Text adventures. Better than books.™
February 22, 2010
“You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.” If these legendary words mean nothing to you, you’ve been deprived of one of the great lost arts of gaming: the text adventure. But fear not, weary traveller. It’s never too late to be eaten by a grue, especially when Skeezix is bringing his interactive fiction interpreter Kronos to the world’s textiest known handheld.
If any of you have been following me since the old Palm OS days (Palm, Tapwave) you may remember Kronos for Palm OS; this is a from ground rewrite of course, for Pandora (that will run also on Windows, Linux, OSX, etc). I’ve got a lot to go yet (add the picture-frame for games with artwork, add some onscreen controls so you can tap on word suggestions), add cheats and note taking (auto-mapper and such); but just thought I’d like to show — text adventures are coming soon for the first real mobile game device that can support them (has a keyboard
)
Maybe I’m the only text adventure nutbar around, but I just have to keep The Pawn and Zork handy (and people are still creating new adventures all the time, no joke.) This app of mine includes interpreters (written byh others) for Infocom/Zmachine (Zork etc), Magnetic Scrolls, and Scott Adams games.
2 words
mobile bureaucracy
*O* <– code for http://i.fok.nl/s/static.gif
Offtopic: Hey een medefokker!
Ontopic: I never tried these games, it sounds interesting
Awesome. I used to make text adventure games on my old TI-82 calculator when I was bored in my high school math classes.
Yeah I remember doing thattoo. Got so bored of doing endless if/then statements I wrote an engine instead (still in Qbasic mind you). Didn’t have the internet at the time, but read all about MUDs in a fantasy gaming magazine I had, so in the end I made some sort of offline MUD where you go in as a ‘god’ and create the game in real time. The first big program I ever wrote, I was so proud of it.
The ‘Posted by:’ gag is not unappreciated
Well spotted, I missed it myself!
Missed out on text adventures the first time around but I wont be making the same mistake again.
Many thanks as usual Jeff
What about a text adventure creator for the pandora? That would be fun.
Inform will probably be in the repositories.
Wasn’t there a a suggestion made to him on the forums about an interpreter that already existed that he was going to concider porting to save time?
I can’t remember the game but it was on the Speccy and based in space. Any time you entered a command that the interpreter didn’t understand it would spit back:
arfle barfle goop
I still use those three words to mean “huh? I don’t understand”. Of course the recipient of the words usually give me a rather strange look. But I’m used to that…
I used to love drawing up the maps as I went around exploring. Ahh the memories…
Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy?
Level 9 software was the company. Snowball may have been the game (or it may have been a different Level 9 title). I’m thinking maybe Red Moon.
I googled “arfle barfle gloop” (note, I was wrong it’s gloop not goop).
http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Level-9
Wow they done Champion of the Raj, that was an awesome game. There is an interpretor for their stuff on Linux already, but I don’t recall it doing the graphical stuff. Fortunately DOSBox will have what it takes.
I remember reading about the language they developed to write stuff with, legends tell it was more memory efficient than assembly language…
I wrote several text adventures on my VIC-20 when I was a kid and I’m still playing MUD today :O <3 Text
Nice… I created a handful of text adventures in BASIC. I even started a fake company called “ORKO” with my brother. Kind of a nod to Zork intentionally and He-Man unintentionally… I liked it so it stuck. Never made much worthwhile but I still have those 5.25″ disks around here somewhere.
I actually just wrote a text adventure game. Mine was written for GameScroll though. Once pandoras start shipping, perhaps I will port it to Kronos. It is a zombie survival game where the user must survive 7 days in order to be rescued. It isn’t very long, but I think it came out like I wanted it to.
inventory
west
east
look
it’s not working
Colossal work Jeff.
I think the first picture has been eaten by a grue.
excellent word-play as usual grue…so ;D
Too clear for me! That gruso is funny(meaning number 2).
The famous pinfocom z-interpreter for infocom *.dat files should be an easy port to pandora. If fact, if I ever get my Pandora, that’ll be one of my first contributions to the project (in addition to upfront funding). The C code to it is pretty straight forward, it’ll compile on anything. It’s also GPL and is included in Debian so no licensing issues there.
An aside, Gruic is derived from the infamous grue, whatever they are, wherever they are…..
ps: don’t turn off the lights…
awwsoom
GO HOME
“You take the cab and order the driver to take you home. The cab arrives on your destination, descending to a dark secret tunnel below. You see a factory with copies of your bodyparts on a machinebelt…”
Which game is that from? Sounds fun.
Not very accurate but its Leisuresuit Larry
A semi text/3rd person dos adventure game.
(everyone knows that ^^)
Oh, OK. I’ know of those. Only ever played a couple of them.
Ooo maybe now I could finish Pimania!
edit – though that might of been graphical ??
There was a version for the Spectrum, and I think a ZX emulator is in the works.
Ideal rainy day + comfy chair material. Just remember to save every once in a while…
Infocom adventures used to let you change text and background colours, aside from being easier on the eyes certain combinations suited certain games.
Red text on black for Lurking Horror…
Its probably been about 15 years since I last played a Text adventure. the one I liked best was Famous five on the Commodore 64.
Good old L9, Magnetic and Infocom are fine, but… any chance for Pandora having ports of modern IF interpreters as TADS, Hugo, Adrift, Glulx, Inform 7 stuff…?
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:sealofquality:
Yes, for sure
jeff
this is good news!
Pirate Adventure !
“I’m in a Flat in london
Obvious exits: NONE”
What shall I do ???
F5
F5
F5
> save
Floyd exclaims: ‘Oh boy, are we going to try something dangerous now?’
Planetfall.
Text adventures are very cool, but I would rather see more working going twords gamebooks like lonewolf, some of the home of the underdogs pdf files, etc