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Work in Progress / Project: Abandonment

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Suicidal Sledder
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Joined: 17th Aug 2004
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Posted: 31st Mar 2007 05:12 Edited at: 31st Mar 2007 05:21
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Ever since you were born you have lived in the ancient hamlet of Maplewood. Children ran freely through the streets and most could trace thier lineage back ten generations to the founders of the small town. Woods surrounded the quaint township, providing abundant food, both in vegitation and in wild game.

Then one dark night, a wind blew in from the north. It carried with it a forbidding evil that hung heavy on the sleeping village. You awoke with a start. The darkness felt crushing, and the air felt thick. The usually bright moon was concealed behide a shroud, and the crisp pine air that wafted in from the encircling forest was instead humid, thick, and smelt slightly of burnt leaves.

You sat up in your bed and snatched up the long sword you kept under your bed. You can still remember your father giving it to you as a young boy, and training you in the ways of a warrior. It looked as if the time had come to put the training to practical use.

You crept down the rough hewn stairs, built so many centries ago, like a shadow. The town was unnaturally silent, even for the middle of the night. You crept to the front door and peered cautiously out to the main street that ran through the heart of the town. The windows were dark in every house as far as you could see. If there was anyone that was awake at this hour they would be downtown in the tavern.

You hurried down the lonely streets fighting to keep your fear at bay, as it was threating to spill over to panic. You pulled up short of the towns tavern as you observed the scene before you. The wind howeled through the empty window frames, and the front door had been ripped from one of its hinges so that it hung at an odd angle.

You crept forward steadily to the gaping door frame and peered inside. Surprisingly the intirior appeared to be in normal condition except the fact that there were no patrons to give the building its regular vitality. You stepped into the overcoming darkness and moveed by memory to the bar and sat on one of the three legged stools.

You ran your hand flat along the top of the bar looking for anything of interest and found a piece of paper nailed to the bar with a small dagger. You removed the dagger and placed into your satchel. You took the paper outside into the growing moonlight. It said simply: 'Turn to the left'. You looked to the left and saw nothing of interest. You double checked the note to find that it now said: 'Take two hundred and fifty paces forward'. You did as instructed to find that the slip of paper now read 'Turn to the left' once again... You continued to follow the instructions until you were lost in the thick woods beyond all hope of returning to Maplewood without directions.

This went on for well over three hours, and the very beginnings of the gray dawn were barely illuminating the silvery tree tops. And then you saw it. A massive stone mansion sat in a large estate directly in front of you. You looked at the note which now
read as: 'Welcome to Project: Abandonment. Maplewood belongs to Philip of the Saints unless you dare to enter'. You thought back to the dozens of friends and family members that shared Maplewood with you as a home. You knew they had to be inside this wretched stone prison.


You knew your duty...












Does anyone remember the good ole classic text games that populated the age of the dawn of the home computers? Project: Abandonment is my attempt at recreating one. In this type of game the player reads text which describes his surroundings, and must type in commands such as: Look Lock, Go West, Eat Sandwich, etc... Although it would seem to be frusterating to those who have never played, these types of games are quite entertaining.

Project: Abandonment is of the horror genre, taking place in the aforementioned mansion. Best to play it late at night with the lights off when everyone else has gone to bed.... after that you will probably find yourself hesitant to play before 6 in the afternoon. That's the hope anyway

If anyone so desires I will be more than happy to supply screenshots (I will anyway, but if I have any requests I'll make it a higher priority) and I will also post a working demo whenever I have enough of the game finished to be enjoyable to play

If this appeals to anyones interest then please!!! Feel free to comment! Heck..... even if it DOESNT appeal to your interest then comment anyway and tell me why not

Hope to see Project Abandonment enjoyed by as many people as I think it will be!


Thanks for reading,
-Justin

--STAR RUNNER-- Full game, arcade clone, nice graphics and music, small download!!

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Sven B
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Posted: 31st Mar 2007 14:38
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Quote: "If anyone so desires I will be more than happy to supply screenshots "


Actually, the rules state that screenshots and some progress are a minimum for starting a WIP thread...

It's the programmer's life:
Have a problem, solve the problem, and have a new problem to solve.
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Suicidal Sledder
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Posted: 31st Mar 2007 23:21
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You are correct...... I'll get those ASAP!! Not a whole lot to see though... just a lot of text and the status bar

--STAR RUNNER-- Full game, arcade clone, nice graphics and music, small download!!

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Suicidal Sledder
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Posted: 1st Apr 2007 00:46
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--STAR RUNNER-- Full game, arcade clone, nice graphics and music, small download!!

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GatorHex
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Posted: 1st Apr 2007 02:06 Edited at: 1st Apr 2007 02:21
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Nice, reminds me of my first programming days spent on ye olde Sinclear ZX Spectum 48k with GAC (Graphics Adventure Creator)



use of graphics was optional though. You can't do much with 48k these days.. that's, er.. inflation for ya!

http://www.KumKie.com http://bulldog.servegame.com
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UFO
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Posted: 1st Apr 2007 21:06
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woah! cool!

I think you should make the text brighter, and also, if you are capable, it would be nice if you can say stuff like "Look at furniture" and "Examine furniture" kinda like the game Zork. Because two word adventures aren't as fun. But that's not that important.

Anyway, good luck, and I can't wait until you release a demo!

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Suicidal Sledder
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Posted: 1st Apr 2007 22:58
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Thanks for the enthusiasim!! it will help to motivate me!

The text in game is actually a little brighter than that... i think its actually an optical illusion due to shrinking the image. I think since theres less of the "bright" portion it looks darker. I'm not sure maybe not though. We'll see with the demo

And yes I agree with the 2 word parser not being as fun as 3, 4, or 5 word games. Its a lot harder than you would imagin though, trying to teach a computer to understand english

But just recently (like within the last week) i've had a revelation that i think will allow me to use more than 2 words.




Here's a question though: your going to have a 10 slot inventory with watever u pickup in the game. What do you think would be the best way to use inventory items? I've thought of 2 ways so far:

One would be to use a command like: "use inv key" or "use inv sword on bat"

The second would be to have to equip the stuff like: "Equip sword" <return> "Use sword"

the first keeps it distilled to one command but would be more confusing cuz of the sytax... the second one uses multiple commands and could be frusterating if you wanted to try multiple items on something. Like if u had 3 keys you would need to equip them all before you could use them.


Which would you think would be better. Or if you have a different idea, please share!

thanks so much!

--STAR RUNNER-- Full game, arcade clone, nice graphics and music, small download!!

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Dr Manette
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Posted: 1st Apr 2007 23:34
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I think the first one is much better, not as much to input, plus people are more likely to remember to use an item than to equip it.


BioFox Games...http://www.biofoxgames.com
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Suicidal Sledder
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Posted: 2nd Apr 2007 06:53
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yeah but if something was equipped then you wouldnt need to type so much if you used that item a lot.... but yeah ur probably right.

--STAR RUNNER-- Full game, arcade clone, nice graphics and music, small download!!

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tha_rami
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Posted: 3rd Apr 2007 00:24
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Looks good, don't abandon this project!

No really, it looks fun. I miss text-adventures while I grew up áfter their biggest time of pride.


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Suicidal Sledder
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Posted: 3rd Apr 2007 03:58
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Hey,
We just finished the "blueprints" of the house today. We have the first 3 rooms finished (or at least finished to the BETA phase). How many rooms should there be in the demo? I'm thinking 5-10. I want to give a lot, but not so much that people get tired of waiting for the release and stop following the project. Like showing too much of a movie trailer

Anyway... depending on if my parents let me continue to spend 8 hours a day on the computer or not, the demo should be ready in a week or two! WOOT!

--STAR RUNNER-- Full game, arcade clone, nice graphics and music, small download!!

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Suicidal Sledder
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Posted: 4th Apr 2007 20:21
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In working on the rooms I run into the problem of difficulty. How hard should it be? If anyone has played "Adventures in Serenia" you know what hard is!!! That litterally took my parents (and me!) about 6 months to win, and being popular in the 80s, there were no internet forums to get help on

So should I make this super difficult where the answers to some problems dont make sense, or make it a little easier so that you dont get as frusterated but its a lot shorter? I would like to make it pretty darnned difficult and then when you get stuck just email me.

What ya think?

--STAR RUNNER-- Full game, arcade clone, nice graphics and music, small download!!

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tha_rami
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Posted: 4th Apr 2007 21:48
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Make it hard. Not unlogic, just plain extremely hard. Get people to use creativity and get them frustrated. The good ol' days!


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Suicidal Sledder
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Posted: 4th Apr 2007 22:02
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YES!!! I just didnt want to make it too hard and then have everyone come crying about how my game sux because they cant figure it out. Lol.

And in Adventures in Serenia the answers to some of the problems were so retarded... Like when you had to feed the lion the bread to get past... what the heck kind of lion eats bread??? Lol...

--STAR RUNNER-- Full game, arcade clone, nice graphics and music, small download!!

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Dr Manette
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Posted: 5th Apr 2007 04:09 Edited at: 5th Apr 2007 04:09
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Vegetarian lions

Complexity is good, I know from experience that simple text adventures get boring (all mine are). I'm curious how you're going to set up the rooms, programming wise and description wise.


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Suicidal Sledder
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Posted: 5th Apr 2007 08:51
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The rooms are simply setup as subs... actually GOTOs if you want to split hairs, but i ran into some problems using actual subs so I stuck with gotos. Quasi-code is like this:



thats about it... there are a LOT of arrays since there is so much to keep track of. The description is hardcoded right into the room "sub". If you want more details or even an actual piece of the code id be more than happy to email it to you



--STAR RUNNER-- Full game, arcade clone, nice graphics and music, small download!!

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Dr Manette
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Posted: 5th Apr 2007 22:00
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You're probably going to get some speech on why you shouldn't use gotos. I'll spare you and just give a suggestion. What I've found easy to do is something like this (not tested):


I'm sure there is a better way, but that's the way i've done it.


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Suicidal Sledder
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Posted: 7th Apr 2007 18:59 Edited at: 7th Apr 2007 19:00
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hmm yeah that looks like it would work, and yeah your right about ppl hating gotos. Lol. I like usually hardly ever use gotos except for like restarting a game and menus and crap like that. I used gotos here though for a few reasons, that are kinda hard to explain. Like I wanted to be able to use subs but thats pretty hard since the RETURN would goback to wherever you called the sub from. And one big loop seemed to be like a little complicated. So yeah there are probably better ways to do it, but personally I prefer the gotos

I started working on the first puzzle. It's not listed in the description of the enrtyway above because it wasnt planned then. To the east is like a giant walkin coat closet. inside are 2 racks of coats, one on the right, and one on the left. There are 10 different colors of coats, and each color has 10 different matierals that the coats are made of. Thereby creating a room of 200 coats. Obviously very time consuming to inspect them all, the player has to find a clue to discover which coats has the key


It's a little challenging trying to get the look function to work smoothly since i wrote it with the intentions of only looking at an object once, and not needing to look at an object, and then look at its "sub objects" so to speak.

Anyway... I'll keep you updated

--STAR RUNNER-- Full game, arcade clone, nice graphics and music, small download!!

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