[I7] Thoughts on game presentation

[Andrew Hunter]

On 6 Feb 2008, at 22:34, Emily Short wrote:

>
> On Feb 6, 2008, at 3:13 PM, Andrew Hunter wrote:
>
>> There's a further step, though. While thinking about embedding HTML  
>> in games, I started wondering about doing the opposite: embedding  
>> the game in HTML. The idea is that the game provide a 'gameplay'  
>> page, which embeds a plugin provided by the interpreter to display  
>> the game's content: this would allow the game to create a unique  
>> look for itself, and would also allow the designer to use standard  
>> tools to create it.
>>
>> The plugin could provide for communication via javascript - the  
>> simplest way perhaps to just expose something like CocoaGlk's  
>> existing automation system, which would be adequate to create  
>> something like the BBC's hitchhiker's game.
>>
>> Perhaps communication could also be done directly via requests on a  
>> custom URL scheme - this would require some interpreter support,  
>> but such requests could be presented as glk streams to the game.  
>> This would allow the page surrounding the game to update itself  
>> using techniques like AJAX. Embedding flash or Silverlight content  
>> would be possible, too, which would make it possible to relatively  
>> easily create very rich interfaces.
>
>
> Here I am not sure I know enough technically to envision what you  
> have in mind: are we thinking of a graphical frame around the game,  
> or something along those lines?

Yes: the game would in effect be embedded in a web page in the same  
way that flash programs are. The actual HTML, images, etc would be  
embedded in the blorb file, so there would still only be one thing to  
download, and if an interpreter doesn't know about the new chunks it  
will just ignore them, so the game would work on older interpreters  
without modification.

Clever stuff could be done with javascript to allow the game to  
communicate with its 'frame', which would make it possible for the  
game to use it for display purposes. HTML allows for much more  
flexible display than something like glulx does, so it should be  
easier to create something with a very nice interface.

It would also be possible to embed the game on an actual webpage using  
the same technique, but people are really quite averse to installing  
plugins in my experience. Additionally, it's an annoying extra step  
and you would be unable to play the game without an internet connection.

> I'm a little bit cautious about things that would make certain games  
> dependent on a specific interpreter, but on the other hand I think  
> there's some interesting stuff we could be doing; newcomers to IF,  
> especially those attracted from outside by I7, seem to want to do  
> various UI tricks that the community mostly hasn't worried about. So  
> offering them the opportunity to try would probably be a good thing,  
> or at least produce some interesting experimental results.

One of the nice things is that it should be reasonably easy to  
implement this on other systems: the only hard part being to write an  
interpreter that is capable of acting as a plug-in to a browser  
control. So this should be platform-independent.

Andrew.