As it says in the subject:  Lily’s getting an app!!!

I’ve actually had it in mind to do this for a while.  Now that the story’s finished, I now have to think of ways to get it out to people who don’t go searching for it on the web.  I tried Wattpad, that didn’t work too well.  For about a thousand posts, importing them is almost impossible, and there’s no programmatic way to do it.  I was considering FictionPress, but for the most part, I just couldn’t find a good place to put it, and besides, there were (and still are) a lot of errors.

But writing an app was a lot of work.  I mean, you have to go into Android Studio, then figure out how to write kotlin, get all the app stuff done… make sure the backend could handle it all (I mean, it’s like like we’ll get even a hundred readers, but still)…  A lot of work to do.  And it was nearly impossible, I just didn’t have the time for that kind of effort, especially with everything else I’m doing.

But along came GitHub copilot.

I don’t really trust GitHub, and I don’t really trust AI (GitHub has some issues with wokeness getting in the way of professionalism, and AI isn’t exactly a panacea) but I’ve been using copilot at work, and as much as I actually don’t like this, it’s a real timesaver.  I mean, it’s tasking tasks that would take me weeks and turning them into tasks that would take me days or hours, and very occasionally, minutes.

It’s made developing an app possible.

I have lots to say about AI and copilot, and many things I want do do with AI and copilot, some of them related to Lily, but for now, let’s just say it’s made making an app possible.

For right now, it’s just going to be another way to read the story.  I’m designing it with a frozen copy of the story built in so that it doesn’t hammer on my wordpress site, but it will go out every now and then and sync up with the site so that you’ll always have the latest version (I have to write a wordpress plugin for that, and I did it in an hour last night before I went to bed… isn’t that amazing? The stock wp-json is just too heavy).  It’ll be pretty and have some artwork that you won’t find anywhere else (I think… I’ll probably have AI generate it).  I’m also thinking about Lily-related minigames, but that’s a little more difficult, I don’t know how I’m going to pull that off.  What I really want to do is train an AI with the story to be able to hold a conversation as Lily (I’ve had that in mind since the beginning) but I still haven’t a clue how to do that.  It’s possible, though, and I think would be pretty fun.

I don’t know when it’s going to be released.  I’m actively developing it right now, but these things do take time, even with AI speeding them along.  Hopefully this will put Lily in front of a whole new audience!

Who’ll probably hate the story, but can’t win ’em all, I suppose.

AI is making some things possible that, frankly, weren’t before, and that’s both promising and kinda scary.

Well, onwards and upwards.  Back to wrangling copilot for work…

(Oh, important:  It will only be for Android right now.  I don’t have an iPhone, and I’m not going to get one for development until I know that it’s going to be worth my time.)