Hi Dark, The point about the IF community is actually one reason why after Mysteries of the Ancients and Raceway are finished I want to take some time off of audio games and focus on more traditional text based games for a while. In the early to mid 90's I was heavily into Dos text adventures, and to be honest many of them had more depth than your average audio game. There really aren't any accessible games on par with Elite in entertainment value, and that is one game I'd love to see updated and released for a modern PC. While I'm at it I can create a version that will run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and other platforms as well. Which, of course, would increase its user base in the process.
The other reason why I'd be interested in updating and rewriting some of my favorite text adventures is the fact that we have better technology now than we did then. Back in the 90's if you were playing a text game the most you would get in terms of sound is a few electronic sounds generated and played out the PC speaker. Now, days we can drop in an audio library like FMOD Ex, OpenAL,XAudio2, whatever and play music, background ambiance, as well as realistic sound effects to blend classic text adventure with modern audio game for the best of both worlds. For example, I had a couple of Indiana Jones text adventures for Dos. Imagine taking that game and adding in the original theme music, the crack of Indy's bull whip, the sound of a fist fight as Indy punches out a few Natzis, and things like that. I'd be taking a classic text adventure and adding in some audio to make it more like an audio game but with the classic game play and accessibility of the text game. Of course, writing a full blown roll playing game isn't beyond consideration either. In fact, that is something I'd love to do. I haven't decided on a specific story, but its certainly under consideration. One major reason for that is the one you mentioned. The IF community have written and released a number of text adventures, but are apposed to writing any kind of roll playing game with stats, skill checks, and so on. Instead author's like Emily Short rely on puzzle based play that I find absolutely frustrating at times. Especially, when it is a case of guess the verb. I'd rather have more exploration, perhaps combat, rather than spend an hour trying to figure out some obscure puzzle or phrase. The other thing IF games sometimes do that drives me slightly nuts is the author expects you to break a task down into several steps. Let's say you want to get a glass of water. You first need to take glass, turn on the tap, fill glass, turn off tap, drink water.While it makes logical sense I personally see no need to break it down into that many steps. However, as you know some tasks aren't quite that obvious or simple and it becomes dang frustrating figuring out what the game expects you to do next. Cheers! On 8/9/12, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Darren. > > I've actually never played elite, far too much text and too spacially > complex, but I'd love to, indeed I'd really appreciate a complex space game > > in audio. > > i can actually enjoy audio games like shades for their atmosphere,even if > the exploration isn't what I'd desire, indeed it was the atmosphere of > shades that impressed me first off and got me interested in audio games, > however I do agree larger, more complex games are needed, it's just a shame > > they're also harder to create. > > though by the same tocan we do have a lot of more extensive games now than > when I started in accessible games, thanks to people like Jason, Phil and > Aprone, I'd love for instance to see Aprone do a second, more complex > castaways as that is by far the best stratogy game I've ever played, and > absolutely the sort of single player, reactive interesting experience I'd > like to see more of. > > As to text, well one of the problems is that tthe if community, who you'd > expect to be the first people to work on text games, actually have an > avertion to anything rpg like or with mechanics, much less anything open > ended and strategical. > > I am hopefull though of what will be created for the portable device markit, > > sinse gamebooks and other text games are on the up at the moment. also, it's > > worth remembering that as far as specific space games go, smugglers 5 will > be coming out this year, and niels has promised more gamebook like, open > ended gameplay and to avoid the rather dragging middle section that made s4 > > so problematic. > > I'll also add that while Ce is great, I'm quite impressed with alter in it's > > exploration system and attention to single players and the general > experience, rather than jkust multiplaying. The only thing that alter lacks > > for me are other activities beside go and kill stuff, or at least > refignments such as hunting or randomly generated quests, but maybe Dentin > will add such things in the future. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
