April 14th 2016 - Rewind/MORGANA Demo V1.02 Released (See downloads page)
Changes in this version:
This is a major update to the demo both behind the scenes and on the surface, although the actual parser hasn't been changed or updated and is still very much in its embryonic state, although you can now play the demo through without using it at all (well, once at the end where a puzzle would otherwise be too easy):
* The game can now be played using pop up menus rather than by typing commands - which makes the experience a lot easier and more familiar to players who enjoy the recent resurgence of gamecocks where you choose pre-determined options to move the story on. The game will now underline words which can be interacted with within the text, and left-clicking an underlined word will present you with a menu of options which can be performed on the word clicked at the current time. Clicking the word "biosuit" in the first room, for example, may present you with different options including "remove suit", "wear suit", "examine suit" or "place suit in locker" depending on the context, whether the locker is open, etc. At the top of each menu is a capitalised version of the word clicked - choosing this will simply insert the word onto the command line.
* Right-clicking anywhere on the screen will present a pop-up menu containing every currently underlined word together with submenus containing all the available actions associated with each word. As the underlined words are likely to quickly move off the top of the screen, this is the preferred way to play - by studying the menu, you can see and choose from all options available at any time. The entire game can be played through by selecting options from the right-click menus. Command commands such as "LOOK AROUND" and "WAIT" are also presented at the top of this menu, and words which are underlined but which no longer have any relevant options are listed in capitals at the bottom and can be clicked to place them directly onto the command line.
* Left-clicking any item in your inventory places its name onto the command line. Right-clicking the inventory item immediately runs the command "EXAMINE object" where "object" is the item clicked.
* You can now click the screen with the left mouse button to move the narrative on whenever the game says "PRESS ENTER TO CONTINUE".
* Behind the scenes, a lot of work has been done on the MORGANA game system, the platform and parser on which Rewind runs. What this means is that all narrative text in the demo is now being compiled and run from code as you play, rather than being hard-coded into the game. In the long run, this means that you will be able to develop your own games with MORGANA and provide others with MORGANA games which can be loaded and run using the system. A MORGANA IDE and development environment will be released in due course.
Games saved in previous versions won't load into V1.02 due to the sheer amount of extra data now contained in the save game file - if you have an autosave from a previous game, it simply won't load when you start the game and you'll need to start from the beginning (the demo is short, so probably not too much of an issue at this stage). If you attempt to load a QUICKSAVE saved with a previous version, or a game SAVEd with a previous version, you'll be presented with a "Load Failed" message.
Hopefully, I've debugged this version as thoroughly as possible, but Rewind and MORGANA are very much a work in progress. Watch this space for further updates as they become available.
Simon
