6 ms·

This is why text-based games are king. One dot release and we're seeing a mountain of new features. I've always dreamed of getting together a big budget to mak

by hodwik 11y ago

This is why text-based games are king. One dot release and we're seeing a mountain of new features. I've always dreamed of getting together a big budget to make a text adventure (e.g. Zork) of incredible scope, both in depth and "interactibility" -- a complex object typologies system, bring in learning chat bots for NPCs, and a system where users can add new objects, rooms and descriptions while they play, a complete object relational system (so it can tell "on", from "next to", from "above"), a very complete state system and so on. Perhaps an "adjectives system", so it knows a huge amount of adjectives relating to any one object, and can generate simple novel sentences about that object on repeat views. I think that at some point someone will be crazy enough to do it, and it's going to be most excellent.

isxek 11y ago
There were attempts at implementing some of what you suggested - here's one: https://www.guncho.com/ https://www.guncho.com/
- jplur 11y ago
  So Guncho interfaces a mud server to inform7 runtimes? I used inform7's function dispatching as the basis for a python MUD engine, fun stuff - https://github.com/selfsame/mud.tilde.town https://github.com/selfsame/mud.tilde.town
macintux 11y ago
How would this be substantively different from Muds?
- hodwik2 11y ago
  Right, yes, some of these features were added to various MUDs with some amount of success. The big difference I'm arguing for is scope, and engineering. If you have NPC chat bots that can learn, and an adjectives and typologies system for object, combine them so that chat bots can talk about objects adjectives and typologies. That sort of thing, really engineer the hell out of it. In the end it would all be a massive NLP problem. As major advances in NLP happen the possibilities for MUDs is massive.
  - dkersten 11y ago
    Some of the more modern MUDs are pretty advanced. I was reading a bunch of stuff by the GodWars 2 guy and he has some pretty cool features (eg the areas are very dynamic). Not the same scope as DF, of course, but still surprisingly fancy. There's still a lot of room for more, though :) I'd personally love to see or make something like what you describe too... I even started tinkering with my own home grown little MUD server written in Clojure, where I had intended to try out some fancy ideas... but lost interest because it would take a huge time investment and I'd be the only player in a multiplayer environment - maybe a single player game like you say would be better after all.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
  It is single player or SUD.
jplur 11y ago
Fun to note DF is a massive voxel simulation that displays a 2D slice as ascii. There's some neat third party visualizers that can hook into it's memory to show more. http://i.imgur.com/PTj1QpL.jpg http://i.imgur.com/PTj1QpL.jpg
- scotty79 11y ago
  Wow. I'd definitely play it with that UI. I often wonder why games almost never have swappable (or even just scriptable) UI-s that could allow player to use shorthands through UI drudgery.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    For many popular roguelike games different tilesets are common. Search for "dwarf fortress tileset".
    - wagglycocks 11y ago
      I'd recommend installing the Lazy Newb Pack instead. It has all the tools and tileset you need preconfigured: http://lazynewbpack.com/ http://lazynewbpack.com/
      - Raphmedia 11y ago
        Now that's what I needed to try this game. Last time I tried, I spent hours and hours downloading tools and never ever got to play the actual game!
        qznc 11y ago
        Also read some introductions. Some tips like "no aquifer" for your first settlement really ease it. http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Quickstart_guide http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Quickstart_gui...
  - zyxley 11y ago
ajuc 11y ago
Making it a text game instead of minecraft-like would limit the audience and save next to nothing in development time IMHO.
- hodwik2 11y ago
  At the very beginning of Zork you are wandering through the forest. At one point, after branching around for a while you hear a bird singing above. If you say 'climb the tree' you read "You are about ten feet above the ground nestled among some large branches. The nearest branch above you is beyond your reach." If you 'climb higher' you see "On the branch is a small birds nest. " If you look in the nest, "In the bird's nest is a large egg encrusted with precious jewels, apparently scavenged somewhere by a childless songbird. The egg is covered with fine gold inlay and ornamented in lapis lazuli and mother-of-pearl. Unlike most eggs, this one is hinged and has a delicate looking clasp holding it closed. The egg appears extremely fragile." If you open the egg roughly, "There is a golden clockwork canary nestled in the egg. It seems to have recently had a bad experience. The mountings for its jewel-like eyes are empty, and its silver beak is crumpled. Through a cracked crystal window below its left wing you can see the remains of intricate machinery. It is not clear what result winding it would have, as the mainspring appears sprung." If you wind it, "There is an unpleasant grinding noise from inside the canary." If you open the egg gently, "The canary chirps, slightly off key, an aria from a forgotten opera. From out of the greenery flies a lovely song bird. It perches on a limb just over your head and opens its beak to sing. As it does so, a beautiful brass bauble drops from its mouth, bounces off the top of your head, and lands glimmering in the grass. As the canary winds down, the song bird flies away." When I found that as a 7 year old, sitting in the dark after everyone in my family had gone to bed, peering into the screen of my 286, I knew that text adventures are the only game worth making.
  - moultano 11y ago
    Check out 80 days if you haven't already. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inkle.eightydays&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inkle.eigh... It has lots of wonderful text.
eropple 11y ago
> One dot release and we're seeing a mountain of new features. A "dot release" (who really cares about numbering schemes?) that took ten months and included a number of incremental and ultimately minor features--yes, they sound very cool, but having played it last night they don't change the way the game plays all that much. I like games like this quite a lot, but this is the same cheetodusting that makes people take Linux-on-the-desktop people with all the unseriousness they demand.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  Can you explain what you mean? Cheeto dust is bright orange goop that sticks to your fingers. I don’t understand how it relates to “ultimately minor” new game features or “unserious Linux people”.
  - eropple 11y ago
    I figured it'd be obvious in context, but if you've never had somebody way, way too into something and trying to pump up its importance get all spittle-flecked and food-spewy (literal Cheetos, in the case I most vividly recall) at you in person...well, I envy you. =)
- metalliqaz 11y ago
  "cheetodusting" -- I don't believe I've ever seen that verb before.
- thoth 11y ago
  >A "dot release" (who really cares about numbering schemes?) DF numbers its releases differently than most software. The developers made a list of features ("core components") they would like to implement and the version number increases for each one finished. So a "dot release" for DF means a significant new subsystem was added. v0.42.1 translates to 42 core components implemented, 1 minor release. The leading 0 means "less than 100 core components finished".
  - eropple 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
blinks 11y ago
I highly recommend looking into Inform7, effectively a text adventure IDE (though the community tends to call it "interactive fiction"). The language is a bit odd, and attempts to "read like English", but it provides so much scaffolding I feel like it's worth it.
- douche 11y ago
  I used to play around with Inform 6 when I was starting to program. It was an interesting step up from QBasic, and they had a really great tutorial that stepped you through writing a William Tell based story. I never could get the hang of Inform 7, the syntax is just too free-form, and I couldn't work out how to get things right.
qznc 11y ago
It is not what you wish for interactibility, but you might enjoy http://seltani.net/ http://seltani.net/
shostack 11y ago
Case in point--I just got back into DragonRealms last night for the first time in over a decade now that they have a F2P option. I thought I'd just spend an hour playing around in The Crossing and killing some rats with my warrior mage, and that turned into three hours where I mostly was trying to remember where things were and running branches back and forth to Mags to make some starter scratch. But in those three hours I felt infinitely more addicted and immersed than I did in playing many more hours of Elder Scrolls Online, WoW, etc. While I need to find some ways of tweaking the Stormfront client more, there is truly something to be said from requiring imagination to enjoy the game.

by hodwik 11y ago

isxek 11y ago

There were attempts at implementing some of what you suggested - here's one: https://www.guncho.com/ https://www.guncho.com/

jplur 11y ago
So Guncho interfaces a mud server to inform7 runtimes? I used inform7's function dispatching as the basis for a python MUD engine, fun stuff - https://github.com/selfsame/mud.tilde.town https://github.com/selfsame/mud.tilde.town

macintux 11y ago

How would this be substantively different from Muds?

hodwik2 11y ago
Right, yes, some of these features were added to various MUDs with some amount of success. The big difference I'm arguing for is scope, and engineering. If you have NPC chat bots that can learn, and an adjectives and typologies system for object, combine them so that chat bots can talk about objects adjectives and typologies. That sort of thing, really engineer the hell out of it. In the end it would all be a massive NLP problem. As major advances in NLP happen the possibilities for MUDs is massive.
- dkersten 11y ago
  Some of the more modern MUDs are pretty advanced. I was reading a bunch of stuff by the GodWars 2 guy and he has some pretty cool features (eg the areas are very dynamic). Not the same scope as DF, of course, but still surprisingly fancy. There's still a lot of room for more, though :) I'd personally love to see or make something like what you describe too... I even started tinkering with my own home grown little MUD server written in Clojure, where I had intended to try out some fancy ideas... but lost interest because it would take a huge time investment and I'd be the only player in a multiplayer environment - maybe a single player game like you say would be better after all.
0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
It is single player or SUD.

jplur 11y ago

Fun to note DF is a massive voxel simulation that displays a 2D slice as ascii. There's some neat third party visualizers that can hook into it's memory to show more. http://i.imgur.com/PTj1QpL.jpg http://i.imgur.com/PTj1QpL.jpg

scotty79 11y ago
Wow. I'd definitely play it with that UI. I often wonder why games almost never have swappable (or even just scriptable) UI-s that could allow player to use shorthands through UI drudgery.
- kbenson 11y ago
  For many popular roguelike games different tilesets are common. Search for "dwarf fortress tileset".
  - wagglycocks 11y ago
    I'd recommend installing the Lazy Newb Pack instead. It has all the tools and tileset you need preconfigured: http://lazynewbpack.com/ http://lazynewbpack.com/
    - Raphmedia 11y ago
      Now that's what I needed to try this game. Last time I tried, I spent hours and hours downloading tools and never ever got to play the actual game!
      - qznc 11y ago
        Also read some introductions. Some tips like "no aquifer" for your first settlement really ease it. http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Quickstart_guide http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Quickstart_gui...
- zyxley 11y ago

ajuc 11y ago

Making it a text game instead of minecraft-like would limit the audience and save next to nothing in development time IMHO.

hodwik2 11y ago
At the very beginning of Zork you are wandering through the forest. At one point, after branching around for a while you hear a bird singing above. If you say 'climb the tree' you read "You are about ten feet above the ground nestled among some large branches. The nearest branch above you is beyond your reach." If you 'climb higher' you see "On the branch is a small birds nest. " If you look in the nest, "In the bird's nest is a large egg encrusted with precious jewels, apparently scavenged somewhere by a childless songbird. The egg is covered with fine gold inlay and ornamented in lapis lazuli and mother-of-pearl. Unlike most eggs, this one is hinged and has a delicate looking clasp holding it closed. The egg appears extremely fragile." If you open the egg roughly, "There is a golden clockwork canary nestled in the egg. It seems to have recently had a bad experience. The mountings for its jewel-like eyes are empty, and its silver beak is crumpled. Through a cracked crystal window below its left wing you can see the remains of intricate machinery. It is not clear what result winding it would have, as the mainspring appears sprung." If you wind it, "There is an unpleasant grinding noise from inside the canary." If you open the egg gently, "The canary chirps, slightly off key, an aria from a forgotten opera. From out of the greenery flies a lovely song bird. It perches on a limb just over your head and opens its beak to sing. As it does so, a beautiful brass bauble drops from its mouth, bounces off the top of your head, and lands glimmering in the grass. As the canary winds down, the song bird flies away." When I found that as a 7 year old, sitting in the dark after everyone in my family had gone to bed, peering into the screen of my 286, I knew that text adventures are the only game worth making.
- moultano 11y ago
  Check out 80 days if you haven't already. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inkle.eightydays&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inkle.eigh... It has lots of wonderful text.

eropple 11y ago

> One dot release and we're seeing a mountain of new features. A "dot release" (who really cares about numbering schemes?) that took ten months and included a number of incremental and ultimately minor features--yes, they sound very cool, but having played it last night they don't change the way the game plays all that much. I like games like this quite a lot, but this is the same cheetodusting that makes people take Linux-on-the-desktop people with all the unseriousness they demand.

jacobolus 11y ago
Can you explain what you mean? Cheeto dust is bright orange goop that sticks to your fingers. I don’t understand how it relates to “ultimately minor” new game features or “unserious Linux people”.
- eropple 11y ago
  I figured it'd be obvious in context, but if you've never had somebody way, way too into something and trying to pump up its importance get all spittle-flecked and food-spewy (literal Cheetos, in the case I most vividly recall) at you in person...well, I envy you. =)
metalliqaz 11y ago
"cheetodusting" -- I don't believe I've ever seen that verb before.
thoth 11y ago
>A "dot release" (who really cares about numbering schemes?) DF numbers its releases differently than most software. The developers made a list of features ("core components") they would like to implement and the version number increases for each one finished. So a "dot release" for DF means a significant new subsystem was added. v0.42.1 translates to 42 core components implemented, 1 minor release. The leading 0 means "less than 100 core components finished".
- eropple 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

blinks 11y ago

I highly recommend looking into Inform7, effectively a text adventure IDE (though the community tends to call it "interactive fiction"). The language is a bit odd, and attempts to "read like English", but it provides so much scaffolding I feel like it's worth it.

douche 11y ago
I used to play around with Inform 6 when I was starting to program. It was an interesting step up from QBasic, and they had a really great tutorial that stepped you through writing a William Tell based story. I never could get the hang of Inform 7, the syntax is just too free-form, and I couldn't work out how to get things right.

qznc 11y ago

It is not what you wish for interactibility, but you might enjoy http://seltani.net/ http://seltani.net/

shostack 11y ago

Case in point--I just got back into DragonRealms last night for the first time in over a decade now that they have a F2P option. I thought I'd just spend an hour playing around in The Crossing and killing some rats with my warrior mage, and that turned into three hours where I mostly was trying to remember where things were and running branches back and forth to Mags to make some starter scratch. But in those three hours I felt infinitely more addicted and immersed than I did in playing many more hours of Elder Scrolls Online, WoW, etc. While I need to find some ways of tweaking the Stormfront client more, there is truly something to be said from requiring imagination to enjoy the game.