Devlog:Layouts & Docks

Since the beginning, AdventureJS has run in a 600x480 window. It's the size of the examples in the documentation. Admittedly, it's tiny. Most other parser systems I've seen tend to go full window. Personally, I find that to be an unsatisfactory UI choice, but I get that it's what a lot of people expect. It's always been fairly easy to adjust a game's layout through CSS, but I'd never gotten around to codifying it until now. I have settled on a set of styles called box, page, and full, each with a set of default sizes.

xs box

the original, 600px wide x 480px high

small box

768px wide x 600px high

medium box

960px wide x 680px high

large box

1024px wide x 768px high

xl box

1200px wide x 1024px high

xs page

600px wide x 100% high

small page

768px wide x 100% high

medium page

960px wide x 100% high

large page

1024px wide x 100% high

xl page

1024px wide x 100% high

full

100% wide x 100% high (aka full window)

I believe this offers some basic options to authors who don't want to jump into custom CSS right away, while authors who are familiar with CSS should be able to modify the layout as they like.

Related to layouts, widgets are a concept I added back around October 2025, but which I had never gotten around to properly documenting. Widgets are plug & play layout extensions that let authors add things like a room description or a room image or a list of inventory items – all the features that made Legend games look like Legend games. (I know that other players may have different points of reference depending on which side of the Atlantic they grew up in.)

On reviewing the work done last year, I found a number of improvements and consistencies waiting to be made. A chief improvement was formalizing a grid layout that allows widgets to be plugged into the display and have it automatically adjust to them. The result of all this busywork is a whole new chapter for Layout & Graphics in the manual.