Copyright (C) 1998-2018 by ultracon0 (stopthedeepweb@protonmail.com)
originally by
Yonah Arakoslav arakoslav@protonmail.com
The program is made to be very easy to use. It should be able to get out of your way and get its job done.
This program is written in a language called Python, and heavily uses a library for Python called PyGame. To use this program, you'll have to install both of them. You can get Python from http://www.python.org/download/ and PyGame from http://www.pygame.org/download.shtml. this program is best run on macOS 10.12 or newer , it may run on older versions or on windows, but this is not officially supported.
You will also need media. Put pictures in the "images" directory. included images may or may not exist
You can replace the included MP3 files if you like. In fact, you'll have to! To cut down on size, not all MP3 files are supported.
After that, you can just run spiral.py:
python spiral.py
If you make it executable, Windows or Mac machines should be able to just double-click it:
chmod a+x spiral.py
The program may prompt you with information you must acknowledge to proceed. Read it and just hit return.
It may ask you questions, requiring either yes/no or short text answers. You can press "y" or "n" to answer the simple questions, or just type an answer to later questions. It should handle non-ASCII characters properly, but I don't use that often and so haven't tested it as much.
While it's running, you can press single keys to change some behavior. "<" or ">" will adjust the speed, as will their unshifted equivalents "," or ".". "f" will toggle fullscreen mode, and "i" will toggle the background images. "q" will quit the program.
The program can do those things on its own, too---sometimes a script will cause it to go full-screen on its own, or to start showing you pictures.
I've included a number of example scripts in "config.py". This should make it easy to see what you can do. There are a couple of points worth mentioning:
You don't have to subclass Standard; it just catches you if you screw up. The top of config.py has utility functions. You don't have to use those either, though they can make things easier. You should see most of them used in the body of the work.
Running text is separated by any white space; the "words" helper function turns words("foo bar baz") into ["foo", "bar", "baz"]. Nothing stops you from including spaces in words to display---I just find whitespace works well as a separator.
Variables always start with "$" when used, and don't have the "$" when you're assigning to them. I don't guarantee you can pull off double-substitution tricks like replacing $$role with Alice, where $role=slave and $slave=Alice. That particular version will work, but only by accident.
Any string starting with ! will be interpreted as a command; see Spiral.act_on for the evaluator. It's pretty cruddy, but it does work for this purpose. Sometimes you'll want to make sure evaluation is delayed until run-time. For example, you don't care about whether the music is playing when you start the program, but you'd like to check whether it's on at this particular moment in the course of the run. Put this material in quotes; it'll be evaluated at run-time. You can see this in Standard:
cond("self.draw_image",
words("Turn on the pictures. Hit the 'i' key.")) + \
words("""You lust for the pictures. $name will be like the
pictures. This turns you both on. You need the changes. You
lust for the changes. $name will be changed. This is sexy. It
would feel so good just to surrender to it.""") + \
cond("not self.config.fullscreen",
words("Feel so good to go fullscreen. Hit 'f'."),
words("So good to be fullscreen. So good to be immersed.")) + \
If there were no quotes around self.draw_image, it would be checked when the program started---no good at all.
The "alpha" values are for transparency. "scale" adjusts the size of the spiral, and "time_scale" the number of ticks that pass per frame. "frequencies" controls how many ticks must pass before the spiral, text, or images advance. At the default setting, the spiral advances every tick, the images every 10 ticks (5 frames because time_scale is 2), and the words every 20 ticks (10 frames).
Each config script will start with its "text()" method. That's the one thing you must override; the other names like "body()" are just my convention.
Experiment! Try new things and let me hear about them! I'd love to see new scripts or new uses for the program. Let me know at yonah.arakoslav@yahoo.com
Right now, it's hard to add new things like subliminal text or a "click me if you're not my mindfucked little hypnoslave" button that goes away on its own. I'd like to make it easier, but so far you're pretty much on your own.
I know there's more to do. My progress with this program is driven by my own desires. I'm willing to entertain requests, but rather unlikely to implement them---think of them as attempts at inspiration. If I'm inspired, I'll implement a requested feature. If not, I suggest you implement it and send a patch my way. I'm very likely to accept patches, integrate them, and redistribute them to the community.
My own notes on what to do are at the top of the spiral.py file.
Yonah Arakoslav is a none-too-clever pseudonym. I'm sure that with a little work, you can figure out who I really am. That's OK. I just don't want search engines fingering me.