Best formats for game books / puzzles?

[Zarglu]

I would like to generate some game/puzzle books for the PRS-505... what would be the best format for that?

The main requirement being a well-defined pagination, or some way to have dynamic (hyperlinked) page numbers.
PDF could fit the bill, but then they force a font size, and the images present on multiple pages would have to be duplicated, thus inflating the size of the file. Short of other ideas, that's the format I'll start with.

For those that don't remember gamebooks, you can have a look here f.i.
http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Books
the main idea is that you have a page, explaining a situation, and "links" to other pages for your actions. On paper book (or for a PRS-505 I would guess) the links are just page numbers, and you go to the page number corresponding to your action.

This allows to have interactive stories/adventures, or puzzles, mazes, math enygmas, etc. quite a lot of variations

I'm asking on the dev forum in the hope of avoiding wasting time looking for the actual possibilities of the various formats, and thus concentrate on producing content ASAP
Ideally some format like a website in a zip (ala CHM) would be ideal, or a format where page numbers can be defined at compilation time (and allow flexibility for font size), or where page numbers can be dynamically replaced in the text at display time... Support for images in pages would be a requirement too.

Thanks for all hints and happy new year!

[acidzebra]

Well, if it were specifically for the Sony reader then the native LRF format can do much of what you want, and if you convert from HTML source it will work fine (you can turn HTML into LRF easily using Calibre). Plus you can move the HTML to other formats quite easily.

I have been experimenting with "choose your own adventure" setups like here but the main issue is that for any but the simplest story forking the amount of "text doubling" (where you have to write the same pages from the viewpoint of action A and from the viewpoint of action B until the fork resolves) grows exponentially. I'm not too good at explaining this but follow the link and look at the HTML source to see. There are some inherent limitations to doing things this way.

The way to solve this would be by using a preprocessor of some sort which will help you automatically write/sort out these "forks" in stories or, harder but vastly more interesting, by porting a dedicated javascript z-machine engine such as Parchment which you can see in action here. We already know it is possible to run custom javascript as shown in the games here but I don't know how extensive this javascript support is nor how easy it would be to port this game engine. And of course you'd have to sort out an input method, discussed here.

PDF is ultimately quite a poor format choice for this venture, I think.

[Zarglu]

Thanks for the links!
I've seen the advanced JavaScript usage samples, and tried to run a multi-file HTML version (in a zip) via Calibre, but if the conversion "works" on the PC (with glitches and broken links), it results in a reboot when I try to open the resulting LRF on the reader...
I'm not too hot on the advanced JavaScript version, given that it seems to suck the batteries. I'm also not really after the long Z-machine adventures, but shorter episodes, like the "Lone Wolf" series.
On the branching, yes, things can quickly grow out of hand, but in the gamebooks they also had that problem and worked around it by having the player remember/note down stuff, or carefully designing story forks, I could live with that. As for generating the pages, I'm not even considering doing this by hand, automated generation only, from a higher level database (so it would also pick dead-ends, etc.).

I'll have a look at custom LRF generation.

[ProDigit]

you probably have to keep in mind the Sony has only 64MB of ram, probably shared for video too,and it also uses some of it; so your application can't use more than 32Mb of ram.
It also has 2Mb NOR ram,whatever that means, perhaps you're limited to 2Mb ram.


Other than that, an LRF is the best thing you can do!
Every chapter, every subtitle and every TOC has a reference name.
The html framework for the bible which I created in Notepad++,had slightly less than 5000 links and references and bookmarks in it.
The best thing you can do is create a simplified HTML,without any data concerning lettertype,or height,language or any other additional info (just <H1> or <H2>, or regular body text).

Stick with a head that has a title, and a body that has the info.
You can't link to an outward page on the reader, but you can on an inward.
if you create a document this way,a 5000 link LRF should work perfectly (with about 1500 bookmarks).
I tried directly to go from Ms Word to BD, but errors occurred.

As far as a game on the reader, I've been looking at one, but the creation of a game in LRF would only allow you to go for very simple games.
A page swap could get you to a whole new chapter in the game without playing it.

I was thinking about those text based DOS games, for the reader; but it would involve decoding the DOS with copyright, or creating one myself, and that took too long time.

The amount of pages would be very large,even for a simple game.

You could create hyperlinks for commands, so pageswaps to a certain page are not needed.

Please keep in mind ASCII art does not work on the reader,except if you find a good font that is compatible with ASCII art.

Also,before posting, keep in mind the Copyright!
You can however post how you created your game,for others to re-create for themselves.