So that other topic is sort of... changing direction. I thought we could reconvene here and discuss what we might like to see in a Quest Game meant to represent the best it has to offer. If you need to catch up, the following quotes are from the other topic:

jaynabonne wrote:And as far as concept and goal go, it might be worthwhile to come up with a bit of a "game bible" that lays out the general universe, similar to what they use on TV shows. Where "bible" could be a short, comprehensive document. In my experience, it always helps to have broad goals and principles to stick to when making down-and-dirty detail decisions.

homeeman wrote:
As I've said before, I am absolutely in love with the idea of a communal game where we make a flagship for the Quest platform. I would also love to work on this, and so I'll stop making excuses and consign myself to be willing to work on something with you guys. "You have my bow."

I can make a Google Doc that everyone could access from this topic in which everyone could contribute to an idea which would function as our "Bible" of sorts, and eventually create a game. Before I do that, though, it would be neat to brainstorm about the kind of setting, environment, and the type of game in general everyone would like to see. Just bounce ideas off this topic, I'd say, and if enough people stop after a certain suggestion saying, "Good idea, PERSON'S NAME! I think that would be a terrific way to prove Quest!" We can more or less agree that that would be a good place to start and create something to make all the IF hipsters totally jealous of us for liking Quest before it was cool.

For instance, the genre du jour for "mainstream" games is the first person shooter. It's simple and accessible, and I think that's what people like about it. I guess.
So, what's the first person shooter for IF? Probably your standard "stick this item with that item and use it on this thingy" puzzle sort of game, which always works great. There's a lot to love there, and saying that that's a staple of IF would be like saying that air is a staple of my diet.
Is that what we would want to make a flagship game for Quest? Would we want to include a battle system? Branching story lines Walking Dead style?
Are we going to have a character stand out that we can champion as a mascot, or are we going to play to the strengths of IF and create a game in which the main character is some extension of the player?
What's a good setting? Fantasy settings and modern day settings are probably the two most common, and I, personally have a bent towards fantasy. What kind of setting do you think would be appropriate for an exemplary Quest?
Let the brainstorming begin, perhaps

sonic102 wrote:I'm a good Puzzle Designer, or more acurrately, Midgame Puzzle Designer.

Why don't we call the game "Quest"? No, really.

TriangleGames wrote:Well, in the old days it wasn't strange to see a game called "Adventure" or even just "Venture." I don't see why it couldn't be called "Quest." Works for me!

I'd suggest a "medium" amount of story, by which I mean a good solid story that drives the player to move forward without throwing up giant walls of text.

Fantasy is sort of classic for text games and less likely to receive "realism" complaints than a modern setting, although to be honest I've never really understood that complaint in any genre other than sci-fi (oddly enough).

homeeman wrote:I actually have a strategy that allows me to handle story-heavy parts without making the player try the command "tl;dr"
In most cases, at least in my last game, these parts took place in the form of conversations (most of the plot exposition was done this way, and it was a you-are-the-character type deal). Before too much text pops up, give the player an option to respond. The response's impact for the player was always aesthetic: somewhere down the line someone would say something slightly different based on your response, but everything mostly stayed the same. The same strategy could be employed outside of conversation with options that represent actions instead of responses.
I bring this up because, like most people within this community, I write short stories in my free time and that tends to reflect on my writing in the game. But because even the most avid IF player might get frustrated or bored with walls of text, I needed to find a way to break up the long plot exposition, and now we could use this strategy in our game to have as much story as fits the game, without having to curb the colorful detail or make a game with a story that's centered more around the player's actions than an over-arching narrative (should we decide that we want to).

HegemonKhan wrote:just a quick comment (and most of you already know this too), but it's a good comment (I think anyways) on how great quest is:

In my limited knowledge of coding, it seems that quest can for the most part, make an elder scroll quality of game (for a text adventure game's abilities of course), that's the power of quest's coding. You can code in all of the elements of an elder scroll game. So, as been said over and over, the problem isn't with quest, it just doesn't have great games to showcase the power of quest's capabilities. We just need some really great games and big advertising of them (and of quest), to get the reknown and fame that quest deserves.

--------------

I'm not a writer nor a game maker, but my "two cents" on the story aspect:

I think for the most part, dialogue should be at most a paragraph, as reading only ~5 sentences constantly throughout the game isn't that big of a deal, especially with game play spacing. This way, you can spread out your story, while still telling an epic story.

Obviously, here and there, you can have some major events in your game, where you can have a much longer dialogue, and a good example would be after a hard boss fight or a very difficult or long puzzle. That way, the game player sees it as a reward, and eagerly reads the long dialogue, compared to as a punishment, if you just have the long dialogue without a huge effort to receive it, resulting in the game player "grumbing" at having to read it.

maybe think of it as like a movie, you need to alternate back and forth between watching action and listening to dialogue, it's the same for a game.

The prologue (using the start script) is good place to set up your story, if it's their first time, they can read it (if they want), or if it is not their first time (or if they just don't want to read it ~ and stumble through the game blindly lol), you can skip it.

Also, any long dialogue of epic story telling, should have an option to skip it, especially if it's the same everytime, again for game player's who're replaying the game and already read it, or for those who just don't want to read it, lol.

We could have sci-fi as the genre, so the game is less of a Curses copy.

So homeman is the.. Storywriter, and I'm the Puzzle Designer (hopefully)

Another idea: After we finish the game, we can release in two versions: one with hyperlinks and panes and one without them. Since there is no way to remove the panes on the fly (I tried to change the 'showpanes' attribute but that doesn't work) and some detest the panes and hyperlinks while others don't, we need to do that or something similar.

I have a small spark with me right now - You are an astronaut and can freely visit planets you have unlocked. Extinguish it or grow it, guys!

Sounds like Mass Effect, or Knights of the Old Republic. The gameplay that would involve reminds me of Sir Loin 2, from the Quest library, as well. There's potential there, sure, but that's an extremely broad idea. Would you care to share a little more detail about your spark?

Why creating a whole new universe?

Do something in the mass effect universe, make it interesting and I assure you that you'll get a lot of people playing the game

sonic102 wrote:Since there is no way to remove the panes on the fly (I tried to change the 'showpanes' attribute but that doesn't work) and some detest the panes and hyperlinks while others don't, we need to do that or something similar.

To hide the panes, use:

      request (Hide, "Panes")

Ok, Asyranok rebutted the idea of having the name "Quest". Any more name ideas?

I propose "Infinite Void".

I think the first decisions are the broad questions of what the game will be:

get the "framework" of the game decided, then we can find who can do what. everyone has to be on board on an agreed upon game.

1. genre~setting
2. the mission~purpose~story
3. type of game (rpg like, king's quest like, dungeon exploration ~ D&D like, old shadowgate game like, old maniac mansion game like, etc etc etc)
4. scale~scope~size~ambition of the game
5. main focus of game's element(s)
6. etc etc etc (my mind just hit a dead end, lol)

------------

my two cents on a what a text adventure game needs:

it has to be believable, people want to play a game, and thus they want it to feel like a game. even though it is a text adventure game, they still want it to feel like a "normal" (computer~console) game, as much as is possible.

the three ways to do this with a text adventure game...

1. writing (story, a good story that draws the game player into the game, get's their interest in the game and what will happen)
2. functionality: they need a game to play, the game player want a lot of fun features to further immerse them into the feeling of playing a game. A "world" to explore, things to interact with, puzzles or quests to solve, rpg elements (character development, stats, monsters, npcs, magic, equipment, combat, bosses, etc etc etc), easy~simple and quick game playing, and etc etc etc
3. media: good backgrounds, neat interface design and colors, pics ~ artwork, sounds, music, and etc.

I'm glad we're moving away from the idea of using the name "Quest" as that's the name of my QuestComp entry. And to whomever said they would automatically not play a game with that name, I hope you'll give my game a chance as it's a deliberately tongue-in-cheek title.

As for what I can bring to the table, I am a graphic designer so I can do some image stuff. I'm not an illustrator though so I'm not very handy if we need hand-drawn art or things like that. I'm also pretty good at developing mechanics and figuring out gameplay balance. I've also got decent experience with project management. I'm sure Jay can vouch for my skills, and possibly some I've forgotten to mention as we've been working together on a few projects for 2 or 3 months now that we haven't spoken about publicly on here.

I agree that a title shouldn't be decided on until the the storyline is pretty much figured out. But there's nothing wrong with giving the game a temporary "code name" to be used until the name is finalized.

we should use other games for ideas on what we want in or to do or whatever with our game, but we need our game to still be original, and not just a "carbon copy" of another game. we need a game that stands out on its own, while still having the elements that we like in other games. Using other games though to decide on the broad framework of what our game will be and entail, is a good idea. We got a lot of choices to choose from, and~or to combine together, we just need to decide on what game and it's details, that will be doing, lol.

I can offer some help as a writer. I'm a published author, and the only thing of particularly high quality that I can offer to this project is writing/dialogue/fleshing a story out.

I made a Google Doc (It's not that shiny, however). PM me your Gmail to get hold of it.

P.S who is doing the actual coding?

Yuri wrote:Why creating a whole new universe?

Do something in the mass effect universe, make it interesting and I assure you that you'll get a lot of people playing the game

Wanted to address this: you're not being ignored! It's in bad taste to use an intellectual property that isn't yours. For the purposes of recreation, and what Quest users usually bring it's completely fine--it's free, and a lot of people like it. But I think for what we're doing it would be inappropriate.

HegemonKhan wrote:I think the first decisions are the broad questions of what the game will be:

get the "framework" of the game decided, then we can find who can do what. everyone has to be on board on an agreed upon game.

1. genre~setting
2. the mission~purpose~story
3. type of game (rpg like, king's quest like, dungeon exploration ~ D&D like, old shadowgate game like, old maniac mansion game like, etc etc etc)
4. scale~scope~size~ambition of the game
5. main focus of game's element(s)
6. etc etc etc (my mind just hit a dead end, lol)

Good list, HK! I especially like the ordering. What genre would you all say that the one Quest game to rule them all should fall into? Calling it a puzzle game jumps to mind immediately, but then again, the vast majority of text adventures are puzzle games. Focusing in on this could help generate ideas for a story, which in turn could generate ideas for gameplay (or at least, that's usually my process).
I've mentioned before that I have a bent towards Fantasy, but I've also noticed that Horror games are very popular within the community. I don't know of a flagship franchise out there within the horror genre (well, I can't think of one), and that could actually be an interesting niche to try to fill.

This is an interesting and cool project but wouldn't it fair to concentrate on the quest comp first? It would be nice if some of our top creator would participate in the competition.

I'd be willing to chip in on the coding (time permitting, of course). I think if we can determine which sorts of features would be needed, I could put together libraries to support those.

Pertex wrote:This is an interesting and cool project but wouldn't it fair to concentrate on the quest comp first? It would be nice if some of our top creator would participate in the competition.

I'm liking this idea quite a bit, but Pertex has a point. The contest currently has received official intent to enter from only two people (one of which is a user on intfiction) plus myself and one other tentative (i.e."intent to hope to enter, time permitting"). There's still about two weeks left until the cutoff date for intent to enter, so I'm hoping to see things pick up. A comp of 2 to 4 people would be a little ... adjective

WHERE
   adjective = something.vaguely.disappointed.but.still.not.too.cynical

That said, here are my current opinions/suggestions/notes on "Project Dolphin" (anybody remember that reference? ), just as food for thought.

Regarding story originality,

Mark Twain wrote:There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.

This is one of my favorite quotes about writing, and I expect it's why professional writers often tell aspiring writers,
"If you want to be a good writer, you have to read a lot."
This is my personal interpretation of putting those thoughts together:
The trick to "original" writing is taking bits and pieces of things you know,
as one can hardly use ideas one doesn't know,
and arranging them in a fashion which produces the illusion of a "new idea."
The more ideas you have to work from, the easier it becomes to craft that illusion.

It seems like text games are sort of "puzzle" games to begin with (to an extent), so calling a particular one a "puzzle game" might suggest to people that it will have VERY little story, in the same way that the term applies to video-games in general. When I hear "puzzle" and "video game" together, the first image in my head is always Tetris.

While adventure games of any kind share certain similarities with role-playing games, I really don't feel a text adventure "needs" to have a lot of complex RPG style systems put into it. That feels like a very particular "text-RPG" sub-genre to me, which could be very impressive when done well, but shouldn't be necessary to make a high quality text adventure. However, there are many ways to go about adding those kinds of elements that could be very simple and effective on a small scale. For instance, the player could learn a few "spells" without needing to develop an entire library to handle them, or engage in "battles" that are more in depth than "kill troll with sword" without having to develop a full scale combat system like Dungeons & Dragons or Final Fantasy. I guess my overall point is, the game does not have to be extremely complicated in order to be good.

Also, a good programmer could use pretty much anything to create a great game with raw code, even just C++ by itself. So while including a large amount of original code via libraries does show that Quest can be highly modified by someone who knows how, it doesn't exactly showcase Quest's basic advantages. On the other hand, stockpiling more and more easy to use libraries to go with Quest does increase the options available for use by designers who wouldn't have been able to write that stuff themselves.

TriangleGames wrote:The contest currently has received official intent to enter from only two people (one of which is a user on intfiction) plus myself and one other tentative (i.e."intent to hope to enter, time permitting"). There's still about two weeks left until the cutoff date for intent to enter, so I'm hoping to see things pick up. A comp of 2 to 4 people would be a little ... adjective

Agreed. I think I'll send a mini newsletter to the mailing list, to see if that captures more interest.

Triangle, I sent an email with my intent to enter, I had been meaning to ask you about that since I never heard back from you... am I one of those entrants?

And my intention for this wasn't to jump into something right away. At the moment, I thought it was enough just to brainstorm what might make a good game. A project like this is going to take a lot planning, and no small amount of commitment from those who are helping to create it.

Someone mentioned a game that would involve visiting other planets etc. I have a game that I will be working on after WAKE that might be something fitting for this project. It is currently called Trillion: Redshift.

It doesn't hurt my feelings at all if this doesn't meet anyone's expectations or pique any interest. Hope you like it.

Here is a pitch and summary primer:

In the human heart, the stars represent hope. Our future. And maybe; our purpose.

With humanity’s numbers reaching critical mass, a rapid expansion becomes the only realistic approach to overpopulation. You are chosen as a special operative to aid the expansionist military forces in a desperate and aggressive campaign to secure new territory and recognition among the various species vying for influence over the Milky Way galaxy.

What started out as a war with a singular purpose increasingly becomes a battle of political intrigue, deception, fear, and unfathomable consequences.

Because trust is a fickle animal - for your oldest enemy can earn your most sincere pity
and your closest allies can be the greatest threat to your species’ survival.

Summary Pitch:

A multitude of species hold sway over the galaxy's present and future. Humanity is a young species, compared to some who have been at war with one another since before our species evolved. We won't make a lot of friends, forcing our way into the controlled territories of our neighbors, but we have little choice.

War breaks out, but things quickly become complicated. We initially believed the greatest threat would come from those who opposed our species' expansion. But there is more to the galactic facade than meets the eye.

The player will find, through their campaign, that the galaxy holds many secrets, and our species may play an integral role in saving the Milky Way from something that goes deeper into its past than anyone ever imagined.


Please read all details in the specie's summaries in the picture, as the plotline summaries afterwards will not make much sense.
This picture is large so I've given an imageshack link instead of embedding the picture within the post.
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/3553 ... gygame.png

Major plotline: BOELTOCKS

-The Boeltocks have begun to use the Dire species as a biological weapon. No one yet knows, but they are using Dire infections on planets as a means to gain a vast wealth. When a planet shows signs of infection, the Boeltocks swoop in offering the weapons that they have developed over centuries of fighting the Dire, to eliminate the infestation. They charge exorbitant sums for the assistance, gaining a massive profit from each planet cleared.

Main plotline: TOX

- The Tox, known for being reclusive and aggressive, have suddenly declared peace with their enemy’s, and are attempting to initiate diplomacy. A small group of Tox individuals suddenly burst onto the scene, warning the other species that this diplomacy is a façade.

They explain that the Tox were long ago consumed by a species of parasitic alien that has taken control of their minds and bodies. Only one small population of Tox on a single planet has managed to remain hidden and clean. They explain that the parasites have not spread to other species simply because the individual matriarch that controls them is taxed to her limit. She cannot control very many more individuals.

However, she has a hunger for expanding her influence. So instead, she has used the Tox mind puppets to wage war on other species, and physically bully her way into expanding her control. This obviously did not work, as the Tox were not as overwhelmingly powerful as she had hoped, and the other species have halted their aggression and pushed them back to the breaking point.

Being forced to come up with another strategy, the Matriarch spent years trying to find a way to continue expanding her influence. She finally has found the key to expanding her abilities to control more minds. Now, the Tox, whom the other species simply think were militaristic, and have no idea that they are being controlled, are now initiating diplomacy. Where war failed, they intend to mingle, and spread the parasite to the other species.


Main plotline: FURIONS

-The Furions are an ancient species. They once had a vast territory around 1.6 Billion years ago. They went from one of the most populous species to, seemingly, extinct in just a matter of years. A remnant population has survived on a planet near human territory. The population will be discovered by the player, as a remnant that has been parasitized by some creature. The creatures inside the hosts reproduce and die in cycles, but each generation renews the host tissues and repair damage. This has literally made the hosts immortal, even though the parasites are not. A side effect of the parasite is that the higher brain functions are entirely blocked, making the host feral.

When the player inadvertently cures a specimen, the species has a chance to awaken from this curse. Soon, it is revealed that this hyper-advanced species, and all others from their time, were wiped out by a single enemy species.

The Accretions begin to come out of their enigmatic and reclusive shell, and take an interest in the rediscovery of the Furion.

The Furion recognize the Accretions as a species from their cycle known to them as Regius. Something does not add up, to the Furion, as they watched the Regius be wiped out by the species that would eventually also spell their own doom. More comes to light as the player pushes their way into Tox/Cinn territory to discover the Cinn matriarch. The Furions suddenly realize that the Cinn were another species from their cycle. The Cinn were the first species to be eliminated by the species that cleansed the galaxy during their cycle.

The Cinn matriarchs have an ability to take on the form of a creature that has been absorbed. With this knowledge, the Furion realize that the parasite infection that attacked them was a repurposed Cinn creature that was used against them – however, the parasites operated unexpectedly, allowing a population of Furions to survive, unbeknownst to their enemy.

This seems like a one in a million chance, causing the Furion to speculate that the Regius/Accretions were, in fact, wiped out by the enemy species 1.6 million years ago. The Accretions of this cycle are imposters that have assumed the appearance of the Regius. The obliterators of all life from 1.6 million years ago have been hiding in plain sight since the beginning of recorded time.

Everyone knew how advanced the Accretions were, and that the species took a guiding role in the advancement of all other sentient species, but no one knew of their sinister intentions, which, with their identity revealed, will come to light earlier than they had intended.

You've obviously put a lot of thought and detail into your idea, and it is in fact a very good one. The scale seems to be appropriate for a team a few people, as I think it could be difficult to do something like this alone, or at the very least, it would take a while.
I noticed that you labeled your picture as "rtsstrategygame," and I'm curious: were you contemplating making this in a non-text adventure medium? It also raised the question as to what you saw the player's role being in the game. The scale of all these events are so grand, including the entirety of species across thousands of planets, so is the player playing as the entire human race, or would they be playing as a John Shepard or an Arthur Dent?

I think this could very well be the thing we're looking for.

Hah - good question homeeman!!!

Yes, I originally intended to make this into a series of missions using the Starcraft 2 editor from Blizzard. I considered making it an RTS adventure with heavy inspiration from Mass Effect and Starcraft 2. But my priority at the time was WAKE, so I set it aside.

When I saw this collaborative project, I though that Trillion: Redshift might be a candidate for something like this, with a few modifications.

Originally, the player was intended to be the newly elected commander of the expansionist military forces. They would lead and direct the expansion into enemy territories. I felt, however, that for a text adventure, a commander would be too distant and unable to explore the worlds, rather than invade them.

So for this, I changed the identity of the player into a special operative that is a scout of sorts, leading the push of the expansion, and being the first to explore and experience everything that happens in this universe. This would also allow the player to support the expansionist forces, without having to worry about the burdens of having to manage such a high-level position, if you will.

So, as you mentioned, the player would be A LOT like Shepard in Mass Effect, in how they go about doing things in this universe. Although, instead of constant battles, there would be more strategy, puzzles, and story packed into every inch of gameplay.

At least, this is my initial impression and thought process.


======================

Edit: So I had an idea for a "mission" that would be a who-dun-it essentially. The player is in a facility that is slowly being infested. A camera catches someone becoming infested by a Cinn creature that controls their mind. Think of john Carpenter's "The Thing". The player will have to find out who is parasitized and who is human, and try to stem the tide of infections to eliminate it.

Also, I contemplated the possibility of the player playing from multiple POV's. Perhaps, the player could also play as the Matriarch of the Cinn. After their discovery, the player can control her in her attempt to spread her influence. Therefore, in this mission, she could take control of various different people, and attempt to infect this facility and prevent people from stopping her until she controls everyone in this facility. So the idea above would be switched around.

Just wanted to throw that out there as an idea for a mission within this game. This type of mission would prevent having to have much of a combat system, as it is an alternative to battling in a way, but still forces tension and gives the player a sense of urgency.

Another example mission is the one where the player discovers the Furions, and helps revive them, bringing a whole new and ancient species back in to the galactic picture.

So those are a few ideas of how it could play out, in a system like in Mass Effect where the player can visit planets and then "land" on the planets for missions like these.

Asyranok wrote:

In the human heart, the stars represent hope. Our future. And maybe; our purpose.

With humanity’s numbers reaching critical mass, a rapid expansion becomes the only realistic approach to overpopulation. You are chosen as a special operative to aid the expansionist military forces in a desperate and aggressive campaign to secure new territory and recognition among the various species vying for influence over the Milky Way galaxy.

What started out as a war with a singular purpose increasingly becomes a battle of political intrigue, deception, fear, and unfathomable consequences.

Because trust is a fickle animal - for your oldest enemy can earn your most sincere pity
and your closest allies can be the greatest threat to your species’ survival.

If Redshift is our game, that is our blorb.

Let me know if you guys are interested, and I can start coming up with mission ideas and flesh them out a bit.

That's regardless of whether or not the game is actually used, which doesn't bother me the slightest if we move away from Redshift, but if I know there is interest, I will devote some extra thought to that right now.

I'm currently very busy with work so I have been scrupulously partitioning my time lately.

I'm glad I can successfully pick out so many of your influences. The entire time I was reading about the Dire I was thinking, "That sounds a lot like the Zerg."
I'm very interested in this idea. I would very much like to get a decisive second opinion.

Me two. I could also help making 'missions'.

Edit: We should have some references to other stuff:

An ending; *** You completely missed the point*** for Curses
A photopia lightbulb for Photopia
The wooden box for So Far

And some non IF:

Somewhere in the game a person throws you something, which you have four turns to catch. Catching it in the first turn gives you the message: Fastest catch in the West. (Guess the reference)

A stuffed tiger.

We should also have a 'hub', where the player can choose a planet to go to. This will be somewhere on Earth, and would be locked off, until the first few puzzles are over. The player has unlimited access on every planet (with some temporary lockdowns) to every planet, but we would direct the player to the first planet.

How many rooms in a planet? I think 75. Yes, really. There would be one landing, palaces, hotels, sights and many natural formations. The Earth should have even more, since it is the Earth.

How many planets to each species? What about 3 for humans? Earth, Alpha and Beta.

Redshift has a large geography, extending to a lot of planets.

Sorry for bumping, but is there anyone here?

I am intrigued, however seeing how this develops before committing to it.

Yeah, I'm sort of in the same boat. I haven't really got anything to add at the moment, but I'm also busy working on a couple of projects myself so I'm somewhat distracted.

The thoughts coming to me is who wishes to do the above scenario and what are they working on for it right now.
Are there other suggestions for a group project.
If others are not interested in what has been suggested, would they be able to do work on a separate group project.

On the above Red Shift, is there a prototype within Quest. For people to have a look at give suggestions on or to build a world and add it to the prototype/ a place to put the coded version of their own up.

Are there people who are not confident to work on the mechanics who would like to contribute any of the following: images, sounds,music,descriptions,items, plots/story lines and characters.
These were mentioned earlier, I am just wondering what is the current thoughts of the community. As it went from going full ahead to not much posting about it.

I like the idea mentioned above, but I'm not doing anything for it right now, and I really don't have any ideas myself since I, too am working on a bunch of other projects at the moment and I'm a little tapped out. Nonetheless, when my QuestComp entry gets to the debugging/beta testing phase I'll be able to give this a good deal of attention, although that will mostly be mechanics and flavor text (I could probably lend a hand with story, but I don't get the feeling there is much story left to write).
If it should come up that I get a good idea before anybody really commits to anything here, I'll be sure to post it just to keep the idea pot percolated.

Looks like the end of QuestComp is the start of this game.

Yeah.. there's nothing wrong with getting some planning underway, but I'm guessing not a lot of actual work is going to start on this game until QuestComp is over.

I told you guys I'd post if I got an idea, and a large-scale type idea popped into my head and it's been taking shape, so I figured I'd stick it up here to let you guys look at it.

It's a fairly direct combination of Minecraft and Terraria, and I keep touching on ideas that closely resemble Dwarf Fortress, too. As in the mentioned games, the player would begin alone, with nothing but the clothes on their back in some relatively non-threatening environment (let's say a peaceful meadow). From this starting point they can travel in all directions except for southerly ones--more on that later, as that's more story-based. When a player travels in one of these directions they are taken to a location that is named for its environmental type ("biome" if you will). These locations function as larger, overworld-like locations. Think of it as the difference between World 1 and World 2 in the Mario games. Anyway, these "biome" locations contain several (ideally it would be completely random, so none to many) landmarks and dungeons that can be interacted with in practical ways. If I'm losing you, read the next paragraph and see if you get it.


You start in a meadow and see that your compass buttons are lit up on all the directions that have no southern component. You chose to go north. You are told that you have entered a savanna, and that you haven't explored it. You type "explore" and the game tells you that you've found a mine shaft dug into the ground (you might later notice, upon travelling back to this savanna, that this exact mine shaft has been added to a list of places you can go to within the savanna). You opt to enter the mine shaft. Inside you find a few materials that aren't useful to you at the moment, because you've only just started, and then you encounter a creature. It begins to attack you, and you are unarmed and unarmored, so you flee back to the main savanna. You then type "explore" again and are told that you find an abandoned ranch. Inside the abandoned ranch you find your first tool, a wooden hoe (or maybe something more original) which will allow you to grow food to heal yourself. You also take note of the fact that the game offers you the option of repairing the ranch at the cost of lumber and other materials, none of which you have the slightest idea how to get (but hopefully the prospect intrigues you).


So the player finds these places, and explores them, and finds things to make more things, or better things, or change other things. There would several different "biome" types, and an important note is that the further you explore from your original meadow, the more challenging encounters with hostile creatures should become. On top of that, once you really start to travel, the types of "biomes" you'll encounter will start to change. We're moving away from Minecraft now and towards Terraria. If not at first, upon travelling further you may find that you're running into mountain biomes, or canyon biomes. And a bit further perahps hellish biomes and/or magical biomes. All of these different places would not only offer different challenges and scenery (you know, the imagery kind), but they would also offer new resources which you might want to take back to the more familiar places to use on projects.

Back to Minecraft, briefly. It would be beneficial if the player could create buildings for themselves, to give them something to do with all that crazy loot they're bringing in. Now, this is a text adventure still, so telling the player that they've built a castle and it's floating only goes so far when you can't look at it or show it to your friends, so these buildings would benefit a lot from being more practical. Perhaps the player, upon massing enough resources, could create a ranch like the one they found (especially provided they haven't found one, either due to bad luck or that one was never randomly created). Perhaps they could make a store, and travelers would come to barter at it, allowing the player to trade resources they've found in abundance for others that they need. Perhaps they would build a floating castle--powered by some magical resources they've found in their travels--to protect them from...

About not being able to go south at the start; you have been exiled from your previous country of residence. We can come up with a reason or leave it ambiguous Elder Scrolls style, it isn't important. What is important is that you can't travel in that direction at all, but things tend to come from there. At first, maybe it's just a bandit. Then maybe it's a few. Then there are raiding parties, mercenaries. Maybe armies come eventually, and it is only you and the marvelous wonders you collected, created, and built that must fend off these attackers--or run from them. Or instead of exile, you are a refugee. Your home has been decimated by a large influx of monsters, and you have fled to this place alone. There's less mystery to why monsters are attacking you, but maybe if we're going for a simpler story that would be a better option.

As for an ending, there isn't one. Perhaps once the player has traveled beyond the most unforgiving and hellish landscapes there are towns for them to visit, or cities for them to conquer. Can the player build an empire? What happens when the king's army has fallen to you alone, and there is not a man left who would stand against you? Can you go south and find... stuff? As with Minecraft and Terraria, it doesn't really need an ending, because if it's done right, the right type of player will be content to create/explore until all the possibilities are exhausted.

I think this works especially well in a text adventure format for much the same reason Dwarf Fortress has its particular art style--because art is hard, and for every item/object you create in a normal game there not only has to be images for the item, but also animations and effects associated with its function. We could churn out new stuff all day, and once the code was done, we could upload it. No problem. There wouldn't be a huge memory problem because we can have as much stuff as we want in a world and no matter what, it all fits within the data confines of relatively small .txt file.

I still really like Asyranok's idea, like I said, I told you guys I'd let you know if I thought of anything.

Homeman's idea combined with Asyranok's idea...