hello. i attempted to make an immersive dungeon crawling roguelite with Inform 7 and gave up as the engine is way too primitive to do anything easily and i was tired of asking for help cosntantly. would i have a better time making a game like that (think Nethack or Eamon) with Choicescript? would anyone play such a thing? i always wanted to do a project like this.
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Choicescript is a scripting language for making very specific kinds of choice-based text games. Inform 7 isn’t well suited to making roguelikes (although really good ones have been made in it), but at least it has native support for rooms, objects, NPCs etc. Choicescript can’t be used to make a game anything like Nethack. You’d be better off using an engine designed for making these things. More info on these can be found over at Roguebasin.
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ah, i see.
There’s no theoretical reason why you can’t have procedurally generated worlds in Choicescript but unless you’re a programmer who enjoys masochistic challenges I wouldn’t recommend it. And all interaction with the world has to be simple text-based choices.
So, what jojo said. You would be welcome here but I think there might be better tools for what you want.
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Have you looked at Icepeak Mountains? It’s a bit more D&D/fighting fantasy-ish than a straight roguelite but the gist is there and it sounds a bit like what you’re wanting to do. You can use RNG to help set up random rooms, enemies types, strengths, loot etc.
Short answer: yes you can.
Long answer: it’s going to be tricky to balance and keep interesting due to the likely use of a lot of RNG and lack of visuals, and since it’s so far out of the normal bounds of what people consider to be a “choicescript game” it’s going to be a harder sell and unlikely to be popular. (I personally liked the concept of Icepeak Mountains, but you rarely hear it being mentioned compared to the author’s other games which is telling for the likely popularity stakes.)
If you want, just try coding a mini game in it though and see what you think. People use choicescript with stat checks and RNG for fight scenes all the time so it is doable if it’s something you want to make. Choicescript lends itself far more to story based games though, so something with core storylines/missions running though it (like icepeak) are probably going to work better than running through lots of infinitely random generated dungeons on a loot quest without any real storyline.
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I’m interested, Do you plan on having a good story/ lore or is it pure roguelike? it would be interesting to see how you would make it work