I'm a fan of sierra-style parser games and gave Interactive Fiction a try recently, too. We can use text parsers in AGS and I've been exploring it for a bit.
Simulating a Sierra text parser isn't hard, but may turn off a lot of players. So I tried to enhance my parser so it's possible to add custom words, objects in the world and inventory item names to the parser with a right click. You also can see location names when the parser is open. Additionally, there's a way to perform standard actions with a right click when the parser is deactivated, kind of like in the SCIV games (KQ5).
I've added an Ask/Tell/Say dialog system. You'd enter a conversation with 'talk to' and would have to come up with topics by yourself. A listbox keeps track of important names and topics and can be used to trigger an ask/tell command for the selected topic immediately.
My questions:
-Would anyone mind playing a game with such a text parser where it's up to you if you click your sentence together or just type it?
-What would your parser system look like, what features would you add?
-Would a text parser keep you from playing a game?
That depends. A good parser would really help a game. But Sierra's games always had a rather mediocre parser, so it might as well not be there. If you can type "tell the baker to eat all breads except the thin one, then go east" then it gets interesting. I'd suggest reading up on your Infocom classics, or Legend games, or Z interpreters in general such as WinFrotz.
This is set up like an old sierra game, meaning you'd control the character with the arrow keys or the mouse (QFG2 etc). It's not an IF or pure text game, therefore 'go north' and the likes aren't applicable. You'd just walk out of a room. You can do things like 'eat a pie', 'fart in the baker's general direction', or 'shove the towel up the pipe'.
I could, in theory, make the parser accept two commands in a row, but is it worth the effort for a game like this? (example: 'look at clock, open door' with the ',' seperating the commands)
Screenshot:
(http://www.origamihero.com/shot5.jpg)
No it wouldn't keep me from playing the game. Provided you use the parser in a good way. Meaning:
Having more than eight commands, needs to be used in a clever way. "Fart to the bakers direction" is hillarious! Use that, for starters! Honestly! ;D
By the way, the word list is customizable and just meant to help get sentences together quickly. You could easily add 'fart' to it, if you really wanted. :) 'Use' would only work on standard things like doors. Open and close works on them, too.
The parser has three modes:
1. Normal: Do anything you like, kicking puppies, reading dirty magazines, call beatrice with cell phone, and so on. It's necessary to be somewhat close to the objects in question, otherwise the game will bitch at you for not being close enough. Especially important when talking to somebody or rooms with two or more doors. This is not as touchy as sierra's old games, you just need to be in the general area.
2. Dialog: Initiated by 'talk to (character)'. Allows looking around, asking about things, telling about things and the 'Say' for answering, for example, yes/no questions. You can't move the player character while in dialog mode.
3. Special: If the player is in a special situation, like, say, in a dream sequence or tied to a rich woman's bed. These can also be restricted: No walking around, unable to use hands, etc.
Why not move the player to where he needs to be rather than complaining that he's not close enough? That sounds like something that's potentially quite annoying.
Looks interesting, though.
This is my preffered hybrid gui, personally. I'd definately love to play this more than a typical LEC-style point and clicker, as there's quite a bit more depth possible with parser-driven games.
Having made Gladiator Quest however, I can tell you you ARE going to lose some of your audience. People have grown too accustomed to pointless clickery.
Just make sure you implement shortcuts for the more repeated commands. l door should work as 'look door' and so on. Binding a few game-related repeated commands like QfG 1 and 2 also is a good idea. So if for example there's a lot of gunplay in your game, ctrl-g should parse 'take gun out of holster' automatically, and so on.
Hero Theorem just became 10 times more interesting, for me.
Trumgottist: If you have two doors on a screen and you say 'open door', the game needs to know which one you meant, so I've implemented a distance check for occasions like that. It would make coding the game a lot easier, so I'd really like to keep it.
Helm: Yeah, I'd expect some players to be turned off by a parser-driven game, but those would probably not be the kind of players I'm making the game for, anyway. You did a great job on Gladiator Quest and I'd love to see more AGS parser games.
The idea behind this is to make a small, 'less graphics' and 'more content' version of Hero Theorem; it's a very text heavy game and I want to train my writing skills a little. I still want to make the LEC-like version, but I don't have as much time as I want to for developing games, so I need something I can make fast progress on.
The shortcuts are a good idea and easy to implement, I'll do that.
The reason I want to make a parser game is because I feel they're more involving. Dialogs are a good example: LEC games present you a few options you can choose from while in a parser game you'd have to come up with a topic by yourself. The 'What Is' GUI will offer a little bit of aid along with detailed informations about characters, objects and events.
interaction with an environment, even if it strictly to get information to the player is much more rewarding in parser games. Just clicking 'eye' on everything has an adverse psychological effect for the player. Getting him to think of the environ as a living thing to be explored, and not a collection of hotspots is a very good idea.
In that sense, although having right click as 'look at' like in Quest for Glory 1 and 2 is a wonderful idea which I endorse completely, be sure that a lot of vital information can be found out and accessed through creative exploration of the environment, not just 'looking at' everything, be it through clicks or parsing.
Quote from: Bernie on Sun 19/03/2006 01:18:12
Trumgottist: If you have two doors on a screen and you say 'open door', the game needs to know which one you meant, so I've implemented a distance check for occasions like that. It would make coding the game a lot easier, so I'd really like to keep it.
Which door do you mean, the red door, the small door, the rusty door, the sweet-smelling door or the invisible door?
(and good parsers let you answer that question in a single word...)
One thing I do like about parser games is that there's no pixelhunting. There are slightly too many point-n-click games (including several Sierra classics) where I got stuck due to simply not seeing some small object, that I should have been able to find through a series of "look" statements. Then again, there are several parser games that have crappy descriptions and don't tell you what to look at (such as an infamous puzzle in Space Quest Zero).
See Radiant's post. The extra coding will really be worth it! It'll make the game feel a lot more polished instead of annoying the player.
Radiant/Trungottist: I don't know if I can code this, but I'll give it a go. It'll have to be all non-blocking, too.
Helm: I'll try. Can you name a few games that do that? I'd love to try them.
EDIT - I managed to code it. If the character isn't close enough, the game will detect this, move the character to the location and execute the command again.
Example. Pressing the 'look at' icon on document pile or typing 'look at documents' wields something in the lines of 'the few memos on the top are pretty uninteresting, maybe however there's something more the abundant paperwork in this office'. If then the player types 'browse documents' or 'examine documents' he should get a more thorough description with some more important or relevant information, and maybe a hint about something being underneath the pile of paper. Then if the player types 'look under documents/papers/memos' (which there's no way to do with a point and click LEC style interface) he should perhaps find an item under the pile of paper.
Remember, 'look at' and 'examine' ( l, x ) are and SHOULD be considered different things by good IF. There's one thing to casually inspect something and another to be thorough about it.
Seem's like this might be helpful to what you're trying to do bernie.
http://www.lumpcity.co.uk/~skimbleshanks/Compiled2.rar .
It's Brisby's last project from the release something. Seem's he was going in the same sort of direction as you.
Quote from: Helm on Sun 19/03/2006 13:32:17
Remember, 'look at' and 'examine' ( l, x ) are and SHOULD be considered different things by good IF. There's one thing to casually inspect something and another to be thorough about it.
I've never seen a single IF that treats "look" as different from "examine". Indeed, people tend to use X since most good IFs don't treat "look tree" as a proper sentence (which indeed it isn't; the proper sentence requires a preposition). X is then a shorthand for "L at".
I would love to see more games using text parsers for dialogue in the manner of Starship Titanic (which admittedly many people hated). I think using a parser for interactions can be tiresome, but I often find choosing dialogue options to be extremely limiting, particularly when I'm stuck in a game and I get sick of seeing the same options again and again.
I've never really played with the AGS text parser so I don't know how it would handle flexible conversations.
I do agree though that 'look' and 'examine' should be and were different in all the Infocom titles I've played.
Ali: You can click your words together, almost in a LEC-like fashion. The game also makes spaces between words for you if you didn't put one in, plus there are standard actions you can trigger with point and clicking. Right-click on look at in the word list, right click on the location and press enter (or double click, or hit the enter button) and off you go.
About dialogues: In my system, you'd start out with something like 'ask about alexander', your colleague. If your dialog partner says something interesting, you can dig in deeper. If you were told about 'alexander's hair gel addiction' you can also do 'ask (or tell) about alexander's hair gel addiction' and so on. Sometimes you need to know a few facts before you can go off and ask a question.
Helm: Thanks for the explanation. I've got a few ideas for puzzles already. I also think it's a good idea to make look and examine different. I'm going to add it to the custom verb list by default.
Chicky: That's pretty interesting, thanks for sharing. I've done a few things Rui did already. I miss the lad, I do.
Heh, coding this thing is fun. I think it'll be ready for actual game production soon. I'm gonna enjoy the writing part even more.
Screamsnot!1
(http://www.origamihero.com/shot6.jpg)
As radiant says (we seem to agree quite a bit here), anyone familiar with IF will expect look at and examine to be synonyms. If you want to hide things more, you could make use of either search/look under/look behind or layers (X PHOTOGRAPH gives "It's an old photograph depicting uncle Albert." X ALBERT "The tie Albert is wearing looks familiar." ...).
Screenie is looking nice!
The IFWiki (http://www.ifwiki.org) may also be of interest to you. There's a lot there on the art and craft of creating interactive fiction, and some of it would apply to your game. (Some is even relevant to non-parser driven point and click games.)
No, Helm and Ali are right; "look" and "examine" are traditionally different. "Look" just gives you a description of what you see around you (essentially the "what is" verb of early Scumm games), and is useful mainly for discovering nouns you can interact with. "Examine" actually allows you to study the thing in detail.
You're probably right regarding the ancient games - I have the Infocom Masterpieces CD, but I still haven't finished any of those games. But I think practically all modern games treats examine and look at as synomyms. That's also the default behavior of Inform, which is the IF development system that I'm familiar with. (I also think that's true for the other big systems - TADS and Hugo - but there I'm not certain.)
If you decide to do any such distinctions between similar words, be sure to clue the player in on it carefully. Nobody likes to play "guess the verb". That goes for any puzzle in a parser-based game. The basic rule is that any reasonable synonym should work.
Oh yeah definately put it in the readme or something, that x and l aren't the same. I've played a lot of IF that uses them as synonims, but they clearly aren't and a lot of games would benefit from the two layers of examinaton of an object, a casual and a more intentful one. if you want l and x to be the same, then at least give us 'inspect' or 'search' for more thorough looking around.
Quote from: Snarky on Sun 19/03/2006 18:00:38
No, Helm and Ali are right; "look" and "examine" are traditionally different.
Zork online (http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/infocom/zork1.html) disagrees with you.
So do Advent (http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/), The Hobbit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_%28video_game%29), Adventure Land, Hugo's House of Horrors, and any Sierra classic.
What "traditional" games are you referring to exactly?
</pedant>
Requiring the player to both "look at" and "search" everything is rather redundant, and is akin to many modern games where you have to keep talking to an NPC until they start repeating themselves. A more elegant and thoughtful way of solving it would be to use propositions, or simply reveal additional keywords in the look-description.
(e.g. "look desk" -> "It's a simple desk with a drawer and an inkstain." will cause players to want to look at the inkstain, thus prompting further investigation)
Encouraging user choice in what could and could not be wanting further investigation is a good idea. Not giving everything on plate is a good idea. Hints are nice, lists of keywords are not. Just my opinion.
Trumgottist: Thanks for the link, I'll check it out! :)
Haha, you're making it hard for me to decide. Looks like the opinions part quite a bit here. Well, in my dictionary, examine is closer to inspect and maybe search, so I think I'll make it a synomym of that.
I good example of a hybrid gui with parser would be a greatly unknown game named Time Quest. Available here: http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=1161 I hope this is any help to you.
Timequest unknown? Anyway, Legend took it a step further in Gateway 1 and 2 too. Excellent games all around.
Don't forget Eric the Unready!
For those not familiar, all of these Legend games were basically text adventures, but with a graphical interface. THere was a complete list of words that the parser understood on the side, similar to Bernie's GUI. On the one hand, this ALMOST eliminated guess-the-keyword, since the complete set was listed right there. On the other hand, Bernie's idea sounds a bit more ambitious, if I'm understanding it right, being able to add new keywords/synonyms during the game (right?), or at least not giving ALL the keywords away up front.
Looking forward to seeing this.
HoN
Hehe, Eric the Unready is fun. :)
My game starts out with a basic list, but you can remove or add words at any time. It's just an aid to click sentences together. If there's an item or character name you need to use often, you could add it to that list so you don't have to type it out all the time.
Well, if you're going that way, how about hotkeys or syntax completion?
(note that Legend has an automatic list of all objects in the inventory and all objects visible in the current room; saves a lot of time because in any Z-like engine you cannot interact with anything else anyway)
I'm not sure how I'd implement syntax completion. Hotkeys... well, you can perform standard action with the mouse, I guess that's sort of like hotkeys. Best to give it a go:
http://www.origamihero.com/txt.zip
(This is just a tech demo I threw together and lacks a lot of descriptions.)
How to play:
Control your guy with either the mouse or the arrow keys.
Press space to call the parser, or just start typing. Press enter, click on the enter button or double-click to confirm.
Move the cursor to the top to open the inventory window or access the memory GUI. Move it to the bottom (while parser is off) to access the cursor menu. Click on it to open the parser. Select a cursor and right-click on locations to trigger an action (while parser is off).
While in parser mode, press the right mouse button to add to the parser whatever the mouse is pointing at (room stuff, word list, inventory etc).
Click the white button on the parser GUI to open the 'What is' GUI. You can drag/drop all of those GUIs.
Other keys:
L/R Arrow keys while parser on: Change word list selection
Right Shift: Add selected word from word list
Right Ctrl: Like right mouse button
Enter a dialog with talk to [person]. Now you can use 'Tell about [stuff]' and 'Ask about[stuff]'. 'Say' can be used for answering yes/no question.
Please let me know if you find this thing easy to handle.
Syntax completion? Easy. In on_key_press, whenever TAB is pressed, replace the current word with the first word in the dictionary of which it is a prefix.
sounds interesting, hope to see it in action. 8)
I really like the sound of the idea -- but the important thing is to actually take advantage of the freedom of the text parser by providing responses for the many and varied things that the player can type. There's nothing worse than playing a text parser adventure, only to find that the game only responds to the standard "look at X", "pick up Y" -- in which case you'd may as well just use icons and the mouse.
Of course, developing a game whilst providing responses for all these things is a considerable undertaking; if done well I can imagine that even coding a single room could take many hours to make sure that the game is able to respond relatively intelligently to things that the player could reasonably be expected to try.
Quote from: RadiantSyntax completion? Easy. In on_key_press, whenever TAB is pressed, replace the current word with the first word in the dictionary of which it is a prefix.
Oh my, I still don't understand how I'd go about that. Would you explain this some more, please? I couldnt even figure out how to retrieve a word from the dictionary.
Pumaman: Good point. I already have a few puzzle ideas you couldn't do with a LEC gui. The cursor functions are for basic things only - mostly for getting around, initiate dialogs, picking up and so on. Hotspots are only for general things - a cupboard may have a 'cupboard' hotspot, but its shelves will not. That would be up to the player to figure out. 'Look' would give the player a prod in the right direction in such situations.
A game like that will take more writing and I don't mind that, I'd rather write more than spend most of my time on the graphics, like I would have done for the LEC-style version.
lo_res_man: Well, you could always give the tech demo in my last post a go! ;)
Aww, I was hoping for some feedback on the tech demo. Well, it can't be helped. I'm gonna start with the actual game production now. Thanks to all who posted their thoughts. :)
Off I go~
I've looked over it... the part where you click your sentence together is kind of nice (although a simple command prompt might in fact be easier) but the part where you can add to and delete from the word list I found actually rather annoying. Basically, the game already has its internal word list. The player first has to guess which words are on that list before they actually appear on the menu. And he should avoid pressing 'delete' at all times because that pointlessly removes a word. So your interface feels like a "guess the word" game, and once you've guessed enough words you can play the actual adventure. If this were a full game and I would be playing it, the first thing I'd do is ask for the full word list on the hints forum; once I've inserted all of those I'd play it like a LucasArts GUI.
I think you should list all the verbs from the start (there shouldn't be that many to begin with, few games take more than twenty verbs to complete) or never list any of them and use a plain typing interface.
Thanks for giving it a go. I'm not sure if I understand what you mean by a 'simple command prompt', please explain. As it is now, you can type away at any time, and clicking sentences together isn't necessary if you don't want to. It's supposed to be just an aid, after all.
I could remove the check for known words from the word list so it's possible to add words even not on the list, but that also seems kind of pointless. Removing words is something I've added in case someone wants to customize the list completely to prevent having to scroll through it.
Removing the whole list GUI is something I don't want to do. I'm considering adding all the available words from the beginning but haven't reached a decision yet. I guess this one will depend on the feedback of the beta testers.
I wouldn't mind figuring out usable words by myself and would add those I need often as I play, but I'm a player with strange tastes.
To be honest, I'm not really sure why you'd make a game with a text parser. It's not to say I wouldn't play it if the storyline interested me, and I've played good interactive fiction. I enjoyed all of the old Sierra text parser games. However, I think that with a sufficiently good graphical interface, like what we can have today, there's not much of a reason to use a text parser, unless you do something really innovative. Which would be cool.
This is now easily my favourite AGS game in production. This is the best hybrid gui I've seen in an amateur adventure game, and barring straight up IF, the best in most commerical games too. I just hope you make good use of it. I found it very intuitive. Awesome that we have now, a great-looking game that also depends on good writing to work. I just hope you do the good writing :P
It would be a good idea to eventually make the code for this public because if I ever make another multi-screen adventure game, I'd really love to use a variant of this GUI.
Pseudopod: Text parsers allow for more options and depth. That's reason enough for me to use one in my game. Knock on the door, listen at the door, hide in the closet, look through the keyhole, etc... :)
Helm: Good to hear you like the interface. I'm hoping that even players not into parsers will find it easy enough to handle.
I'm pretty sure that the story itself is interesting, but I'll have to enlist the help of a few proofreaders later on because my english isn't as good as I want it to be. The game is set up to only tell the whole story if you dig deeper and follow some smaller leads. You can play through it absent-mindedly, but then you won't find out about a lot of things. And you probably won't get the woman, too.
About releasing the GUI code - it relies on a lot of custom functions, I think I could make a module out of it.
Quote from: Bernie on Fri 24/03/2006 14:31:04
I'm pretty sure that the story itself is interesting, but I'll have to enlist the help of a few proofreaders later on because my english isn't as good as I want it to be. The game is set up to only tell the whole story if you dig deeper and follow some smaller leads. You can play through it absent-mindedly, but then you won't find out about a lot of things. And you probably won't get the woman, too.
That's what I liked on The Colonel's Bequest! I wish you good luck!
I've now tried it too, and I approve. Ã, :)
Here's a few nitpicks:
Be sure to add synonyms. I want to be able to type "talk to man", since it's easier than typing "talk to " and then click on Sergeant Fielding.
"It" would also be nice, if it's not too big a problem to implement. (So I could do "open door" "close it". Not a big issue for a door, but for things with longer names, it's a very nice feature.)
I did find the conversation mode a bit awkward initially (that you have to say bye before being able to do anything else), but I think I can get used to that. I think I understand why you've done it like that.
I like that I can play completely with the keyboard. Movement, and things like that. I noted some exceptions, that would be nice if you added keyboard control to: Save, load, quit, inventory (i for short), memory.
Was it supposed to crash when exiting through the door? (I'm guessing yes, since it's only a proof of concept and not a real demo.)
nihilyst: Thanks! The Colonel's Bequest was an awesome game. So many details to figure out if you pay close attention to things...
Trumgottist: Thanks for trying it.
->Talk to man
This would require some special code that figures out to which character the player is the closest to. Assuming you have two people of the male gender on the screen and you type 'talk to man', the game needs to know which one. However, you can also do 'talk to sarge' (he even tells you to do that in the actual game), or 'talk to alex'. I'll try to add it if it's not too much trouble, but I can't promise it.
->It
I can't think of a good way to code this. I'd have to re-write way too much of the code.
->Dialogs
I could make an automatic 'bye' if the player wants to walk away by clicking or hitting one of the arrow keys. Yep, gonna add that.
->Keyboard control (save, inv)
Good idea. I'll add that. :)
->Crash
I simply took that one room out of the game and put a few lines of text in it to make a small GUI demo.
By a "simple command prompt" I meant one like in the old AGI/SCI games - so that people can just start typing without clicking anywhere. I think you should offer both; in my opinion, keyboard shortcuts are very important to a game's playability (just like Trumm said he wanted to type 'talk to man')
Text parsers do allow for more options. Interestingly, NONE of the old Sierra games ever used any of that, which is why it comes natural for Sierra games to use the icon system. On the other hand, most Infocom/Legend games and many IFfies do use those options effectively. So yes, be creative with unusual verbs, that's very cool!
Coding "it" would be relatively easy. Whenever the player refers to a hotspot, character or inventory item (i.e. any noun that isn't the name of a character), remember its name in a string. When parsing, replace "it" by the value of said string. Ditto for "him" and "her".
"Talk to man" - infocommies would respond by querying "Which man do you mean? The sergeant or the baker?" Ideally, a one-word answer would suffice; otherwise, having the player repeat "talk to baker" isn't too bad.
This game concept sounds interesting. I do hope you'll come up with a better plot than Laura Bow, because I found the story of Colonel's Bequest exceedingly lame and rather anticlimatic (I mean come on, you can't do a thing about any of the murders or other intra-character complications, all of those complications are entirely irrelevant to the main plot, you never learn anything except after the fact, the puzzles are simply glued on and make no sense story-wise, the murderer has no motive other than being a raving lunatic, and the end of the game leaves you with nothing but a lot of nasty gossip about dead people... who friggin' cares? Come to think of it, this means that you will find it almost impossible to not come up with a better plot)
Radiant: Butbutbut...!1 you CAN just start typing like in the AGI/SCI parser games! You can also press space to call the parser. No clicking needed if you don't want to. And I agree that Sierra games could have done a lot more with their parser. Very nice games, still. QFG2 is one of my favorites.
For the 'it' thing to work, I'd have to add a line of code to every action involving that location. And I'd have to retrieve the word out of a whole string like 'look at the door', and I have no idea how I'd get 'door' out of it and put it in another string. I'm a bit stumped here. It also seems like a lot of additional work throughout making the game.
Note that The Colonel's Bequest is not a big inspiration for my game, I just liked its concept. My game only features a bunch of sidequests. The more of those you figure out, the more story will be revealed.
Hero Theorem basically tells a story about a naive albino policeman, a psychologist with a few love issues and a boy who witnessed a murder. It also touches subjects like terrorism and politics, but that's about all I want to tell for now.
Sounds deep and meaningful. hope to play it when its done. this game will continue to receive my support ;D
Remember to allow diagonial movement with the keyboard (some of us still have numpads and adore them) and also, I'd suggest pixel-perfect movement for the characters. That is to say, every step the character makes, he moves exactly the length of pixels his stride covers, no gliding, no skipping. It's the ubernitpick, I know, but these things help immersion!
And yes, Sierra games didn't do anything with the parser that you wouldn't be able to do with an icon interface, and this is mainly why they're more closely aligned with the latter point and click adventure games and not the modus operandi of traditional IF.
lo_res_man: Can't promise that the game will be deep or meaningful, but it should at least be something different. :)
Helm: Diagonal movement is a good idea, I've added that now. Getting the walking animation to look right is always a bit hard, and if the character moves diagonal (but not diagonal enough to show the upwards loop), he'd still slide slightly even if it's looking good when walking a straight line. I guess 8 direction animations could fix this, but they'd be too much work.
I was surprisingly happy with the parser interface... it seemed to work very well in conversations. But you must make it so that "say bye" or "say goodbye" wotk, as well as just "bye". Heh, if you tap enter repeatedly it looks like he's touching himself. :=
Good idea, will do! :) The 'enter' thing was just me debugging my Take() command, I forgot to remove that.
Quote from: Bernie on Sat 25/03/2006 06:00:40
lo_res_man: Can't promise that the game will be deep or meaningful, but it should at least be something different. :)
sounds more deep and meaningful then oh,a quest to buy porn.
Hey now, the quest to go out and buy porn is more deep and meaningful than you might think!
you say so :P