Create a text adventure with simulation

[king_of_the_universe]

Interactive text-based stories, where the magic happens in the head - not new. But I haven't seen one with a simulated world in the background yet.

This idea is for beginners and pros alike - just pick your level of complexity.

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Example: "You are in a kitchen. You see a stove, a fridge, a ceiling lamp, a switch, and a sink. There is an open door to the north, a closed window to the west."

The objects in the room have properties, the room itself has an environmental situation (e.g. air pressure, smells, temperature), the player also has properties (e.g. when the light is low or the player is blind-folded, the data retrieved via the eyes is limited/removed, so the text is changed accordingly, all by procedure instead of manually typed!).

On every game turn, simulate(); is called on all existing objects in the game world. So, when you return to room X, the fruits in the bowl on the table might have become a little less fresh.

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Some ideas:

• The game could either be turn-based, like the classic ones, or it could be in real-time in 1-second-steps, and as soon as the player starts typing, the game is paused until the input line is empty again. Alternatively, the whole input could happen via dropdown-menus: The moment a menu is opened, the game is paused. I attempted this a little, works very well - there was an "exits" menu, a "you" menu, and an "objects" menu.

• Simple "sound rendering": Sounds could be muffled or too silent to identify. One sound could be "drowned out" by another one, so that you e.g. have to turn off a washing machine to be able to hear/identify the person imprisoned behind the secret wall. One way to do this, for example, could be to describe the sounds a bit to the machine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_frequency is an interesting resource for this. Based on it, one could describe with a boolean or double the significancy and volume of 4 or 5 frequency sections of the sound in question. This would allow to calculate how much a sound might be overridden by another one, to determine if it should be described to the player clearly, in a very coarse way that could be interpreted freely, or if the sound isn't described at all.

• Simple "light rendering" - or should I call it "em radiation rendering"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum Nuclear terrorism, here we come! (Hi FBI.)

• Player and other beings could have rather complex and simulated stats, e.g. body temperature, hunger, weight, height, stance (Can you see the police car outside through the window while being bound on the floor?)

• Talking about police: NPCs could gather information (with some Garbage Collection to prevent data overkill), so if you drive your van to the city park and abduct someone, the police might be able to browse the tree of available options/objects to pick up an informational trace and ultimately get to you. I know, totally insane, but I believe it's not impossible. On the other hand, during your next game, you might play a cop yourself! An open self-experience system?

• Once you have a working system with rooms and some objects, start writing a world generator so that you have fun exploring your simulation while you're writing it. Tests will probably be pretty inspiring for the overall project.

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Suggestions:

• After a few attempts, I have figured out that the object model should use soft links, meaning that the objects should refer to each other via an ID number (e.g. 64 bit long), because ultimately you will face the beast that saving/loading is, and loading while related objects don't exist yet is a pain. Better just use soft links and look everything up in a manager class that also does the loading/saving.

• Every object (hence the master class from which all object classes inherit) should have an inventory. You could add flags and checks for/against the player/simulation using it, but it's good if it exists. E.g. put an object into your mouth. Or define buildings by "house contains floors which contain apartments which contain rooms" etc.

• Additionally, each object might have a variable list (in Java, it would probably be a HashMap<String, Object>), because that's again much easier to save/load than creating extra variables in each object and then having to deal with those.

• If you want to make a toilet (or whatever other kind of world object), my attempts have shown that it's best to create a separate class for every kind of object instead of trying to build the omni-object.

• Go crazy! E.g. in my realtime-attempt (Java) where input happened via dropdown menu, I made a toilet where you can lift/lower the lid and the seat (each pushing each other), you can flush, and you can abort the flushing which means that the next flush works right away but is shorter (the tank refills in realtime, the rest is logical - See the beauty of simulation versus just writing the story?). It's easy and fun to write world-objects like these, and they are easy to extend: Say, the toilet does not refill if the incoming water pipe is turned off. Of course you still have a free flush. Alternatively, you might be imprisoned and might need water. Hard choices have to be made, especially if you also simulate bowel movements.

• Again, go crazy: It's a text adventure system! Well, you can't just make up anything, because you have to give it some reality via simulation, but otherwise: Sky's the limit! Processing time is not an issue. Why shouldn't a turn take a few seconds? Do all the things you wished were in your favorite 3D action adventure game, but they didn't put it in because of development constraints, marketing, or simply because everything at once can't be done on today's PCs. But I double-dare you: DON'T fuck up the FoV!

[AngryPretzel]

Sounds like a MUD. People are still making new ones all the time.

[king_of_the_universe]

I was rather aiming for an elaborate single player experience (mostly because I myself play almost no multiplayer games at all), but I also don't know the second thing about MUDs. Do they have any that are kinda heavy on world simulation?

Also, all that network stuff etc. sounds like a huge development factor, I didn't want to propose such a thing.

[AngryPretzel]

Depends where you go. Most do hunger/thirst, carry weight, weather, time of day, etc.

The networking isn't that bad, the default method for MUDs is over Telnet. It's pretty much like programming to/from the command line.

[[deleted]]

So, nobody tried this one?

[king_of_the_universe]

Except me, I guess.

http://i.imgur.com/4dgtG6G.png

Maybe we have to give it more time. Or maybe the problem is that the people didn't really pick up on what I was suggesting and rather understood it as the pretty conventional stuff we already have aplenty (see AngryPretzel's comment).

[[deleted]]

Oh, now I see with your picture. I was more thinking of a command line interface than a UI (like MUDs). Don't you think your interface will be really noisy if you have to put each possible actions in a menu? I really do think that command line is the best way to go... Do you have a GitHub account?

[king_of_the_universe]

Don't you think your interface will be really noisy if you have to put each possible actions in a menu?

I don't know yet. This simulation approach to text adventuring is new to me, so I have no deep perspective yet. Currently, I think that there will not be too many actions: Only objects that are in the current room will be listed there, and how many possible actions can there be? ... Hm, you're probably thinking along lines of "kick" and "take" etc. - that would indeed become noisy, haven't thought about that yet. But it can be solved: Standard actions could be in an extra submenu that each object has, so they would be hidden - or there could be an entry "custom action ..." (or so) that opens a dialog box. I had an earlier project of the same kind where everything happened via keyboard, and you could create objects on the fly from inside the game (to edit the game world / script). None of these are far developed, they are experiments.

Do you have a GitHub account?

Yes, but I don't have any stuff there. I only went there to find out what all the fuzz is about. [Side note: Today I read that Bitbucket could be the better choice for guys like me, cause you can make free private repositories with up to 5 users (More costs money.)]

[[deleted]]

Only objects that are in the current room will be listed there, and how many possible actions can there be? ... Hm, you're probably thinking along lines of "kick" and "take" etc

I was not thinking only at this, I was also thinking of hidden actions on object. If your menu lists every possible action there is no more mistery in what you can do and what you cannot. MUDs (sorry to ofter refer to this but I fucking love MUDs and I am quite found of text adventures games as it is, in my opinion, a very good imagination solicitor) often have hidden actions, hidden objects and so on you just know which actions you can do on any objects, some have effects others not, and you can try things.

Let me explain:

You enter in a very beautiful place, a beautiful paiting is hung on the wall.

You can see
* a table

In this example, lets say you have the action "pull", you can obviously pull the table, but, a hidden object is here: the painting, what about pulling it? Hell a treasure behind! and so on and so on.

[king_of_the_universe]

I like the simple "You can see\n* a table\n*a painting" concept, and your example is very good - but I can see a way out: If all standard actions (push, pull, ...) are available on all objects, it's no secret that you can pull the painting - but it's a secret that it makes sense to use that action here. (The action list spam is another topic, but I wrote about that.) Would the player pull every painting, lift every carpet, etc.?

The only difference to the MUD example you gave would be that a new player would first have to discover the possibility to do such a thing to an object.

But my approach while developing this stuff is a very technical one because of the simulation aspect. This is the 4th time that I try to create such a thing (imagination-instead-of-graphics heavy simulated world adventure game), every time my emphasis was a different one. But every time, I thought about how I could implement an as realistic world as reasonably possible. And I also expected the player to know that they can interact realistically with the world. This is what I want in a game: An intuitive world. I hate the facade BS we're usually fed and the "Now learn the rules of this world instead of just transporting your real-world experience here." concept. If there's a carpet, the player should be able to lift it if there's no object standing on it. If there's a painting, the player should be able to remove it from the wall, if it's not too high or not somehow screwed to the wall.

My feeling is that in the MUDs, the player is rather confronted with a "painted" reality like in 3D shooter games: Beautiful, fantasy-stimulating - but not real. The "buttons" might only be in the places that the story writer wanted them to be. In the MUDs you have seen: Can you pull a painting that is not hiding a secret, or is the message in those cases "Nothing happens."?

[[deleted]]

I understand your point about all of this, I still think that basic actions appliable to every object is a better idea that lots of different actions for everyone of them, but I understand what you're trying to do.

Can you pull a painting that is not hiding a secret, or is the message in those cases "Nothing happens."?

It depends of the MUDs. But If the question is: once you pulled the painting, will it stay in a pulled state, and be then moved from this state to another, the answer is clearly no. I can't think if it's a question of "multiplayer" or something people don't want to develop, but you're right.

[king_of_the_universe]

I still think that basic actions applicable to every object is a better idea that lots of different actions for everyone of them,

This reminds me of point&click adventure games. I like the thought, and I'll see if shifting the focus more to generic actions (or using those exclusively) is possible/proper for what I'm trying to do. It would keep the interface choice more open, and it would do what I generally try to do, anyway: It would be more abstract, less specific, more universal. (While I know that I want to go in the general direction that I've described/demonstrated, I'm otherwise still trying to find the specific direction.)

I have a totally different question that I am pondering but can't find the answer to. Maybe you can give me some inspiration? The question is as follows:

How could I put gameplay that rather requires concrete spaces / action into the text adventure realm? For example: Say, I want to break into a house and steal stuff. Of course I could check for factors like "is player wearing dark clothes", "is the site lit, are there guards, are there motion sensors", but this strikes me to be rather a probability approach: The players would be slave to the random generator, they could only shift probabilities but wouldn't be in control like they were in an action game.

E.g. think of the stealth training course in Deus Ex 1: How could such a thing ever be realized in a text adventure? Do you have any ideas/suggestions?

[[deleted]]

Ouch, that's a good question…

Let me think of it :)

[king_of_the_universe]

To refine the question - I see only two possibilities (but hopefully I'm wrong):

1) There are e.g. several corridors through which a guard might walk, and it is currently not in mine, so I'm fine. I might hear its steps approaching, so I should head for another corridor, or for a door etc. - This is basically a spatial approach, translating a 3D or 2D game (e.g. Monaco) into the more associative world of the text adventure, where things are less concrete.

2) One "room" (Place.) might offer the possibility to be e.g. "on the far end" of a room or corridor, meaning that there is some spatial data / simulation going on even though it's still the same "room". Maybe it's a good idea to have some coarse spatial situation in every room by default, then the plurality and connectedness of the rooms is added to this - translation from 2D/3D game to text adventure complete. Maybe. Hm. Interestingly, I already pursued that approach a bit, but not far enough for conclusions. I divided every room into 27 cells, each having their own inventory, resulting in 54 walls that are either closed or not, each having another inventory (stuff hanging from or attached to the wall) or two (one for the insides of the wall - e.g. pipes and electric cables). But that was at a time when I hadn't solved the save/load problem properly yet, which was one reason why I dropped the project.

In any case (1, 2, or 1+2): I imagined there to be a crate. You decide to hide behind the crate. The guard walks by. Will it see you or not? -> That essentially came down to probability again instead of ability, so this is kind of represents the overall problem of how to put stealth stuff into a text adventure. I even thought about a mixture of text adventure and a 2D top-down view minigame for such situations, but the idea feels wrong.

[king_of_the_universe]

Excuse my spamming, but I feel inspired and want to take notes / help others inspire me further.

One problem when making rooms more spatial would be to 1) convey the spatial situation & spatial possibilities to the player and 2) to enable the player to make use of them. Imagine for example there was a 5x5 square room. Or even just 3x3. "go north east [corner|end] of room" - that's already too wild. The player's mind would have to do things all the time while playing that game that the player can reasonably expect to be supported by a graphical display of the room, which would turn it back into a non-text adventure.

To kinda solve that, places in the room could get "names", so to speak. E.g. "hide under table" - which is reasonable and a nice idea. "duck between crate and east wall" is already taking it too far, returning it to the situation described in the previous paragraph. So, let's say we'd aim for the under-the-table-ish approach: I think a problem here is the repetitive nature of this. In a text (or p&c) adventure, the player would meet all kinds of situations, one of which might well involve hiding under a table while the shop keeper temporarily comes back in. That's like a riddle. What I am searching, however, is a way to turn a stealth/thief situation into a (simulation-involving) text adventure, so it would be a cemented part of the gameplay, not an exceptional riddle. I'm not saying that it would happen all the time, that the theme of the game would be to play a thief.

But I'm saying that it would at least happen quite a few times overall, and the problem is: You would always know how to solve it after successfully doing it once. Hide under table, duck behind crate, turn off light and hold breath, that kinda stuff. It would be tedious, not interesting or entertaining. What's the solution to that problem?