Seltani: Rearranging the gallery

[Pavitra]

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[belford]

I apologize for going quiet in the last few weeks. This month, I've mostly been working on my own (non-Myst-related) Kickstarter project.

I've gotten a bit of Seltani work done, though. I'm about halfway through the "communication between worlds of different creators" feature. Hopefully that'll be done by the end of the month, and then people can start inventing Relto pages or something like them. :)

In November, I'm thinking maybe a small competition? To get more people into Seltani and looking around. I know Obduction is a huge distraction -- certainly I'm looking at the KS page every three hours :) -- but we should be able to get something going.

[Pavitra]

A Seltani competition might help draw more attention to the Myst fandom and therefore to Obduction, so maybe early to mid November would be better than late November. (Kicktraq is currently projecting “maybe”.)

I very much like the idea of a gamejam/agejam, for several reasons.

• It creates a Schelling point for lots of people to log in at once. (Compare: most of the GoMe's calendar.)
• It creates an excuse to talk about Seltani to people who might not already know about it.
• In particular, a short/small/fast age-creation event provides a concrete demonstration of how easy it is to get into making stuff with Seltani, which is in my opinion one of its strongest features.

[belford]

The cross-world communication feature is now in place: http://seltani.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Writi ... er_Writers

[Pavitra]

Most excellent!

[belford]

New feature: guest accounts. If you go to the sign-in page, there's an additional button for "Sign in as a guest." No email address or password is required.

Guests can do anything except Write. When you sign into a guest account, your description, pronoun, and linking booklet are reset to the new-player state. However, progress in Ages is *not* reset, so you may run into completed or partially-completed puzzles and story events.

There are currently just four guest accounts (Guest 1 through Guest 4), and if they're all in use, you can't sign in as a guest. I may add more as needed.

[belford]

I have just installed a change to the HTML structure of the site. The game interface itself should not change at all. However, other pages on the site now scroll in a more natural way. The header will no longer be pinned to the top of the window, and I've fixed the weird inset scroll bar.

I've tested this in Safari, Mobile Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. As usual, let me know if I broke anything.

I think Seltani is now ready for... well, I don't know whether it's "alpha" or "beta" or what, but I think it's ready to lose the "dev." and move to http://seltani.net/ . (The journal currently at that address has been cloned into the game site, at http://dev.seltani.net/journal . It's linked on the front page.)

This is mostly a symbolic milestone. I don't expect a huge influx of users.

[belford]

But, on the topic of an influx of users...

Competition! Or Age Jam, as Pavitra put it.

Here's my notion: (1) This weekend, announce a theme! And a two-week deadline. (2) Wait two weeks. (3) Jam festival! Have a tour around the entry Ages, talk them over. Then have a straw poll for the coolest one. Everybody applauds. Go home.

Why two weeks? That's a little long for a jam, I know. But I want to give people a chance to join in even if their schedules are busy.

There's also a scheduling constraint: I will be on a trip from the 14th to the 18th. I'll have net access but probably not a lot of free time. So I don't want to either start or end the game on that weekend! Seems like the best strategy is to straddle it.

Conceivably we could straddle it with a one-week jam, but that means starting and ending on weekdays. Possibly that's okay?

[Pavitra]

I was hoping to end the competition before the Obduction kickstarter closed on the 16th, but the only way I see to make that sensible is to shorten the jam to two days and hold it this weekend. Maybe that's too rushed? I don't know, it's your event not mine.

Regardless, I definitely intend to participate.

(I do suggest the dev. migration occur before the competition begins, whatever the schedule.)

[belford]

I'm going to do the dev migration tomorrow. I don't expect any breaks in service.

Two days feels rushed, yes. I want to get people trying this who have never tried Seltani building before. A newcomer *can* pick up the system and create something in two days, but I don't expect that of everybody!

I agree it would be nice to do this before Obduction wraps up, but it's not going to happen. Best I can do is *start* it before Obduction wraps up. Looks like this Sunday (the 10th) is the best day for me -- I expect to be busy on the 9th.