A text Myst Online project

[belford]

The system is running and accepting account registrations.

http://ec2-174-129-230-8.compute-1.amazonaws.com/

This is, obviously, a temporary URL. I will redirect seltani.net to this server eventually.

Everything is still in an early state. I have not even started to build the Age-building interface! So it's a long way from what I've promised. But you can register, walk around, see the sights, and chat. Let me know about any problems.

There are eight worlds currently available, although half of them are small and the rest are *really* small.

Don't pass this URL around yet. I want to launch this slowly and watch for potential problems. It's never been tested with more than about four people on at a time, and I have no idea what the practical capacity of an Amazon "micro" EC2 is.

EDIT: The URL changed.

EDIT-ADD: Okay, final URL: http://dev.seltani.net/

Final until I decide to go 1.0 with it, anyway...

[Acorn]

Hi, belford, I've just had a quick look round and wanted to commend you for the wonderful descriptions - evocative without being too wordy. There's obviously been a lot of work and time that has gone into this project. I only visited one of your new worlds and found there was so much to read and explore that before too long I needed a rest! I didn't want to miss anything, but that means a lot of links to open. Sometimes I found that a link would unexpectedly move me on when I hadn't read everything at that location. Maybe that was my mistake, of course! I'm not familiar with this genre of gaming - apart from the old-style text games from the old days so I may have missed something. But I wondered whether it might be possible to signal [more clearly?] which are the "move on to next location" links and which are the "explore what is around you" links?

Hope this feedback is helpful! Looking forward to exploring more when I'm rested.

[Wamduskasapa]

I have been unable to access this game I keep getting an error

Unable to open websocket: ReferenceError: 'WebSocket' is undefined

IE 9 does not support Websockets, and I have not been able to find a Valid Plug-in

[belford]

Acorn: Thank you! I am very encouraged that this layout -- which is only a couple of months of part-time writing work -- is already too much content to explore in one sitting. When more people are able to contribute, this could really hit the goal of "content added faster than a player can consume it."

Wamduskasapa: I'm sorry, that is correct. I have only tested the system with Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. According to Wikipedia, IE10 should work too.

I may eventually add the socket.io library, which would add compatibility for older browsers. However, my priority for this month is scripting and the world-building interface.

[belford]

Also, you're absolutely right that links should distinguish "look" from "move". (There are also "act" links, but only a couple of examples so far. Eating a jellybean in the tent is an example.)

I have added that to my todo list.

[Wamduskasapa]

OK IE 10 (64 bit) for Win 7 Ultimate installed and updated..

Belford, thank-you very much

This world of yours is very well written and enjoyable...

[Acorn]

(There are also "act" links, but only a couple of examples so far. Eating a jellybean in the tent is an example.)

Yes, I found the jellybeans. The one I ate was delicious. What an interesting taste combination.

Wamduskasapa: I'm sorry, that is correct. I have only tested the system with Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. According to Wikipedia, IE10 should work too.

I was using Chrome.

Sorry you can't help me test it out just yet, Wam! I only hope I don't stumble across any fish baskets in the meantime!

Edit - aha, I see Wam is able to play now. Phew! I'm safe to find fish baskets after all.

[belford]

I am pounding on the DNS configuration, so the URL I posted does not work any more. Use this one:

http://ec2-174-129-230-8.compute-1.amazonaws.com/

I will have a nicer one set up soon.

[Christian Walther]

I was able to sign up, but when I log in I get “The connection to the server could not be opened.” on both Safari 5.1.9 and Firefox 20.0 on Mac OS X 10.6.8. I first thought it might be related to my Privoxy (HTTP proxy) or Little Snitch (reverse firewall), but it persisted when I disabled both. Haven’t debugged any further yet.

[belford]

Christian -- I don't have an OSX 10.6 machine, but I've tried it (briefly) with Firefox 17, and that works. So I'm assuming the problem is not your browsers.


That specific error message ("The connection to the server could not be opened") implies that the browser was able to create the websocket, but it closed again immediately. I'm not sure what would cause that -- a networking problem would be my first guess too.

I don't see any indication on my end that the websocket was received at all (although the regular web pages requests show up). I don't *think* I could be dropping it without any error message, but I'll double-check.