We take web browsers, webpages, and conventional layouts of text + images for granted. Even with WebGL, Flash, and other means of experimenting with what we see online, conventions have remained conventional when it comes down to HTTP. We read hypertext as text (well, and images), and browsers are designed towards minimal alteration of that data, maintaining an overall skeuomorphic outlook on the web as literal pages that haven't strayed that far away from the printing press. Enter alternative interpretations of HTML. How about treating the many hyperlinked nodes we see as ‘pages’ differently? Where <a> is a gate, <div> a house, <img> a tree, <b> a cloud, character count gives you volume… This is all very figurative of course, but. Well. You get the idea.
This is a first attempt at doing just that — our HTML2RPG browser is more of an experimental and primitive game engine were different levels are generated by "surfing the internet." You start from a homepage, translated into a level where every hyperlink becomes a gate to other maps generated the same way, and so on, and so on. Basically, we’re now dreaming of building an RPG game/web browser whose levels would feed on html content of which you never see the real content and urls. More soon!
