Text Based Combat

[chairmonkey4406]

I saw on the internet a Text Based Pong game and I thought it would be fun to do that with combat. Think it would be a silly thing to do on a day off? I can just see it now.... player 2 moves ten feet away from player1, turns, shoots.

[sku_u]

In the days of MUDD it wouldn't be considered silly

[fil300]

No it wouldnt be. The fun of Combat is the moving around and dodging bullets. With a text it be kinda boring.

[SimonTemplar]

It don`t seem any more silly than Zork by infocom....

 

A GIANT TROLL IS SWINGING HIS SWORD AT YOU.

» dodge

 

YOU HAVE BEEN HIT. YOU ARE BLEEDING.

» go west

 

YOU CAN`T GO THAT WAY.

» go east

 

YOU CAN`T GO THAT WAY.

YOU HAVE BEEN HIT AGAIN. YOU ARE DEAD.

 

 

RESTART GAME Yes/No ?

» yes

[NovaXpress]

In my day, sword and sorcery video games only accepted two-word commands and we were GRATEFUL! And we'd walk ten miles in the snow just for one of those cheesy Infocom hint books with the goofy invisible writing.

[chairmonkey4406]

Well a couple weeks ago I walked 2 miles in the blizzard for my copy of Dance Dance Revolution Max 2 and my memory card.

[+Random Terrain]

It don`t seem any more silly than Zork by infocom....

For anyone reading that post who never played Zork and the rest of the Infocom games, the parser could understand whole sentences. But you sure were stuck with two words when you played games by Scott Adams. I think anyone who played Scott Adams games and spent all of those hours trying to figure out what words the games understood is now great at finding stuff using Google.

[Rob Mitchell]

Re: Text Based Combat:

 

I've been hit! I spin violently at a high RPM! Now I am disoriented as I come out of the spin and I am pointed the WRONG direction with the enemy bearing down on me again! I'm hit again! I'm getting dizzy from the spin! I think I'm going to vomit!

 

I'm aimed straight at my enemy .. and suddenly he flips around a wall! How the hell did that happen?

 

The score numbers are starting to flash! That means I have to act fast if I am going to to defeat the enemy. Suddenly I am frozen! I cannot move .. while the environment colors change every 5 seconds. Wow! This is pretty psychedelic!

 

Or of the strange biplane games: That sure is a pretty strange and huge looking Biplane Bomber! All three of us will do a synchronized loop to attack and fire in unison!

 

Text based Combat? Naah!

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

[Dino from Bula]

THE SCORE IS FLASHING. YOU ARE LOSING.

 

>> elbow friend

 

YOUR FRIEND PUNCHES YOU IN THE FACE.

 

YOU ARE LOSING.

 

>> push reset

 

THE GAME STARTS OVER.

 

YOU HAVE 2 MINUTES AND 16 SECONDS.

[NovaXpress]

The Infocom games did indeed accept whole phrases, but if you wrote anything that didn't boil down to a two word command *DO* *THIS* then you were probably going to confuse the program. I always used 2-word commands to save time because there was no advantage to using whole sentences.

 

As I was telling MMF in a nostalgic moment the other day, as a high school freshman my big computer class project was creating a text-adventure game in which the player went through an accurate representation of my high school and was compelled to murder students and teachers BY NAME in a graphically-described fashion. Of course if a kid did this today he would be locked up immediately. In my day, the school thought it was funny and I got an A.

[SimonTemplar]

I am still playing those text-adventures today. Now I`m playing Dragonworld, Witness and Borrowed time. It is a good thing now these games like infocom`s have become public domain so you can download them from some sites and play them on a modern computer.

At the time of the PCjr , these games you had to buy them individually, I remember Dragonworld cost me 89.99....

[pmpddytim]

I still love the old text adventures too. In fact I think they should come out with some new ones for PC. Just think how big of a text adventure you could fit on a dvd ! And the best part .....no more swapping floppies! Ok, maybe I need a little sleep.

 

Tim

[+Random Terrain]

The Infocom games did indeed accept whole phrases, but if you wrote anything that didn't boil down to a two word command *DO* *THIS* then you were probably going to confuse the program.  I always used 2-word commands to save time because there was no advantage to using whole sentences.

I usually used two words too. Probably because of Scott Adams. Speaking of this stuff, I still have my copy of "COMPUTE!'s Guide to Adventure Games" by Gary McGath. I have a quote from that book on this page:

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/gamedesign/re...restarting.html

 

I wanted to make my own text adventures, but I never had the patience. If I ever find a good, easy to use, easy to understand tool for doing that, I might make a small one for the fun of it.

[chairmonkey4406]

I personally don't like text based games because to me, it's just like a virtual chose your own adventure book, not a game. I might like just a quick text based combat though.

[Cootster]

I still love the old text adventures too. In fact I think they should come out with some new ones for PC. Just think how big of a text adventure you could fit on a dvd ! And the best part .....no more swapping floppies! Ok, maybe I need a little sleep.

 

Tim

 

Plenty of people are still making them . . . Mind you, usually only really tiny ones for contests . . . I'm considering learning one of the languages myself . . . http://www.tads.org/

 

Yeah, on a DVD, you could fit a playable IF version of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" Always thought that should exist . . . Might just make it.

[Cootster]

I personally don't like text based games because to me, it's just like a virtual chose your own adventure book, not a game. I might like just a quick text based combat though.

 

On some parody site, don't think it was the Onion, just one of its many unsucessful clones, I once saw an article called "Tandy to Introduce New Text Game Console." Considering all the things that have been converted into the form . . . I predict that the PS3 will be entirely text based and ship with GTA5, as written by Carl Hiassen and Elmore Leonard.

 

Hey, I can dream, can't I? It would allow for the possibility of a truly excellent Discworld game, after all . . .

[Mindfield]

The robot bounds into the room.  "Floyd here now!"

[NovaXpress]

Creating text adventures is one of the easiest programming jobs. I started making them as soon as I learned what an IF/THEN statement was.