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The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

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Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#181

Post by godrejplots »

seanwilson wrote: post #180
framsberg wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about The Edifice, which won the XYZZY Award for Best Puzzles and for Best Individual Puzzle? https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=4tb9soabrb4apqzd The puzzle that won it the Best Individual Puzzle award in one where you need to learn enough of a foreign (invented) language to ask a person for critical information.

This seems like another one that has to include a unique mechanic on top of common object manipulation to make the latter more interesting? I'll look at it more closely though. I know of https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl and https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=w5s3sv43s3p98v45 that use language and wordplay as well.

https://godrejsparkretreat.in/ https://www.wevideo.com/hub#media/ci/2461109068 The project is surrounded by well-established precincts aided with excellent connectivity and commute facilities.

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#182

Post by anthk »

framsberg wrote: post #172
anthk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Z-Machine was made for games, too. And the then new Inform6 game was basically literal OOP with rooms, objects and people, thus making an adventure can be done in really trivial ways. If you read up Inform's Beginner Guide you'll get amazed of how the Inform6 library handles lots of stuff for you. Lots of verbs and objects types are already implemented, so you can set a game "room" for example in just four words…

Nowadays there's also PunyInform, an Inform 6 library that replaces the standard library. Programming for it is very similar, but the resulting games are much smaller and faster, to work well on 8-bit computers. https://github.com/johanberntsson/PunyInform There's currently a jam going on. Three PunyInform games have been released, and anyone can play and judge them at https://itch.io/jam/punyjam-2/entries . One of t…

Yeah, I know Punyinform too, I already tried some game under Vice (C64 emu).

I am curious about Tristan Island, it looks like a decent game for an v3 Z-machine.

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#183

Post by anthk »

fistynuts wrote: post #169
Jiro wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can get many of your adventures from your old website. The readme file says that four of the later adventures are in SAGA+ format and are not included because ScottFree can't play them. Since this was written 24 years ago, is there now anything that can play them and if so will you be releasing them? (I'd think that at least it should be possible to play through emulation.) Trying to google this is harder than it s…

I believe ScummVM supports many of Scott's games.

Gargoyle supports all engines and the text rendering it's far better.

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#184

Post by framsberg »

anthk wrote: post #182
framsberg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays there's also PunyInform, an Inform 6 library that replaces the standard library. Programming for it is very similar, but the resulting games are much smaller and faster, to work well on 8-bit computers. https://github.com/johanberntsson/PunyInform There's currently a jam going on. Three PunyInform games have been released, and anyone can play and judge them at https://itch.io/jam/punyjam-2/entries . One of t…

Yeah, I know Punyinform too, I already tried some game under Vice (C64 emu). I am curious about Tristan Island, it looks like a decent game for an v3 Z-machine.

It is! I'm about halfway through it. $4 is a bargain. Just get it.

A link for anyone who cares: https://hlabrande.itch.io/tristam-island

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#185

Post by framsberg »

seanwilson wrote: post #180
framsberg wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about The Edifice, which won the XYZZY Award for Best Puzzles and for Best Individual Puzzle? https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=4tb9soabrb4apqzd The puzzle that won it the Best Individual Puzzle award in one where you need to learn enough of a foreign (invented) language to ask a person for critical information.

This seems like another one that has to include a unique mechanic on top of common object manipulation to make the latter more interesting? I'll look at it more closely though. I know of https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl and https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=w5s3sv43s3p98v45 that use language and wordplay as well.

Well this is far from wordplay.

I don't get what you think makes a text adventure puzzle less worthy.

A puzzle should work well in the medium that it's presented. A complicated math puzzle that you suddenly need to solve in Call of Duty is pretty useless. A puzzle where you need to recognize patterns in an image, presented in a text adventure where the image is just described in (many) words is equally bad. A puzzle in a text adventure that's about words and language seems like a great fit.

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#186

Post by Rd6n6 »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #117
Rd6n6 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Play Galatea. It’s a famous, award winning parser game about a conversation with a sentient statue and has approx 70 endings. The game models your relationship along several axes as you go and the writing is superb

I'm trying it and it's _really_ hard to get any commands to work. Maybe I thought it would be more like Facade. Stuff like "Ask galatea her favorite color" and "tell galatea her dress is pretty" aren't working. It's moving really slow (minutes between attempts) as I try to guess what keywords I can use. I can't even "examine room" like I usually do for conversation. "You can't see any such thing".

I think most of the commands are of the form “talk about x” “tell about x” and “ask about x.” There are also “Galatea, come here” type commands. It definitely takes some some experimentation to figure the parser out unfortunately

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#187

Post by Rd6n6 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #30
ScottAdams wrote: post #3

Hi all this is Scott Adams. I am open for an AMA (Ask Me Anything), awaiting your comments!

It's wonderful to see the GOOD Scott Adams here on Hacker News! I can still crisply remember the places and frames of mind I was in while walking around and solving puzzles in your worlds. How do you think Adventure games are like the Method of Loci, or Memory Palaces, in that they can help you remember and retrieve vast amounts of information geographically? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci What do you t…

I just found out about containers and doors world models and it was really fun to read how you’ve used them here today. I’m going to try out that ui building approach

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#188

Post by Rd6n6 »

ScottAdams wrote: post #127
Rd6n6 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Scott. I started playing parser based IF less than a month ago. I find it so immersive that the only parallel I have for the experience is high quality VR. I love it so much that I wrote my own parser engine 2 weeks ago and I have some ideas for side projects to revive the genre. Thanks for helping to create these! Are you aware at the moment of any interesting developments in the “text games for people with visio…

My Return To Pirate Island 2 (turn of the century), the Inheritance (2013) were blind compatable. I also released Escape The Gloomer on Alexa (fully audio only) Currently working on making AdventurelandXL (www.AdventurelandXL.com) Windows screen reader compatable as well.

I tried the Gloomer last night (steam version). The audio is exceptional

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#189

Post by anthk »

framsberg wrote: post #185
seanwilson wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like another one that has to include a unique mechanic on top of common object manipulation to make the latter more interesting? I'll look at it more closely though. I know of https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl and https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=w5s3sv43s3p98v45 that use language and wordplay as well.

Well this is far from wordplay. I don't get what you think makes a text adventure puzzle less worthy. A puzzle should work well in the medium that it's presented. A complicated math puzzle that you suddenly need to solve in Call of Duty is pretty useless. A puzzle where you need to recognize patterns in an image, presented in a text adventure where the image is just described in (many) words is equally bad. A puzzle…

EDIT: wrong parent.

On the text adventure puzzles, most people began with Zork, so they arent used to modern IF made with Inform against the Z-Machine, were text puzzless can be far from use x on y.

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#190

Post by seanwilson »

framsberg wrote: post #185
seanwilson wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like another one that has to include a unique mechanic on top of common object manipulation to make the latter more interesting? I'll look at it more closely though. I know of https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl and https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=w5s3sv43s3p98v45 that use language and wordplay as well.

Well this is far from wordplay. I don't get what you think makes a text adventure puzzle less worthy. A puzzle should work well in the medium that it's presented. A complicated math puzzle that you suddenly need to solve in Call of Duty is pretty useless. A puzzle where you need to recognize patterns in an image, presented in a text adventure where the image is just described in (many) words is equally bad. A puzzle…

I'm probably not making myself clear. Thanks for the examples and all these text adventures are very worthy showcases of good puzzles that take advantage of the medium in a clever way, and modern IF games are really cool.

My pondering is about how far you can take text adventure design if the designer _intentionally limits themselves_ to object manipulation puzzles based in the real world. My feeling was early text adventures explored this to a limit, which is why all the interesting modern IF examples usually have some twist or layer on top. I'm not saying that's a bad thing either, I just find understanding the limits of how far you can push a certain design restriction interesting.

Specifically, I was looking into if you could get a computer to randomly generate interesting text adventure puzzles by feeding it metadata on common objects and how they interact. My feeling eventually was this was unlikely to generate something surprising as it needs more layers.

I'm really interested to see more text adventure games that push complex NPC interactions (The Edifice looks like a great example, thanks!) as most e.g. movies, TV shows and book plots are based around characters interacting and manipulating each other, over interacting with objects.

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