Introducing new authoring system: ngpaws

Hi All!

After some time working in Superglus authoring system, I though it was time to build my next authoring system: ngpaws. In fact, ngpaws is not exactly “new”, as basically is the same authoring system, but instead of generating a glulx executable, generates html/javascript that can be run in any modern browser, either online or offline.

During the process of “converting” Superglus into ngpaws, I have added some features, but the one that will cleary be an advantage for this forum readers is I re-wrote the documentation, the compiler messages, the Win32 GUI… in english. Well, at least in the best english I can do, that would be kinda broken sometimes but will be easier to understand than spanish.

ngpaws stands for next-generation-paws. For those that don’t know, PAWS (professional adventure writing system) was a well know authoring system for the 8/16 bits computers, that was used for building lots of homebrew adventures back in the 80s and 90s in the UK and Spain mainly. ngpaws is so a PAW-style authoring system but of course uses many of the features modern computers can offer.

You can find links to the documentation, downloads, and a demo in spanish (with solution included) at :

ngpaws.com

As you will notice, ngpwas source code is at github, what would make easy for linux users to compile ngpaws (if you need help, just ask, I can build a linux package but I haven’t done it yet).

PS: If you go to download page you will find “ngpaws beta 5”, but beta 5 is the first one that includes an english version of the start database, so you haven’t missed the other 4 beta versions (except that you are spanish).

I decided to add a second message to this thread to ask for help, what I didn’t want to mix with the announce itself:

I have a challenge with ngpaws, were I probably need your help: I have built the parser so it can understand english, I have made english documentation, english GUI… but I also needed to create the english start database, and there is where english cannot be broken. So I’ve built the first version of that start database (what in Inform or TADS you would call “the library”), that provides default responses for many actions, and built a small test game, and I would need volunteers to check it and help me make it a good english start database. Please notice that in this game the NPCs are dumb, you cannot even talk to them, but you should receive different responses when you “BREAK DOOR” than when you “BREAK JOE”. Any suggestions about responses that look like nonsense, broken english, unexpected responses, etc. would be welcome.

This is the english test game, you just need to leave the house to win:
ngpaws.com/demos/en/

If any of you want to collaborate with me in depth with building/improving this start database, please let me know. If not, any report regarding that small english demo would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance!

Hmmm… I just realized this is maybe not the proper section for this thread, maybe “General: Interpreters, Add-Ons, and Tools” is better. If some admin can have a look and move it that would be nice.Thanks.

No this looks like the right board to me! :slight_smile:

Just for your information, ngPAWS has reached it’s 8th beta version, an it has become very stable so far. It has now precompiled packages for Windows, Linux (x86) and the development IDE was rebuilt and now runs in Linux (x86) also (apart of the original Win32 version). Also, all but the IDE has been compiled for Linux (arm) so it can be used from a Raspbery Pi.

ngPAWS does also include an english start database since a few versions ago.

ngpaws.com/

Good job! That sounds like a cool system, especially with the fact it outputs HTML. Are people on the Spanish forum using it?

Your demo game is gorgeous! :smiley: Does the author have control of how it looks from within the language or does he have to hack a css or something? Also, how much control does one have? (Can you change the font, the color, etc from the language?)

A minor thing (and you probably have more important things to do): the game doesn’t look all that great on mobiles (the font is too small), is there any way it could be more “responsive”/mobile-friendly?

Keep up the good work! :smiley:

Are there, or can there ever be, downloadable versions of ngpaws games?

I doubt the spanish community would be bothered about that in any way - there seems to be a trend of making everything more accessible, making non-story details disappear, striving for total immersion and complete mimesis. Which is good, it’s a trend, it’s a philosophy, I got nothing against it…

…but downloadable files stand the test of time (and platform). Web-only games don’t.

EDIT - Also, “it” doesn’t seem to be recognised?..

EDIT 2 - Ok, I can download the game by downloading the index.html file and the three .js (buzz and whatnot). I lose the fancy formatting, but maybe if I spent some time I could somehow hack it back in, but I’m not really bothered about that.

So it’s possible to play the games offline, and thus distribute them. Right-o.

Any web game that doesn’t rely on a particular server is a downloadable game. It just has to packaged and put up for download. Some games won’t run from disk due to browser restrictions on cross-domain file loading, but they will still run when loaded from any web server, including one running on the local machine (I run such a server to test Undum games, for instance).

I have an inkling of that (and know that the CYOA sites where you can’t download games are a minority). This was me trying to indirectly and politely point out that some of us prefer to download and play offline (for one thing, I can play it anywhere on my mobile device; I only have net access at home), and possibly indicate to the dev that some easier method of downloading the games might be peferrable - instead of checking the page source, seeing what javascript files are used, guess at the name of the main .html file, and download every .js file individually.

Check the options your browser has when saving. Mine has “Webpage, HTML only” and “Webpage, Complete”, which includes the JS, CSS, and images.

I stopped simply loading a game and saving “webpage complete” when I realised that that wasn’t fully downloading some Twine games.

Though it’s possible Firefox just isn’t as complete as your browser.

Anyway, if the author of an ngpaws game would be kind enough to provide a zipped version of their game, as in the recent spring thing an Undum game did (boy, was I glad to see that!), it would only make sense.

So far there is one user who ported his own Superglus game to ngpaws. There are no other people using it afaik, but some has expressed their intentions of porting Superglús games.

All style-related changes should be donde via css, in fact, there is as less control as possible over styles from the language, as it intends to have style and programmin completely separated. Despite of that , you can refer to the css classes when writing text, so it’s easy to use any clases using sequence tagswithin the game like this:

WRITE "The {class|redtext|red} box is on the {class|wood|wooden} table."

On the other hand, the language can be easily extended by adding plugin condacts, so if the author needs classic “Condacts” to change style they can be built just by creating a file like this and adding it to the jsl folder:

//CND LARGEFONT 0 0 0 0 0

function ACClargefont()
{
 $('.text').css('font-size','30px')
}

All about extending ngpaws here:
github.com/Utodev/ngPAWS/wiki/C … 20condacts
github.com/Utodev/ngPAWS/wiki/E … 0libraries
github.com/Utodev/ngPAWS/wiki/Hooks

Yes, that is a pending task, though to be honest it’s not my top priority. It’s something I want to have a look at when I consider ngpaws stable, what I hope will happen soon.

Thanks!

Yes, but it’s up to the author to pack all files in a zip file and make it avaliable or not. There is nothing in ngpaws games that requires the server, so the games can be played offline. Anyway, all files required are detailed in the html file, so you can make your own local copy if you want (files are the html file, css.css, jquery.js, buzz.js and the whatever_name_of_the_game.js)

Do you mean in the online demo or have you created a new test game? “IT” should be working whereas the game has the english flag set, what is set by default if you create a new game using the english start database, but it’s not if you use the spanish database (in that case it uses the pronoun sufixes -LO, -LAS, etc.)

I guess you missed the css file, that’s all. And probably you missed also the whole “dat” folder (where multimedia files are).

Anyway, I have packed them for you (and any other who prefers playing offline):

ngpaws.com/demos/mcarras/mcarras_ngpaws.zip

Yes, it is.

By the way, I have just compiled ngpaws for OSX, IDE included, it will be soon avaliable.

Apart of some minor changes I have on my to-do list, the most important pending task is testing the english start database in depth, but that is something I cannot do myself, cause I’m unable to detect when I write broken english myself, for obvious reasons. I hope one day someone will use it and let me know what do I need to fix, I already got some comments, but won’t really have an in depth feedback until someone decides to use ngpaws to create a new piece of english IF.

Thanks for your feedback re offline play. :slight_smile: