Caltrops - ICJ's Necrotic Drift





	[quote name="Ice Cream Jonsey"][quote name="Mischief Maker"]And then talk started getting floated about actually making a game based off that concept, but people were saying it would at best take until fall to get a workable engine built to say nothing of the sound and graphics and I was all, "Fuck that shiznit I could have the entire text portion of the game done by the end of christmas break!" Which naturally pushed my mind in the direction of text adventures.[/quote] Yeah, furthermore, large groups of people getting together to make a game over the Internet almost never works. You need some seriously dedicated people, or else you need to use some sort of engine or process that doesn't require many people. A text game engine is definitely that. [quote]Now one of my favorite RPGs of all time is Dragon Wars, which had practically no graphics to speak of and relied on text alone to create fantastic locations. So I was wondering if there are any engines around these days that work like that, very basic controls, bare-bones automap to track your position, choose options from a list, track RPG stats and combat, and the only production values are reams of text.[/quote] Just so we are on the same page, by Dragon Wars you mean <a href="http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc/role_playing_games/games_d_f/dragon_wars.html">this</a>, the game that was supposed to be Bard's Tale IV until two weeks before production. There are four text adventure languages with varying degrees of support that would allow you to accomplish your goals. <a href="http://www.tads.org/">TADS 3</a> is a fully-featured programming language that people writing in C++ and such tend to gravitate to. Someone re-enacted a barebones Wasteland interface in TADS 3, but it was a quick demo thing and I have no idea how it has progressed in recent years. I don't know of any TADS 3 game doing things like splitting the screen into various panels, like Dragon Wars did, but I am very much out of the loop on this programming language / engine. <a href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Inform%207.html">Inform 7</a> is the hot, new text adventure programming language that took everything by storm. It uses a kind of natural language programming. For instance, this is I7 code: [quote]‣Martha is a woman in the Vineyard. ‣The cask is either customs sealed, liable to tax or stolen goods. ‣The prevailing wind is a direction that varies. ‣The Old Ice House overlooks the Garden. ‣A container is bursting if the total weight of things in it is greater than its breaking strain. [/quote] That being said, I don't believe the language is ready for screens to be set up in any way other than a more or less straight text adventure. But it would be fairly easy for you to pick up and start making stuff with. Before Inform 7, there was Inform 6. Inform 6 does not use any NLP, and the code looks like code. However, you can compile Inform 6 code into a virtual machine <i>different</i> than the one Infocom used, called "Glulx." If you use that spec, you can do all sorts of crazy shit with the screen. I haven't programmed in Inform in years, however, so I would not be much help. The last language I should mention is the one I use every day. It is called <a href="http://www.generalcoffee.com">Hugo</a>, and I can tell you about how it relates to what you've specced out, because I am most familiar with it. Let's say you want a screen window with the maze you are in, then the monster you encounter, and then some stats. You can definitely do this in Hugo. Let me give you an example from my current work in progress: <a href="http://lh4.google.com/robb.sherwin/R0O-SkxyFlI/AAAAAAAAAWs/711Z7mUJ_0M/s800/czk-ss-20071114-01.jpg">Pic!</a> All I am doing here is keeping track of a character window (the left one) the graphic for the current room I am in, and then a bunch of miscellaneous text shit to the right. The only real demand for Hugo is that the text input window is at the very bottom. And of course, if you want to forgo graphics all together, there is less stuff to worry about. For non-graphics stuff, you basically want the following: - A set of room objects for the player character ant to move around in - An automap, which Hugo supports as an extension... it's kind of crappy, but it does exist. - A combat engine (I wrote one that handles hit points and damage rolls and so forth for Necrotic Drift, I think it is fairly reuseable) - Classes and object for the monsters you'll face. You'd basically make up your monsters like this: class monster { type monster hitpoints 20 maximumhitpoints 20 attackadjustment 5 damage 12 speed 5 } monster UnmedicatedSysop "crazy asshole" { ! Use the class default variables, except for the following ! Oh, and ! is a comment in Hugo hitpoints 40 damage 6 speed 1 long_desc { "This crazy asshole has the look of madness in every cell of his body! He's completely off his meds, run for your fucking lives before he deletes you all!" } before { xobject DoGive { if object = meds { "\"Thank you,\" he says. \"I guess things aren't so bad after all.\"" } else { "He deletes it!" remove object } } ... And you can just populate your enemies in similar fashion. [quote]And on the heels of that, if such an engine exists and you are intrigued by my premise above, would you be interested in collaborating on turning it into a full-fledged game?[/quote] I think the premise sounds like a lot of fun, but you know what, I am booked until at least February as I try to complete the game in that screenshot. I am going to try to sell it, which I am sure will be a huge financial disaster, but I can't tell myself anything. I've already started the process for the second mortgage, to just stay above water. That being said, I would be happy to get a game engine started for you in Hugo. Something like an example room, a combat engine, a player character, some enemies, that sort of thing. I am not practiced enough in any of the other text game languages to be useful there, but I use Hugo every day. Plus, Hugo runs on Windows, DOS, Linux, a Mac and an Amiga with a single compile. Would a starting point like that be useful? Once you get started and see how I lay things out, I am very positive that you'd be able to take over and flesh it out into a real and enjoyable game. the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey![/quote]