Author Topic: Text Based Games  (Read 13026 times)

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Offline JoeyBelgier

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Text Based Games
« on: July 04, 2009, 07:35:35 pm »
My question is pretty clear  :P


Btw: don't start to write crappy (read: 'mean') comments, It's just a question and if you want to answer, tick an answer. I don't say you can't post here either :p

Greets J. NF

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #1 on: July 04, 2009, 08:00:48 pm »
Well it depends what you mean by text-based games.

-For some people, text-based game means that the game only has sentences and/or menus and the user have to imagine himself how the area where he's in looks like. These kind of games are kinda like when reading a book or playing an old DOS-based MUD game. Basically, the game shows no minimum of graphics (even ASCII-art) so you won't see your character walking around on a map or entering buildings.

-For other people (the minority), text-based game will refer to everything using ASCII characters (letters, numbers and symbols) as tiles/sprites for dungeon layout and battle animations, not just menu-based games as described above.

IMHO, the second definition is not valid, because text-based should refer to something that just use words and sentence to describe where you are or menu choices when you want to go somewhere. game such as Illusiat 6 through 13 (except 10) would be more ASCII games, ASCII-based games or ASCII-art-based games rather than text-based

That said, I tend to not really play text-based games per the first definition because I tend to prefer to have a certain minimum of graphics representing the dungeons or battles when playing, even if they're just ASCII characters and lines. Idk, I just kinda prefer to be able to walk around rather than just select menu choices like in old dungeon and dragon books. There are some quite good text-based BASIC games, though, such as TI-City (altough it isn't finished) and Potter Quest 1.

Offline JoeyBelgier

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #2 on: July 04, 2009, 08:45:17 pm »
ASCII is indeed not 'text based'
by textbased I mean that the game is told with lines of text.
And only graphics like some images or some animated images.
And most of the time RPG's

Offline Eeems

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #3 on: July 04, 2009, 11:22:45 pm »
Quote
Rule The Freaking Planet!!!
:D




they make you think
/e

Offline Geno

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #4 on: July 05, 2009, 07:18:57 am »
I voted can be good.  The only reason I didn't vote rule the planet is because there are always those crappy ones where the maker put in no effort whatsoever and expects people to like it.  Otherwise, I enjoy playing them.  :)

Offline JoeyBelgier

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #5 on: July 05, 2009, 07:44:21 am »
results are better than I was expecting =D

EDIT: I was working a whole day today on a new text-based game called "Dr. Ausrotts Castle" (in pure basic 'of course')
The starting image only already costed me maybe 2 hours to make in total.
But once again, I almost started crying and pulling my hair (and I have pretty long hair) out of my head
becouse I accidentially ran the GB emulator, wanted to exit it, pressed 'ON' and cleared my calc XO
Gee, sometimes, life is really hard
« Last Edit: July 05, 2009, 01:59:35 pm by NecroF-_-ckk »

Offline Silver Shadow

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #6 on: July 05, 2009, 02:39:58 pm »
You're lucky - at least the Gb emulator can be run on your calc - I'm stuck with my 83+.
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Offline JoeyBelgier

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #7 on: July 05, 2009, 03:02:26 pm »
You're lucky - at least the Gb emulator can be run on your calc - I'm stuck with my 83+.
Actually, it doesn't really run on mah 84+ yet, Tetris is sound only and rest = nothing but scrambled graphics

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #8 on: July 05, 2009, 05:08:43 pm »
I hope the emulator can be fixed eventually for the newer calcs, but sorry to hear about the data loss. It's always best to backup frequently while making games, even pure BASIC. With Pure BASIC, what can happen is that you accidentally edit a bunch of code and create more bugs, then it's no longer possible to fix it, or sometimes you can run into TI-OS glitches, which are usually more rare, though.

Offline simplethinker

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #9 on: July 06, 2009, 11:46:54 am »
They can be good, but it really depends on the author.  Many games nowadays (I'm not just talking about calculator games) have nothing except incredible graphics; good story lines and game play have gone out the window.  Obviously, with text-based games there's no way game play will be sacrificed for graphics.
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." -- Professor Robert Silensky



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Offline JoeyBelgier

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #10 on: July 06, 2009, 12:57:47 pm »
i made a new beginning 'animation' ^^

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #11 on: July 06, 2009, 05:38:32 pm »
I agree with Simplethinker. In calc games, in my case, my first graphical games often sacrified gameplay and content to keep up with the RAM limitations (back then, XCOPY, ZCOPY, xLIB real(10 function and Resource didn't exist. Flash Gordon was rather limited), but of course I was also experimenting. But take for example The Reign of Legends 3, the game that started up xLIB project, according to what tr1p1ea said back when he started it. From ROL2 to 3, I went from ASCII to graphics, but to do that, I had to sacrify considerable amount of speed and cut down hours of gameplay and features. Map loading was slow, walking around as well and battles were slower paced too. Certain other loading times were reduced, though. ROL2 was 25 hours long. ROL3 was 15. ROL2 had 9 playable characters switchable between battles in the airship. ROL3 only had 3. Some config menu options disappeared as well, altough new ones were added. The only thing ROL3 had over ROL2 in general was the better graphics, fewer garbage collections, travelling in time like in Chrono Trigger, much smaller save files (compression) and better english version (ROL2 was my first RPG of that lenght to be translated, while ROL3 started directly as an english game)

In Reuben Quest case, games were rather short and battle system was too simple and repetitive

Offline SolusIpse

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #12 on: July 06, 2009, 05:52:20 pm »
They can be good, but it really depends on the author.  Many games nowadays (I'm not just talking about calculator games) have nothing except incredible graphics; good story lines and game play have gone out the window.  Obviously, with text-based games there's no way game play will be sacrificed for graphics.

Agreed.  Same with movies too *cough*Transformers 2*cough* although I really liked it.

Have you ever played Braid?  Now that's a really good game with really good gameplay and story.

Offline noahbaby94

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #13 on: July 06, 2009, 05:53:25 pm »
Transformers isn't about plot it's about giant over sized mechanical robots beat each other up duhh.
That's what she said!!!

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Text Based Games
« Reply #14 on: July 06, 2009, 06:07:14 pm »
I didn't saw the 2nd one. I saw the first one, tho and liked it. However, there are lot of movies I like better than this.

Another game that put a lot in graphics, altough it isn't visible until the game end, is Zelda: Dark Link Quest. Fortunately, this game has reasonable gameplay lenght and features, but the movie before the final battle takes about 40 KB of archive memory and is only like 2 minutes long