itch.io

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!

It absolutely will. Watch this space. 😊 

In fact... about two weeks? There will be news!

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.

It's presently on hold as I am looking at resources to develop it further. Hopefully there will be updates in the coming months - things are looking hopeful. Worst case scenario is I will move back onto it once my current dungeon crawler is released.

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

Thank you. 😊 

Unfortunately that's not a trivial thing to do, or I'd probably have done it already. When I re-write the way the text code works I'll be doing term size and pause breaks, but for now that's a little ways off.

Please let me know what the segfaults show though, if you can! I just re-tested --force-alias does have a bug I found and fixed, but... it doesn't cause a crash? I will put up version 1.0.3 today with that fix (and a few others). If that still causes issues, please let me know!

Oh and for support things feel free to email me - the link is on the web site. Easier for sending crash dumps, info about the server setup, etc.

Oh! And one more note - the sysop guide is not just on the web site, but in the /errata directory in each copy of the game, so when new versions come out, you can find the latest docs there at all times.

Thanks, and awesome! 😊 

1 & 2 are already there, as of the latest version, thanks to another sysop who messaged me. We ended up settling on the option to run the game with --force-alias.

You can turn on or off forced password entry too, if you STILL want that. (A useful feature if, say, people still get command-line access - you may not want someone with terminal access realising they can log in as another user as they please.)

More details are in the sysop's guide.

If there's any issues with them, please let me know!

(3) is on my to-do list. Right now you can manually set a wide screen width for word wrapping, but it doesn't grab your screen dimensions from termcap yet as I found it... didn't work on a lot of systems. (And of course text ANYTHING barely works on Windows but... this is one of the few games where I guess Windows is by default a second-class citizen.)

I did set one up, but only as a test server as I don't want to have to moderate one myself atop of develop this. Just don't have time as long as this is a side project.

The web site has information about how to do it - including a link to the sysop documentation - which can also be found in the 'errata' directory in any copy of the game. Note that it requires some understanding of how to set up and run a unix server.

Thank you! I can tell you if you'd like, but I'll keep shut for now in case figuring it out is part of the fun for you!

Thanks! I am at Alpha and I'm currently figuring out next steps with the game, in discussions with a few people. 😊 I will post more when I decide where my next steps lead and what I need!

Thank you so much. 😁 

So, it began as an "I really want a BBS Door like those I played in the '90s for my little tilde club for my friends. Play once a day, see progress and have social message boards..." type idea in my head. Many months, 23,000 lines of code and 49,000 written words later, and Swords of Freeport 1.0 is done out!

A dozen or more people helped me test this almost daily, figuring out the right directions to go, steering me around bugs, and it's finally done!

It's a sort of steampunk fantasy setting, with a sense of humour and angry left-wing politics wherever I could sneak them in. You can make characters who are hunters, forgagers, pick pockets, burglars, fishers, and even work up to owning your own property & running a shop.

On top of being a text-mode RPG that can be played single player or multiplayer on a tilde club instance, it's also  something I was able to get working on basically anything that can compile C++17 and has a few meg of memory.

It is (so far) working on macOS, Windows, and Linux - the latter with builds available for x86_64, and arm32 & arm64, so it'll run on even the oldest of raspberry pis (or similar ARM based single board computers).

I've got big plans for where to go with it, and am already planning version 1.1's features.

https://expectproblems.itch.io/swords-of-freeport

Thank you! I have a rough plan for a sequel, picking up a few weeks later, but haven't had the time to do more than figure out rough plot ideas so far.

I will post here (and on my mastodon account) when I am ready for more testers! Will be in the next week I think.

Thanks. 😊 

Aw thank you, that means so much. 😊 ❤️