Hello!

The Spritely Institute

We'll talk more in the coming days and weeks about other demos we've used, including more modifications to Terminal Phase, that have shown off specific parts of Spritely's tech.

But you can play many of these games today! Many in your browser! https://spritely.institute/arcade/

The Spritely Institute

We will, however, talk about one game *in particular*: Cirkoban! https://davexunit.itch.io/cirkoban

(Alt link: https://files.spritely.institute/embeds/cirkoban/)

Cirkoban is COOL AND FUN AS HECK but it also shows off something really important! It was the first demo of Goblins running in the browser!

The Spritely Institute

Spritely is working on a lot of pieces to deliver its vision of p2p tech being the default, but there are two big ones:

- Goblins, our p2p time-traveling distributed programming environment https://spritely.institute/goblins/
- Hoot, our Scheme to Webassembly compiler https://spritely.institute/hoot/

Naturally, the most important thing to get to compile *is* Goblins on Hoot. Cirkoban used an early version of Goblins ported to Hoot as its foundation. That's what powers the time travel "undo move" in the game!

The Spritely Institute

Aside from being *fun*, this gave us a real, running, actual example of Spritely's tech combined that we could not just show the world, but show ourselves.

Games force you to be very real about things! And when the tech is hard to explain, it's sometimes easier to *experience* something!

The Spritely Institute

Now you may note that the two games we've focused on in this thread aren't particularly social.

Would you be shocked to hear that more social browser-based games are on the near horizon for Spritely?

Because you'd be right!

But... is that a distraction? Again... this is serious stuff!

The Spritely Institute

If games became the primary deliverable, this would be a big distraction.

This is one of the reasons that Spritely does its demos in game jams: time-boxed demos that show something off, but which you can finish and step away from.

But you get something tangible in the end!

The Spritely Institute

But there's a *reason* that the E programming language, which we firmly argue is the most innovative language around distributed security *ever*, grew out of a distributed virtual world environment.

Games aren't the main goal. But they do force you to be robust about *building the right things.*

The Spritely Institute

We need a computing revolution, we need to change the defaults of the way networked programs are written. Secure, peer-to-peer tech can't be the exception. It needs to be the default.

That's a big lift. Conceptual, fun, interactive demos are an important part of Spritely: they help us get there.

The Spritely Institute

The characters, the whimsy, the games: these things are no accident.

Lots of corporations lie through their teeth and say they're "changing the world" while just trying to extract value for shareholders.

Well we really are trying to change the world.

But to get there, we'll have to have some fun.

The Spritely Institute

That's it, that's the last technical value.

But that's not the end of our journey! Within the next few days, we'll have our technical roadmap up and more visually accessible on our site. And we'll start walking through that.

In the meanwhile...

The Spritely Institute

If what we're saying, if the values we've listed and talked about over the last few weeks have aligned with you? If this is the world you want to see happen?

Please consider donating! We could really use your help! We are a small nonprofit! Every donation helps a lot! https://spritely.institute/donate/

The Spritely Institute

Thanks everyone who's tuned into our "tech values" threads. "Values" are abstract, but they matter a lot!

Thanks to everyone who has donated! We are so close, SO CLOSE to crossing the $58k line. Which means we're getting close to $60k of our $80k goal! https://spritely.institute/donate/

Thanks everyone!

The Spritely Institute

OH WE FORGOT ONE THING! HOW COULD WE FORGET!

Speaking of fun! If you donate at the silver, gold, or diamond tiers... you can appear in the credits of our video game demos!!! https://spritely.institute/donate/

That's right! You get to appear in video games that CHANGE INTERNET HISTORY!

So, maybe donate

Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️

@spritely I'd love to boost a toot announcing your fundraiser, but I couldn't find one that was actually primarily about, well, the fundraiser!

I mean, there is a long ass thread about the importance of introducing fun into technical, activist technologies, that briefly mentions the fund raiser at the end, but it would be great to have a toot that just says you're fundraising, what for, why it's important, for how long and how much etc.

*whispers eeerily* If you post it, they will boost...

Dan Connolly

@spritely @cwebber I invited my panel of expert video game reviewers (read: my sons) to check out Cirkoban.

Great suff!

They got pretty sucked into it

#games #fun