Library of Blabber
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Explore the Library of Blabber, an infinite structure filled with endless bookshelves of eternal nonsense!
..Or so they say..
Can any sense be found?
Do answers lie somewhere in there?
How long will you stay sane looking for them?
Well, you'll have to flip the pages to find out..
Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' story The Library of Babel, and Jonathan Basile's libraryofbabel.info project, this "little" game is focused on exploration and the fun of meaningful discoveries in the noise of random data. Although it does not posses the mathematical correctness and "purity" of the original story, it still does contain enough pages of nonsense worthy of several hundred lifetimes..
Made for #procjam2015
by Ivan Notaros
@Nothke
#procjam2016 update [016]
- New book types, including Markov chain stories and poems
- Performance improvements, much much faster now
- Page flipping is nicer
- Improved wall textures, stone wall blocks now make much more sense
- Books no longer pass through shelves when held
- Many more tiny fixes
Download
Comments
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Oh my god. I love this. Imagine soon we can plug in AI to generate entire stories in every book, somewhat cohesive ones, and just explore a library or random tales? But for now, I will enjoy the Blabber.
I love the visual section of this video game, super beautiful.
Does anyone know of a game/program to read my pdf files with a 3D interface similar to this game?
Hahaha! Nice!
bladder
Is it alright if we make mods for this application? I'm tempted to see if it's possible to expand on preexisting features along with adding more.
would be cool to add an inventory and collect books you find funny or even interesting. 30 or 50 slots.
I found “Songs of Stomach”:
Its first page was like that:
Love it!
Let me ask do you have any plans to continue development of this game? I think it’s cool.
Probably not.
HAHAHHAHAH I JUST FOUND TEXT "A steak was sneaking through ice"
Someone has to make a mod to include real illegal pdfs in a seamless way
theres a website like this, i love the library of babel concept, https://libraryofbabel.info/
would be nice if we can reach top shelves...
I think this is waaaay dead for this to be fixed soon :(
Sadly I agree. One can hope I guess
There is an infinite number of books. Does reaching the top shelf make any difference?
Kinda yeah, it shouldn't just be there for looks tbh but it aint end of the world I suppose. I just think itd be cool to add a ladder.
I love the game/tool you created, dont get me wrong! :D
I want a search system that wen you search finds your book title or pages!
What is a noise and what is not a noise? What is an information? Answer me, everyone.
A vibration & a lack thereof.
One way you could improve is that you can use plus and negative key to turn pages instead of using ''scrolling'' on your mouse. Not everyone always has a mouse available 100% of the time
Library of blabber is much better however the library of babel has been recently updated... in 2018, this one however has not been updated since 2016 :( - This one happens to be my fav despite it being a bit outdated.
Beware the Vashta Nerada
Love that episode
I keep waiting for something creepy to happen
Please update
One thing I was thinking would be cool is a personal bookshelf where you can save books you've found.
YES
How do you flip the pages? Because arrows don't work and do most of the books have writing or just certain ones?
Mouse Wheel
Is there any way to change the font the books are displayed in? I've come accross (pseudo-) German and French books, but any accented characters don't get displayed (äöüéèà and so on).
Interesting, on what system are you?
Windows 10 / HP ZBook 15u G3
Fascinating concept. I played this about a year ago, and was inspired to look at it again. Unfortunately, I was unable to get it to work on OSX. I'm running macOS Sierra v10.12.6. It gets to the finding books prompt and gets stuck. I'd love to take another look.
Wow. I'm blown away by this.
Is this true procedural? Could I jot down some directions or coordinates to get someone to a book I've found?
Could we export a cool book, or possibly in the cover have the seed exposed, to be run through an outside program to get the same text again?
This is crazy cool stuff.
Yes, every player will find the same page in the same book on the same shelf on the same wall in the same chamber - exactly this is the seed for generating text. For exporting, it's not possible without modification. As for an external program.. Essentially if you had my book generation code you could do that, but isn't it more interesting to walk around and 'physically' find books? :)
if you like a certain book, simply screenshot each page and save it in it's own folder.
this is really something i would reccomend you to keep updating. if possible you should add more logic to the generation of the text to make more sense of the books. add more history, literature , and more words to the generation. allow the program to generate a new seed each time it is opened. maybe add the option to select the generation of specific languages.
Try this, open the program and wander for a few minutes then stop and open a book that captures your eye. read the first few pages to see if the book can predict the near future.
if you believe in fate than you have chosen this specific book for a reason.
Network
Love jump strange distribution, No situation will excite.
These are really in-depth
Network
Love jump strange distribution, No situation will excite.
These are really in-depth
Network
Love jump strange distribution, No situation will excite.
These are really in-depth
:) One of my favorites
Thanks!! :)
Are you thinking about updating ?? hope you have the ability to go down stairs, go upstairs.
oh PLEASE at least allow me to reach the topshelf :( I cant reach any books at the top shelf and for some reason, some of the books the titles are either really long or no title at all....
keep it up, what else might you add to this ??
Going to be an update any time soon?
You know how you could make this better? why dont you have procedurally generated book covers as well? :O just a thought, love the new update, can see a few poem like books - random but uhh some make some sense actually, keep it up! love the buildings, be cool if you could add down stairs and upstairs too... increase the size so to speak
You don't need to do this but I keep thinking about it...(Maybe you already added this and I don't know) REORGANIZING BOOKS! Like a book code or moving around the books for like organization. Just an idea :P
If the OSX version doesn't work for you ("Not found. Obtaining sources.."), here is how to fix it:
1. Download it into your ~/Downloads folder.
2. Open Terminal
3. Type: cd ~/Downloads/LIbraryOfBlabber_016_osx/LIbraryOfBlabber.app/Contents
4. Type: ln -s Data/* .
Now you can double-click it and it should run properly.
Thanks for reporting this! I made a major mistake with file paths, I've corrected it! No need for this hack ^
It works great now. Thanks!
This is an awesome thingy-that-you-made. It would make a great VR experience too :)
I cant start it: I start it, it goes to the black screen with the credits, says 'not found obtaining sources' and stays like that...
On what platform are you running it? It might be a permission problem because at that point I am trying to read from a database file
If you were running on mac, it should work properly now, fixed it!
Really amazing. The atmosphere and the graphics are great. I am blown away and have no clue how you seamlessly implemented all of this. Bravo sir, bravo.
This is brilliant. The concept is brilliant but you also nailed the atmosphere of the library.
I know this sounds strange but in the game I really felt like jumping and especially sitting (or simply crouching). Like... jumping to get a book that's on one of the higher shelves and then just sitting down and look around while seated. Sitting down with the book would also be +++ but even without that, I feel like sitting down would have been very satisfactory.
But yeah, again this is absolutely brilliant. Having different kinds of randomness in different books was an excellent decision. Your game is a good experience. :)
great stuff- but unfortunately got stuck on OS X laptop, since RMB is required to close a book.. only have LMB enabled on my comp (and CNTRL + click didn't work). I'd suggest just using the spacebar to both open and close a book?
Suggestion, you could erm... have like stairs or elevators ... going down or up infinitely ....o.o Or go into doors to another building with books, instead of just shelves, what about also in piles? a load of books everywhere..you have to pick them up haha and drop, press the mouse button to read it and close it etc
thatll be cool....
I mean I love the layout as it is, texture is great especially on the archetecture
I do come across some books that dont even have a title and how can I actually read the books at the top shelf ??
Some books contain some english like '' or '' ''but '' she '' ''was'' Most books, if read out loud, sound like ancient texts or some alien language hahahaha
Beautiful and elegant implementation, and it even has books with cyrillic texts ;) Bravo!
Its just beautiful. .. .. and ....its just lets speak alien language simlator 2016
It's fascinating the way the text seems to be perpetually almost, but not quite, decipherable, or in another language. It's like someone that had a very, very shaky grasp of English went out and wrote an entire library of books.
Try picking up a book that seems almost on the cusp of understanding and try pronouncing a page out loud. It's like you're reading some kind of magic spell.
I think this authenitc gibbberish could be useful under certain unusual circumstances, like picking words for a magic spell in a story. It might be helpful in making up a fake language, too.
It would be really cool if there were random bookmarks or photos in the pages of some of the books.
Maybe the bookmarks and little photos could be part of a grand story, like how the library came to be or, where everyone else is, or why you are here...