There’s a niche genre of text adventure that’s halfway between a traditional novel and a videogame. Think Zork if it had an extra few novels worth of words of well-crafted story to go with the action. [t0mg] is a fan of such adventures, and also quite enjoys carrying around his palm-sized ESP32 powered Xteink e-ink reader, so decided to create a project to merge the two interests, called eeink.
The Xteink readers have gotten popular lately because their modest internals and size make them very affordable. Not to mention hackable, since they’re basically an ESP32-C3 e-ink dev board that comes with a nice case and battery. The X4 Pro notably comes with an ESP32-S3 which means a lot more RAM, but this project targets both that and the X3/X4 that use the C3 version. Using the C3 means working within some rather stringent limits, as Xteink didn’t spring for any PSRAM, so [t0mg] had less memory to work with than folks did in the 80s.
This project is specifically focused on adventures using the scripting language ink, and comes with its own IDE called eenky to roll your own choose your own adventure book. It’s all on GitHub under an MIT license, and if you want to see it in action there’s a demo video embedded below.
Speaking of Zork, it wasn’t just the first commercial text adventure; it brought some important technological innovations, too.
Typo police here, it’s called “eenk” (without the extra i)
Thanks!
\begin{rant} I recently got the X4 directly from xteink and I got custom firmware running on it so that I can sync it with Calibre. It’s a nice ereader but they send me the wrong flip case. I ordered a dark red one, they send me a bright neon pink one. So I contacted support. They told me they were going to send me a new case. No tracking code was given. Then I asked what the code was, new person, new conversation about their mistake, was promised a new case, they were going to send it, no tracking code. So yesterday I contacted them again, asking for the code, they asked for pictures, then promised to send me a new case, but no tracking code. I don’t think I’ll ever receive a new case. \end{rant}
I wonder if this project will be best on the new pro version with the touch screen. The video says it supports it. That might actually be a really nice way to play old games like this.
Also, it’s very weird that the company sells two different versions of each device. The ones sold through Chinese retailers, Amazon etc, are locked. To install custom firmware you have to unlock the device before you can flash it over IP. This firmware seems to have the same issue but with USB. So the official site and resellers sell the exact same hardware with the same name, but different software configurations.
Sounds like you ran into some AI Helpdesk thing.
avoiding the substance of your comment :)
i have found a useful shopping hack is to just buy the pink one. even at stores that sell to children of both genders, i have frequently found that the previous customers have selected against pink. if the product came in 10 colors equally distributed, after a while, a third or more of the ones actually on the shelf are pink rejects. by consciously preferring pink, i shortcut the process of picking a color… plus pink tends to be hi-viz (with some exceptions), and also easy to like pick out my pink-handlebar-tape bike out of a bike parking pile.
My old mate had a massive set of pink SnapOn tools. He never lost one or had one stolen.
Well, although I’m not a big fan of bloating the X devices with unnecessary (non-reading-related) features, I would be interested in this one. I think this particular project would be a good candidate for newly developed Crosspoint plugins. You see, it’s quite impractical to flash another custom firmware just to play text adventures and then flash back to the main reading firmware. This project, as a Crosspoint plugin, would be just perfect. There is no need of yet another firmware.
It would be best if one did not implement Hitchikers guide to the galaxy in this manner. There is only so fast that I can throw such a thing by hand, and accelerating it faster than a manhole cover is potentially possible with enough incentive. The physics required would be devastating however.
There there, have a drink of something almost, but not entirely, unlike tea.
So, are they locked or not locked? Interwebs seem to be split on this. If they are locked, which regions/countries sell those, and which ones sell unlocked ones?