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Skyrim rendered in text

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Re: Skyrim rendered in text

#11

Post by jamesrcole »

haspok wrote: post #7

How old is the author I wonder? Did he not play Wizardry or any other similar game back in the 80s/90s, which implemented exactly this kind of gameplay? Wizardry 7 had so much - good quality - text in it (probably enough to fill a book) that it significantly accelerated my English learning at the time as a non-native English speaker. And the fighting system was very similar to what the author arrived at in the end. I…

> I haven't played computer games for so long, mostly because they are just all the same, 3D action and no substance

If that's your opinion of them then I don't think you've investigated them much, and are just jumping to conclusions.

Re: Skyrim rendered in text

#13

Post by PostOnce »

jamesrcole wrote: post #11
haspok wrote: post #7

How old is the author I wonder? Did he not play Wizardry or any other similar game back in the 80s/90s, which implemented exactly this kind of gameplay? Wizardry 7 had so much - good quality - text in it (probably enough to fill a book) that it significantly accelerated my English learning at the time as a non-native English speaker. And the fighting system was very similar to what the author arrived at in the end. I…

> I haven't played computer games for so long, mostly because they are just all the same, 3D action and no substance If that's your opinion of them then I don't think you've investigated them much, and are just jumping to conclusions.

I still play all the time and there's some truth to them all being the same. They get more and more polished on a UI level, and more realistic looking, but remain static mechanically.

For example, Skyrim doesn't do much mechanically that Ultima Underworld didn't. Ultima proper did all of that from a different perspective for a long while before that, too. The Witcher 3 is my absolute favorite RPG at least since Skyrim and probably supercedes it, but again, it's just super polished, it doesn't do much that's really new, that I haven't seen before in an RPG or other game. You pick speech options from dialogue trees, loot dead things, and fetch quest items, but you're in a cardboard world. The monsters just wait for you to come slaughter them, they're set-pieces whose purpose is to sit there until you arrive, then bite you. The world reacts largely in a single specific way: you win.

Actually, I thing modern RPGs have regressed, Ultima VI's keyword-based dialogue was better than our modern dialogue trees. You could speak in natural language about a variety of topics, some of which were hinted at by the NPC with highlighted words, and others you had to figure out for yourself. (you could just type "troll" or you could type "What can you tell me about the troll?" or "I have seen a troll, and need advice, can you help?", it was more fun and interactive)

I'm hyped for Underworld Ascendant, because just maybe they'll break some new ground for a change. "A living ecosystem", but with people who can (and have) backed up that claim. I don't see much else on the horizon -- the indies are our only hopes! AAA can't afford to lose now, so it's all cookie cutter sequels there, only the indies can afford the risk.

I think a huge, huge part of the problem is that games cost so much and carry so much risk now. Ultima Underworld got a full sequel _ELEVEN MONTHS LATER_. You could move faster and try more then, because art didn't cost so much, there was no motion capture, no voice acting, it was cheap to make a game. If a sequel flops now you can't just try again, you lost $75,000,000 dollars and are now bankrupt.

Anyway, here's a link to a free, breathtakingly good book on the history of CRPGs from the 70s through today: https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/

Re: Skyrim rendered in text

#15

Post by michaelbuckbee »

duckarmada wrote: post #10
bitL wrote: post #3

I first thought the author used real-time CNN + RNN to generate descriptions of the rendered Skyrim scene and showing only that one to the player.

Exactly what I was thinking, which sounds like an interesting project in itself.

Similar, but I thought maybe they had just pulled the dialogue trees, locations, etc.

Re: Skyrim rendered in text

#16

Post by pwaivers »

I wonder how difficult it would be to adapt this game to read the text adventure out loud and allow visually impaired kids to play it. The author here has done tremendous work into the mechanics of a text-based game, and I think it would be a relatively small task to port it to an "audio-based" game.

Every year I volunteer at as event at the University of North Carolina CS department called Maze Day. Students build games, which blind and handicapped children come and play on certain day. I think the children that visit in this event would LOVE a game like this, if it became accessible.

Re: Skyrim rendered in text

#17

Post by lph »

jamesrcole wrote: post #11
haspok wrote: post #7

How old is the author I wonder? Did he not play Wizardry or any other similar game back in the 80s/90s, which implemented exactly this kind of gameplay? Wizardry 7 had so much - good quality - text in it (probably enough to fill a book) that it significantly accelerated my English learning at the time as a non-native English speaker. And the fighting system was very similar to what the author arrived at in the end. I…

> I haven't played computer games for so long, mostly because they are just all the same, 3D action and no substance If that's your opinion of them then I don't think you've investigated them much, and are just jumping to conclusions.

Get-off-my-lawn sentiment aside, it seems strange that the author doesn't even acknowledge the vast field of text-based games that already exist, and that predate the modern retro fascination with interactive fiction. I'd love to see how their mechanics compare to the ones he worked out for his game.

Re: Skyrim rendered in text

#19

Post by wavefunction »

guard0g wrote: post #12

Back in the 90s, we use to run text-based adventure games called MUDs (e.g, PennMUD, TinyMUD, Islandia). Funny how it's circling back.

Programming areas in a TinyMUD instance was my first experience with pseudo OOP as a 14 year old. Unfortunately my ambitions were larger than my practical knowledge at the time, but I was lucky to have some laid-back adult admins who indulged my interest and gave me a little corner of the world to develop.

Re: Skyrim rendered in text

#20

Post by e12e »

> Good text cannot have too much repetition. Repetitive text is boring. Try writing up everything that happens in the first five minutes of some Super Mario gameplay with prose that is fun to read. It’s impossible.

This is true. But I still smile when I think of the phrase:"The Blue Yeek/Kobold/it/ dies in a fit of agony." (Originally encountered in Moria, now to be found in Moria/umoria/Angband).

Mildly relevant: https://thebutterfly.deviantart.com/art/Moria-Filthy-Street-...

Relevant: apt install moria

https://github.com/dungeons-of-moria/umoria

(which actually looks rather interesting as they claim having ported the code forward and tidied up quite a bit)

[ed: I think there's another option for repetition: automatic success after a certain number of successes - similar to "auto-haggling" in shops in Moria - once you've haggled a certain number of times with a certain shop keeper, the game will "fast-forward" to settling the transaction without any interaction. This gives flavour (haggling in stores) and avoids (too much) grinding (forcing the player to go through routine, static interactions)).

In the context of this post, it'd mean a low-level/young character would go through detailed actions to trap a rabbit, then automatically be able to trap a rabbit, but fight with an orc, then be able to "kill the orc", but need to detail the actions for fighting a band of orcs, then struggle to kill a dragon, but being able to simply "take out the orc war band" (with a suitable description, based on the adapted play style, from the "micro-managed" fights: "You sneak around upwind of the band, and after setting out a dozen arrows in front of you - take rapid aim and let fly a precise volley and the orcs. The last warrior realize their scout has fallen to your first arrow, just as your last pierces his left throat - and all is quiet except for the wet death rattle of the final fallen." Or something equivalent involving a fireball or charge and sword dance.]

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