A text Myst Online project

[belford]

Acorn, thanks for the reports. I broke several things in tonight's update. Mostly it was because I used some property names that were Python keywords, before I realized that these would become illegal once the scripting system went in.

The tower levers were a crude hack and I'm partway through replacing them with the real implementation. I shouldn't have pushed out this code until they were back in play, but I forgot. Sigh! This is why we call it alpha.

EDIT-ADD: I've fixed Leafspin and Goldspring -- all the links should work now. The levers will take a little longer.

[Wamduskasapa]

Every flavor in that list is something I have eaten (or drunk) as a sweet and found tasty.

(Seriously, I would buy pink peppercorn soda in crates.)

After numerous tries I have only found 11 flavors, but, unfortunately you seem to have missed my favorites, the Jelly Belly Sours (Sour Cherry, Sour Grape, Sour Green Apple, Sour Orange and Sour Lemon). The first entry is for the Jelly Belly Site and the Second is for Amazon (cheapest)..

I am hooked on them and I do buy them by the case, and yes they are sugar free (Splenda) and low carb.

[Acorn]

I thought your list was intriguing, belford!

Is your vision that other writers will be able to add their favourite flavours to the list of strings? Could get interesting!

[belford]

A change I intend to make: limiting the jellybean-eating rate to (perhaps) three per minute per player. This will be for pacing. Right now you can click wildly and run out the list, which spoils both the surprise and the sense of immersion.

(I don't have any kind of timer or time-checking in the script system yet. Soon.)

Is your vision that other writers will be able to add their favourite flavours to the list of strings?

No, but that's a good question.

A basic principle of my system is *One Age, one Writer*. It will not be possible for you to alter anybody else's Age. This keeps the design process simple, and of course limits the possibility of griefing.

(This doesn't mean that people can't collaborate on an Age design, but just one player account will have editing access for the Age on the server.)

I envision a few exceptions to this rule, but they will all be strictly limited. For example, it is possible to create a "chalkboard" where any visitor can update the text. (This is just a publicly editable string. It's up to the Age creator whether to describe it as a chalkboard, a banner, a journal, an imager, or whatever.) Or there might be a "chalkboard" which is editable only by the instance owner, so that you can customize a personal instance.

To do what you suggest with the jellybeans, I'd have to add a new facility, a publicly editable *list*. This is possible but it seems less widely useful than the chalkboard trick. I'll keep it in mind, but I have a lot of basic infrastructure to finish first.

[Acorn]

EDIT-ADD: I've fixed Leafspin and Goldspring -- all the links should work now. The levers will take a little longer.

yup, working again now. I had one brief glitch where the linking book from Laufensea Pod said "error, action is not available" but it delivered me back to Goldspring after a bit of a pause, and the second time I tried, I didn't get the error. Maybe my internet connection, or the server?

btw, is it meant to be possible to get onto the beach in Leafspin? I've not discovered how and I think I've tried all the permutations.

[belford]

I had one brief glitch where the linking book from Laufensea Pod said "error, action is not available" but it delivered me back to Goldspring after a bit of a pause

I think this happens if you manage to click a "move" link twice before the server responds to the first click. The first move is processed, and then the second one fails because you're in a new environment. The error is harmless, as you saw.

If this happens often, I can add some debouncing code on the client side. (Ignore two clicks on the same link if they're very close together.) Or I could just make the error silent -- might make more sense.

btw, is it meant to be possible to get onto the beach in Leafspin?

Yes. I have done it. Might need to approach it from a different angle, though.

[Acorn]

Or I could just make the error silent -- might make more sense.

whatever is easiest, not a big deal

btw, is it meant to be possible to get onto the beach in Leafspin?

Yes. I have done it. Might need to approach it from a different angle, though.

Ok, thanks. I'll go through the permutations more systematically to see what I missed.

[belford]

The tower levers work again. I've made it a two-step process, basically to make sure that such a thing was possible. :)

There are enough features in now for some subtle effects. In Mount Trial's rock garden, you can now sit down and stand up. The world keeps track of this as a personal flag. If you try to leave while sitting, you'll get a different message ("You stand up and head back out to the balcony.")

[belford]

Further amusements: timed events now work. You can observe this by seeing the Goldspring generator run down (over three hours), or sitting in Laufensea and watching the periodic lightning.

This completes all but one^H^H^H two^H^H^H several of the script features I sketched out for my collection of Age plans. Okay, there's a lot of work left. :) But a basic puzzle with buttons, levers, and timed state changes is now doable.

I guess tomorrow I should start thinking about the building interface...

[belford]

A peek behind the scenes: http://i.imgur.com/L0249uy.png

This is not yet an active editing interface, but it looks basically right.