Hi Dark, Well, I am not actually creating a custom text adventure language. The games will still be written in C++ and compiled using a C++ compiler. What I am doing here is basically creating a framework so I can quickly put a text game together without having to rewrite some of this stuff from scratch. Basically building common classes and modules that I'd need for a basic text adventure or text based game.
To give you an example in text adventure languages like Inform they come with a number of built-in types such as Man, Woman, Animal, Thing, Room, Door, etc. Basically, all the common things you'd expect to find in a basic text adventure. Well, I am doing essentially the same thing but in C++. I am creating a basic framework for creating rooms, doors, people, creatures, etc by developing a number of generic classes that do the same thing as what the basic types in Inform do. In addition to that I am adding some special classes such as an audio class that wraps FMOD Ex allowing the developer to add sounds and music to the text adventure, and probably an input/output module that prints text and can query the keyboard for input. As far as RPG mechanics etc goes I haven't done anything in that direction yet. I think you are putting the cart before the horse so to speak. I can certainly add RPG mechanics, skill levels, and experience to the games if I chose but that belongs to a specific type of game. What I am doing here really isn't designed for any specific game so to speak. Merely a framework to quickly get up and running with some text based games. To give you a quick example in the early 90's there were a number of Indiana Jones games created by Lucas Arts for Dos. As it happens they had plenty of text so were fairly accessible with a screen reader. Unfortunately, they will not run on newer flavors of Windows, and can only be enjoyed using a Dos emulator. Its a case of either rewrite them for a newer platform or keep a virtual machine around for the express purposes of playing those games. Since I am a skilled programmer I have considered rewriting some of those Dos games, and making them available for people who are running a newer flavor of Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux. It really isn't that hard to do, and could be done with minor effort. So at this point I haven't decided on weather or not I am going to create some roll playing adventure like Sryth etc since that is, for the moment, probably a lot more than I had planned on doing with this project. Of course, I need not necessarily use text as my primary output. I have considered using Sapi to read the text, and have menus where you can perform the basic commands like get, put, examine, look, etc. Part of me thinks that would be the better way to do it since one reason text adventures put people off playing them is because the parsers tend to be unwieldy to use. If someone is a poor speller, doesn't know how to spell something, do not enter the proper command, etc they'll get the typical "I don't know what you are talking about type message." A menu would resolve that problem because all they would have to do is scroll to the proper menu item and press enter. The problem with menus is depending on how big the game gets it would take forever to code a complex menu that has dozens of items to choose from that may or may not be available at the time. Call me a lazy coder, but I don't really want to have to spend a week writing a bunch of if statements which checks if the item is visible, in inventory, is in the room, etc and then add it to the proper menu. I can save myself a lot of work by using strictly a text input system that checks if the item is available and just do the action rather than putting it in an ordered list. Cheers! On 4/16/14, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote: > Hi Tom. > > I'm personally happy with that sort of thing and have seen some games that > do it. > > One more general question however. If your developing your own text game > creation language had you considder rpg mechanics such as combat, > experience, levelling etc. > > As we have discussed before, the majority of if games are very heavily > puzzle based and actively discourage having rpg features in favour of often > > very obscure puzzles, often with weerder linguistic elements or guess the > verb situations. > > If your developing your own language therefore, it might be nice to include > > some things that standard if such as inform does not do. That and of > course while we're inundated with standard zork style interactive fiction, > > rpg text games are rather thin on the ground. > > All the best, > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
