text adventure game

[Jeff]

Jeff.. I had a look at the blog.. holy whitespace!

I looked at the html, and there's an unnessecary abundance of br tags in there.. like 2 after the paragraph, and one after each line in your table definition. if you're unfamiliar with the html, br is a new line. so just clean up the html around the table blocks and get rid of the br tags at the end of each line.

I didnt write those, they were an artifact of a blog editing filter.

Took my a day but I found it and turned it of. Its fine now.

[Jeff]

Btw, I just wrote the article on inventories so have a look.

The next step, conditional transitions, will answer another confusion of yours.

[kevglass]

I read the articles - nice to see some more texts explaining concepts

I wasn't going to post - since I'm sure there is a reason to all this - but I really don't see the benefit of modelling a text adventure as a FSM - seems ok for moving around (it almost looks like the map) - but everything from that point on seems like pushing an square abstraction into a round problem.

Whats the benefit of using an FSM over just using a normal object model for instance?

I mean isn't the object model for adventure games is beautifully layed out implicitly;  This thread has almost inspired to go write an text adventure engine (like I haven't got enough toys to play with right now).

Kev

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Jeff]

Hey Kev,

As you migth see in the lates article, I actually am evolving towards an OOP model, but its still an FSA just a modular object oriented FSA. 

The justification for this is that it makes the core concepts much easier learn.  Its easy to get distracted by trying to actually code physical simulations of the world and a text adventure isn't a physical simulation, its a textual one.  To put it another way, a text adveture is a lot more like one of those "make your own adventure" books then like a world simulator.  Thats a key distinction.  In fact I strongly suspect thats where the original poster that kicked this all off went wrong and ended up spending a year on what is a month project at most. 

It also gives us a useful language of tables we can use to talk about adventure design, even as we move away from actual tables in the code.  It also makes the histyorical adventures that werent written in OOPLS (Infocom, Scott Adams) easier to understand.

Having said all that, i DO have a radcially different archotecture that is better suited to multi-player MUDS that Iintend to introduce once the disucssion of single player text adventures is finished-- but it will be muche asier to udnerstand in the context of the single player adventures then beign introduced "out of thin air"  *)

[bahuman]

Jeff, having read up on your blog, wouldn't this also make a nice chapter on your wiki ? 

[Jeff]

Good thought for when I have time

[Jeff]

Next chapter up, btw.