Developing RPG

Roger Kenyon edutec at idirect.com
Sun Jul 29 21:38:00 UTC 2001


>> Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual
>> Z-machine?
> 
> Yes it would! Any volunteers to do the port? Should be "pretty easy" .....
> 
> P.S. My friend Douglas Adams did perhaps the tour de force Infocom
> game. It would be nice to bring this back to life in his memory.

This is related to an area of special interest to me: digiTALES. A digital
text adventure learning experience, or digiTALE for short, is a form of
interactive fiction in the spirit of the old Infocom text adventures (e.g.,
Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). It differs in two significant
regards:

1) The puzzles are based on a unit of study in the extended science
curriculum (e.g., including geography and health just as much as biology or
physics). Students must apply principles of science to situations to achieve
a goal and move further along in the adventure.

2) The text adventures can be played inside a web browser or on their own.

I have an HTML/JavaScript sample in action maze format if anybody is
interested. 

Picture a school web page that contains background information about
electrical circuits, spatial volume, or some other unit of study. At the
bottom of the page would be a digiTALE to reinforce concepts. Right now,
however, it seems that the only way to play a text adventure within a
browser is via ZPlet. (Examples: http://games.igateway.net/adventure/.)
 
ZPlet is a Java interpreter allowing games created with Inform to be played
in a web browser (see http://www.pond.com/~russotto/zplet/ifol.html).
Unfortunately, that means writing interactive fiction with Inform, which is
pretty intimidating (see http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/DM4.pdf).
Moreover, the result is a Java-based text adventure with mixed and many
limitations (e.g., slow, no save/restore). ZPlet adds its own limitations
(e.g., font, color scheme), but Matt Russotto has opened the ZPlet source
code in hopes of improvements
(http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/IF/Zplet.htm).

The Cloak of Darkness site (http://homepages.tesco.net/~roger.firth/cloak/)
is a good place to compare the various text adventure languages. Inform is
the most powerful, but not very friendly. ALAN is the most friendly, but not
very visual. Adrift is easy and visual, but Windows only. A digiTALE
implemented in Squeak might be a better way of going about browser-based
text adventures. 

--

R. Kenyon

|T|h|i|n|k|L|i|n|k: http://www.riverwoodpub.com/educatio.htm
Not everything is black & white: some things have to be read.





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