Manuals for games!

Iā€™m sure could be awesome to have manual for a game on the Play date console.

Like in old times we had manual with game cartridge.

For this great feature need to do:

  • invent lightweight text format, maybe with images, maybe based on md or maybe on some structural lang like yaml :man_shrugging:t2: - that will be simple to limit with a scheme;
  • UI: reader app;
  • UI: possibility to know that manual for a game is existing;
  • UI: some button to start read manual - run reader app - in can be long press on a game in the Launcher app for example;
  • extend package manifest with field that points to manual, or just put it in the root/manual :man_shrugging:t2:
6 Likes

I agree!

That's why all my games ship with manuals, links in the description:

It's a lot of work, but I write the content as a rough outline during development. Then it's a nice easy job to lay out the pages a day or two before release.

Digital manuals would be cool, we could use one or another of the existing ebook readers. Until then, I include reduced instructions on the title screen of my games.

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We could even avoid having to download and sideload a text file if the games just wrote their manuals to the shared folder and the reader(s) added support for reading from there. I'm in favour!

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Open standard as offered above is great, I agree. But I suppose it would be ideal to see an app/service built into the OS and declared format row manual.

Very cool idea, having them in a shared folder with a system app able to read them would be really neat.

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This thread motivated me to make a manual for my golf game! :smiley:


No Caddie Included - PDF

3 Likes