Weekly Links #312

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Call me flighty, but I switched tracks again this week.

In my defense, the game port I described last newsletter was a stop-gap project, meant to fill the time until something better came along. Well, something did. First published a few months ago by the IFTF, the official Twine specifications were recently finalized. It took a while longer for an idea to crystallize in my mind. This is the result:

Screenshot from a desktop text editor with a list down the left side, showing a passage from some sort of gamebook.

This is about as simple as it gets, yet it's perfectly capable of working with the story data generated by Twine. Not as friendly as the official IDE, but a lot more so than compiling source code with Tweego from the command line. And unlike either of those, Tee-Wee Editor makes authors remember to pick a story format. Currently, most people have no clue that's a thing they can do, and that causes all kinds of issues.

Besides, think of all the obscure authoring systems that could easily be implemented as story formats for Twine and compatible tools, thus becoming part of a vibrant ecosystem. It only takes awareness, and my little toy can help with that.

In the way of news, this week we're looking at one company trying to capitalize on current events in a rather transparent way, then a good handful of links with no comment. Details under the cut.


From a fellow creator in the Itch server on Discord I just learned that Clickteam Fusion is free until June 1st. A very nice gesture on the surface, that joins many other such initiatives these days. But check out the fine print:

Please note that this version of Fusion 2.5 Standard is NOT compatible with the exporters for Android, iOS etc.
You will need to purchase Fusion 2.5 Standard from https://shop.clickteam.com to use these.

Which is fair enough given the already generous offer, but then it's not really the standard edition, now is it? Call it something else, please. Oh wait, there's already a free edition. That's going to cause a degree of confusion. In fact I was just about to call foul before checking to see that the standard edition offers enough extra features besides the mobile export filters to make this a nice gift. But dammit, corporate types. Why do you have to make everything so complicated out of a fear that people might get a little too much value for free?


Apart from an explanation of what exactly is a "gacha" videogame, this week we have:

Last but not least, this is from last week but still current: a list of upcoming Open Game Art events in 2020. Enjoy, and see you next time.

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Tags: interactive fiction, tools, business, adventure, history, roguelike