Text Adventure Maker, Take 27

27 is just a number I pulled out of my hat.  I really have no idea how many times I’ve made or attempted to make this project.  I even have a historical one on the website right now. The old one never made it very far, mainly because I was storing everything in a database, and the database was getting complicated, and all edit actions were happening on the server and that was getting very complex as well.

And it was named “Dungeon Delver”, because “Text Adventure Maker” sounded too lame, and still sounds too lame. The current incarnation is called “Adventure Maker“.

It is done entirely in JavaScript, a phrase which amuses me. None of the things I’ve written in JavaScript are “entirely” in JavaScript.  At the very least some HTML is involved, and almost always some CSS.

At the moment, a person can create directions, portals, items, and locks.  The complete set of entities includes traps, monsters, epilogues, rooms, roomportals, roommonsters, roomitems, a character, and an introduction.

The concept dates back to my time of programming in TRS-80 CoCo2 BASIC. I had made a similar text adventure maker after being inpired by the Adventure Construction Set for the Commodore 64.

This time, however, the “text based” interface won’t be as it was those years ago, when I had implemented a “VERB NOUN” parser. In JavaScript land, I can make buttons with words on them instead.

This project is getting me repracticed in JavaScript, which may lead to me doing some more WidgetBoxing. Dunno.

Anyway, its a fun toy to play with.

HamQuest Submitted

Today, I finished up those few bug fixes for HamQuest, put together a PAD file, and submitted it to softpedia.

Anymore, I find myself just wanting to have something *RELEASED*. For a long, long time, I’ve been sitting in my cobwebby little corner of the internet, sharing games with a handful of people.  Today was another step in the direction of changing that.

I’m not ever after money this time. HamQuest has been released for free, which is a good thing considering it isn’t all that spectacular of a game.

I also joined a roguelike forums. I’m branching out.

HamQuest Known Problems

So, HQ has been in playtest for a few days, and I have been testing it as well.  Thus far, I have found or reasoned out the following problems:

1. opening a save file changes the current directory such that starting a new game will cause a crash.
2. the game can be rendered unwinnable if a teleporter is placed in the way of a door (on either side) if the dead end contains a megaham or the exit.
3. there is some weirdness involving creatures that are on the edges of the screen and when the player enters the screen on that square.  in play, moving around typically fixes this(the monster reappears), but saving the game at this point would cause a creature to disappear entirely when the game is reloaded.
4. each turn, the player rolls his speed on 2d6.  each move he makes gives the creatures a proportional number of moves. if he rolls low, this means that the other monsters can get multiple moves to his single move, which means he can be hit numerous times in between his moves by the same creature. he can easily die, and ham only gets eaten at the beginning of a move, not in response to creature hits, so the player can die with ham uneaten.

None of these are terribly hard to fix, thankfully, but I do want to get this round of issues fixed up prior to putting HamQuest out on softpedia and other software submission sites. I’m even using the “publish” features of VC#2005Express to make a neat installer that checks for .NET 2.0 and installs it if it isn’t there (unlikely in the crowd I’m catering to, but it is good to have).

Since my last post, it has become abundantly clear that I’ll need to make my own homebrew game mechanics.

And there are a number of other features I’ll need to add to the current game before I can call it “complete”.  These include:

• creature spawning – currently once a room is cleared out, that’s it, you never see another creature in it again. with random spawnings of creature (depending on the number of turns have taken place since the player last visited the room), this’ll increase difficulty a bit
• marking the minimap – currently the only room on the minimap that is marked is the player location. i would like to include marks for creatures still present, treasure still present, and teleporters present.
• timer – it’ll just record how long it takes, so people can brag about how quickly they get through the maze. or die.
• sound effects – hopefully this can be done without being too obnoxious, and without adding a lot to the footprint. likely I will need to do a “sound pack” type of thing, and release the soundless version as well. also, this means a new option on the menu.

and there’s an even longer list of things i’d *LIKE* to put it, but I’m not going to.