Text Based Game Idea...How can I do this...need help

[GameboyReviewer]

I need some help, I'm kinda new to the 2600 programming world and just completed my first game that I'm working on putting in cart form. Well my question is that I just seen The Dark Mage and I thought it was freaken' brilliant and love text based games such as zork and would love to make a text based horror game for the 2600 and have no clue how to start it. If anyone here knows how to do this please help, i'm stuck in between a rock and a man eating shark thats out for blood because I killed it's entire family. Lol, jk I have no clue how to start this, haha I know its lame. Well if any one out there knows how to do this please, thank you, you guys.

[A Sprite]

I need some help, I'm kinda new to the 2600 programming world and just completed my first game that I'm working on putting in cart form. Well my question is that I just seen The Dark Mage and I thought it was freaken' brilliant and love text based games such as zork and would love to make a text based horror game for the 2600 and have no clue how to start it. If anyone here knows how to do this please help, i'm stuck in between a rock and a man eating shark thats out for blood because I killed it's entire family. Lol, jk I have no clue how to start this, haha I know its lame. Well if any one out there knows how to do this please, thank you, you guys.

 

I'd love to help, but I'm not even sure what you're asking. Right now, you've given us a blank slate to project our ideas into...for instance, my own first thought was that nobody's ever done a text based game where the idea is that if you eat your own flesh, you can regain health. Of course, you'd bleed, and that might make it hard to hide. And what would you eat? What can you afford to lose, just to keep playing the game?

 

Where do you find the tools to do it?

 

It's survival horror gameplay at it's most pure.

 

But that's just off the top of my head.

 

We could fill an entire thread with random ideas. I doubt it's the answer you sought.

 

So please, tell us first what you have in mind so far for this project?

Edited December 15, 2008 by A Sprite

[newcoleco]

I'm not an Atari programmer, and not really a fan of text adventures, but I did program a few. Just to name one, I've started a translation of a text adventure to be played for the colecovision based on a listing for a vintage computer.

 

To put a lot of text into a small ROM space, you need compression and if you are not familiar with some compression technics like dictionnary compression, you should read about them.

 

For the engine itself, I like spliting the coding into many parts, each one for a specific action and one for the general storyline. This way each section deal with the logical flags and values needed to get the special objects or events when it should be. The keys and other objects with only two states : have it or not, I use flags TRUE-FALSE which can be represented as a single bit of information in memory. So, to set and test each flag, it's fairly easy with binary operators, and you can set 8 of these TRUE-FALSE flags into a single byte.

 

Whatever the way you program your text adventure, feel free to share your developments with us.

 

Have fun!

[128bytes]

I need some help, I'm kinda new to the 2600 programming world and just completed my first game that I'm working on putting in cart form. Well my question is that I just seen The Dark Mage and I thought it was freaken' brilliant and love text based games such as zork and would love to make a text based horror game for the 2600 and have no clue how to start it. If anyone here knows how to do this please help, i'm stuck in between a rock and a man eating shark thats out for blood because I killed it's entire family. Lol, jk I have no clue how to start this, haha I know its lame. Well if any one out there knows how to do this please, thank you, you guys.

 

Do a search on this forum for Chris++ and his excellent text-based game called Fork -- all shall be revealed.

 

Or if you are lazy just click this link

Edited December 15, 2008 by 128bytes

[sandmountainslim]

Do a search on this forum for Chris++ and his excellent text-based game called Fork -- all shall be revealed.

 

Or if you are lazy just click this link

 

Everytime I try to run Fork it crashes with Stella.

Wp

[128bytes]

Do a search on this forum for Chris++ and his excellent text-based game called Fork -- all shall be revealed.

 

Or if you are lazy just click this link

 

Everytime I try to run Fork it crashes with Stella.

Wp

 

There are lots of different Frotz environments to run text games -some may not conflict - heck, I played it on my Palm Treo phone!

[supercat]

Everytime I try to run Fork it crashes with Stella.

 

I don't think it's a 2600 game.

[Impaler_26]

Everytime I try to run Fork it crashes with Stella.

Wp

Fork is not a 2600 game. Just run "WinFrotz.exe" and load the "Fork.z5" file under "File --> Open New Story".