AJAX/Wiki VN engine

[delta]

Maybe this is interesting to some here.

http://typemoon.us/miraploy/inversion-l ... ual-novels

[Koveras]

Looks interesting. I've been thinking of designing a web-based VN engine, for some time, since HTML (or better yet, XML) lends itself wonderfully to present text with pictures, plus you can have hyperlinks for dialogue options... Though you still get problems with saving game data (cookies? session IDs?) but they are manageable, too.

[papillon]

is it just me or are all the graphics broken?

[PyTom]

It's an interesting implementation, reminds me a bit of the tsunami channel script site (back when it existed). I think the downside of the browser-based stuff is that you're quite limited in what you can do, at least without a lot of programming. I don't think you can do an imagedissolve in a browser, for example.

I'm not sure I like the domain typemoon.us. It's trading off the fame of Type-Moon in a manner that is somewhat misleading.

[jack_norton]

Well the best solution would be to use flash. You can do all image effects (fade, zoom, etc). I didn't realize it was AJAX, thought the demo was flash...

[Koveras]

I think the downside of the browser-based stuff is that you're quite limited in what you can do, at least without a lot of programming.

They claim that the engine doesn't require any scripting which is probably an understatement. Programming is required for any kind of software development, period.

I don't think you can do an imagedissolve in a browser, for example.

Well, it's not W3C standard but you can play around with CSS parameter "opacity" on background images and make it change in real time with JS...

Well the best solution would be to use flash. You can do all image effects (fade, zoom, etc). I didn't realize it was AJAX, thought the demo was flash...

I think the problem with Flash is that it requires plugins and I also heard of some security issues with it...

[monele]

Very interesting. There already was a clunky javascript VN script out there, but this one seems a bit more polished. Though it also seems you can't use it anywhere else than their website? And of course, limitations with graphical stuff... but I'm sure many people will be content with this and happy that they can simply share an URL.

[EusthEnoptEron]

Interesting implementation.
The system is limited, but using a JavaScript library (JQuery, ExtJS) you do have quite a few effects in stock. I think something like blending should be possible, though very resource-consuming. And then there's the problem of having to be online.

Though you still get problems with saving game data (cookies? session IDs?) but they are manageable, too.

I'd just use a login. Cookies wouldn't work, because you'd have to be on the same browser all the time and there's the expiration date.

I'm curious if some nice VNs will be born there.

[Koveras]

Though you still get problems with saving game data (cookies? session IDs?) but they are manageable, too.

I'd just use a login. Cookies wouldn't work, because you'd have to be on the same browser all the time and there's the expiration date.

But cookies are HTTP standard and you can renew them, or just set the expiration time to 2038 to begin with. Sure, you can manipulate them but there are security measures to prevent that. Login is nice but many potential players would be scared off if you make them register to play your game. And about being stuck with one browser, isn't it the same way with normal installed VNs? Plus, how many PCs does one actually use to game and how many favorite browsers one usually has? ^^

[EusthEnoptEron]

Though you still get problems with saving game data (cookies? session IDs?) but they are manageable, too.

I'd just use a login. Cookies wouldn't work, because you'd have to be on the same browser all the time and there's the expiration date.

But cookies are HTTP standard and you can renew them, or just set the expiration time to 2038 to begin with. Sure, you can manipulate them but there are security measures to prevent that. Login is nice but many potential players would be scared off if you make them register to play your game. And about being stuck with one browser, isn't it the same way with normal installed VNs? Plus, how many PCs does one actually use to game and how many favorite browsers one usually has? ^^

You've got a point there. But cookies would eliminate the greatest benefit of an online VN - accessibility. Also, I think it's a bit too... well, unstable or something like that. The user decides to wipe his cookies -> his saves are sent to nirvana without him knowing.
An alternative would be downloadable save files. It'd be a bit of a hassle to manage them, but it would allow portability, as well as transparency for the user.

[Blue Lemma]

is it just me or are all the graphics broken?

I think it's just you Are you running NoScript? If JavaScript isn't allowed, it won't work. Maybe try a different browser, too?

That's a neat little system there, but where are the menu choices? It looks more like a kinetic novel engine to me (which isn't innately bad, but I just need my choices! )

[papillon]

All the images are just urls, and when clicked on say that the resource is not found. I don't have javascript turned off, although I do have adblock... *shrug*

[mugenjohncel]

- CONTENT NO LONGER RELEVANT -

[Koveras]

You've got a point there. But cookies would eliminate the greatest benefit of an online VN - accessibility. Also, I think it's a bit too... well, unstable or something like that. The user decides to wipe his cookies -> his saves are sent to nirvana without him knowing.
An alternative would be downloadable save files. It'd be a bit of a hassle to manage them, but it would allow portability, as well as transparency for the user.

Well, unless you save something on the player's PC, he'd have to start the game all over again every time... Downloading files is a hassle, too, actually. One cool thing I saw in some games are "access codes": each scene is assigned a code, so that the player can copy it for each one he/she reached (emphasize on "can") and start the game from the point he/she left off earlier. The problem with this one is that static scene codes won't include the internal game data (e.g. character's dispositions) unless you encode it as string and append at the end of the scene code, which, again, would potentially blow its length. And it will also, just like the downloadable save files, be an extra hassle for the player who'd have to manually save them.

[Jake]

All the images are just urls, and when clicked on say that the resource is not found. I don't have javascript turned off, although I do have adblock... *shrug*

I get the same thing, I'm pretty sure the example URLs in the docs are just that - examples, which don't exist. The demo worked fine for me.


...Well, as 'fine' as I can bring myself to call something which used the words "omphalos" and "fulgent" within a couple of pages of each other.





It seems like it works OK, but honestly... the only advantage I see over Flash is that it's probably easier to script, but the scripting language looked pretty unnecessarily awkward, and I still don't really like the web delivery. To my mind, web delivery is good for things which are going to last you ten minutes or so, or things which you need to be able to access from multiple sites. Multi-site is going to be difficult (as has already been noted in this thread) unless you have logins, and most VNs are going to take significantly longer than ten minutes to read through.