Quote: "but one thing man will you try to play it and i alredy did the db trile and was so confused i gave up but then i got game tap and looked a round my dad was talking at the tabel when i was eating and he remebered zork so me and him played it for 15 mins that night and we LOVED IT it felt like we wre realy haveing that stuff happing to us sowe desided to make are own i havent worked on it in at least 1 mothnt go give us a brake i want to get some coments on this game"
I actually thought about going over your game and posting my opinion about it... but I decided it's a waste of time. If you're so hard headed to refuse to go to a place that accepts Visual Basic code then I seriously doubt you would even listen to anything I have to say about your program.
I will tell you my opinion so far on what i've seen to this point. Looking at the code you posted in the WIP board your code consists of case statement after case statement. It looks for specific text to be typed in. I'm sorry but that's just not the way to do a text adventure like Zork. Yes, it appears to work fine but you cannot make code for the millions of permutations you need to look for every single thing the user would type... at least not like you're doing. Text adventure games separate the words that are typed in to determine what the user is talking about. They often don't require even the whole word for the computer to know what the word is. Once it defines each word (verb, item, movement) Looking at each word and in what order they were typed the program determines what the user wants to do.
Because you search for the user to type in specific things there is a problem. I don't see any code that changes the user input to highercase or lowercase before checking what was typed in... so that makes it even more difficult to play. As an example in the first room you have a case statement looking for "e" and "East"... so if the user types "east" it doesn't know what their talking about... the user can only type "East" (with a higher case E if you didn't catch that) for the program to acknowledge it as a request to go east.
The interface you want to use is a very non-zorkish way to do it. You don't allow the user to check their inventory (because it's always displaying)... and your inventory tracking is horrible (code wise)... it's crazy to track inventory by variables (and not arrays). "lantern=1" only causes even more code for each if/then statement to check for each variable of inventory. You have played Zork... and you know is scrolls text on the screen (very easy to do in Darkbasic)... so what's with the small window and no scrolling text??
Because your code is a bunch of case statements the most obvious way to make the code better put everything in a file and load it into arrays... the room descriptions, the exits, the items... everything. You can reduce your code like crazy simply by doing that (in any language).
But because this is a Darkbasic forum and not Visual Basic... we cannot help you to make those changes... unless you decide to get Darkbasic. If you want to finish this game in VB then you must stop posting here and go to a Visual Basic forum. I made sure the VB forum I picked had lots of messages... so it's a very active forum and i'm sure you'll get replies.
Insisting all of us review a game made in a language other than Darkbasic is crazy. Does your Dad know you're doing this? Does he condone what you're doing here? It's silly to keep pushing we review a game that's in another language.
Think about it like this:
If I went to your house and started yelling at you and your Dad because I bought a drill at Walmart that didn't work... and I refuse to leave your property until you take this drill and give me my money. How would you react? Would you tell me that your house is not Walmart and for me to leave?
Posting here and wanting us to review your game is the same thing as me wanting my money back for that drill that you did not sell me. This is not the place for your program review because it's in Visual Basic... go to the right place or get Darkbasic.
I have one request... go get your Dad and show him this entire thread. Afterword ask him if he thinks you need to go to a Visual Basic forum... if anything show him the following.
@Zork all the ways Dad
It's nice to see fathers helping their kids to program (my Dad introduced me to programming too)... but there's a time and a place for everything... this is the time to teach your son this concept. He needs to go to a place where they accept Visual Basic or he needs to program in Darkbasic. I encourage you to get Darkbasic for him... perhaps a christmas gift... make sure it's Darkbasic Pro. You can still do the father-son thing and learn Darkbasic together. He sounds like a great kid... if Darkbasic isn't in your families future... help him to do the right thing. Thank you.
