Flavor Text Adventure Contest

Make games! Discuss those games here.

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marionline
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Post by marionline »

I'm not 100% sure what the expected result should look like. More like an rpg or like a text adventure?

Does the flavor text apply to dialogues and surrounding descriptions? Or is pure dialogue branching also okay?

If using the OHR: Would all NPCs have to open a menu where you choose an option and then they'd show a textbox?

And, is it okay to merge story branches together again? Otherwise there would be a lot of them quite soon, right?

For story games there's also a tool called RenPy. It combines story and sprites.
This and Twine already mentioned by Willy Elektrix were two tools that came to my mind.
Besides a simple text based game that runs in a terminal shell.
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TheLordThyGod
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Post by TheLordThyGod »

I'm trying to make something for this. My OHR kung fu is no good, but I love adventure games so I'm going to give it a shot anyway. It doesn't really have any functionality yet, but it already looks better than LinearQuest (not difficult).
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Stote's Quest ideas
Stote's Quest ideas
SQ1 01 Test.JPG (53.63 KiB) Viewed 3995 times
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Pepsi Ranger
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

I'm not 100% sure what the expected result should look like. More like an rpg or like a text adventure?
The type of adventure you create is up to you. My vision is a traditional OHR style game (minus the battles, or with, doesn't matter) that involves exploration, puzzle-solving, and interactive objects that activate choice menus for the player to progress. But that's just one idea. You can do what you want. Just make sure it could be classified as an adventure game.
Does the flavor text apply to dialogues and surrounding descriptions? Or is pure dialogue branching also okay?
Flavor text, in this case, is traditional usage, where the player "uses" an object on the map (i.e. the stove or oven from the original example) and a textbox pops up, but the adventure part of it is to create choices for the player to make when activating these objects. It would be akin to clicking on an object in a point-and-click and getting a response based on which pointer icon is activated (use, talk, touch, look, etc.). But, I'm not sure if that answers your question, so maybe do what you think flavor text is, and then we can tell you if it helps make your game more adventurous.

You could also post animated GIFS of your game in action if you get really concerned about your flavor text choices, but I'm sure it'll be fine.
If using the OHR: Would all NPCs have to open a menu where you choose an option and then they'd show a textbox?
No. That would be excessive. Just do what the story calls for.

If you want to maintain a standard, you could have each NPC open a menu, but the majority of them may just have "talk" or "use" options appear in the menu, where others may have multiple options. But again, that's up to you and the standard of quality you want to set your game to.
And, is it okay to merge story branches together again? Otherwise there would be a lot of them quite soon, right?
No idea what you're talking about here. How you develop the story is up to you. If you are talking about merging choice selections and results, then sure. Again, make the game in whatever way it needs to be made. Don't make your game terrible to meet the demands of a gimmick. Use the gimmick as needed to make the best game you can. Again, the base requirement is to make an adventure game where interaction with objects is part of the gameplay, but interaction with all objects is not necessary.
For story games there's also a tool called RenPy. It combines story and sprites.
This and Twine already mentioned by Willy Elektrix were two tools that came to my mind.
Besides a simple text based game that runs in a terminal shell.
I also recommend a few of you make a quickie game using Mogri's Interactive Storybook (the link is on the announcement post), as it's a Slime Salad featured engine that currently has only five games (including one of mine) and is really quick and easy to use. You could dash off a short and fun adventure in just a few hours. Plus, it could improve your adventure story-telling skills, as it requires no graphics, and unless you want to do something fancy, no scripting.

Mine is an unfinished psychological drama (well, more like a comedy) about a man who commits a crime because he likes pigeons. It will take me a while to finish it, and I probably won't finish before this contest ends, but you guys could certainly write something short and clever and submit it to this contest. I think Mogri would appreciate it, too, since he made the engine and no one has used it in about three years.

Actually, here's the link so you don't have to go hunting for it: https://www.slimesalad.com/book/
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Idontknow
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Post by Idontknow »

Last night I made a game with Interactive Book to test it out. It was dumped out in about 15 minutes pn my phone so it's pretty much nonsense, but it's complete more-or-less.

I might enter this contest though, most likely with a Twine game since I downloaded Twine about four years ago and have done literally nothing with it.
Last edited by Idontknow on Sun Jun 11, 2017 3:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Pepsi Ranger
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

Just a quick bump to see how many of you have started working on a new grand adventure that may or may not take an hour or so to finish. Don't forget to hype.
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Post by kylekrack »

I started drawing some graphics last night with a vague idea for a concept, but that's all I've had time for all month :(
Hopefully I can contribute something. Might be working with someone else to do so.
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Post by SwordPlay »

I'm designing a concept for an epic-ish neo-punk-noir game but I am having trouble justifying it and it's spinning out of control (help me) hahaha (send help immediately).

I don't want to make something boring, as that would go against the spirit of "flavour" but I do want to give it a jolly good crack the best I can.

I'm not sure if I can get it done, but I might try to churn out a few joke games instead :p

EDIT: Hippity Hoppity HYPE Homie
Last edited by SwordPlay on Tue Jun 20, 2017 10:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Willy Elektrix
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Post by Willy Elektrix »

I've decided on a concept. The game will involve a fashion show.
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MorpheusKitami
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Post by MorpheusKitami »

I've already started work on it. It's a coming of age tale set in a dark fantasy world full of knights and demons. Also, elves and every other generic fantasy critter ever.
TMC
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Post by TMC »

Virtuous Sword wrote:I'm not sure if I can get it done, but I might try to churn out a few joke games instead :p
How about minigames rather than joke games? Well, I assume a minigame about, say, making a cup of tea without scalding yourself might be considered satire of the adventure game genre, and what is satire if not a joke with sophistication, so...
Last edited by TMC on Wed Jun 21, 2017 2:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Idontknow »

I've been going deep into my game. It stars Necromancer protagonist Diana as she explores her home and town in order to find a way to defeat a highly paranoid and almost magical hacker, the self-proclaimed HACKERMAN, who has it out for her and her son over a trivial internet argument.

Most of it is goofy nonsense in the spirit of my other games, but there may be some surprises along the way.

It's a twine game, because I wanted to try out a new medium. I had to brush up on my high school CSS skills but the game itself operates fine, albeit horribly incomplete. I'm still mulling over what colors to make the text and background, or any other layout changes.
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Sample of flavor text
Sample of flavor text
angry_greek_woman.png (77.63 KiB) Viewed 3828 times
Older screenshot of a fight with Damien's computer
Older screenshot of a fight with Damien's computer
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Mogri
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Re: Flavor Text Adventure Contest

Post by Mogri »

You've gone and given me ideas.

Image

Oh no door is locked!

Image

Lucky for us, we have a menu full of verbs, and lots of things to point them at.

Image

Push aside the doormat to reveal a key. (Rats! Now I've spoiled the first puzzle.)

The default battle engine actually works really well for this, although you have to create a ton of attacks and enemies for even a simple puzzle. It'll also get complicated if you need to preserve a room's state between visits -- it's simplest if you can keep the game linear, so the player can never revisit a scene. (Guess what I'm not doing.)

I do not actually have a good story for this idea yet, but that has never stopped me.
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Post by TMC »

Now that's innovation! Looking good.

We probably should have more tag conditions in places in the battle system. Anything you recommend?
Last edited by TMC on Sat Jun 24, 2017 6:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Mogri »

You ask a dangerous question! Here's my wishlist, most of which doesn't have much to do with tags:
  • Some way to hide the MP cost indicator, maybe keyed off of whether the hero's MP stat is hidden? That "0 0/0" is a little ugly.
  • In the main battle menu, draw the highlight bar before any of the text, so that the outline of the previous item doesn't get eaten. It looks especially bad when the highlight is faint or matches the menu color exactly.
  • Auto-transmogrify-on-tag would be lovely. Before battle fade-in and when any tag is changed in battle, check to see if an enemy should transmogrify. (There's a possibility for infinite loops here; I assume you'd just short-circuit at some point, with undefined behavior because that's what the author deserves for setting up an infinite loop.) This would neatly solve the persistence issue.
  • Actually, the other half we need is "set tag on death" for enemies. (Heroes can already do this!) You could do some really cool things with both: a dragon that gets madder with each egg you destroy, for example. This is such an obvious feature that I was sure we already had it. (You can do it with an on-death attack, but again, most cool battle system ideas involve creating dozens of attacks to do simple things, and anything that reduces that is a good thing.)
  • The ability to associate a caption with an enemy that could be revealed when targeted by an attack with a theoretical "scan" bitset would save me approximately one attack definition per enemy. Admittedly more of a nice-to-have since the functionality is already there, but "scan" is a pretty common use case in RPGs. If you want to make this more general, have a "responses" submenu similar to the existing "attacks" menu -- the responses would allow you to give captions for counters without having to set up an attack for each one. (This would be really nice to have for any nonstandard use of the battle system)
  • I'd love expanded captions. There's no reason we need to limit them to one line (but then you'd also want a caption preview in the editor).
  • And along those lines, it'd be great if captions weren't wiped out when they chain to an attack with no caption. But now I'm nitpicking; I already have workarounds for this.
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Post by TMC »

These suggestions are all great ideas.
I would implement some of these immediately, but I'm trying to avoid working on the OHR due to a pressing deadline.
Mogri wrote:Some way to hide the MP cost indicator, maybe keyed off of whether the hero's MP stat is hidden? That "0 0/0" is a little ugly.
I wonder whether costs for hidden stats should be shown at all (well, maybe sometimes you want to show that cost, and other times you want to use a hidden stat to 'silently' disable a attack, so a setting is appropriate.)
Or costs which are zero. If any of the other costs are zero they are hidden.
I guess bitsets could be added for both of those. Or alternatively a per-stat "Don't show <stat> costs in battle menus" plus a "Don't show attack MP cost if zero" bitset, since MP is special.
In the main battle menu, draw the highlight bar before any of the text, so that the outline of the previous item doesn't get eaten. It looks especially bad when the highlight is faint or matches the menu color exactly.
It annoys me too whereever it happens.
Auto-transmogrify-on-tag would be lovely. Before battle fade-in and when any tag is changed in battle, check to see if an enemy should transmogrify.
This would be very powerful!
I guess that start-of-battle transmogrify should be instant, while during-battle should perform a dissolve.
If an attack sets a tag, I don't know whether it happens at the beginning or end of the attack, before or after chaining occurs, or when the attack is selected rather than performed. We need to decide upon that. Maybe after the attack is performed, but before the 'next' chain is decided? I think clearly it needs to happen before 'instead' chains for followup attacks are checked.
Actually, the other half we need is "set tag on death" for enemies.
I agree that we should add enemy settings such as that instead of requiring attacks.
a "responses" submenu similar to the existing "attacks" menu -- the responses would allow you to give captions for counters without having to set up an attack for each one.
I'm unsure about this one...
I guess in future there could there be other kinds of responses? (Set tags directly, or textboxes (see below)?)
Counter attacks happen after the triggering attack, so I guess non-attack responses should be the same, but there would be a caption displayed without any attack active. That might require creating a dummy attack in the attack queue, in other words not so simple.

I think the best first step to responding to this request is to make it easier to create a new attack from the enemy editor (jump straight from one editor to the other).
I'd love expanded captions. There's no reason we need to limit them to one line (but then you'd also want a caption preview in the editor).
I'd like to allow textboxes in battles, as drastically improved versions of captions. (Length, positioning, portraits, conditions, chains, etc.) But that's probably still far-off because there are so many questions to answer. Or maybe it wouldn't be hard?
Just expanding the file format a little to allow a couple extra lines would be a doable stop-gap.
And along those lines, it'd be great if captions weren't wiped out when they chain to an attack with no caption. But now I'm nitpicking; I already have workarounds for this.
I tested and made a couple changes to battle captions recently, and could have sworn that this was not the case. Are you using turn-based or active battle captions?
Last edited by TMC on Sun Jun 25, 2017 5:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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