


           /------------------------------------------------------\
           |                   Elder Gods Shrine                  |
           |                       presents                       |
           |                                                      |
           |     HOW TO MAKE A GOOD DESIGN FOR AN IF GAME.....    |
           \------------------------------------------------------/
            wRiTtEn bY ChThOn....

.oO ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Oo.

 Hay people! Long time no hear, huh? Well, we continue with our files about
 textual (IF) adventures.....This time we came with a file explaining how to
 make a good design for an IF game...and with no cute ASCii pictures...this
 file was ment for iNET, that means for those with UNIX, DOS, or whatever, so
 we used standard 7bit ASCii.....ok, let's go down to business.......


                            A GOOD IDEA	
	
	First that shows up in game designing is the idea itself. If you don't 
 have any good ideas at the moment, leave it for the time when you will get 
 more ideas. The random picking method is not good (last time I said it was)
 because, at the first time you will like your game. As you get further in your
 designing you will find it not that interesting, since you will get ideas
 for some other kind of game. Choose your game type, location, time,
 surrondings, keep it in your head for a week, and if you still like it after
 a week of time, make it!

 Well, if Tolkien were alive, he would have been the best adventure maker...
 He actually designed the complete world: rases, languages, history, ideals,
 even the map of the world....But when inventing an idea, it must be original,
 not some princess rescuings or film kind action adventures....I can't tell
 you what would a good idea be, because then I would use it in my new game
 insted of giving it here, hehe....Well, whatever, the best ideas so far were
 crime stories like Agatha Christie's or Sherlock Holmes' adventures....I
 prefer those two mostly and beside this kind of stories I also like
 adventures in time of legends, magicians, magick, medieval wars and so on,
 and I presume that most number of adventure players (especially IF) are
 in love with this last kind....Last but not least because in modern type of
 adventures (point and click) the player is actually deprived of smells,
 sounds, FEELINGS....If you see a statue (320x200x256 resolution) and the game
 tells you that it's alive, you wouldn't nodest anything...(of course you would
 try to rescue her/him...) but in an IF game, the text can imagine the
 feelings, smells and the sounds of the statue.....It's like reading a book...
 You must admit that you can feel more READING a book than looking into screen
 and reading a line saying "it's alive"....
 We have sound cards, video cards....soon we will have smell cards, feelings
 cards... ;))  But IF WILL NEVER DIE!!!


                          THE DESIGN ITSELF

 Ok. Now when we got the idea, we must design it....Disigning an idea means
 inventing many ways and methods of implementing it's goals (Ouch!)...To be
 specific, create enviroment of the game, it's goals, methods how to achieve
 goals...Like this:  (so what, I have an 7bit ASCII picture ?)

   START                 START
     o                     o
     |                     |
     |                     *\___*_____ 
     |                     |    |     \
     |               __*__/|    *      |
     |              /  |   |  _/\      |
     |              |  |   | /    \    |
     |              |  |   |*\     *\  |
     |              *\ |   *   \ /    \|
     |              |  \   |   /       |
     |              |    \ | /         |
     |              |      |/          |
     |               \     |  ________/
     |                 \   | /   
     |                   \ |/
     o                     o
    END                   END

   fig. 1                fig. 2

 Ok, now, take a look at my cute little 7bit ascii picture (cute right?). Well
 it ain't no railroad map or Oil Pipeline.....It's your idea...;)...FIG. 1 
 represents your pure unrefined idea...FIG. 2 shows your refined and DESIGNED
 idea....The possible directions your game can take.

 As you can see, the player encounters all kind of events on his journey
 and on every * he makes a decision which way (method) of solving the problem
 to pick....You don't have to put all the lines ending at END, you can misguide
 the player or take him to the dead-end where he must go back to go again....
 Whatever you do, DON'T make events linear! That means enable more different
 methods to achieve the goal, you can even link methods so the player doesn't
 have to pick up the key in the beging to unlock the final gate...No, you must
 enable the player opening the gate in many different ways (beside the key). If
 you are inventing different kinds of problems that player will encounter, 
 these problems must not be too difficult for the player will get depressed
 and frustrated, but in the other hand, don't make them too easy for the 
 player will get bored...

 The good idea is to make random events (problems)...although I prefer those
 IF's with non-random events...hehe.....Ok, now about the player's interface...

 What's player's interface? It's how the game reacts to player's orders and
 how does it show up the events...Most used interface is scrolled text
 (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Bureaucracy, Zork, ...), but you can use
 graphix/scrolled_text mixture (The Pawn, Guild of Thieves, Lancelot) or
 ANSI_graphix/scrolled_text (Skullduggery). My favorite is graphix/scrolled_
 text like in The Guild of Thieves (the best game I ever saw and played)...What
 about game's responses to player's orders? Well, this is the worst part....
 First you must know how to code the parser (see my file about doing textual
 adventures). Depending on your coding skills, design the words used in the
 game and how will the game ract. This means don't answer "Ok. Dropped." to
 player if he drops a bottle, but answer something like this: "With a loud
 crash the bottle hits the ground and breaks into many pieces" or instead
 "The door is locked." use "You checked the door from both sides revealing
 it's locked" or "Suddenly the door speaks: I am locked" or "You dismember the
 door, investigate the lock (revealing it locked) and then put it back on it's
 original place". The best idea is to do random answering:

>open the door
You check the door from both sides revealing it's locked.

>open the door
You dismember the door, investigate the lock (revealing locked) and the put it
back on it's original place.

>open the door
Read my fonts, morone: THE DOOR IS LOCKED !

>open door
AAAAAARGH! What a stupid player!!!! Ok, ok, the door is now open...nah, better
not. The door is still locked.

These kind of answers I saw in the game The Guild of Thieves:

> get the fireplace
It refuses to be moved.
 
or in the Skullduggery:

>knock at the door
The door responds with a low, guttural moan.

>knock at the door
You hear a loud, swirling wind from the other side. As you watch, the door
bulges outward, bursting around its edges.

 This is more interesting and funny than "You can't." prompt. Beside this you
 can put random events. Random events are events that happen randomly if some
 conditions are fulfilled like the player is in the room A or he has the object
 B or he said C etc. But this random events must be connected to something in
 the game...Like in our game that will never be finished: in the manor is a 
 daemon playing a billiard, so if the player is somewhere near the manor
 (condition) he can sometimes read this:

Suddenly a billiard ball falls out from a window and a skeleton emerges through
the door. You can see the skeleton searching something, taking the billiard 
ball, and returning back in the manor.

 or

You can hear a sound coming from the manor: something like bones falling on
the floor.

 Or if he is near the entrance door to the manor, he can sometimes read this:

The door opens and the skeleton emerges but it fast returns in fright as he 
realises your presence.

 and then

You can hear a sound coming from the manor: something like bones falling on
the floor.

 All these events are real and created randomly. At the end of this file is the
 list of some events I made up or stole from other games. It can give you idea
 to make up your own! Well, it's better than begining from a scratch.
 Actually last time I forgot to include these events at the end of this file.
 Let's pretend I also forgot to do it this time again!

 Don't make up events just to write something to the screen. Those events must 
 help player or make him worse, but they must be real. Beside events, you must
 wach out for eventual characters, and then places (it would be good if you 
 make the scenario and the maps first and THEN go to design and coding)....



                    SMALL NOTE ABOUT ROOM DESCRIPTIONS

 I wanted to note this: When you are writing a description of a room, I advise
 you to do next: list (beside all other important things) the objects that
 cannot be taken (but are of some meaning to the game) in description and list
 those which can be taken below description, like this: 

(from our new game Pandemonium, which will never be done)
You are in a lone temple. In the center of the room you can see a huge statue
of a naked woman. On the north wall there is a burnt cross upside down. Each
time you look upon it, you feel desperate, empty, frightened and want to kill
someone. Against the wall is a small altar. On the altar you can see 
dismembered corpse of a troll.
Hanging upon the east wall is a small torch.
There is a priest here.

 The player is able to examine the cross, the statue (which will reveal some
 ancient letterings) and the troll but not to take them, but he can take the
 torch. He can't take the priest ( ;) ) but the priest is listed below
 description because he can leave the room. 



                         FINAL WORD...THE HELL IT IS


 At the end, I got nothing more to say than read this, code and ask me if you
 have any troubles....Oh, yes, you must design your game according to your
 coding skills...I mean you can't let the player to GET THE SWORD AND KILL THE
 MONSTER FAST if you don't know how to make a good parser for this line 
 (errr....neither do I but that is irrelevant now...I was joking of course ;) )


						Cya next time.....

 


		The Lands of Torment PBeM
 +.oO -------------------------------------------------------------- Oo. +
 |      vkrstul@public.srce.hr                  Chthon                   |
 |                                          the GameMaster of            |
 |  http://jagor.srce.hr/~vkrstul              the Lands of Torment      |
 |                                                  PBeM game            |
 |                                                                       |
 |  .!! Eight years of Interactive Fiction gaming experience !!.         |
 +.oO -------------------------------------------------------------- Oo. +

