5 ms·

I'm in the same boat, being in love with making games but really quite terrible at graphics (and with no real enjoyment for learning either, sadly). I tried pix

I'm in the same boat, being in love with making games but really quite terrible at graphics (and with no real enjoyment for learning either, sadly). I tried pixel art several times, but ended up solving my dilemma with parser interactive fiction instead. I lucked out in that a) I'm an excellent writer and b) I'm obsessed with puzzle-y, simulationist games with a lot of exploration and atmosphere, so parser IF is perfect for me.

Waterluvian 3y ago
If I wanted to write an IF game but needed a very detailed game state (inventory, levelling, stats, etc.) is there a direction you might point me in for an engine or an engine design? I looked at the popular IF engines and they all felt very focused on story and branches and not really on if you need game systems and a lot of state.
- logicprog 3y ago
  > I looked at the popular IF engines and they all felt very focused on story and branches and not really on if you need game systems and a lot of state. If you need complex game states and world models and object simulations and relational stuff, then you definitely want to do parser based interactive fiction instead of hypertext interactive fiction, the latter of which is what it sounds like you looked at. Hypertext interactive fiction isn't really so much a game as a choose your own adventure approach to traditional fiction, whereas parser-based interactive fiction is a lot like a text-based immersive sim like deus ex or system shock — the two major engines have very powerful and in-depth relational world models that can do a lot of impressive things such as simulating the expansion of a gas and its attenuation through rooms or fluid simulation or tying arbitrary things together with ropes. Both of them automatically come with very complete and powerful systems for doing all the stuff you listed by default. The two parser IF systems I'm talking about are Inform 7 and TADS 3. I would personally recommend the latter if you already know how to program, though. Inform is interesting, especially in concept, but it has a huge amount of very serious drawbacks due to its extremely static nature (no dynamic allocation, no creating lists on the fly and appending to them, etc), lack of general programming constructs, and "natural language" syntax, whereas TADS 3 is actually a very excellent little language that's got all the modern amenities and is just a joy to write games in, and has a simply shockingly powerful standard library / world model, a far more deep and extensive one than Inform has even with extensions. It often feel a like everything I could possibly want to model in TADS 3 has either already been done, or is a trivial combination of things. Additionally, TADS 3's documentation is so much better than Inform's I can't even begin to describe it. TADS 3 feels like Ruby/Smalltalk had a baby with C and it specialized in IF. Also, try the adv3Lite library instead of the default standard library — the name is a bit of a misnomer, as it's just as complete as the default one, it just has superior design sensibilities and a huge host of new features stolen from Inform. Adv3Lite adds basically everything thay was good about Inform 7 to TADS 3. Don't let the fact that Inform 7 seems more active or gets more fanfare deter you from TADS. There's a very active little community of tads users that are very eager to help and will answer almost any question you have immediately, and the documentation is so astoundingly excellent I've basically never felt the need for a search engine because everything I want is in one of the three 600 page manuals on different aspects of the language and standard library or in the standard library reference manual. also although tads three the language hasn't been updated or changed since 2012 the compiler is updated and improved regularly.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    Thank you so much for taking the time to provide all this guidance. I definitely missed the boat by not knowing to look for “parser” IF. I’m excited again to know there’s choices out there for this kind of thing.
    - logicprog 3y ago
      Hell yeah! Here's some links: Here's a list of worldsim-heavy, huge parser IF games I've compiled myself: https://ifdb.org/playlist?id=5wvcywn58ojmsxqi&type=wishlist https://ifdb.org/playlist?id=5wvcywn58ojmsxqi&type=wishlist Here's the TADS 3 website: https://tads.org/ https://tads.org/ Here's the adv3Lite and TADS 3 documentation: https://faroutscience.com/adv3lite_docs/ https://faroutscience.com/adv3lite_docs/ An explanation of adv3lite: https://users.ox.ac.uk/~manc0049/TADSGuide/adv3Lite.htm https://users.ox.ac.uk/~manc0049/TADSGuide/adv3Lite.htm The TADS 3 compiler: https://github.com/realnc/frobtads https://github.com/realnc/frobtads My TADS 3 mode for Emacs (has most of the features of the VS Code one, despite not having an LSP, since the VSC one has very simple auto completion): https://github.com/alexispurslane/tads3-mode https://github.com/alexispurslane/tads3-mode The TADS 3 mode for VS Code: https://github.com/toerob/vscode-tads3tools https://github.com/toerob/vscode-tads3tools IF Development Forums (very active and friendly, a few TADS 3 people around, including me, I'm a new regular): https://intfiction.org https://intfiction.org
- em-bee 3y ago
  look at MUDs. some of those are fully programmable. i am most familiar with LPmuds, which are written in LPC, which is a complete programming language. (Pike a general purpose programming language is derived from LPC. and there are also a few small MUD engines written in Pike) though for a standalone game a full MUD may a bit much since they are designed for large words with hundreds or thousands of players. but take a look at the available game engines and see which ones come with decent documentation for you to get started easily.
  - Donckele 3y ago
    Can you recommend any mud “engines” that can be used on a modern linux system which are easy enough to get into (both for users and devs) and battle tested for security?
    - em-bee 3y ago
      i am afraid that this is rather difficult to answer. the first question is where you really want to go with this? some of the issues to consider are: do you want to potentially commercialize the game? that rules out some engines (most notably some LPmuds) because their license only allows noncommercial use. then you have to consider the size of your future game. some MUDs are huge and their code has a long and checkered history. while they are more likely to be battle tested, i don't know if a huge engine would be a good start for a new game because it would prescribe a lot of game mechanics already, and may not be so easy to get started with. personally i would rather opt for a small engine that doesn't have more than basic game mechanics so that you are free to develop your own. but those are most certainly not battle tested, and there are probably quite a few that were started but are now abandoned. finding a small, active and tested engine may not even be possible. i would recommend to actually play and build with a couple of MUDs that are based on potentially interesting engines to familiarize yourself with how it works and see if that is something that you'd be comfortable to work with, and then take it from there.
      - Donckele 3y ago
        Thanks for the response. If you have any links, to where I could start exploring, then I would be grateful.
TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
It’s possible to hire someone on fiverr to make retro pixel sprites for very low cost. I sometimes hire two people, give them the same instructions, then choose the sprites I like better.

Waterluvian 3y ago

If I wanted to write an IF game but needed a very detailed game state (inventory, levelling, stats, etc.) is there a direction you might point me in for an engine or an engine design? I looked at the popular IF engines and they all felt very focused on story and branches and not really on if you need game systems and a lot of state.

logicprog 3y ago
> I looked at the popular IF engines and they all felt very focused on story and branches and not really on if you need game systems and a lot of state. If you need complex game states and world models and object simulations and relational stuff, then you definitely want to do parser based interactive fiction instead of hypertext interactive fiction, the latter of which is what it sounds like you looked at. Hypertext interactive fiction isn't really so much a game as a choose your own adventure approach to traditional fiction, whereas parser-based interactive fiction is a lot like a text-based immersive sim like deus ex or system shock — the two major engines have very powerful and in-depth relational world models that can do a lot of impressive things such as simulating the expansion of a gas and its attenuation through rooms or fluid simulation or tying arbitrary things together with ropes. Both of them automatically come with very complete and powerful systems for doing all the stuff you listed by default. The two parser IF systems I'm talking about are Inform 7 and TADS 3. I would personally recommend the latter if you already know how to program, though. Inform is interesting, especially in concept, but it has a huge amount of very serious drawbacks due to its extremely static nature (no dynamic allocation, no creating lists on the fly and appending to them, etc), lack of general programming constructs, and "natural language" syntax, whereas TADS 3 is actually a very excellent little language that's got all the modern amenities and is just a joy to write games in, and has a simply shockingly powerful standard library / world model, a far more deep and extensive one than Inform has even with extensions. It often feel a like everything I could possibly want to model in TADS 3 has either already been done, or is a trivial combination of things. Additionally, TADS 3's documentation is so much better than Inform's I can't even begin to describe it. TADS 3 feels like Ruby/Smalltalk had a baby with C and it specialized in IF. Also, try the adv3Lite library instead of the default standard library — the name is a bit of a misnomer, as it's just as complete as the default one, it just has superior design sensibilities and a huge host of new features stolen from Inform. Adv3Lite adds basically everything thay was good about Inform 7 to TADS 3. Don't let the fact that Inform 7 seems more active or gets more fanfare deter you from TADS. There's a very active little community of tads users that are very eager to help and will answer almost any question you have immediately, and the documentation is so astoundingly excellent I've basically never felt the need for a search engine because everything I want is in one of the three 600 page manuals on different aspects of the language and standard library or in the standard library reference manual. also although tads three the language hasn't been updated or changed since 2012 the compiler is updated and improved regularly.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Thank you so much for taking the time to provide all this guidance. I definitely missed the boat by not knowing to look for “parser” IF. I’m excited again to know there’s choices out there for this kind of thing.
  - logicprog 3y ago
    Hell yeah! Here's some links: Here's a list of worldsim-heavy, huge parser IF games I've compiled myself: https://ifdb.org/playlist?id=5wvcywn58ojmsxqi&type=wishlist https://ifdb.org/playlist?id=5wvcywn58ojmsxqi&type=wishlist Here's the TADS 3 website: https://tads.org/ https://tads.org/ Here's the adv3Lite and TADS 3 documentation: https://faroutscience.com/adv3lite_docs/ https://faroutscience.com/adv3lite_docs/ An explanation of adv3lite: https://users.ox.ac.uk/~manc0049/TADSGuide/adv3Lite.htm https://users.ox.ac.uk/~manc0049/TADSGuide/adv3Lite.htm The TADS 3 compiler: https://github.com/realnc/frobtads https://github.com/realnc/frobtads My TADS 3 mode for Emacs (has most of the features of the VS Code one, despite not having an LSP, since the VSC one has very simple auto completion): https://github.com/alexispurslane/tads3-mode https://github.com/alexispurslane/tads3-mode The TADS 3 mode for VS Code: https://github.com/toerob/vscode-tads3tools https://github.com/toerob/vscode-tads3tools IF Development Forums (very active and friendly, a few TADS 3 people around, including me, I'm a new regular): https://intfiction.org https://intfiction.org
em-bee 3y ago
look at MUDs. some of those are fully programmable. i am most familiar with LPmuds, which are written in LPC, which is a complete programming language. (Pike a general purpose programming language is derived from LPC. and there are also a few small MUD engines written in Pike) though for a standalone game a full MUD may a bit much since they are designed for large words with hundreds or thousands of players. but take a look at the available game engines and see which ones come with decent documentation for you to get started easily.
- Donckele 3y ago
  Can you recommend any mud “engines” that can be used on a modern linux system which are easy enough to get into (both for users and devs) and battle tested for security?
  - em-bee 3y ago
    i am afraid that this is rather difficult to answer. the first question is where you really want to go with this? some of the issues to consider are: do you want to potentially commercialize the game? that rules out some engines (most notably some LPmuds) because their license only allows noncommercial use. then you have to consider the size of your future game. some MUDs are huge and their code has a long and checkered history. while they are more likely to be battle tested, i don't know if a huge engine would be a good start for a new game because it would prescribe a lot of game mechanics already, and may not be so easy to get started with. personally i would rather opt for a small engine that doesn't have more than basic game mechanics so that you are free to develop your own. but those are most certainly not battle tested, and there are probably quite a few that were started but are now abandoned. finding a small, active and tested engine may not even be possible. i would recommend to actually play and build with a couple of MUDs that are based on potentially interesting engines to familiarize yourself with how it works and see if that is something that you'd be comfortable to work with, and then take it from there.
    - Donckele 3y ago
      Thanks for the response. If you have any links, to where I could start exploring, then I would be grateful.

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago

It’s possible to hire someone on fiverr to make retro pixel sprites for very low cost. I sometimes hire two people, give them the same instructions, then choose the sprites I like better.