Authors Passage
A downloadable tool for Windows
In itself, writing is super easy. However, todays computers are loaded with obstacles: gaming, social media and movies are but a mouse click away, ready to distract you with shallow, instant gratification. With that kind of procrestination at hand, it is hard to stay focused on writing, which requires a more solemn and self-contained mental state. If you want to write in this day and age, you wlll have to use whatever hack you can think of to create a writer-friendly environment. This program is my attemp at that.
At its core, it's a simple retro-console where you can type words. Visually, it is very far from the modern PC experience. This is not just about aestetics. By making the whole experience unlike anything else, I hope to trick your brain into believing that it really operates inside different space from the modern computer interface with social media and multitasking and all that.
The old-school visuals are contrasted with modern features aimed at providing a more natural and playful experience: autosave, five different display modes, sprint mode, gamification, word targets and a total absense of editing capacities.
The program is highly moddable. Just thinker about with the stuff in the media folder.
A few extra tricks to help you write:
- Have a specific PC for writing, (with no internet access)
- Have a specific room where you write.
- Have a specific time of day where you write. (morning preferable, so you have the rest of the day off)
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this is fun! I love f11 :-)
Is there any way to run the program in windowed?
Nope, sorry!
Upon opening, I get the error code "Error: Failed to open file for writing C:\Users\User\Documents\Authors Passage\doc_0.txt in includes/docs.agc at line 30"
Afterwards, the program opens but there is an overlay on the screen with the words: "Tap/click to exit". Nothing responds and the only thing left to do is exit the game by clicking anywhere on screen.
I created an empty .txt file at the above mentioned location, which allowed the game to start. However, the above error repeats again whenever the program tries to actually save the file, either through autosave or through manual. The only difference is that the error is at line 116 this time.
I looked around in the "media" folder, but I'm guessing that the issue is in the bytecode.byc file. I'm not familiar with the format, but it sure as hell doesn't like being opened by Atom.
If you are still working on this program / updating it, I hope that this glitch can be fixed. I love everything this program is trying to do, adore the aesthetics and would definitely see myself make heavy use of it once it runs on my machine. If anyone else reads this, I highly recommend you try this for yourself. If you don't encounter the same error, you are rewarded with what seems as a very nifty writing program.
Additional info: ran the program as administrator on recently updated Windows 10, if that helps.
Hi, thanks for letting me know! I just gave it a test drive, and it still work at my end. Good for me, but doesn't help you. :-/
The line 30 is this one: (line 116 is the exact same)
I can't figure out anything which could go wrong here, if the directory string (as shown in the error message) is legit. The only other instance I could find of "Failed to open file for writing" is this one (an Android app where the dev forgot to checkbox writing permission)
Some stuff can be adjusted in \media\settings.txt and in the file C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\AGKApps\AuthorsPassage\media\authorspassage.json But none of those should have any influence on the ability to save a file. I never touched bytecode.byc, but doubt that it's the culprit.
Do you think you could check if there might be something on your machine that is blocking the writing? I can't really think of anything else, sorry!