I'm thinking about burning a few copies of my game for my thesis to a CD, and I wanted to include a copy of Quest along with my game file, so people could put in the CD and play from the get-go, but I've noticed that on USBs a copied Quest application file, even just the setup file, will not work properly.

It's pretty inconvenient because it means everyone that I want to be able to read my story without an Internet connection has to somehow download Quest itself.
So what I'm asking is: why can't I transfer it that way? Will I be running into some legal issues if I distribute copies of this software? (I'm not selling this or making a profit in any way, and I would accredit the creators of the software if necessary.)
On top of all the other inconveniences of Quest, this is kind of annoying. Suggestions would be appreciated.

There are no legal issues - Quest is free and open source, and you can pretty much do what you want with it.

The setup file quest530.exe should run with no problems from a CD.

The application files should also run with no setup required, if the machine already has the .NET Framework v4.0 installed on it. The quest530.exe setup file checks for the presence of the framework and downloads it if necessary, so if the computer has no internet connection this bit will fail if .NET is not installed. But, you could put the standalone .NET installer on the CD from http://www.microsoft.com/net/download/version-4 - you only need the smaller "Client Profile" download.

I'd be interested to know what "all the other inconveniences of Quest" are - all feedback helps to improve the product, so no use keeping annoyances to yourself

There is one other option for putting a game on a CD - I can convert it to an HTML + JavaScript page for you, so you could distribute a file that will work in a web browser (even if the computer itself is offline).

Sweet.
Should I list the "inconveniences" here, or is there a separate thread for that?
Anyway. I'll put a few down here.

Resolution problems: Not sure if the same thing applies to larger screens, but on screens 1024 x 600 or so, Quest does this thing where if whatever content you have on the page is more than what your screen can fit in, it resizes it and immediately offputs the page to the bottom of your content. It's really inconvenient for readers, and I think it kind of turns off more than a few of the people I show my stuff to.
Page navigation is a bit of a bother- it'd be nice to be able to scroll with the arrow keys or the wasd letters instead of having to use your touchpad/mouse to scroll for that. (This was a particular problem when I had to present my story in front of a panel of judges. Much fumbling was to be had.)
There's also the issue of background music only lasting for one page, which I think got touched on by this other dude on the forums- it'd be nice to be able to create a lasting atmosphere for the thing.
Image resizing stuff too, I guess. Maybe there could be a smaller default size for the way images appear? Sometimes the images aren't really the main thing, and it sort of takes away from the text when the image's too big.


Bow. Thanks for the help!

HammerSpace wrote:
Resolution problems: Not sure if the same thing applies to larger screens, but on screens 1024 x 600 or so, Quest does this thing where if whatever content you have on the page is more than what your screen can fit in, it resizes it and immediately offputs the page to the bottom of your content. It's really inconvenient for readers, and I think it kind of turns off more than a few of the people I show my stuff to.
Image resizing stuff too, I guess. Maybe there could be a smaller default size for the way images appear? Sometimes the images aren't really the main thing, and it sort of takes away from the text when the image's too big.

Absolutely agree with this. It would be great to stay at the top of the content and allow readers to scroll down at leisure instead of having to scroll all the way back up again.
Image resizing is good too. Could we set a height/width value in pixels? Or even a percentage of the full size? I wind up having to test my game to see how well the picture fits, jump to a separate resizing website, shrink and upload the pic again.
Minor problems, really, but an IF should run smooth as pudding, eh? Atmosphere and all that!

I will take a look into these. Presumably this is all in gamebook mode?

Alex wrote:I will take a look into these. Presumably this is all in gamebook mode?

Not sure about the OP but I am using the text adventure format. And as far as I know, the problem exists there.
Great that you're looking into this, even the minor stuff. Thanks!

Yeah, using the gamebook format.

Also, I'd like to ask if there's some way I could embed the online version of my stories onto a website or onto a blog somehow.

I think for embedding Alex can give you some Html of the game for you which can embed? Or am I getting HTML all wrong?