Porting Bioshock to the Plus 4?

[Frozone212]

I've made a test demo on the trs80. How does it look?

Bioshock test.cas

[bjonte]

Multi Load?

Divide the game into levels, store them separately on disk and load each one when you are about to play it.

[Frozone212]

thanks

[+OLD CS1]

11 hours ago, Frozone212 said:

I'm not touch TI's basic. It's too slow and the TMS99000 is way too complex

[carlsson]

I think programming language is one of your least concerns, so is the choice of target platform unless you have a combo you already know very well.

 

Which kind of TRS-80 is that file intended for? I tried to mount it with TRS80GP but it complains about the file header is corrupted. I managed to open it as a file in Emacs so I can see you have some text content, but not the code flow.

[jhd]

On 4/4/2022 at 12:10 AM, Frozone212 said:

Would Forth be an option? or is that not applicable for text adventures?

 

If you think that BASIC is complicated, stay FAR away from Forth!

 

Personally, I have coded text adventure games in BASIC and (a little bit) in Pascal. There are many, many guidebooks available for the former. Several examples can be found here: https://commodore.bombjack.org/generic/generic-books-games.htm

 

Depending on your target platform, there are specialty languages and packages available. These range from Inform to the Adventure Construction Set. The more flexible a package, the more complex it will be to use. Some systems are better documented than others. I tried to use AdvSys once, but the poor state of the documentation put me off. 

[bjonte]

Adventures can be made in a Z-machine also to get all that text parsing stuff for free. Play back in Ozmoo on many platforms.

[Frozone212]

How though. I don't want to learn an entirely new programming language. I'm a writer, I write using plain english (I.E no syntax errors)

[Frozone212]

I'm trying to download Ozmoo but All i get is a source file. What do I do with it? I'm on windows 10

[Frozone212]

I'm not doing all this. How hard is it to write a story on word, convert that to basic and load it?

 

I'm NOT a programmer, I'm barely even that!

 

sheesh

[Casey]

What good would a document be as a BASIC program? 

[Frozone212]

by convert, I mean run it through a Z machine interpreter, then copy/paste that code into an IDE and build the program

[bjonte]

You make a z-code file. Go to https://www.microheaven.com/ozmooonline/ and upload it. Select target platform and press Build. You should then receive a disk image with the game. A bit slow to iterate like this but it’s as simple as it gets. But if you aren’t going to learn a new language you can forget it.

[+OLD CS1]

3 hours ago, Frozone212 said:

I'm NOT a programmer, I'm barely even that!

Then you need to either become a programmer or collaborate with someone who is a programmer who is capable of translating your ideas into a program.  Otherwise, you are pissing into the wind.

[carlsson]

Draw up a tree of nodes with situations and exits, much like Build Your Adventure books. It won't be a full fledged text adventure, but easier to turn into a program and gives you full artistic freedom. If that sounds too hard, perhaps skip the idea of making computer games entirely.

[jhd]

13 hours ago, Frozone212 said:

I'm not doing all this. How hard is it to write a story on word, convert that to basic and load it?

 

Sadly, the technology to do this does not (yet) exist. 

[Laner]

Ozmoo only packages up a z-code interpreter and data file into a disk or prg image; thats the part that will let you take a pre-existing z-code story and make it Plus/4 compatible.

 

It does not allow you to create the adventure itself - that's where the real work lies. 

 

You would need to create the story (plot, items, descriptions, logic, etc.) first. Something like PunyInform - https://www.vintageisthenewold.com/punyinform-a-new-library-for-writing-text-adventures-for-old-computers -  is reasonably easy to manage for a non-programmer. 

 

While it's simple to understand, creating a text adventure of any sort of complexity is going to be a very involved process.   I am not a programmer, however I was was able to recreate my home in PunyInform in a few hours.  But there was no plot or environment manipulation to speak of, which is where the real work lies.

 

--

 

If you wanted to go the choose your own adventure route rather than a proper Infocom-style text adventure, there are tools such as Twine - https://twinery.org/ - that can help.  No idea if it's possible to port that work to a Plus/4 though.

Edited April 6 by Laner

[Frozone212]

I apologize for the wait, this is the demo.

 

This is also what the full game will be, no graphics, full text

(unless someone is willing to help with that, I suck at art)

bioshock (demo).d64

[Chris+++]

On 4/10/2022 at 8:47 PM, Frozone212 said:

I apologize for the wait, this is the demo.

 

This is also what the full game will be, no graphics, full text

(unless someone is willing to help with that, I suck at art)

bioshock (demo).d64 170.75 kB · 4 downloads

 

Good job making some progress. If you're not married to the Plus 4 for this project, consider using Inform 7. I would recommend that for writing text adventures in general, actually, especially for non-programmers. It's not too far from plain English, and the commands are very easy to understand. There are myriad tutorials and examples available online. It might be worth looking into.

 

http://inform7.com/

 

 

[Frozone212]

I'll use Twine. Inform is some ungodly abomination that insists on programming syntax for writing a story. 

[DavidC]

On 5/4/2022 at 6:30 PM, Chris+++ said:

 

Good job making some progress. If you're not married to the Plus 4 for this project, consider using Inform 7. I would recommend that for writing text adventures in general, actually, especially for non-programmers. It's not too far from plain English, and the commands are very easy to understand. There are myriad tutorials and examples available online. It might be worth looking into.

 

http://inform7.com/

 

 

This looks pretty cool!  Thanks for the link. I may give this a shot.  Have a few ideas bouncing around in my head.