Text Adventures - When authors pretend to be programmers and visa versa

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Text Adventures - When authors pretend to be programmers and visa versa

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Doc Hawkins posted:

E: oh poo poo, how could I have forgotten Beyond Zork (play it and find out)

Beyond Zork is pretty much the type of game it sounds like they are looking for. In fact thinking about it now makes me want to go back and play it again.

As far as IF design goes, Beyond Zork is really great in how it has these hubs that are connected mostly random layout adventure areas. Puzzles abound all over, but it gives the whole game a grand scale that feels like a MUD in scope.

And speaking of IFs with goof hub design, has Adam Cadre disowned Interstate-0? It doesn't appear on his site any more and looking for it on google there is one database that lists it, but with Author Unknown.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 22:31

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 02:17

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Callipygian Weasel posted:

http://www.improbableisland.com/ is a multiplayer one entirely based on this kind of nonsense. The mods are struggling a little to keep up with modern machines right now, so. One can more or less win automatically, at this stage. Rant at the machines hard enough, and it just works.

Isn't this just like the old Red Dragon BBS games? Not really IF in a meaningful fashion. Unless there's something more here than at first glance?

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 01:45

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Replaying Beyond Zork now, I'm reminded about things that tripped me up when I was young, like figuring out which monsters needed to be just attacked to death, and which needed to be puzzle-beaten. Like the Dorn beast is early and easy to remember, or the slug. But like the cruel puppet I can't recall if there's a trick to it or it just needs its face smashed in.

EDIT: poo poo, I forgot to let the monkey grinder smash the fairy before I gave him the sea chest. Is there another way to deal with that or should I just restart?

Potsticker fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Feb 11, 2016

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 05:39

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Potsticker posted:

EDIT: poo poo, I forgot to let the monkey grinder smash the fairy before I gave him the sea chest. Is there another way to deal with that or should I just restart?

Update: cleared Beyond Zork

I also ended up using the palimpsest too many times (I forgot it was limited use) and lost track of the minx (I think it ended up trapped in the idol) and had to restart anyway. And yes to my own question, I missed something important since the ___ of Dispel was behind the fairy. At least I'm pretty sure that's a non-random location for that item, even if the exact item name is fluid.

Since it's been many years, I was kind of surprised at how much I did remember, and at how short the game is when you know how to do everything. Also the puzzles are a whole lot less satisfying when you're not figuring out what you need to bring to any given location.

One thing that I had remembered wrong was that items do not sell back for their purchase price. For some reason I had thought that it was the sort of game where you couldn't get stuck due to money because if you accidentally sold the wrong thing you could always get the full price back on a refund, but when I accidentally sold the Hurdy-Gurdy with the goblet and caterpillar still inside, even though I hadn't gotten past the Christmas Tree monsters yet I had to buy it back, retrieve the items and sell it again and noticed the loss in Zorkmids. There is more than enough money overall to make mistakes, so it isn't so bad.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 09:05

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

For Choice of Games, I thought Mecha Ace and Black Cat have been the best ones I've played. They are basiclly CYOA Gundam and Lupin stories, so if that's what you're into you should have a good time.

To the City of the Clouds was good too, which is kind of a little Indiana Jones in South America, but doesn't really feel like it's a straight rip off. I read the LP of the Wrestling one around here, and it seemed okay, but I felt that the story was a bit too confusing and the backstage antics were a lot more depressing than I wanted so I didn't end up buying it. I also didn't think Hero's Rise was that bad, but it sounds like the series must have gotten really bad since when it first came out, reactions seemed much more positive than all the negativity that I see commented on nowadays.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 11:44

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Milky Moor posted:

<snip>
There's too many characters and the ones that are there aren't exactly fleshed out in any meaningful sense. The plot just kind of happens around you and you're painfully on-rails.

The series really doesn't respect player choice and agency. There are choices that amount to traps where it feels like the author is waiting in the wings to leap out and go 'AHA!' There are also choices where your character just suddenly acts like a moron. For example, you choose 'infiltrate the supervillain hideout', so you walk in the front door in your full superhero costume.

Yeah. The author gives you three or four choices and you sit there and you have to consider, as a player, if the author is going to make you an idiot and make you wonder why the choice was even there in the first place.

<snip>
Oh, and Heroes Rise has what amounts to in-app purchases that tell you what the optimal choices are if you want to get the 'best' ending - which probably explains why the choices are so drat obfuscated and difficult to figure out.

Was the IAP thing added later? Either that or I was blind.

Thanks for writing this up. I don't really remember too many lovely trap choices, maybe I managed to accidentally avoid them, but I do recall some lame forced plot events that funnel you towards the ending. There's one part in particular that even after everything was revealled in the end I thought didn't make a lot of sense with the choices I had been making. Still, I came away with a positive outlook overall, though I will admit I've never felt the need to replay it or explore different routes like I did in Mecha Ace and Black Cat.

John F Bennett posted:

I very much enjoyed 'Choice of Broadsides' and 'Choice of Romance'.

Choice of Broadsides I couldn't get into at all because if you don't choose to be a man it genderflips the entire world which basically means just changes the names and pronouns. It somehow felt worse than if the game didn't address your gender in any meaningful way at all. I guess it's like that it felt like the author(s?) didn't want to write different scenarios or interactions based on a player's choice and instead took the laziest way out.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 13:37

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Lord Windy posted:

I never normally use IDEs

For what reason? Unless you're making very small projects with a minimal amount of files, I can't imagine any sort of programming evironment that not using an IDE wouldn't save you heaps of time.

Also, why push Python? It seems to me there are way better options for beginners that are easier to dive into, yet still offer depth when needed. If the idea is a simple CYOA-style, then there's Twine. Want a structured environment with easy to understand components and a graphical interface, there's RAGS. And if you're okay with a being a little less babied, there's TADS, whose basic form is still very human readable without programming knowledge. Adrift I don't remember too much about, except that I ended up preferring TADS or Inform at the time. Of course, now Inform is a mess of trying to emulate English sentences in it's syntax and last I checked (trying to help a friend debug some IF he had written) the documentation was badly arranged and incomplete.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 08:55

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Megazver posted:

Are you going to do anything for this year's Adventure Jam in May? I'm thinking of giving it a try, hence the fiddling with Twine.

Since my schedule didn't allow me to do the 7DRL this year, I might give this a shot. Game Jams seem to get me more motivated to actually finish projects rather than leaving them all in partial states of implementation.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 10:34

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Lord Windy posted:

I'm a little biased here as I am a programmer who has never done IF before. Most of the things you've suggested are built around a core existing Engine. Now what if you want to change how the engine works? Without looking into how those options work, I'm guessing that it isn't possible/easy. Now with a proper programming language like Python, it can be very easy to change how things work in an uncomplicated way.

Okay, for someone with a background in programming I'd definitely suggest checking out TADS. There's nothing wrong with using your language of choice of course, but I do feel at the very least you can get a wider perspective and not only see how things are done elsewhere, but you may find a feature set that already fulfills all your needs. How TADS and Inform both handle their parsers was certainly interesting for me, at least. That tends to be the most complicated thing in an IF engine anyway.

Also, as another Python alternative, I've played around with Ren.py a little from the perspective of making CYOA type game and had success making a complex combat system. It was an interesting exercise at least.

RickVoid posted:

If anyone is interested in using the ChoiceScript system for making a game, I spent a weekend reading through their online manual and tutorials (which are awful and bad and full of lovely advice), and wrote up a list of the various commands and explanations of their usages, often with an example of how it's used. I'll post it below (in code tags because otherwise the forum will interpret some of it as BBcode).

ChoiceScript is an actually good and flexible language that is unfortunately tied to a company that has made some really, really bad games.

Thanks for this writeup, it does look interesting and it answers some questions I had about how the Choice Of games were scripted.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 14:59

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

RickVoid posted:

Their tutorials are similarly enlightening. The section on fakechoice almost literally says "use this to artificially pad out your game" and it down plays using the more advanced functions "because the player will neither notice nor care". Really explains the design philosophy behind some of the games their studio put out.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but from especially their early catalog it's clear that they're not interested in making the digital equivalent of Fabled Lands or anything. I will say (again?) that Mecha Ace and Thieves' Gambit are the best I've seen from them in terms of how much your choices actually matter and help shape the story. They also seem to lack the lovely types of choices that don't actually move the story in the direction the text indicates.

Megazver posted:

I haven't checked it out yet, but I heard Ink is very similar. If you're someone who can use Unity, it's probably a better option.

Quite familiar with Unity, but not with Ink, I'll check it out. Thanks.

Potsticker fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Mar 17, 2016

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 15:26

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Thanks for the link.

I did buy Sorcery on my phone, but I didn't really enjoy it at all. I barely got very far in it, I think. Either way I wasn't into it so I never checked out the sequels. FL I mostly mentioned because it's structure as a CYOA that could span an include multiple physical books and have interactions that mattered between them was pretty amazing. Especially since I had a friend who owned one book differently than I did, so we traded a couple of times and have discussions and such.

Looking at your other link, the Quest style is the one I tend to look most favorably on. I mentioned it as a 'hub style' when talking about how I liked I-0's structure before. Branch and Bottleneck stories are sort of annoying if the bottlenecks are events that feel like they are railroading you in ways that don't properly account for how you acted during the branches. Again a sin of most Choice Of games. Honestly though, plotting style doesn't really matter as long as it feels good with the story. Forest of Doom, which is a gamebook I've only played as a digital app has a structure that flows kind of like the Gauntlet, but you're expected to play through it multiple times to figure out which items you need to start with and which paths to take in order to collect the items necessary to win at the end. Described, it sounds rather lame, but it turned out to be fun puzzling out the solution.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 16:37

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

potatocubed posted:

That link led me to this Twine game which I really enjoyed.

This was fun. I especially like the author's explanation and detail on how the endings are structured.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 16:47

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Megazver posted:

Yeah, I specifically mentioned 2 & 3 because they begin to experiment with the structure in those. The first one is a straight-up adaptation of an old-rear end gamebook that's grog as hell, but they start to work their own stuff into the other ones.

I started digging more into that blog you linked and it's really quite fantastic. I love these breakdowns of gamebooks complete with flowcharts of their page-by-page structure. There's a lot of good IF articles, too.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 17:16

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Emily Short posted:

Adam Cadre�s now-disowned I-0,

Well, that answers my question from earlier.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2016 04:52

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

While I think that it's basically the textbook on well-structured and designed IF. I-0 does has some sophomoric pornographic content with cringe-worthy writing if you take certain actions.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2016 05:31

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

If nothing else, this review is hilarious. Thanks for the sufferin!

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 18:18

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

The Deviations posted:

EDIT: No.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2016 23:26

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Twerkteam Pizza posted:

...Bad.

I'm trying to remember the hoops I had to go through to do something simple like keep track of the number of times a player did something and then give a different room description for each value. I do remember trying different things like attempting to just make multiple rooms to ferry the player through or using some sort of clock/timing function? All I really remember is that it was a spectacular failure.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2016 22:06

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Well, I went to check to see if I could find the code on dropbox for specifics and almost couldn't find it.

This is a Mastermind-type puzzle where you have to figure out the correct "code" via superpower usage. I have no idea if this code runs or not. I've trimmed and snipped a bit so this isn't so long

code:

firstPower is a number variable;
secondPower is a number variable;
thirdPower is a number variable;
fourthPower is a number variable;
status is a number variable;
numberCorrect is a number variable;

When play begins:
 	now the firstPower is 1;
 	now the secondPower is a random number between 1 and 4;
 	now the thirdPower is a random number between 1 and 4;
 	now the fourthPower is a random number between 1 and 4;
	now status is 0;
	now numberCorrect is 0;

Section 2 - Introduction

When play begins:
	say "[bold type]Introduction[line break]";
	say "[roman type]snip. [line break][line break]";

Section 3 - Challenge Room

Challenge Room is a room. The player is in the Challenge Room; Challenge Room is private;


Understand "restart/restore/quit" as "[meta-command]";
Understand "strength/punch/superstrength/1/one" as "[str-power]";
Understand "heat/lazers/heatvision/eyelazers/2/two" as "[eye-power]";
Understand "fly/flight/flying/3/three" as "[fly-power]";
Understand "x-ray/xray/supervision/x-rayvision/xrayvision/4/Four" as "[ray-power]";


After reading a command while status is 0:
	now status is 1;
	if the player's command matches "[meta-command]":
		make no decision;
	otherwise if the player's command matches "[str-power]":
		if the firstPower is 1:
			say "Succeeded!";
			increase numberCorrect by 1;
		otherwise:
			say "Failed!";
		[say "[italic type](Super Strength)[line break]";]
		[follow the strSucced1 rule;]
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise if the player's command matches "[eye-power]":
		if the firstPower is 2:
			say "Succeeded!";
			increase numberCorrect by 1;
		otherwise:
			say "Failed!";
		[follow the strSucced1 rule;]
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise if the player's command matches "[fly-power]":
		if the firstPower is 3:
			say "Succeeded!";
			increase numberCorrect by 1;
		otherwise:
			say "Failed!";
		[follow the strSucced1 rule;]
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise if the player's command matches "[ray-power]":
		if the firstPower is 4:
			say "Succeeded!";
			increase numberCorrect by 1;
		otherwise:
			say "Failed!";
		[follow the strSucced1 rule;]
		rule succeeds;
	otherwise:
		say "Pick a Power to Use[line break]";
		now status is 0;
		reject the player's command;
		rule fails;

This last part here is ridiculous, since for some reason I couldn't figure out how to more gracefully detect how many chances the player had left so this code is repeated for each value of status. And then at the end it either moves the player into a room for the victory text or a different one for failure.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2016 22:39

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Yeah, I shouldn't have been using Inform for that sort of game at all, but my friend was only familiar with it and he wanted to collaborate with him doing most of the writing. It was doomed to fail.

But, it looks like here:

code:


When play begins:
	now the challenge list is the list of all superpowers;
	sort the challenge list in random order;
	say the challenge list.

Is only going to make a "code" where each power can only be the solution once each. Unless I'm misunderstanding how it works?

# ¿ Apr 29, 2016 01:42

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Here's a dumb idea:

What if you broke a link up so one part of the word took you to one pla c e, but if the player can see the hints you leave they will discover that there's a trick to getting to the secret area?

You'd have to change the highlight color to be the same as the non-highlighted link color, though. And the already visited link colors.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 08:37

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

The first program I ever wrote was a simple two word parser for a really short adventure game in QBASIC back in Jr. High, so I do have a deep seated love for them, but I think one of my favorite technical implementation is for the terribly clunky/no good games made for it RAGS.

In RAGS games you basically have list windows for things in your current "room" and your inventory, a portrait space, plus a room title and a compass and everything but the compass can be right clicked on for a contextual menu of how that object can be interacted with. Plus its way more clean and presents many other options than a CYOA style game. It's incredibly flexible and it bypasses a lot of problems you get with both traditional parsers, hypertext, and graphic adventure game menus.

In general though, RAGS's overall look and ui is pretty bad, but I feel like the core lists+context menus implementation could be a look into the future of a well made IF system.

In other news that's more physical CYOA related, I got a friend who is really into roguelikes hooked on Fabled Lands. I did a couple of rounds in the java version someone made, but it makes me want to see if I can dig out the couple of books I do own and maybe order some of the ones I don't have. I don't think I've come across a better implementation of IF as a physical book and even playing it electronically it's still pretty great.

And if anyone is interested in CYOA boardgames, if you haven't checked out Tales of the Arabian Nights, it comes with a huge book of paragraphs you read to each other to find out exactly what happens to you as you travel the world. Players start with tokens representing skills that can be useful and serve as sort of character creation, there are various statuses you can attain, like being a vizer or cursed, and navigating the CYOA paragraphs include a parser-like chart so you can decide if you want to beat or court or rob or hire the old begger or do things like drink a terrible storm. It's a fun time even just for the aspect of telling stories to one another.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2016 20:20

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 02:17

Potsticker: Jan 14, 2006

Draxamus posted:

Not sure if it's been mentioned here, but there's a discord bot that lets you play various oldschool and more modern text adventures: http://xyzzy.roadcrosser.xyz

Kinda nice for co-opping these things. Very close to beating Zork!

This owns! Having a friend play 9:05 through this right now and it's hilarious because he's gotten some really good clues to the "truth" early on, but seems to have completely ignored them.

# ¿ May 10, 2018 11:13

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