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making a text adventure

QueBert

QueBert

Lifer
I use to love text adventure games, and I made a couple with AGT, it's an old DOS program but it did work in Windows 98. I fired it up and got an error, I'm assuming it's not y2k ready, the program was discontinued like 13 years ago. Googling turns up a bunch, but I'm wondering what's good. I don't have programming knowledge, I can learn to comprehend a scripting language if it's not too involved. I don't need graphics or music, just want to create a good ole text adventure game.

 
(I do not do much scripting, so I am only commenting on programming languages)
(assuming that a text based adventure game is all that you want to do) BASIC is very easy for that kind of thing and should be fine. I wrote some text based adventure games in junior high with qbasic.

If you are planning on learning other programming languages and/or eventually 2D / 3D programming, I would suggest JAVA since its syntax and paradigm (OO) are both modern and it has official 2D graphics support along with semi-official 3D support.
 
There are text adventure engines already out there if all you want to do is make a text adventure. Just find a newer one that works with Windows or use Dosbox.

If you're doing this for the fun of programming, maybe you should ask in the Programming section of the forum.
 
no programing here BladeVenom, I know there are dozens of engines out there, I was hoping somebody had tried a couple and have a recomendation. ADRIFT gets a lot of praise but it cost money, I'd like to stay free. The few free ones I've tried recently are pretty complex and not user friendly.
 
Found Inform 7, looks pretty involved but not crazy complicated to use. Will start work on the Epic Fail text adventure today, with a name like that it'll probably be an Epic Fail of a game lol. I'll try to make it interesting by incorporating some of the more colorful AT people on it like CasioTech and a few others. Suggestions on who else to have in it? I know making this will be a huge waste of time but I'm bored and it's something different to do 🙂
 
Originally posted by: QueBert
I use to love text adventure games, and I made a couple with AGT, it's an old DOS program but it did work in Windows 98. I fired it up and got an error, I'm assuming it's not y2k ready, the program was discontinued like 13 years ago. Googling turns up a bunch, but I'm wondering what's good. I don't have programming knowledge, I can learn to comprehend a scripting language if it's not too involved. I don't need graphics or music, just want to create a good ole text adventure game.
Click to expand...

Any language would work. Basic even.

The jist:

Put your "map" in an array. Each row will represent a room number. Each of the six columns will represent a direction (north, s, e, w, up, down). If the value stored is a 0 you can't go there. Any other value represents the room number that you'll end up in if you go there.

Make a second one dimensional array to hold the strings giving the room descriptions.
Make another one that holds objects, monsters etc.

For input just make a parser that grabs "verbs" like go, walk, pick up, drop, attack, grabs the following noun and sends the noun off to the appropriate verb function/subroutine.


You might want to hunt around for some "construction sets" though. I was pretty fond of ZZT. Also, games like Angband are open source and have incredibly well documented code that you can mod.

 
Originally posted by: irishScott
You do know about DOSBox Right?
http://www.dosbox.com/
Click to expand...

I do, but it totally slipped my mind. I ran it and AGT sure enough works, probably would be better off making it in Inform 7 so anyone can play it - errr.... assuming I finish it and there's a single person interested in playing a text adventure called Epic Fail!

lol.
 
If you are a good writer and it turns out to be funny (I assume it's going to be funny with a name like Epic Fail) then I would be interested.

Woot! This is my 1000th post 🙂
 
haha you assume it's gonna be funny because of the name? It might be a true example of an Epic Fail, it will have a lot of references to ATOT threads so knowledge of ATOT will greatly enhance the experience. I'm learning this Inform 7 program and from there I can get into seeing if I can make a funny game *shrug*
 
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