Developing RPG (Tile-based graphics with transparency)

G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl
Sun Jul 29 18:17:16 UTC 2001


RPG: RolePlayGame or IF: InteractiveFiction... It has a long history, going
back to the 80-s (The days of Apple-II and Tandy model-I and even before
that: a good overview of the history and the diverse programs of the past
and present is available at: 

ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/

Core of these programs is handling natural language, placed in
fantasy-settings: "You are in a dark wood, at your left you see an old
house, on your right you hear a waterfall.. what will you do next?

My favorite is: Inform, also documented at:

http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/index.html

Because is has this same platform-independancy of a virtual machine I also
like in Smalltalk & Squeak:

"....The Z-machine is an imaginary computer, created in 1979, which has
never existed as circuitry. Instead, almost every real computer built in the
1980s and 1990s has been taught to pretend to be a Z-machine. The usefulness
of this is that Inform's story files (the actual games which players play)
run on the Z-machine, so it follows that a Z-machine interpreter is just
what you need to play Inform games. The Z-machine was invented by Joel
Berez, Marc Blank and others working at the Infocom corporation, so it also
runs Infocom's justly famous works of interactive fiction...."

There are also trials of combining the language parser with sound & graphic
scenes....

Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual
Z-machine?


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Clemens [mailto:clemens at wvwc.edu]
Sent: zondag 29 juli 2001 14:54
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: Developing RPG (Tile-based graphics with transparency)


> I don't know what an RPG is

Or an old "programming language."  Actually more accurately a set of coding
sheets that allows the "easy" creation of reports from data files.  Used
many of the same terms/concepts as COBOL but without the ability to do much
real "coding."  A later version was called RPG II.






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