FyreVM Shared Source

One of the reasons I started Textfyre was that I had and have a firm belief that paid programming was a considerable missing component of the development and improvement of Interactive Fiction as an artform and medium. The “IF community”, depending on your definition of such a thing, generally focuses on the academic and hobbyist participatory aspects of the medium. We’ve had a few people sell games within the community and they’ve shared some of their processes and thoughts, but no one has recycled any profits into the community at large.

Although I don’t have any profits (let’s not talk about the increasing debt I’ve incurred) to speak of, I do have a sincere interest in sharing the fruits of our internal workings as much as possible without crossing swords with my attorney.

So with that in mind, we’ve put together a “shared source” version of our Glulx VM implementation named FyreVM which can be reviewed and downloaded from the FyreVM website. By shared source we mean that there is a non-commercial aspect to the source code and we also want to restrict branched versions of the VM itself. Any code you write that uses the FyreVM is of course all yours. We’re going to put up samples and those will all be public domain. We will entertain friendly requests for a limited (individual) royalty-free commercial license.

FyreVM is the culmination of a lot of thought on my part and a frustrated review of the Glk specification. I’m not saying Glk is bad or wrong. I just think its limited in its usability by the average developer. There has been a sizable effort by several people to make Glulx and Glk as friendly as possible and yet we still aren’t seeing any increase in games developed with higher quality user interfaces.

So I’m sharing FyreVM because of how we implemented I/O, which is differently from how Glk implements I/O. FyreVM uses channels to convey all information between the virtual machine (game engine) and the user interface. We’ve completely abstracted away any detailed knowledge of pointers and memory and low level programming hacks to access the I/O interface. The developer has to simply retrieve the text that comes out of each channel on each “turn” in a game and do with it as they may.

To aid in this process, we’ve also created a very friendly set of Inform 7 extensions to give developers the tools they need to create channel based games.

Of course we’re still working on sample games to show off the potential of FyreVM and Channel I/O and we will report updates on the website. We invite anyone and everyone to help create samples for the website.

Textfyre is dedicated to being involved in the interactive fiction community and will continue to share our tools and processes as time, money, and lawyers permit.

Transitions

Textfyre is now going through the most difficult period since its birth. We’re pulling everything together to move from a start-up company with virtual, part-time sub-contractors to a living, breathing corporate entity with several full-time employees, an office, a marketing team, investors, and more.

The critical aspect will be our final business plan, the presentation, and whether or not our potential investors sign on the dotted line. There’s no guarantee that this will happen and yet it’s critical to the future of our company. I am, however, confident that we will get the necessary funding and launch in fall.

Last month I met with two marketing firms and am following that up with meetings with several others. These steps will insure a wide and very public launch.

I’d like to welcome Jacqueline A. Lott Ashwell as a game tester and I’m also in talks with Daniel Sadowski of Soundrama.com in hopes of adding a score to each game.

Closing in on The Launch

As has been noted in previous posts, I’ve been working on funding Textfyre through angel investors. In order to facilitate this endeavor, I’ve spent a great deal of time on developing a rock solid business plan. In February I had meetings with two potential investors and have been in touch with a third. These meetings were informal and not meant to be full blown presentations. They both worked out perfectly in that I received exactly the type of feedback I needed to fill in the gaps in my business plan.

One of the gaps included the financials, which I had worked on last summer, but so many things have changed since then that I needed to completely redo them from scratch. I worked with my business plan advisor, April Lane from the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center at DePaul University in Chicago, to rework the financial projections and come up with a target funding amount.

Outside of one more meeting with a marketing firm, all of the gaps have been addressed and the plan is 99% complete. The next step is to develop and practice the ten to fifteen minute investor presentation and then setup final meetings with investors. This all should happen in the coming weeks and we should know more about our funding situation by the end of April.

Based on the outcome of these meetings and the always continuing internal work, Textfyre will launch in either June or September. We’re confident we can launch by September, but we’re hoping to launch by June.

Dinner with Janny Wurts

This past Saturday night I arranged a dinner meeting with a favorite fantasy fiction author of mine, Janny Wurts. Janny brought Don Maitz, her husband and I flew Michael Gentry up from Virginia to join in a discussion about her work being introduced to interactive fiction within the confines of Textfyre.

Janny is extraordinary and if you doubt me, take a look at her website and review her artwork. Then I highly recommend that if you haven’t already, or if maybe you stopped short of reading through all of her books, that you should read every single word she’s written. Seriously, Janny writes as if every word is a first born child, every sentence as if it were her blood, and every character is drawn directly from her heart and soul. Even if you stumble through the complexity and density of her prose, trust me when I say that the payoffs are profound and worth every minute of your time.

During our dinner she pulled out The Paravian Sketchbook and Mike and I were floored. This sketchbook contains pencil drawings of various settings within the world of Athera and are some of the most detailed and beautiful artworks I have ever seen. I’ve been to the Vatican. the Louvre, and various other European galleries and Janny’s artistry can easily be described as brilliant.

Eventually we discussed how Janny might become involved in Textfyre, but before too long we had to call it a night. Even so, we had a great conversation and there’s hope that Janny will bring her brilliance, in part or whole, to helping Textfyre create great games.

UI Progress and Cross-Platform News

I’ve talked often about hurdles in the development of Textfyre as a business. We’ve had to work through procedural issues, development issues, content issues, game engine issues, artwork issues, investor issues, and user interface issues. We still have marketing, sales, partnership, and other issues on the horizon.

In late 2007 I was finally able to hire Jesse McGrew for the game engine, but I still couldn’t find anyone to fit into the development of the user interface. This is obviously one of the most critical components of Textfyre since the vision is to present something that is easy, attractive, and yet retains the simple beauty of interactive fiction.

After trying to get a local Flash developer involved, then trying to hire a consulting firm, I finally contacted Peter Mattsson, the creator of Flaxo, a Flash-based z-machine interpreter. Peter is going to help finish the Windows version of the user interface. Peter also has offered to help build a Flash version of uor games for Linux and Mac environments, but we’re still trying to figure out the technical details.

On the investor front, we’re getting ready for a presentation on February 20th with a Chicago-based angel investor. This Saturday, Mike Gentry and I are having dinner with Janny Wurts, a noted fantasy author who I’m trying to entice into helping with content or to become an advisor. I’d also ask that if anyone knows of a potential angel investor to talk to them about Textfyre and get us together.

On the marketing front, I’ve been developing the advertisement plan for our launch and this going very well.

The development of Textfyre has been exciting and every time we fine ourselves facing a challenge, we have always managed to define it, plan a course of action, and meet that challenge head on.

Launch Year Begins

A couple of things are happening right now as we prepare for launch.

In regards to content, we’re very busy testing and increasing the quality of Secret Letter. In conjunction, we’re also working on the design and writing for the second Miradania game, Trials of the Vedd. The first game in the second series, Klockwerk - The Shadow in the Cathedral, continues to to near its design completion and we will begin implementation in the coming months. We have other content in development and we will report their progress in the coming months.

On the user interface front, we have clear milestones to achieve and we’re working with consulting partners to complete those tasks. We should have a solid beta product within the next month or two.

We’ve begun working with marketing consultants to develop and refine our strategies for getting the word out on our company and our products.

And we are now in a major push to locate and obtain investment funds that will allow us to implement our marketing strategy at a high level. We would like to ask anyone with contacts in the angel investor world to bring our company to their attention and have them contact me directly at david/at/textfyre/dot/com or they can call me directly on my cell phone at 630 803 4302.

Virtual Machines, Designers, Authors, and the End of 2007

Since Jesse McGrew has successfully created our virtual machine, the next hurdle in Texfyre’s path to market is completing the visual and interactive aspects of the user interface (also known as an intepreter or “terp” to IFers).

As mentioned before, we’re using Microsoft’s WPF and XAML to do this work and it’s been very difficult finding anyone with experience with the design tools for these technologies. I’ve tried craig’s list, elance, various online forums and have come up empty until this week. I went to a Visual Studio. .NET 2008 Load Fest at Microsoft here in Chicago and asked one of the evangelists if he knew anyone with the skills I’m looking for and sure enough, he did and even better, he was at the meeting too.

I asked Anthony Handley from Magenic Consulting to stop by my laptop for a review of what we’re trying to do and give him the 10,000 foot view. He was excited and confident that he could do the work and that we just needed to talk to his boss about availability, cost, and functional requirements. After seeing Anthony’s demo of WPF, I’m extremely confident that he can manage the work and even though this will entail consulting-level fees, I feel strongly that it’s critical to put the extra effort and cash into this portion of the business.

So another hurdle seems to be overcome and the final two hurdles include partnerships and investors as well as marketing and sales. Basically we’re getting close to launch and those are the final steps in the plan.

In game news, we’re making great progress on the second Miradania game and Klockwerk’s first game is more than half complete (design and writing). Our third and fourth series’ are going slower, but I expect those to pick up steam in Q1.

In other news, I’m talking with one of my favorite authors, Janny Wurts, about helping Textfyre with content and/or editorial advise. I’ve got my fingers crossed that she might find Textfyre interesting and completely compatible with her novel writing. I plan to contact other authors once we’re in production about using existing books or new works in Textfyre games.

2007 has been a fantastic building year for Textfyre. 2008 is going to be the big launch. Happy Holidays everyone and have a great new year!

November Surprise

I’ve had a list of “tasks” since the beginning of this endeavor. Some of these tasks are simple, like “Incorporate” or “Get a Logo”. Others are more complicated, like “Business Plan” and “Hire People to Make Games”. And then there are a small number of issues that seem almost impossible. One in particular….

You see, I have a very clear vision of what I want Textfyre games to look like to the public. I want them to take on a near Myst-like quality. That’s probably unattainable, but it’s something to strive for. So in striving for that level of quality I decided to implement the first round of games using the latest Microsoft development technologies; Windows Presentation Foundation and XAML. These tools don’t really do anything that couldn’t be done before; they just allow it to be done far more quickly and efficiently. Instead of requiring deep knowledge of arcane graphics API’s, WPF allows the developer to implement glossy applications in declarative form. If you want a quick look at one application that spurred my interest in WPF, take a look at the New York Times Reader. It comes with a 30-day free trial and it’s simply phenomenal.

So with that in mind I decided to bypass (for now) a cross-platform delivery mechanism and focus on Windows as a platform. I’m not turning a blind eye to Apple or Linux users. We will absolutely address the needs of those users. But our first delivery solution will be Windows oriented and based on the .NET Framework 3.5, which is the latest version available. It’s bleeding edge to some, but having been tested publicly for a year now, seems pretty stable.

One of the big complex tasks was to develop the virtual machine for our games. Since we’re currently standardized on Inform 7 as a development platform, it was either Z-Code or Glulx and since Glulx was a bit more mature, I decided to push forward with Glulx. I also liked that Andrew Plotkin, the creator of the Glulx specification, made it so that the I/O layer was abstracted and he also made it so that the VM was extensible by adding extra “op codes” or internal operations. This means that Textfyre could develop its own I/O layer and do things that have really never been done before, which is to handle all of the output in the user interface. The Textfyre output channels are simply handing off the text to the user interface and we code the user interface to do the “right thing” with that output.

So the challenge was to find someone to do this work. I tried to tackle the problem, but it would take me years to understand all of the aspects of VM’s, memory management, and many other non-trivial tasks to make this possible. I started with Jesse McGrew and then got blind-sided by a fast-talking developer who said he’d do it on a promisary note. That didn’t work out so I eventually went crawling back to Jesse and after some begging and pleading, he agreed to extremely favorable terms for Textfyre. This was only a few weeks ago.

Jesse more or less finished the VM in less than two weeks (with a few more hours of finishing touches to add). I can’t possibly explain to the uninitiated how incredibly unlikely this is. As Jesse put it, he was “in the perfect storm for this thing”. He knew C# and .NET, Inform 6, Inform 7, Glulx, Glk, and he understood virtual machines.

So starting tomorrow I am going to marry our game in beta (Secret Letter) to the user interface I’ve been working on in WPF and to the Textfyre VM, and have a very real beta version ready within a few days.

This is something to be truly truly thankful for. It is now almost assured that our first game will be published in Q108 and it may be as early as January. We still have a lot of “finishing” to do, but the end of the tunnel is very much in sight.

Hats off to Jesse McGrew!

October Progress

We’ve made progress in a couple of areas. We’re inching closer to the beta (content only) for Secret Letter with only two small pieces left to write and code. Mike is tapping out the final design changes and those should be implemented some time in the next week or two.

Erika and I are going to meet in the next week or so to start designing the themes for the user interface. These themes will be hand drawn graphic illustrations of various settings within the game. When the player reaches a certain location and/or scene, the user interface will change its background and colors to reflect the current setting.

I’ve been networking at various entrepreneur gatherings looking for marketing help, potential investors, and advice. There’s been a lot of very positive support from the entrepreneurial community in Chicago. I continue to reach out to partners and advisors to help make Textfyre a first class publishing company.

And finally, the most significant news is the addition of Jesse McGrew to Textfyre as a Systems Programmer. Jesse will be developing our virtual machine with additional unique requirements that will make it the best interactive fiction user interface ever developed, commercial or otherwise.

We still have a ways to go before we publish Secret Letter, but every month we’ve made some progress on some aspect of the business. In the meantime, we’re focused on refining our internal processes and developing new ones to help us in the future.

I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re going to be publishing our first game in the first quarter of 2008. Stay tuned!

Attention from the Blogosphere

Starting with Grand Text Auto on July 6th Textfyre has been receiving interesting commentary on our business development. Some of these comments are humorous, such as “It’s not April”, suggesting my company is going to be a large hoax revealed next April. I can assure anyone that’s paying attention that I have not invested money in a hoax. This is a very real company with very serious asperations.

After GTA, GameSetWatch.Com blogged about us and then TIGSource.Com and Kotaku.Com followed suit just a few days ago.

We’ve also been interviewed by Gamasutra and ArmchairArcade.

If anyone has any direct questions about Textfyre, please feel free to ask me anything. This is the place.