Messages

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.

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.

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.

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.

I did Victor from my game. This is a fun topic! :3

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~

Looks like the one in my last post doesn't work with 2.71. However, this one does and features the same functions:

http://www.origamihero.com/files/bgs05a271.scm (AGS 2.71 and below, not ObjectOrientified)

and...

http://www.origamihero.com/files/bgs05b.scm (AGS 2.72 and higher)

(Right-clicking it and choosing 'Save Target As...' should get it going.)

All you need to do is to import it through the module manager, then the two commands DisplaySpeechBackgroundEx() and IsCharacterSpeeching() are usable (05a version).

Actually, thinking up the story first works quite well for me. Here's my process:

1. Coming up with the Story, Characters, Events + Important Dialogue
2. Planning out the Rooms
3. Planning the Puzzles
3b. Minor adjustments to planned Rooms if a Puzzle requires it
5. Making the Game

I find it easier to come up with the puzzles once I know what happens to the main character and his NPC friends and which locations he and they visit throughout the game.

I think this process differs from person to person. All we need to do is figure out what works best for us.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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:

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?

I made a module you can take a look at. It gives the player character a platform movement and uses walkable areas of any shape (I hope) as platforms. Take a look at the 'up' and 'down' code in the module's script.

http://www.origamihero.com/files/plat01.scm

Use the arrow keys and space to control your character.

I reached a similar part in Burne Hogarth's book, his approach slightly differs but is still the same basic idea. This is definitely useful and something I'll tinker around with. It goes hand in hand with that anatomy book, too. Thanks!

I've got a lot to try out and learn now. It may take a while until I post some results, and they'll most likely go into a new thread, so... thanks and until then, CL!