Notice the similarity to MUDs and MOOs.

Cheers,

Alan

------

At 9:41 AM +0200 7/30/01, G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:
>I took a short look at Adrift and I like the way they organize the editor
>interface, but it is only available under Windows.... (I also saw on the
>website you mentioned a java-applet for running Inform-games)
>
>Your remark about Inform is correct.
>Therefor: Wouldn't it be nice to have an editor (or even more: something
>like an adventure-game-objects-organizer for children, running on top of
>Z-machine)
>
>In 1986 I saw a program called Tombs of Arkenstone, demonstrated by a very
>enthousiatic Bob Hart, who told us about an avarage primary school classroom
>with lots of children who hate reading, history, etc...
>Then he introduced a very simple adventure-game-editor (running on a
>BBC-computer form Acorn)
>It was simple to create rooms/caverns connected through corridors.
>You could add the descriptions of the rooms and corridors.
>You could place persons and objects inside these rooms, again: adding the
>descriptions...
>
>Children decided to design an medieval castle with Knights, so they started
>to read books about knights, castles... wrote down their thoughts and design
>ideas, created paper dmo-castles...
>
>I forgot if the game ever was finished, I remember Bob and I am still
>wondering how much the enthusiasm of Bob - and not the game - infected the
>children...
>
>Now seeing Squeak and Swiki: wouldn't it be nice to create a swiki where you
>could work on a adventure-project with many others:
>
>- choose an adventure theme
>- start an adventure swiki for that theme
>- let all 'children' add documentation about persons on person-pages
>- let them create rooms and corridors and fill these with descriptions on
>description-pages
>- let them create (thematic) puzzles on puzzle-pages (is more then solving
>puzzles ot others)
>- have a masterpage where you place puzzles and persons in the rooms and
>(this is the more difficult part to design)
>- go to the play-page an go.. (here you need a history-list you could read
>from and write on from the internet... and that for every player: ..)
>- realize it will never become so complex as the professional games, but
>connections to music, pctures on the pages and even Alice in Wonderland pass
>my fantasy..
>
>   
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Roger Kenyon [mailto:edutec at idirect.com]
>Sent: zondag 29 juli 2001 23:38
>To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>Subject: Re: Developing RPG
>
>
>>>  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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