The CheapGlk Glk library allows playing interactive fiction through a dumb terminal interface, such as IRC or a chat server, without the need for cursor positioning and similar; unfortunately, it has the significant lack that it cannot handle anything but a single buffer output window; no status bars, multiple windows, or any of the other fancy things that the Glk standard is capable of handling.
RemGlk is a Glk library that, rather than displaying to a screen or console, handles input and output via JSON-serialized events.
Sleepmask seeks to bridge the gap between dumb terminals and
full-featured IF by wrapping up RemGlk in a human-friendly dumb
terminal interface. It maintains the state of grid buffers and
prints them out in their entirety when they are updated; it
outputs all line buffers as they are updated; it provides both
line-based and character-based input (through the /key <x>
metacommand).
Install the required gems - yajl-ruby and the development version of eventmachine.
Download and compile RemGlk - at the time of writing, you'll also need the save file name hack to enable saving and loading.
Download and compile your favorite Glk-enabled IF interpreter (for instance, Glulxe, the Glulx reference interpreter) against RemGlk.
Edit sleepmachine.rb to point it at the location of your interpreter(s).
(Get an appropriate story file - for instance, the venerable
Adventure has advent.ulx available.)
Run it:
ruby sleepmachine.rb --interpreter glulxe ../advent.ulx
Type commands normally.
If you use the commands SAVE or RESTORE, sleepmask will
automatically prompt you for a filename; if your game does not use
those commands for saving and restoring, you will need to type
/savename <filename> before you attempt to save or restore to
tell sleepmask what filename to use.
If you need to press a key (rather than enter a line of input),
use the /key <key> metacommand - any (non-whitespace) (latin-1) single
character, or one of the special character names:
space, left, right, up, down, return, delete, escape, tab, pageup, pagedown, home, end, func1, func2, func3, func4, func5, func6, func7, func8, func9, func10, func11, func12
/quit will quit the interpreter.
- No differentiation between different line buffer windows.
- No support for hyperlink input.
- No way to query and interrogate the current state of grid buffers that are not being updated.
- Bad interpreter configuration support (currently hardcoded)
Copyright (c) 2012 Justin de Vesine
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
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