Escape from Alendar
DEMO ATTACHED TO POST
Intro
Escape from Alendar is (hopefully) my entry to the text adventure compo, assuming I can get it done in time, or done at all. I've been working on it as a "side project" to Pirates of Port Royale for a while, even before the text adventure was announced, just as a nice relief to the difficulty of creating a 3D RPG. So now to the actual game.
Description
Escape from Alendar begins (for now, at least, story is a WIP) when you are on your way to work at the office, and you have a car accident, knocking you out. You wake up in a mysterious and juxtaposed jail cell of medieval times and modern details, such as a tile like floor and a mysterious glowing light. The game will carry the usual freedom that all of my games do (ie PoPR), but will be much more story driven, and more confined in the fact that, well, you have to first figure out how to get out of the cell itself. Much of the basic engine is done (picking up/dropping objects, movement, object interaction, talking, time, NPC's), it's just filling those engines with stuff that will take time.
The game is not based around choosing from a list of actions, but actually typing which action you want to do for yourself. The numbered list you see is only for dialogue, where you normally will have 3 options to say. The rest are more like a MUD if you've ever played it, where you would say "north" (or "n") to go north, say "pick up key" to pick up a key, "sit chair" to sit on a chair. So it's based around you actually typing what you want to do. To make it easier I'm planning a help thing, as well as alternative ways to say stuff, like instead of "sit chair", you could also say "sit on chair", because we all think of different ways to say what we want to do.
The time is real time. The game, like I said, isn't based on going through a series of "choose your own adventure"-like list options. It's based on what you actually do. So for that screenshot, I had previously typed "sit chair", and it said, "You sat on a chair", then I had said, "north", and it told me the cell door was locked. Then the time-triggered dialogue of someone in the cell next to mine appeared, at which time I had options to respond. So technically you could just sit there and leave the game idle for days (in-game), because the clock is constantly running. The ratio is 1 minute:1 second, so 1 hour:1 minute, and 24 hours:24 minutes, at least for now, that may change. There is also a "sleep" command, which makes time pass 10x faster, you just can't do any actions (hence sleeping).
The map just shows the rooms around you for better orientation. "I" stands for an interior, "E" for exterior, "*" for your player. In the shot above you can see that the only exit is to the north, while view in all other directions is obscured. It just reinforces the description of the room, or vise-versa.
So, enough explanation, here is a screenshot, only one, because of the nature of text adventures, there's not a lot to show
. Actually in this shot there is a lot more going on than may first appear. I personally like the interface so far, it's simple yet easy to read in my opinion. Description is in green, interactive objects in blue, dialogue responses in brown, time in orange, old "alerts" (or whatever you want to call them), in white, and the new one in red. Tell me what you think.
Hope you like it, and please comment
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I've attached a demo of the first room. Type help in the game to get started.
