NPAPI No Longer Supported in Chrome & Firefox

Hi everyone,

It would appear that the Javascript applets I use to run my Z-Code and TADS games on my website are no longer supported. As a result the games are no longer playable online. This is just part of a larger problem; I’m a motion graphic designer by trade and much of my early work is in the form of small Quicktime movies which can also no longer be played in those popular browsers. My whole website is basically broken.

I’m also totally clueless about this sort of thing. I know a lot of you are from programming backgrounds and I thought I’d appeal to the community for more information.

Here’s an article I found with a temporary workaround (that I don’t fully understand): support.google.com/chrome/answer/6213033

I’d appreciate any light you can shed on this problem. It’s extremely worrying for me.

Thanks,

J. J. Guest

I notice Parchment still works without complaint. Is there by any chance an equivalent for TADS 2?

No unfortunately. I’d love one day to have the full set of Gargoyle VMs ported to the web (perhaps via emscripten), but for now there’s no TADS 2 Javascript interpreter.

Looks like I’m going to have to port ‘To Hell in a Hamper’ to I7 then - something for a rainy day

Presumably Parchment uses something other than NPAPI then? (As I said I understand very little about these technologies!)

It’s just written in pure Javascript.

The Z-Machine and Glulx both have very reliable specifications, and so there are multiple independent implementations of each. In contrast the TADS VMs are less well documented. There is really only one TADS 3 VM in use, the original C(++?) one by Michael Roberts, which has been ported to other systems. Though zmpp2 now has some level of TADS 3 support. I would like to write a Javascript version of the TADS 2 VM some day, but there’s never enough time…

I think the confusion is “Java” vs. “JavaScript,” which have surprisingly little to do with each other. JavaScript still works. Java uses NPAPI and so it doesn’t work.

Posting an old I6 Z-code game with Parchment is pretty simple. I’ve done it for all of my old games.

Worst case, you do a direct link to iplayif.com (like IFDB does).

Thanks everyone. I honestly never knew there was a difference between Java and Javascript, even having tinkered with Javascript myself.

I’ve re-linked my Z-Code games to iplayif.com for the moment. The TADS 2 ones will have to wait.

The Quicktime movies are another matter…

Jason