Re: [kidsgames] Generic adventure game engine

[Douglas Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

On Thu, 13 Jul 2000, Horst H Lindner Jr wrote:

> I came into this discussion fairly late, who is trying to
> organize the
> generic game engine?

jm and I are part of a group (started by some students at MIT)
that wants to create a game that works similarly to the Carmen
Sandiego games, where the player has to chase the target through
various cultures' conceptions of the underworld.  The working
title is, "Where in Hell is Aida Sanfernando?"  The students are
planning to do the artistic, musical, and game flow work,
leaving jm, me, and a few others to work on the game engine.  We
want something that will be more broadly applicable than just
this one game, so we're looking for something that can be
extended as necessary to accomodate various options.

> But if you want to
> do somthing
> like this you need a template of what you are creating to tell
> how complex
> you want it to be.

I'll take a crack at answering these questions.

> 1) How complex should the text parser be?  Natural language
> such as "Take
> the hammer and hit the door with it" or the old simple version
> such as "hit
> door with hammer"?

In the Carmen Sandiego series (remember, these are aimed at
children) character interaction is by selecting predefined menu
options.  If we go with that initially, the process should be
significantly easier.  If it's done modularly, dropping a text
parser in in place of the menu should be relatively
straightforward once the parser is written.

> 2) How do you create a adventure?  Trying to create an engine
> that was ALL
> in text would be hard on the people creating the adventure, a
> graphics
> interface where you could create items (hammer, locked door 1,
> tree, gem
> etc.) and interactions such as "hit tree with hammer" "hit
> nail with hammer"
> "hit chest with hammer" would be good.  You would also be able
> to use the
> interface to create scenes, connections between scenes and the
> initial items
> in each scene.

I've left the entire question in, as I think this is one of the
most important aspects.  jm and I want the adventures to be
written in XML, making them creatable in a standard text editor.
 Of course the graphics and audio would have to be created
separately and called from the XML file.

But if we hope for creative, non-programmer types to write games
for this engine, we'll need some sort of authoring tool like you
mention.  I think this will be nearly as important as the
engine, although the engine will have to be created first. 
We've been looking at an application framework built around XML
called Entity <http://entity.evilplan.org>.  We haven't had time
to go over it in detail, but to me at least it looks very
promising as the basis for both the engine and the authoring
tool.

> 3) Do you need conversion routines for other game engines (for
> example
> adventure is a game engine that loads various different text
> adventures for
> unix systems) so it can use older games that are free?

We weren't considering this at all, although if the data are
stored in XML writing convertors shouldn't be overly difficult.

> 4) What kind of storage structure are you storing the games
> in?

XML.

> 5) Do you want it extensible into a more complex game like the
> old nethack
> under unix systems perhaps with better graphics?  This would
> add lots more
> complexity to the system.

As I say, modular, so that as extensions are written they can be
easily plugged in.

> If you every want this to get off the ground DEFINE IT.

I've started doing so here.  What other bits would you like to
know about?  I agree that defining the problem is getting half
way to solving it.  We're working on defining it here.

-- 
Doug Loss           The art of medicine consists of amusing the
dloss@suscom.net    patient while nature cures the disease.
(570) 326-3987             Voltaire

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