[See comments below for latest updates - DAC - 2016-12-28]
The work on a standard reusable template has begun with a target of mid-December for functional completion. Depending on how it looks, I may let a designer friend play with it before releasing, but extensions and documentation will all be published as soon as it’s feature complete.
The standard template will come with several options that are driven by I7 code. Some behavior will be different than most interpreters and this includes:
- Every turn is saved, along with turn data. This allows the story to be reloaded with history/scrollback/pages and allows the reader to jump to any historical turn and “branch” their play. If a player does page back to a previous turn and enter a different command, the previous line of story is saved as “branch 1” and stored separately from the “running branch”. The player can create as many branches as they wish. The player will be able to add/edit a description to each branch.
- We’re using ReactJS for the templating system and all of the front-end code will be simple with clear separation of concerns. Each portion of the template will be a self-contained component controlled by the larger template.
Some of the template feature choices include:
- Story Title Header (optional)
- Status Bar (optional)
- Location Name (on/off)
- Turn (on/off)
- Time (on/off)
- Score (on/off)
- Main Content (required, select one)
- Scrolling
- Paging
- Command Line (required, select one)
- Embedded
- Static Footer
- Menu (required)
- Install New Story (required)
- Save Story To File (required)
- Start Story (required, must have installed stories or will be disabled)
- General Help (required, provided but modifiable by author)
- Story Help (optional, generated by I7 extension “FyreVM Story Help”)
- Story Hints (optional, generalted by I7 extension “FyreVM Story Hints”)
- About (optional, generated by I7 extension “FyreVM Story About”)
There are many features and options to add, such as turning off the command bar and making a choice-based selection list of links, allowing embedded directional links, embedding magic word links, embedding images, and creating more complex templates. I plan to publish a story with an alternate template and release it next year at some point, possibly for the 2017 IF Comp. Requests for features will be welcome, but I’d also encourage others to try their hand at creating their own components and templates. For anyone with basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript knowledge, this will not be too difficult.