« BackLessons from creating my first text adventureentropicthoughts.comSubmitted by kqr 3 days ago
  • chrismorgan 6 hours ago

    Just tried playing the game, and found my very first actual breakage due to blocking custom fonts in over five years of using the web like this.

    It just puts up a “NetworkError: A network error occurred.” error and doesn’t start.

    The reason is this:

      await document.fonts.load(`14px ${font_family}`)
    Since this isn’t actually necessary for page functionality, it would be better wrapped in a try { … } catch {}, or just with .catch(() => {}) appended.

    My bizarre workaround is a user stylesheet to remove the offending font:

      :root {
      --glkote-mono-family: monospace;
  }
    Honestly, I’m a little surprised it took five years to find something that actually broke completely from this.
    • kqr 3 hours ago

      It might be worth clarifying that the game itself does not deal in typefaces: it's the interpreter running the game that handles font business. The link in the article leads to the web-based Parchment interpreter running on iplayif.com, but there are other alternatives both for web-based play and native applications.

      Maybe the Parchment people would appreciate the bug report, though. Or if it's iplayif.com that introduces this bug. I have no idea!

    • thrtythreeforty 11 hours ago

      I'm so glad someone finally echo'd how I felt trying and failing to learn Inform 7. It was very much "there is a syntax. We are not going to tell you what it is." It was a shame because it looked so cool to be fluent at. The learning curve was just too high for me.

      • crooked-v 6 hours ago

        The ability to (in theory) easily get second-order behavior out of simple definitions in Inform 7 is something I would find really fascinating if only it didn't require knowing all the specific magic invocations to do so.

        • colkassad 6 hours ago

          I much prefer TADS 3. With that said, I'm glad Inform 7 exists. It's such a strange one that seems to work for a subset of creatives, made by people that really love the art form.

      • ianbicking 7 hours ago

        Some of the issues with parsers and knowing what to type could be helped quite a bit if the text adventure interfaces had a bit more affordances. Making important objects bold is an easy one (unless you feel that determining the importance of objects is part of the puzzle). But if you break out of the linear-narrative approach there's a lot to do. Label exits with their destinations (if you have traveled there before). Use colors akin to blue/purple links to indicate history. Inventory doesn't need to be a command. If mapmaking isn't part of the challenge, then give people ways to move quickly (e.g., "go to throne room" could just find a path to the throne room based on your knowledge).