Post by artfluids in Feature Requests

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This project is so awesome. It's almost exactly what I always wanted to find/make. One thing I'd like to request is for color image import that spits out a 16-color dithered image and palette. Maybe images as resources. I'd like to import Myst-type images. AFAIK it's a myth that a HyperCard based version of Myst actually shipped, but it was definitely originally built in it. And they did do a Mac resedit type resource hack to add color. So, I get that Myst wasn't standard fare for HyperCard, but it would be awesome to see color content be a little easier to add.

If I was being really annoying with feature requests, I'd love to see this also start to dip into Macromedia Director territory. With 256-color image support, 22050hz audio. I guess I could always fork the code myself and look into making modifications.

Either way, in its current state, this rocks. I've been looking for something like this for a long long time.

Internet Janitor1 year ago

Thanks, I hope you have fun playing with Decker!

It's possible to have 16-color backgrounds in Decker right now, but kind of a pain: the "read[]" function can import color images posterized to the 16-color Macintosh palette. If you prepared a set of appropriately dithered and colored images with some external tool, you could use a Lilt script to bulk import the images and splat them into card backgrounds. I've added a more direct/integrated workflow for color images to my todo list.

256 colors would be trickier. Decker/Lil Images are 256 color internally, but some of those are reserved for 1-bit patterns, animated patterns, and special UI-related "magic colors". With some light hacking on the codebase you could easily reclaim at least 128 more usable colors.

Deeper audio bit depth is another simple tweak from a code perspective, but it'll make deck filesizes get huge very fast, even if I add better compression methods. I don't think I'll be going that route in the forseeable future. Perhaps something more like .MOD playback eventually would be a better fit.

artfluids1 year ago

Yeah, I know raw audio data like that would balloon really quickly. But on all those old CD-ROMs like The Manhole, raw audio was the norm. Back then the bitdepth/sample rate was your compression, I guess. So I don't really care about compressing the audio. For a standalone desktop deck it wouldn't be so bad, but I wonder if a 500 mb deck (hypothetical rough "CD-ROM" size) would struggle to play in a browser. I really don't know.

It would also be interesting to have small postage-stamp sized QuickTime videos (dunno if QuickTime itself is usable, probably proprietary) you could paste in as an opaque string.

But yeah, you can check out a manifesto/document I made years ago about my general idea for bringing back this HyperCard/Director aesthetic: https://artfluids.itch.io/directorcore-manifesto

It doesn't fully reflect my feelings on the topic anymore, but the general gist is still how I feel. Decker is the closest thing I've found yet to this ideal.

I also want to say that I really like Lil. I was going to get into the nitty gritty of Flex/Bison to make a parser for a similar HyperTalk inspired language, but I think in the future I might just borrow Lil and use your parser. If I do, I'll let you know.

I think it is worth looking into aspects of Macromedia Director because it is very inspired by HyperCard. Its programming language, LINGO is almost like a dialect of HyperTalk.

I know that if the scope of this project gets too big then it loses its appeal and charm. But for my part, I think for it to become a real "multimedia sketchpad" it would have to embrace the Macromedia Director phase of the Macintosh as well (at least up until like 1995. Director 4.0). Maybe have videos. I'm not saying it should have every feature of Director. Because Director had stuff like timelines (individual frames could have their own scripts, just like cards/widgets) and that starts to scare away newcomers/non-programmers. I just think the aesthetics of Director would be nice (i.e. 8-bit color, video, 22.01khz audio).

But, all that said, I am thrilled to find Decker and am excited to use it as-is. Also, I'm spreading the word to anyone who will listen.

Nicky Flowers1 year ago(+1)

hi jumping into the thread to say HELL YES to .MOD playback. i almost posted a new topic about it just now lol. i am loving Decker so much