next »

[hexdie]

What is this?

I'm building a game which requires the player to interact with a virtual OS. At the moment, the goal of the game is to be a computer which belonged to someone and you explore it, as well as solve puzzles, to learn more about this person. I only have rough ideas of the story at this point. I started building this over the weekend and I plan to continue working on it.

Here's where the app is now (sorry it's not pretty):

The game is built with web technologies. The game has a client side, for UI, and a local server for rendering templates and handling system operations (like reading/writing files). The game is built this way for two reasons:

1) I wanted to leverage HTML and CSS for building a suitable UI.
2) I'm considering adding some sort of scripting system to the game, and I could leverage javascript easily for that purpose in this environment.
3) I'm a web developer by trade, so I know this stuff pretty well.


Progress so far

I've been able to run this game through my browser as well as a standalone application (using NW.js).

So far, I've done a good amount of setup work, built out the super rudimentary OS interface (background + taskbar), and worked out building the windows (this is where the majority of coding has gone so far). Each window holds an iframe, like this:

The source of the iframe contains a url to a html page on the local server. This means, the windows can load any arbitrary html code I give it, each of which will act as an application in the OS. The file at /static/apps/test-app/index.html looks like this:

I'm planning on some of these applications to be mini-games, probably built with phaser.js. Others will probably be more mundane, but important apps. I haven't quite planned it all out yet. One other aspect of these windows that I got working is the ability to independently move and resize these windows. This is from an earlier build, but I can confirm the recent versions are able to do this too.

[rj]

yes good

[hexdie]

yes good

Thanks! Glad you dig it! 

[tpelham42]

I can see some fun ideas coming out of this. Curious to see what the story/game play will be, but puzzle games are definitely something I enjoy.

[hexdie]

I can see some fun ideas coming out of this. Curious to see what the story/game play will be, but puzzle games are definitely something I enjoy.

Thanks! I'll definitely share the story details once they become more concrete. The gameplay itself is pretty open at this point, but the idea now is that there will be a number of available apps and files available in the OS for players to search through and interact with, and those things will either contain puzzle clues, "keys" (like passwords), or generate a file that can be used to progress.

[hexdie]

As a test, I loaded two of my old games into the OS (this game) and started them as applications. I'm able to play each of the games and they run simultaneously, and their windows are still movable.

I added options for the frame for setting the dimensions and whether or not the window can be resized. I also added the feature for the most recently clicked frame will be moved above all other frames.

[hexdie]

Another quick update: I added close buttons to the frames for users to quit applications.

[hexdie]

Another small update: Last night I finished up adding a frame maximize button. Currently it's covering up the taskbar at the bottom but I do plan on fixing that when I focus more on the taskbar (currently it's just a placeholder).

[Pineapple]

can we use this to replace shoddy OSes like windows 10

[hexdie]

can we use this to replace shoddy OSes like windows 10

As long as you don't need your OS for any practical applications, then yes, it most definitely can!*
*an operating system is required to run this game.

[Pineapple]

all I use my OS for is to look at cat videos and post to dumb internet forums

[hexdie]

I'm not sure I'll be able to implement a web browser within the OS because of cross-origin policies. If there is a solution to it, I haven't been able to find it yet. HOWEVER I can throw in some cat videos in there for you.

[Pineapple]

I'm not sure I'll be able to implement a web browser within the OS because of cross-origin policies. If there is a solution to it, I haven't been able to find it yet. HOWEVER I can throw in some cat videos in there for you.

what about a BBS client

[hexdie]

what about a BBS client

Perhaps. It's something I don't know much about but apparently there are some javascript libraries for supporting it. So, who knows!

[MaxTexeira]

Please add Blue Screen of Death 

I love the concept! congratz 

[hexdie]

Please add Blue Screen of Death 

That's definitely doable! (It wouldn't be the first time I've done it either)

[hexdie]

I've been working more on my implementation of the windows. I want to make sure they are very responsive. I think I've gotten to a point where I'm happy with how they react to my input. I still want to add resizing to every corner, as well as resizing from each side, but for now I might leave it and begin implementing a start menu and the taskbar.

I've also managed to add this site onto its own server, and is accessible here:

TRY IT OUT

It's still incredibly barebones, but I wanted to share it because there's a small surprise here. Try pressing enter a couple times after opening it.

[Pineapple]

[hexdie]

You wish this had nude Tayne!

[hexdie]

Update time! I've started working on the OS object, which is really just responsible for spinning up and managing all of the apps (each of those windows). I implemented a method of launch apps by just name alone. With the given name, the code builds a url to an app config file and downloads it, then configures and launches the window.

Here's an example of one of those app config files:



Here it is in action:



You can see the built url in that last attempt to launch an app, which failed. It just looks for /filesys/apps/{appName}/app-config.json. Eventually I'll add some code to handle when an app fails. I'm currently just detecting the app failure and just logging.