"Text Adventure" Rogue Like

[Pueo]

What's the general opinion on text adventures and roguelikes? If a classic text adventure like Zork or Adventure was put on the roguelike scale, where would it fall?  What about a fusion of a T.A. (text adventure) and a roguelike, or are they too different?

[Legend]

I would call Interactive Fiction Like Zork or Adventure roguelike at all. They are far off the scale in my opinion. Zyll might be the closest because it does contain combat and randomized item locations.

Big differences are the lack of tactical combat and lack of raandomly generated levels.

[Alex E]

I like text adventures, and I like roguelikes. A combination though? Eh, I can imagine it and it doesn't seem too fun.

-You encounter a Troll while crossing the bridge!
Attack

-You deal 10 damage! Your sword breaks in half!
Run Away

-You run away! You have 1 stick and 1 wooden shield remaining in your inventory.
Walk North

....

I guess it could be fun, but I personally don't see it.

[Pueo]

Yeah, I was thinking about it, but I guess they don't really "gel."  I had thought about maybe having a HUD type display on the side with the text on the other.  I also had thought of using my favorite part of Text Adventures (the parser) in a roguelike, where you could could use it alongside the regular commands.  Maybe in conversation?

[kraflab]

Nothing wrong with spending a week or weekend prototyping something and then showing it to us.  You might be able to make it work.

[Pueo]

Heh, with my (non)skills it would probably be more like a couple weeks to a month.  I'll see where it goes 

[kraflab]

Heh, with my (non)skills it would probably be more like a couple weeks to a month.  I'll see where it goes 

Every bit of time spent developing/programming games will make things go faster the next time.  Good luck!

[AgingMinotaur]

There are some examples of attempted hybrids. I most recently came over a game called Kerkerkruip, which seems interesting, although I didn't try it myself. It can be downloaded with a *.gblorb file extension, whatever that might be. Here is a wiki entry: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Kerkerkruip

I think the idea (RL/IF hybrid) is interesting, but probably difficult to pull off. The core stuff that makes text adventures fun don't lend themselves easily to randomization.

As always,
Minotauros

[Darren Grey]

Kerkerkruip is quite popular amongst blind roguelike players as it can be played with a screen reader.

[Pueo]

Thanks for the tip about Kerkerkruip, I checked it out; appparently a gblorb file is a glulx (?) story file in a blorb (?) wrapper, and you need the glulx VM to run it.  Maybe I'll figue that out and play around with it.

[XLambda]

Thanks for the tip about Kerkerkruip, I checked it out; appparently a gblorb file is a glulx (?) story file in a blorb (?) wrapper, and you need the glulx VM to run it.  Maybe I'll figue that out and play around with it.

Here's a little tip: many people use Gargoyle nowadays. It is open-source, can handle most IF formats and is pleasant to read, as opposed to many console-based IF machines.

[AgingMinotaur]

lol

[george]

I don't know if the combination is that far fetched. There are muds with randomized content and they have been/are popular.

I can't remember the name of the game but someone posted on the forums here with an IF RL some time back. It was written in Inform 7, the same language used for Kerkerkruip.

If anyone gets interested in Kerkerkruip there's quite a bit of development happening on it right now. See http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=5697&sid=3f438abc5b503bf94f3f8b73ab4b84e4 .

[Pueo]

I'm also trying to figure out how many RL elements you could add to an IF game while still keeping to the spirit of both.  Obvious and necessary for me are random content, combat, and permadeath/permanent actions (most IFs have an 'undo' command).  However, should there be actual hitpoints, mana points, etc; or should it be more like Zork where it's more of a general "you are in good health" kind of thing?  Also I'm trying to improve on the design; one of my least favorite things to do is keep track of where I am, what I have, what's around me, etc, all in my head, so I want to maybe add a HUD type display, but would that detract from the IF-ness?

[george]

As far as a HUD goes I've seen some ideas,