Noob question: I want to make a text adventure ("go north", "get key", etc.) for Picotron. The way to publish a graphical game is well-defined: you publish a cartridge. But I don't want to publish a cartridge and then hear from people that it would have been better to make it a system utility installable with "yotta", or whatever would be most optimal. Here's what I need:

• Accessible to noobs: Easily runnable in-browser via BBS by users with zero experience.
• Convenient: Experienced users install and run the game in the way an experienced Picotron user would expect a text adventure to work.
• Save progress: progress is saved, either automatically or via a simple "save" command, and loaded for the next session either automatically or via a simple "load" command. It's okay if this doesn't work on the BBS.

These needs are in order of importance, but I'm hoping none of them are mutually exclusive.

I'm sure I can figure most of this out on my own, but y'all can save me a couple false starts. Any advice? Would be good to know both the downsides and upsides of what you suggest!

Why can't you just publish a cartridge?

If I publish a cartridge, would I have to re-implement the prompt and output features of the terminal in code myself? Want to avoid that, especially since my implementation would probably differ from the terminal in small and annoying ways.

Will 50% of users launch it and immediately give up on it because they didn't read the BBS description (at least some people won't) and don't know they have to open a terminal and type a command to run it? (Is there a way I can make this happen automatically when the cartridge is launched?)

Basically, I need to cater both to noobs and experienced users, and I'm wondering how to go about that.

Looks like Localize System in the cartridge releases forum might be doing at least part of what I need? Seems like, when launched via the BBS, it opens a terminal window and runs a command? I can't tell what the command is or if it can be launched from a terminal by typing its name, though. The BBS description says "This must be run in desktop, it won't run in fullscreen terminal", which doesn't seem promising.

Picotron's missing man pages is a Yotta package, which at least presents usage instructions when launched via the BBS. Ideally I'd like to have a cartridge be installable as a Yotta package, but also open a terminal window with the command (game) running when launched via the BBS.

@nephariuz Localize System is not running a terminal command. That's just a normal cart. (Picotron's terminal doesn't support interactive prompts like that)

Have you considered using a copy of terminal.lua as a base? Modify run_terminal_command() to remove the normal commands, and add in your commands instead. Users can launch the cart and have a "terminal" window with the game commands, without needing to install any commands to the real terminal.

Aw. I was really hoping to run in the Picotron terminal. Well, if it's not supported it's not supported. Thanks for the lead!