Hi! I’m a short ways into a WIP of mine and have been reading a lot of old CYOA games for inspiration. I’ve become pretty interested in the gameplay style of Photopia and other classic text games, where the player is given a text box instead of a series of choices and can type what they want to do (go north, pick up rock, talk to Guy, etc).
I know this isn’t the typical choicescript method of gameplay, but I think it’s possible if perhaps tricky to implement using CS’s input text function. Has anyone tried this? Could a short story in this style be feasibly published on hosted games?
Thanks!
From technical side I think that it can be done but it would be messy to make due to various ways to write a command. Example: go north, go to north, Go north, GO NORTH, Go North. I think you would need a way to make it clear to the player to only use lowercase letters (or whatever rules you find proper) to avoid writing twenty or more possibilites a command may be written.
About it being published, I can’t tell. It might be best to ask COG leadership (or whoever handles such work/requests.)
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Is it doable? Theoretically, yes, but something like inform is much more suitable for it. yes, inform is a much tougher language, but at least it’s built for games that use a parser. using something that’s not really built for that, like CS, is just going to result in headaches, trying to circumvent limitations
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If you want to keep the text, input idea, I can give you a hand with the inform shit, I’m coding a game in that right now
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I think a command guide might work, but it seems like the gameplay would be a little clunky clicking back and forth from the instructions to the main text. Thanks for the input!
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Appreciated! In my case, I’ll probably stick to CS because I like the platform here. Good luck on your inform project!
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hmmm. It can be done.
but first is necessary to code a parser that:
1 - reads the text input (up to four letters of each word? most verbs and some nouns will be identifiable by their first 4 letters, right?)
2 - ignore case. (by converting it to lower case perhaps?)
3 - compare the words identified accordingly with the rules of a formal language (its an action? then it has a verb, it’s a question? look for a question mark in the sentence, etc…)
4 - react to confirm statement (If player writes yell, answer “to who?”, if he writes pick “what item?” etc.)
*goto/gosub event accordingly with the context tree of the scene (interactive items, interable objects, possible actions, people being addressed at, characters presents, time count, events in motion, etc…)
Makes sense?
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