Erasmus
20-12-2006, 03:06 PM
I'm sure that many of you here have played text games in the past. The ones that go something like this:
PLAYER1, you are in a cave, you will probably be eaten by a grue
>GO EAST
You were eaten by a Grue
etc.
and these were all rather fun and certainly better than most of the modern shite that seems to be made to a very specific and mediocre ideal.
But there was always a bit of a problem with text adventures: Firstly, they ended. Secondly, there was very often only one way of doing things, and using one item on another, or an item on something in the enviromnent in a manner that you know would work in real life returns the rather irritating "I don't know what you mean"
Well, the azuretext project is a rather half-arsed attempt to fix this. It is, as you can probably guess, a text adventure game. But unlike others it gets written as you play it. Much like the ones that people occasionally run on forums for short times.
The idea is this: You're given a basic setting, the first room in the adventure. In this adventure you can do ANY COMMAND. As you try to execute a command the game looks up whether it's ever been done before, and if it has, gives you the results, and if it hasn't it logs the command on my computer so a result can be written.
As such the game is potentially limitless, or as close as my general laziness allows, and allows you to try anything.
Of course, there are some problems: it'll be slow going for the first players, because none of the game exists yet, and I (and possibly a few others) will have to build it as you play. The second problem is that, as this is in the very early stages, Azuretext runs as an IRC bot from my computer. This is because IRC creates pretty much the whole online-send-and-receive-text framework that is needed. I'm working (slowly) on a way to implement the bot as a plugin for gaim, allowing it to be played over MSN, AIM, Yahoo, GT, etc. but that could be a long time from now, so you're stuck with IRC.
If you want to try this out, log onto Quakenet, and join #azuretext. Hope to see you there. If you need help with IRC, PM me. I'd like to keep the thread clean from IRC troubleshooting
Bot commands:
......
start - starts game. It uses whatever nickname you're currently using to identify you, so use the nickname you're going to continue using.
update - is used when playing to get a description of your surroundings
restart - Restarts the game
test1 - Returns the lines "Three words here" and "Is null". Not really worth using
do <string> - This is the command that allows you to DO things in game. Just type "do" followed by whatever.
use <string> with <string> - Uses an item from your inventory with something not from your inventory. The "with" is all important, even if it means your command doesn't make grammatical sense
commands - Lists these commands
bug <string> - Reports a bug you've found. Type 'bug' followed by a short descruption of exactly how you broke the bot. I might even fix it.
Notes:
-Though you do have an inventory, there is currently no way of viewing it (sorry).
-There are, as I'm writing this, absolutely ZERO hardwired commands, and only one setting, so be patient.
-It's called Azuretext because I like the colour.
-The bot messages people individually, and you message it the commands. It doesn't play the game on the channel. That would be insane.
PLAYER1, you are in a cave, you will probably be eaten by a grue
>GO EAST
You were eaten by a Grue
etc.
and these were all rather fun and certainly better than most of the modern shite that seems to be made to a very specific and mediocre ideal.
But there was always a bit of a problem with text adventures: Firstly, they ended. Secondly, there was very often only one way of doing things, and using one item on another, or an item on something in the enviromnent in a manner that you know would work in real life returns the rather irritating "I don't know what you mean"
Well, the azuretext project is a rather half-arsed attempt to fix this. It is, as you can probably guess, a text adventure game. But unlike others it gets written as you play it. Much like the ones that people occasionally run on forums for short times.
The idea is this: You're given a basic setting, the first room in the adventure. In this adventure you can do ANY COMMAND. As you try to execute a command the game looks up whether it's ever been done before, and if it has, gives you the results, and if it hasn't it logs the command on my computer so a result can be written.
As such the game is potentially limitless, or as close as my general laziness allows, and allows you to try anything.
Of course, there are some problems: it'll be slow going for the first players, because none of the game exists yet, and I (and possibly a few others) will have to build it as you play. The second problem is that, as this is in the very early stages, Azuretext runs as an IRC bot from my computer. This is because IRC creates pretty much the whole online-send-and-receive-text framework that is needed. I'm working (slowly) on a way to implement the bot as a plugin for gaim, allowing it to be played over MSN, AIM, Yahoo, GT, etc. but that could be a long time from now, so you're stuck with IRC.
If you want to try this out, log onto Quakenet, and join #azuretext. Hope to see you there. If you need help with IRC, PM me. I'd like to keep the thread clean from IRC troubleshooting
Bot commands:
......
start - starts game. It uses whatever nickname you're currently using to identify you, so use the nickname you're going to continue using.
update - is used when playing to get a description of your surroundings
restart - Restarts the game
test1 - Returns the lines "Three words here" and "Is null". Not really worth using
do <string> - This is the command that allows you to DO things in game. Just type "do" followed by whatever.
use <string> with <string> - Uses an item from your inventory with something not from your inventory. The "with" is all important, even if it means your command doesn't make grammatical sense
commands - Lists these commands
bug <string> - Reports a bug you've found. Type 'bug' followed by a short descruption of exactly how you broke the bot. I might even fix it.
Notes:
-Though you do have an inventory, there is currently no way of viewing it (sorry).
-There are, as I'm writing this, absolutely ZERO hardwired commands, and only one setting, so be patient.
-It's called Azuretext because I like the colour.
-The bot messages people individually, and you message it the commands. It doesn't play the game on the channel. That would be insane.