac or Windows.
David C.
David C.
We're adding a Settings option that will have a number of
customization features, including font/size. We're also going to add a
plain book with white background as an option.
David C.
Adam Thornton
"Version" definitely causes a busy-waiting hang on OS X and Safari 4.
Adam
David C.
> In article <1e950bdc-f5da-41c9-8c4d-22f9dcf71...@r10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
>
> David C. <david.cornel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Jun 30, 5:53 pm, Francesco Cordella
> ><francesco_levaque...@nospamm.net> wrote:
> >> I'm still not able to play the Demo, my browsers freeze: not a good
> >> start for a commercial text game in 2009! :-)
> >What OS and Browser are you using. We've only heard of this in Linux,
> >not Mac or Windows.
>
> "Version" definitely causes a busy-waiting hang on OS X and Safari 4.
>
> Adam
Don't type version for now.
David C.
fran...@avventuretestuali.com
> What OS and Browser are you using. We've only heard of this in Linux,
> not Mac or Windows.
>
On my Windows XP PC, I have latest versions of Firefox and Explorer:
the browsers freeze with your Demo. The same happens to three friends
of mine... and we have Silverlight, in fact nothing tells us to
install it...
f.
fran...@avventuretestuali.com
> On 1 Lug, 01:37, "David C." <david.cornel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What OS and Browser are you using. We've only heard of this in Linux,
> > not Mac or Windows.
No answers about technical problems?
f.
David C.
Francesco - did you get my e-mail?
David C.
Francesco Cordella
> Francesco - did you get my e-mail?
>
> David C.
yep, and I'm sorry I still can't try the demo... :-(
Francesco Cordella
too... fine.
f.
David C.
> Blind players don't seem to have been consulted. Shame really.
Actually this is not true. One of the regular ifMUD folk, Jayson
Smith, has been consulted many times on what blind players expect and
has recently helped develop a console version of Secret Letter,
specifically for blind players.
This will be packaged and made available in a day or two. It will
still require the .NET Framework 2.0, but that should allow us to
compile it for Linux and Mac as well as Windows using Mono.
I had JAWS installed for awhile, but decided it was more productive to
develop the requirements and let an actual blind person test the
application.
David C.
James Jolley
Funny, is this Jason using a mac? no. Is this person actually bothered
in making the program accessible to all? probably not. Just because it
works with JAWS means nothing. Why not release the work as a standard
glulxe work. Either way, forget it, seems as most people jump because
we're expected too. Pathetic.
Jesse McGrew
Are you saying a standard command-line console application won't work
with Mac screen reader software?
I'm seeing mixed reports online about how well VoiceOver works in
Terminal. On my Mac I couldn't get it to read anything except the keys
I typed in, but some people apparently have it reading everything.
Does it work for you?
vw
James Jolley
Yes, terminal works but i'd still rather play IF with a REAL terp
thanks. This is the 21st century you know folks.
David C.
> i'd still rather play IF with a REAL terp
> thanks. This is the 21st century you know folks.
I guess I'm missing something here. Is there a difference in playing a
console game and a game in one of the glulx interpreters for blind
people? Can you describe the difference? What features seem important
to you?
Thanks,
David C.
James Jolley
Hi,
I just use Zoom like anyone else. There aren't any specific glulxe
terps for blind people. I'd prefer that anyway personally.
I'm curious as to what the issue is with providing the work as a glulxe
file though. Messing about with terminals isn't going to be everyone's
cup of tea for sure.
Best
-James-
David C.
I'm sure you and most others would be compliant to any license I
placed on such a file....but all it takes is one person to put it up
on a file-server and share it with the world. I'd prefer that everyone
play Textfyre games in a Textfyre interpreter and really have that
experience be as a one off executable and not have the dual interpreter
+game file format.
I know this isn't optimal for the IF community, but it is what it is.
David C.
James Jolley
That's alright. Didn't even consider the copying and sharing it around
aspects. I've been so used to the terp plus game format that it's hard
to see what the attraction of a bundled version is. Now I know.
Thanks.
-James-