Get Camp Keepalive Demo (and maybe others?)

[josefnpat]

The development studio Twofold Secrets has quite a few games that may meet the requirements of vapor.

http://twofoldsecret.com/

I've contacted the owners.

[josefnpat]

Twitter'd at them again!

[josefnpat]

this is a response to an e-mail from Chris at twofoldsecret

Hello Chris!

Your response hits the issue right on the head, and I'm so happy that there are other developers who have had the exact same issues I have had.

The reason I have the "no-fullscreen" rule is for a few reasons;

• Alt-Tab doesn't work on Linux all the time (Command-Tab on OS-X in your case)
• Not all games can be easily quit via menus. (You've played games that are like this.)
• Changing the resolution without the users permission can be annoying, and sometimes troublesome. (Ever got stuck in 640x480 after an app crashes?)

I love the concept of going full screen when a user has a small res and it makes sense, so long as the game can always be easily quit. (This is a great idea, and now I want to do this in my own games...)

I have to concern myself with the "But Chris did it, so why can't I" argument, even from windows users. They may know they can alt-tab, but they may not understand the troubles that come with distributing cross platform, like you and I do.

So for the compromise, how about;

1) Fullscreen on "small" resolutions, because this is a great idea in general, so long as there is an easy, clear and quick way to quit. 2) A) Default the game to windowed with the F12 key prominently shown, or B) a quick "yes / no" defaulted to "yes" that asks the user if the game can go full screen.

I can totally understand wanting to streamline the distribution process, as creating multiple binaries, and then patching them is annoying! But also keep in mind, that the binaries that Vapor uses have the consistency checked against via a SHA1 hash, which means if you want to change the binary, you have to update the games.json database via a merge request.

In an effort to keep vapor development as transparent to everyone as possible, I will mirror this conversation on GitHub.

Feel free to respond via e-mail or right on github!

https://github.com/josefnpat/vapor/issues/58

-Seppi

On 2013-09-08 14:08, Chris REDACTED wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: CHRIS REDACTED Date: Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 1:34 PM Subject: Camp Keepalive on Vapor To: seppi@josefnpat.com

Hi, I had some time to look at your Vapor project and it looks cool. I really like the LOVE platform and Vapor seems like a good way to promote it. One hitch with adding the Camp Keepalive demo -- the logic I have is that the game defaults to fullscreen if a) you're not on a Mac, because command-tab doesn't work in fullscreen or b) your monitor is less than 800 pixels tall. The idea being that trying to fit a 1024x768 window on a screen that short wouldn't look good. You can also toggle fullscreen with F12 and it'll remember your preference across startups.

So -- I know that doesn't comply with the letter of your requirements but hopefully the spirit. I'd really like to avoid doing a Vapor-only build... I'm already creating 3 versions for every release, one for each platform. Is this ok? If not, can we do some kind of compromise?

chris

[klembot]

I agree that you should be consistent about this. It's kind of a shame fullscreen is so problematic -- maybe will be improved in 0.9? I like the idea of making the fullscreen toggle more obvious... that is a weakness right now of Keepalive. You have to read the manual to know about F12. But I am leery of messing with the code too much at this stage.

So... my game plan is to wait and see if another point release or two is needed to fix bugs, and once things settle, to put together a quickie build that defaults fullscreen off and give that to you.

I'd also potentially be interested in adding Sought to Vapor, but we released that under a pay-what-you-like model and I'd at least like to ask people to consider giving us money :), so I'd have to tweak the game to have some kind of message about that without being annoying about it.

[qaisjp]

OR integrate pay-what-you-want with vapor! For example, all games are free but all games can have an option to have a forced pay what you want or a optional pay what you want.

Forced pay what you want will show you a little dialog when you try to download the game using the button about paying what you want ($0 - whatever the system handling the payments allow). Optional pay what you want works like a donate button in the description section, clicking download works like a normal game. This can help support developers, perhaps work with itch.io to provide this.

On 9 September 2013 18:23, Chris Klimas notifications@github.com wrote:

I agree that you should be consistent about this. It's kind of a shame fullscreen is so problematic -- maybe will be improved in 0.9? I like the idea of making the fullscreen toggle more obvious... that is a weakness right now of Keepalive. You have to read the manual to know about F12. But I am leery of messing with the code too much at this stage.

So... my game plan is to wait and see if another point release or two is needed to fix bugs, and once things settle, to put together a quickie build that defaults fullscreen off and give that to you.

I'd also potentially be interested in adding Sought to Vapor, but we released that under a pay-what-you-like model and I'd at least like to ask people to consider giving us money :), so I'd have to tweak the game to have some kind of message about that without being annoying about it.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/josefnpat/vapor/issues/58#issuecomment-24097194 .

[josefnpat]

It's kind of a shame fullscreen is so problematic -- maybe will be improved in 0.9?

I wonder if there is a bug report against love for this? Might be good to look into, as 0.9.0 is right around the corner so to speak, and now that SDL2 is in, it might be easier to make happen.

So... my game plan is to wait and see if another point release or two is needed to fix bugs, and once things settle, to put together a quickie build that defaults fullscreen off and give that to you.

Sounds great! I'll leave this ticket open in the meanwhile!

I'd also potentially be interested in adding Sought to Vapor, but we released that under a pay-what-you-like model and I'd at least like to ask people to consider giving us money :), so I'd have to tweak the game to have some kind of message about that without being annoying about it.

We do have @slime73's game in the db as Snayke (Demo). You could also consider releasing a demo, although you are planning on making pay-what-you-want. Keep in mind, there is always a "visit author's website" button available as well. Another option is to add a "Pay-What-You-Want" flag, that would open a message saying, "YOU CAN HAVE THIS FOR FREE, BUT DONATE TO US PLEASE" [visit website]/[no thanks, game plz] option box.

OR integrate pay-what-you-want with vapor! For example, all games are free but all games can have an option to have a forced pay what you want or a optional pay what you want.

We have hardly the infrastructure or the man-power to implement this in a timely fashion. Although Ii think this would be a great new issue to make, I don't see it in the short run, as it really isn't low hanging fruit.

[klembot]

Here's the bug I filed, did not sound promising: https://bitbucket.org/rude/love/issue/629/cant-command-tab-in-fullscreen-on-os-x-108

[slime73]

I wonder if there is a bug report against love for this? Might be good to look into, as 0.9.0 is right around the corner so to speak, and now that SDL2 is in, it might be easier to make happen.

This isn't really a LÖVE issue... or an SDL issue, it's an issue with the way operating systems / WMs handle display mode changes.

Many triple-A and non-love games these days have an option to use a different type of fullscreen which doesn't mess with display modes or program switching, it's usually called something like "borderless fullscreen desktop". It creates a borderless window which covers the entire screen and sits above desktop elements like the taskbar.

SDL 2 and LÖVE 0.9.0 have the capability to do this as an alternative to regular fullscreen, but there's a catch: the window is forced to be the same size as the user's desktop.

The non-love games which already use this method do resolution scaling by drawing the game to a framebuffer (aka canvas) at the resolution they want (800x600 for example), and then drawing the framebuffer to the screen scaled up.

[josefnpat]

I guess this discussion circles back to the point vapor puts across; doing fullscreen right is hard; so unless someone brings it up, let's not have any of it.

[slime73]

Considering the vast majority of people who play games do so on operating systems which don't have big issues with fullscreen, and considering fullscreen is an expected option for games... disallowing fullscreen completely is not a very good solution, IMO.

Disallowing fullscreen-by-default is more sane.

[qaisjp]

I am sure fullscreen-by-default, @slime73, was what @josefnpat was doing the whole time...

[josefnpat]

disallowing fullscreen completely is not a very good solution, IMO.

I entirely agree, and apologize for the confusion. My intention stands as the readme states, "[Your game must:] not start in fullscreen mode".

[josefnpat]

@klembot bump :horse:

[klembot]

So I put this on my to-do list for over the holidays, but now the question is, is it a problem that Keepalive isn't compatible with 0.9? Curious how you plan to handle this since I imagine almost all existing games aren't.

[josefnpat]

@klembot vapor is currently only 0.8.0 compatible, but we want to add 0.9.0 support so that it plays both games (see #151 )

I will be working on this feature when I get back from vacation in Europe!

[josefnpat]

@klembot bump :horse: