Principia in the web browser, and more...

Recently you might have noticed a new link on the pages for levels on the community site, which takes you to a web-based version of Principia allowing you to play the level directly in your web browser without installing the game. This has been made possible by recent developments to the web port of Principia powered by WebAssembly making it playable to the point where you should likely be able to play most levels now.

However it is still a BETA feature and there are many bugs and issues remaining, and performance will generally be worse than the native version. Still, it is a great and convenient way to play levels and try out the game without installing anything, and works on any device with a modern browser including ones that do not have a native version of Principia available such as macOS, iOS and locked down Chromebook devices.

While the primary usefulness of the web port currently is being able to play levels from the community site with it, you can also go to https://principia-web.se/wasm/ without a level ID in the URL to launch the game normally and go into the sandbox. However it is very limited at the moment as the web version uses the incomplete Imgui dialog backend with a lot of dialogs in the sandbox unimplemented, and all networking code for the game needs to be rewritten for Emscripten in mind in order to work in the web version (currently only downloading levels has been implemented). But this is something that will likely improve over time.

More...

The Principia website has seen other improvements during the latter part of this year.

Earlier this autumn the official Principia community site archive previously hosted at archive.principia-web.se has been merged into the main site. While there was a historical reason for the split (the archive was originally hosted by Bithack on the original Principia server), it no longer makes sense now that I fully operate both of them, and only seems to cause confusion for players.

Now it is more easily accessible and integrated into the main site, with pages like the Search allowing you to select whether to search the archive or not. You can now also comment on archived levels, and more things are coming in the future such as being able to submit highscores for archived levels with a leaderboard.

In addition to this, two new features have been added to the community site in order to provide more ways for users to share content in a way that is not reliant on external third-party services, in order to improve the independence and longevity of the community:

• A pastebin service allowing users to upload and share LuaScript code, log files or other text content.
• A file uploader allowing users to upload and share files, e.g. for sharing screenshots and other images on the forums instead of relying on third-party image hosting services that are subject to link rot after some time.

The access to these features are subject to a few criteria, but if you have been here for a while, uploaded some levels and posted on the forums you should be eligible. You can find links to them on your personal user page. I will likely lower the criteria for access in the future once I am more confident in the moderation tools.

Finally, a new chat has been added to the site. If you've been around for a while you may remember the previous chat on this site that was essentially just a comments section and was decommissioned in early 2024. This new chat is closer to the dynamic chat that used to be on the old community site back in the day.

While the Principia Discord server is not going anywhere, Discord is also a commercial third-party platform chasing the whims of corporate interests and are showing clear signs of going downhill sometime in the future. You may see a pattern with the previously mentioned features, and while the chat on the site in its current form is very rudimentary, I hope it will still offer a small alternative to chat with other players on the community site.

Donations

I would also like to take the opportunity to ask for your financial support. This New Year's Eve marks three years since I released the first version of Principia after the source code release, and it's been five years since I originally started hosting what has become the new Principia community site now. I've been the main driving force for the development of Principia during this time, and I have made a lot of personal sacrifices to make that happen over those years with countless hours spent on the project.

So if you enjoy the work I have been doing on Principia over the years, please consider making a donation. More information about donating can be found on the donate page.

Happy new year!
ROllerozxa