The Encryption Update

Hi all!

Exactly one year ago today, I released Spider-880. Thank you so much to everyone whose visited over the past year or so! Special thanks to Indiepocalypse for accepting Spider-880; a lot of my renewed interest in the project has been seeing just a few more people engage with my work. Thank you all for playing, and I hope you enjoy these new updates. 

The Changes

Gameplay

BuSab has issued a security update across its devices, using cutting edge hack-proof technology. Spider-880 is now accessing a version of BuSab with webpages that are entirely compressed and encrypted, with the now somewhat forgotten "compress" algorithm and DES cryptography standard.

NavSab has been updated to handle these files for you, but you also have the option of attempting to decrypt them yourself. Instructions on doing so (assuming you have openssl and its legacy providers installed) are located in the new installation. Mr. Gertwig should be noted as still absent, so we're not sure where the source of these updates has come from. Regardless, the bug causing memory leaks whilst typing in a NavSab window has thankfully been fixed. In its place are some new pages that seem to have extra encryption. Unfortunately, you'll have to find the additional passwords for these pages yourself.

There are some smaller quality of life improvements. NavSab now remembers what pages you've visited (albeit only for the duration of one session). The database window has seen some small tinkering for better use. Pages have some more interconnectivity to avoid one-way links. Pages have also been updated by their authors to better reflect reality. Please ignore any prior contradictions from any other sources prior to this reality update, they are incongruent with your sanity.

Linux Build

Spider-880 now has a Linux binary! It requires X11 for window rendering. I've only tested it on WSL (Ubuntu) and the latest Linux Mint (although I did have to update mesa to get certain parts working), and I'll be happy to work with anyone who might be having trouble on their specific distros.

A screenshot of the game in action:

The Future

I might be able to squeeze in some time for a Mac build if anyone is interested. A web build is most likely feasible, but it's something I have yet to research; just thinking about the rough details though: the effort to make the game compatible in WebAssembly would be too monumental to really bother. I might, maybe think about considering it some day though.

I also realize that Spider-880 is most likely not very accessible as things stand right now. FLTK doesn't include support for screen readers, which isn't great. FLTK-RS has an accessibility extension that uses something called accesskit, which I might be able to use? That's something that could take a while to set up, so it's a very vague future plan.

Everyone I know at Unicode would also make me fight a horse-sized duck if I didn't mention localization (as is customary). It'd be a very unique challenge for sure (the localization, I mean; the winning strategy for duck fighting has always been to lie back and accept the imposition of a superior will onto your soul). Most games do not encrypt the majority of their text content, but if anyone's interested in providing translations: please let me know! I'd be happy to be more accommodating for other languages.

Anyways, my continued support for this project (and any other projects I have going on) is really dependent on your interest. Feedback is welcome! Thanks for stopping by.