TIGSource Forums

Idea: Multiplayer Text Adventure Shooter.
Details: Players use typical Text Adventure commands to interact and eventually kill each other. Map will have randomised rooms, randomised weapons.

Tools:

• FlashDevelop
• Visual C# 2010 Express
• Player.IO
• Flixel

Progress:

• Day One (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17114.msg492267#msg492267)

Currently:

• Experiment with server code some more.

Welcome to TIGSource. Please enjoy the multiplayer bloodbath.

Thanks!

My current idea is to make a 'strategic' teamplay game. But that would require more than 2 players, so this may be revised at any time. Both team exist of pickles, obviously, and there is one team attacking, and one team defending at any time. One of the attackers will have the ball, and the goal is to bring this ball across the field behind the other team for a touchdown. If an enemy players collide, a minigame will occur. The minigame decides which player 'wins', and the losing player will be stunned for about 2 seconds. The ball carrier will have some sort of 'debuff' which will make them worse at the minigames, or make the minigames harder. If the ball carrier is defeated in a minigame, the enemy player becomes the ball carrier and the team roles now switch.

Sounds ok in my head. Not sure how much of this I will be able to pull off, lol. But it sounds so much fun I'm giving it all I got :)
Lots of research and fun ahead!

I'm getting different ideas for different games now. Need to decide what's most fun to do.

Minigames are a pain, you sure about this? Also, think small, better to have a finished shitgame than a barely-started masterpiece! Also, I love shitgames!

Why are minigames a pain? If they're quick, they could work, right?
I've put that idea on hold though, I've just updated the first post with a new idea.

Too many ideas -_- Need to decide on one thing and go with it. Currently I'm thinking just multi-player turn-based minesweeper could work, but that's not very new in any way.

I like the saboteur idea alot, but I don't think different minigames would work, somehow. They'd become repetetive quite fast I'd think.

I finetuned the idea for the pickle game a bit, essentially leaving out 'minigames', and making it more fun. It'd still require atleast 2v2, most likely 3v3 though.

Another idea I had can be 1v1. And I think I may be able to pull that off alot better. It'd be an interactive multiplayer shooter. So you'd have to type in commands to do everything. Example:


Etc.
I'm liking this idea so far, could be pretty funny I guess. I'm almost certain I'll go with this, as it seems best doable for me in such timeframe.

That idea certainly has some strange consequences - for example, weapons with shorter names are faster to use, and players with longer/more challenging to type names take more time to hit. You'd also have the issue of cheating via the use of programs that simulate keyboard input (the equivalent of an 'aimbot' would be having a macro that auto-types your opponent's name, or something). Still, interesting in a quirky way.  :)

I like this idea too...  And hope for many interesting ways to kill your opponent along with some opportunities to counter/protect yourself from such attacks.

I will probably randomly generate the maps (so players don't learn the maps and instantly own at them), and randomly generated weapons with longer/shorter names may actually be a good thing I think. Players with longer/shorter names on the other hand seems unfair indeed, have to find a way to counter that.
I don't know how I could counter cheating through macros/programs. Something to take for granted I suppose. I still have over a month though, so who knows.

As for countering from attacks, that is a great idea!

I'll start working on this today. Will probably make this in Flash, Unity seems pointless for this and I'm more advanced in Flash. For the title I was thinking 'Very Interactive Fiction', as a play on words for the genre 'Interactive Fiction'.

Progress Report:
Researched Player.IO today (Thanks a bunch Chevy ;)), and thought up and wrote down some ideas for the game. Now that I get the basics of server-user interaction I may be ready to start work on the actual project. Productive day, even though it looks like I've done nothing.

Hiya Maqrkk, good to see you taking part! :D

I really like the idea, and I'm thinking re: player names, perhaps you could have presets assigned randomly at the start? could even make a set of characters each with their own abilities maybe? like cluedo if colonel mustard carried around his old pistol from the war, but it jams super easy. and if in cluedo it was a deathmatch or whatever... >__>

ok, ignoring me might be best, but I like the idea anyway, looking forward to how it works out :)

I thought about having a bunch of presets randomly assigned, and this is still my favourite idea at this point. I mean, it's interactive fiction, anything could happen. Maybe an optional gender toggle, or am I making too big a problem of tiny things? If the names are random, I think it would matter less if one were named 'Quintin' and the other one 'Bob'. That's just luck of the draw, not an abuse by one of them.

However, characters and their own abilities is also a great idea, and that would also take care of this problem. This would require some slight rethinking of certain aspects, but it sounds like alot of fun.
I'm going to have to admit I've never played Cluedo though, but that is not the point ;)

Anyway, thanks for the kind words, I hope not to disappoint :D

Or maybe longer names could incure some kind of offsetting penalty.  Like it's harder to counter or heal yourself because of the longer name(?).

Longer names on weapons = deal more damage

Solution for player names could be to make them all six letters long, or so.

Anders
Smitty
Robert
Joseph
Johnny
Keaton
Alicia
Olivia
Andrew
Ashley
Sophia
Kaylee
Bernie
Adelle

etc.

That's a very clean solution I'd say, Inanimate. I may go with that. Thanks a bunch :)

The Flash part of Player.IO I can now do pretty much from scratch. The server bit is still a huge mystery. To have full control, I feel I have to be able to write it from scratch. This is not the case yet. I haven't found a good guide to set up Player.IO server code from scratch. I'll continue experimenting ofcourse, until I tackle this.

I think I'll make the lobby/room selection also in Text-Adventure style. There'd a be a 'help' command to get you started, but you'd type something like JOIN LOBBY to enter the chat/room selection. You'd use commands like LIST ROOMS, CREATE ROOM MAQ, JOIN ROOM MAQ, etc. Chatting would be by starting a sentence with a word that's not a lobby-keyword I think..

Once there are atleast 2 people in a room, it will be started (this is so the first player cannot get a huge advantage by exploring and gathering weapons before any other players join).

That said, moar experimenting!

You mentioned 'randomized arenas'... perhaps instead of just being entirely random, you can choose 'themes', like "THEME: LAVA" or "THEME: FACTORY", which produce certain tilesets / weapons / obstacles?

For weapons and rooms, themes could work. And I may not have been clear enough on my ideas, but it won't feature any graphical output other than text. You will not see the map, that's left to your own imagination.

By tilesets, I meant what it was described as. You were perfectly clear.  ;)

Progress Report:
During the past two days I've done more testing with Player.IO. Think I'm about 95% there to fully understanding and finally starting it up.
Also been pondering some things gameplay-wise. Obviously with text-adventure, nothing is 'real-time', but with multiplayer, there has to be. Here's some examples and my current thoughts:

Event: Someone enters the room you're in.
Thoughts: I think part of the charm of text-adventure would be to keep this non real-time. For starters, it would give the player in the room a MAJOR advantage, because the other player has to LOOK or EXAMINE the room to find there is another player. But in the case where it's not real-time, the player who enters the room has the advantage, as they would most likely know someone else is in the room sooner. Leaning towards not real-time for this.

Event: You get killed.
Thoughts: Really unsure. It could work as real-time, that as soon as you're killed you get a message like "As you feel the bullet enter and exit your head, all can only think how much it sucks your opponent gained a point. A POINT!!". On the other hand, it could also work if you are being told by your next command, like this:
EXAMINE CUPBOARD
There is a gun in the cupboard.

** here you've been killed by someone **

TAKE GUN
I'd respawn first if I were you. Oh that's right, you died.

Don't know what would work best right now.

The lobby itself would mostly be real-time, with chatting. I don't think there will be any chatting during the game at this point. Or maybe the lobby will stay active during a game?

I'll start writing a text-input thingy first now. Should've done that already, really. I work so slow at times. /me sighs.

Thinking back to the MUDs I once played, I wasn't sure why you were hesitant about real-time actions in the game.  In fact I feel like I've even seen them in some single player text adventures, but can't think of a specific example... maybe the gnome working on different things in Lost Pig(?).

I do really like your delayed death message though.  And it would be a good way to prevent players from spamming eachother durring a game.  At first I thought this might make everyone feel a little slow in terms of being told about things that have changed around them.  I suspect it would actually make things more frantic as players constantly look around to watch their back.

I'm really looking forward to playing this one!

I also like the delayed death message, I think it'd make it alot more hectic like you said, making the players paranoid, having them check LOOK constantly. I think I'll make final decisions during playtesting, see what works best.
Thanks by the way :) Feels good to make a game for an audience like this, that's a first for me. Makes me more excited to finish it too.

Progress Report:
Finally started the actual creating of the game. I managed to get a funky oldschool looking text input bar pretty quickly. It will take care of most of the game on its own, the rest is communicating with the server and adding feedback text to an ever-growing (and clearable??) list of textfields. This will probably be scrollable, but I'm not sure (making it scrollable could destroy the oldschool feel, and the old lines are probably outdated by the time they reach the top).

Also, I've taken a rather drastic change from my previous programming, and am now working slightly structural. I've written down the commands that will be in the game, and focus on that list. This differs from my usual totally random approach, which hopefully will result in quicker and better programming.

So, I have some questions that I'd like opinions on.
1. Should the game start in the lobby with a default name (Guest427), or should it start in 'offline' mode, and you would need to type 'CONNECT ___', with the underscores being your desired nickname? I think the first option is more user friendly, in that they can start straight away, but I'm unsure.

2. Did I forget any commands for the lobby? I can only think of 3 at this time; JOIN [roomname], NICK [new name], and LIST [rooms|players].

3. Should there be chat during the game? If so, how would this work, considering mostly everything is non real-time. And you're probably focussed on playing anyway? Hmm..

All in all, I've had a terribly slow start, but I'm finally making some progress! Yay!

I was going to join this forum to participate in this competition by making this same thing(but in js).

My hat is off to you, and I am available for consulting ;)

I like the idea of choosing a name before you connect. This way you don't end up with a room full of Guests all trying to figure out how to change their name. You could start the game with a simple prompt, "What is your name?" And then connect when they hit enter.

Also, just brainstorming here, to distinguish between chatting and commands in the lobby, the commands could be following a slash like: /join and /nick.


Maybe: CREATE [roomname]?


I'm not sure about this one. On the one hand, it might be nice to chat while waiting for your turn. On the other hand, it might be kind of disruptive to be seeing real-time messages pop up when you're taking your turn.

You could think about in-game forms of communication:

SAY "I KNOW YOUR GUN IS OUT OF AMMO"

or

YELL "COME OUT AND GET ME"

If the opponent is too far away:

You hear a muffled yell from the north but can't make out the words.

Or you could just leave the in-game communication to simple verbs like MOCK JERRY or TAUNT JETHRO. Although players would have to be in the same room for this to really work.

Maybe, the chat could be in a separate window. Or somehow on the side?


I'm excited about this project. There are a lot of ways to expand this idea too.

Traps? PLACE BOMB IN CUPBOARD

Alternate game modes? Objective based? First person to PARACHUTE off the ROOF with the BRIEFCASE wins? But you better be sure those aren't FORGED PAPERS first!

What a coincidence :D And you are free to make your own if you wish ofcourse!

I think I prefer that way too. You start in offline mode and pick a name. If you try a name that's taken, it would notify you, but sign you in under your name followed with (2) or something, like Maqrkk(2) and Fluff(2).
As for the slash-commands, unsure. A different option would be to have the chat under a different command, like "CHAT HEY ALL" would say "HEY ALL" in the lobby.

I thought JOIN would create the room if it doesn't exist, but I guess a CREATE command should also be valid in this case. Now I need to decide what would happen if you create a room that already exists. Would you join it (if possible), or be told it already exists?

This comes back to the real-time vs. non real-time events. If the game is, what I currently think, 100% non real-time, then even the simple communication would be 'odd'. I guess a screen on the side would be the best option for this, but it may be distracting. I have to think about this some more..

Those are some crazy fun ideas :D And thanks, I hope not to disappoint :)

Thanks for the comments, they keep me motivated :D

Are you still working on this?

I was pretty sick this week, and therefore hardly able to do any work on this. Am starting to feel alot better, so expect some updates soon :)

So when I started to feel better, I was struck with a second coming of the flu. Spent the whole week doing nothing but feeling crap. Now that the deadline is coming closer, I'll be extra motivated to finish this, I think. I've spent two weeks thinking stuff through, so updates should come rapidly.