New adventure game and BASIC (and now C) framework (don’t expect a new Ravenswood)

[Lardo Boffin]

XML, I hate XML. Bloaty and difficult to hand edit.

Lets not forget XLST being a nightmare to use and having to replace > with > etc. I have to use it at work as it is a common method of communicating data with the likes of SAP. I didn’t think of using JSON for this - I did use it to implement a communication layer from a ReST service to a mobile app and it was easy to use. Currently I am using Notepad++ set to XML mode to edit the ‘adventure’ file.

That aside the links between rooms are independent of the rooms themselves - to go East from room 5 to 6 there is a record in a separate table holding 5, 6 and the id of the verb East. To go west from room 6 to 5 there is a record holding 6, 5 and the id of the verb West. This makes creating mazes much easier.

Currently if you need to go East from room 5 to 6 and there is a locked door there are no record in the link table - the room has code to move you once the ‘door’ is unlocked.

[Naomasa298]

Ooh, this topic takes me back. I was a huge adventure fan, and I had (and have) a copy of Peter Killworth's book. I wrote him a letter when I was about 14 via Topologika and to my surprise, he actually replied. Never forget that.

I wrote my own version of the Adventurescape system using similar concepts except it was disk-based (which later versions of AS were too). My parser only had simple verb-noun input though.

I had some machine code to perform the text decompression, but that was it, everything else was in BASIC.

Will definitely revisit, to see how much I've forgotten in 30 years!

Love the features you are adding, like NPCs. IIRC, Level 9's Red Moon had a simple spell and combat system - maybe that's something to add.

[catventure]

I also applaud your efforts to make an adventure creator. It was interesting reading through this thread.
I am also a big adventure fan and used to own QUILL/PAW and GAC on Spectrum 48k.
My own homage to these type of programs was a text adventure creator I made to run in PC Windows called "TAB" (Thinbasic Adventure Creator)
(Don't suppose it will be of much interest to many on this forum, however)
http://tab.thinbasic.com
I wrote mine entirely in the thinBASIC programming language and am only a hobbiest programmer - not a Pro.

Have fun and Good Luck with your project!

[Lardo Boffin]

Thanks catventure. TAB looks interesting and still counts as it has retro in the blurb.

It must be nice to create one of these on non-limited resource computer. With less than 32K to be had its difficult to fit much of anything in. But I guess much of the fun is the technical challenge.