Category: Technology

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Text Adventures Part 4: The Document

A text adventure would not be useful to me if it was not written down. Particularly when the goal is to have an unfeeling, strict parser doling out commands only when successfully prompted, it’s important to have a reference that is clear, contains maps and explanatory information, space for notes, and everything the “computer” needs to say throughout the game.

With the exception of Recurring Nightmare, I write every text adventure using LaTeX. Over time I’ve built up commands and formatting to make this process simpler. For Recurring Nightmare, I tried my hand at InDesign since I had received a license from work. That license no longer exists, and it’s easier for me to edit a .tex document than an InDesign document, so LaTeX continues to be the way forward.

In this post I’ll talk about some of the decisions I made for formatting my document, how I make maps, and other bits of trivia that come to mind.

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NASA Wallpaper Changer

I like switching up my wallpaper every once in a while. Each device I use has a different wallpaper, and I normally just get it in my head that it’s time for a change.

I decided to go a little further than before when I discovered the NASA APOD Gnome Extension. This downloads NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, and sets it as your wallpaper. It’s a neat utility. There are several others which allow you to use different sources, or which pull from Wikimedia commons, and I’ll likely play around with those. What I like about this APOD extension is that it also gives the description that accompanies the picture.

NASA APOD Wallpaper Changer icon window.

I think changing up a wallpaper can give a fresh look, and a different feel to each day. I’m not sure how much I’ll like it in the long run, and sadly none of the extensions I’ve found are able to require 4K wallpapers, but it’s a fun adjustment to how my computer runs that I’m looking forward to.

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The Gold Standard for Math Typesetting on the Internet

Through a wonderful little game called TeXnique, I became aware of the online typesetting system KaTeX. Unlike MathJax, which is immensely finicky, slow, and has limited support for proper LaTeX, the KaTeX system supports scaling of rendered images, automatically detects the text color of my site and adapts as necessary, and has a fuller implementation of LaTeX commands.

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Update: Animal Crossing Takes Hold

This is a quick update, as I’ll be traveling over the weekend and don’t have much time to write a longer post.

In short, Animal Crossing has captured my mind. It’s a cleverly simple game that lets you focus on whatever grabs your attention. While my initial weeding endeavors have fizzled out, I’m very much invested in trying to obtain every fish and bug I can over time. Fashion and interior decoration don’t excite me overly much (I probably only have about 7 things in my house), but I’m playing the game to get to the point where I can have free reign over the island.

It’s a fun game, and I get it now.

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Animal Crossing: Weed Yourself to Victory

I was finally convinced to start playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I’d been hesitant to give it a try for a few reasons. First, Nintendo games are expensive. Second, I wasn’t sure I’d actually enjoy it. And third, if I did enjoy it, I wasn’t sure I’d want to sink time into it.

Having played it for a few hours today and successfully paid off my initial expenses to Tom Nook, I totally get the appeal. No, it will never be thrilling. But it’s a simple “life simulator” that you can enjoy to whatever detail you prefer. For me, I’m not necessarily interested in the things I can get. I’m currently motivated by the Nook Miles achievements. I’ll be a big bug-catcher and fish-fisher. The first thing I did was clear my island of weeds, and I intend to do so tomorrow. I found out quickly that if I just suspend my own judgement and allow myself to appreciate the straightforward charm of the game, it’s a relaxing way to pass the time.

Of course, these are all first impressions. I have no idea what staying power it will have in my life, but there’s a large catalog of fish and bugs to find, so that will almost certainly keep me going back every so often. I think the best aspect of the game is that it isn’t any sort of survival or sociology simulator; I don’t need to eat or drink, as best I can tell I’m unlikely to upset my island neighbors. I can focus on myself, do what needs to be done, and that’s it. It’s a game that simplifies activities that can already be considered calming and rewarding. Plus, they buy weeds. I’m going to fund my house using weeds and conch shells, or at least that’s my plan right now.

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Personal Organization Sucks

Work has been getting crazier in the past week or two. We are now planning on being online for a while, and the curriculum work that has resulted is growing rapidly. There are many courses to rewrite as we experiment, on the fly, to figure out what tools we want to use (or avoid). I’ve been put in charge of these experiments, and it’s a much larger logistical task than I’ve ever had to deal with. It pales in comparison to what others have done, but it’s quite a doozy on my end.

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iPadOS Cursor Support

iPadOS 13.4 was released a couple weeks ago, and with it came full support for cursor devices. You can now connect a mouse or trackpad and have a small circular cursor that acts like a mouse for your iPad. Certainly many people won’t find this useful, but it was really the missing piece that allows my iPad to go from a device mainly useful for handwritten notes and media consumption to a full-fledged computing device. I can fairly comfortably navigate 90% of what I do on a daily basis. While I still prefer my regular computers for podcasting, and also prefer the larger screen real-estate, the iPad now allows me to perform my regular work functions.

In my estimation, there are two things that cursor support brings that completely change the game: hover states, and text selection.

Most of my work is done through browsers. All of the content editing I do is through our browser-based CMS, and a lot of navigation and editing tasks require the ability to hover over something to see more options. This is a well-known paradigm in the computing world: Hover over a menu, see options related to the top-level item, then click on the option you want. This was completely missing from iPadOS; if you used mobile Safari, then the iPad would try to be clever and say one tap gets you to a “hover” state, and another tap lets you select. But this was not universal, and failed in most situations I find myself in at work. However, now the cursor has a complete hover state, making it very usable.

Text selection has been frustrating on all mobile devices for a very long time. You have to try and remember what number of taps you need, where to tap, and what to do after. The OS is guessing at what you want, and while it has improved, it doesn’t always get it correct. While dealing with a whole paragraph, or even a single word, isn’t too bad, editing a few characters here or there is extremely painful. The Apple Pencil has helped with precise selection, but the whole situation has been limited by the text selection paradigm that iOS has chosen. The new cursor support gives a new look to the familiar “pipe/I” selection cursor seen in all text-editing situations on a computer. You can now finally precisely place your cursor where you want it, and select any number of characters without fiddling around.

Overall, this has been an amazing upgrade for my use of the iPad. Definitely check it out.