itch.io

I've tried about 4 times to write a sequel and the issue isn't continuing their story - it's continuing it as interactive fiction! SALN has a premise that makes it (IMO) perfect for a bit of IF. I feel like I'd need to come up with another conceit to do a successor, and I've not come up with one I truly like.

Thank you. 😊 That's lovely to hear.

Thank you very much! Glad you enjoyed it. 😊 

Thank you so much! 😊 That's good encouragement to get cracking on the sequel!

Thank you! My other stuff is non-interactive (and only one of the other stories is also set in the '90s), but I will hopefully do another interactive one some time.

Hi there,

So I spent some time looking at this during the week and unfortunately it's not doable without a lot of time. I put in a hacky version and it broke a lot of things. The project just wasn't designed with that in mind, and there are a lot of edge cases. It's designed to be a bit like a BBS door, not actually being one.

I'd have to totally re-write all the text display and word wrap features and even once it's done that'd take a lot of testing and debugging to find all the things it broke.

Part of me wants to write a framework that does all this and where the game logic then sits in a scripting language (it's probably obvious than 90% of this game is hard-coded in C++) but it's just not a project I have the motivation or time for right now. Apologies.

Thank you. 😊 

I presume you've already done so, but if you change the directory permissions it should be fine for future days.

Hmm. That's odd. Which OS is this, again?

I'll add it to my to-fix list.

Glad you're enjoying it! 😊 

So, without access to /etc or the like, you can point environment variables called SFP_DATA and SFP_GAME to the two directories, to avoid that error message.

Then you just need the binary file to be in your path somewhere.

So, off the top of my head (and not knowing your OS) you probably want to have the 'sfp' binary file in any directory that's in your path, set in your .bash_profile or similar file.

Once it's in the path it should just find the binary fine, and with the two environment variables set above, it should find the correct game static and dynamic folders and run your instance.

Hahaha. That's amazing praise, thank you so much. 😊 

Oh god has it been that long? Haha. Thanks.

I still have a rough sequel idea in my head, but haven't had the time to sit down and do it. I don't quite know how it ends yet, which doesn't help, either.

The other issue is that part of the original working (I think) is that the premise of "one night, find a person" fits the medium well. I need to find a similarly good conceit for the second one that doesn't feel too similar.

Heh. Her name is Paige.

Oh wow, thank you. 😊 That's fantastic. So glad you enjoyed it!

Apologies for the delayed reply!

I haven't worked on any more SFP stuff yet, unfortunately. I've been inundated with other things taking up my time. It is still top of my list when I next sit down to work on it.

Thank you. 😊 

Thank you! But no, this is for now my only piece of IF. I am planning more but don't expect them any time soon unfortunately.

Thank you. 😊 

Awww thank you. 😊 

Ah yep, I follow you. I'll see what I can do. 😊 There is a feature a little like what you describe already but... not quite. I'll see how it can be tweaked.

And thanks!

Out of curiosity, why is the 24 lines thing a blocker? Just curious how your BBS works. 😊 

2 is pretty easy, I'll add that to the sfputil next update.

The first one I'll need to think on just how to do it. I think if I'm lucky my current text rendering code should be able to be be set to track that.

Thank you so much. 😊 

Thank you. 😊 Glad you're enjoying it!

Haha. That must have been an interesting thing to realise! And thank you. 😊 

Thank you. 😊 

Haha. Thank you. 😊 

Thanks! I've just had someone message me about that - I'm open to it as long as I can get access to a build machine. Will update here when I do so. 😊 

Good luck!

Sorry! It's really not designed for that. It's very much designed for people who already have a dedicated tilde club (or want to play it single player).

There are people linking it up with existing BBS software such as Synchronet so I'm sure there'll be instructions for that in future, but that still won't be a beginner's guide...

Yeah, there sure is!

Thank you so much. 😊 Yes, I have plans for a sequel (and a sidequel about a vampire road trip across country). Just unsure when I'll get time to do more than plan them out as bullet points!

Thank you so much. 😊 

Thank you. 😊 

Haha thank you. What an amazing compliment. 😊 

It's a pretty involved process, unfortunately, doing BBS setup stuff. I've created a sysop documentation though, so hopefully that helps! https://swordsoffreeport.com/md.html?src=sysop.md