Feeling a bit thick, but after giving the forums a good search I found the exact problem I'm having...only to have the person asking say they figured it out themselves.
So...in lieu of making a good first impression I'll just go ahead and ask how the heck I make the defibrillator incapable of being used a second time on Bob.
How often does this come up, I wonder...

Without going through the tutorial step by step myself I can only describe the first solution that comes to mind: go to the use defibrillator command and create an if statement that checks if he has the 'alive' flag. If not, print a message about him coming back to life, and turn on the flag. Then click 'Else' and have it print a message about the defibrillator no longer being needed because he's okay now.

In simple terms the logic goes 'if Bob is dead, revive him and change his status to alive. Or else if Bob is already alive, tell the player they don't need the defibrillator.'

I do agree that that tutorial really needs to be updated, though. I basically assume that for every newbie who bothers to create a forums account and ask for help there, there's like three to five more who just get frustrated and quit without ever informing anyone.

Ha no, I won't give up on this.
It's too awesome, even with an obviously aged tutorial.
Luckily, the program is intuitive enough that the barest basics can be gleaned by just playing around.
But...even just a recall back to the proper step where one does learn the action necessary would be nice.
I pick up things pretty quick, but even then some details can get lost in the shuffle.

So far I still seem to be doing something wrong.
I'll play around some more, thanks for the attempted assist though.
You've at least gotten my brain to start working a bit better at the problem.
I'd give a clearer idea of the process, but Quest is on my art tablet which I keep isolated from other networks and the like.
It'll get there...I hope.

I'll come back in the morning with some screenshots if you're still stuck...though I'm sure someone else will have come along and done a much better job explaining things by then.

Either way, glad to have you with us here, and good luck.

So far, the only thing I've managed to accomplish is to have the admonition that it wouldn't be wise to use the defibrillator again pop up simultaneously with the initial text stating its success.

Do you have the 'alive' flag created for Bob?

Okay, some screenshots. Though again, I'm not following the tutorial exactly, this is just to show how to have the player use the same command twice with different results. (And note that in this example I'm not bothering with any checks to make sure the player's actually in the room with Bob, the defibrillator, or anything else, though obviously you'd want those in an actual game.)

Aha, the lamp!
Bloody lamp!
"You already know how to do this" indeed.
More like "you did this when setting up the lamp, so refer to that if you need to" or somesuch.

Like a ray of light through a mud puddle.
Knew I was being thick.

Don't worry, you're getting the hang of the basics quicker than I did. The first few days I was here I couldn't wrap my mind around anything, and I have a feeling I'll always be hopeless at all the more advanced stuff like functions.

Heh, it seems to me I'm going a bit too fast.
Thank you muchness for your help.
You've certainly found yourself a willing playtester whenever you need me, or other such assistance if ever something comes up.

you can take a look at my own noob thread, when I just started with quest:

(I had trouble with the 'troll' scenario, not sure if that's still in the tutorial or not, and also after the tutorial, I was super confused~overwhelmed by all of the terms too. I was able to follow the tutorial pretty well, but outside of the tutorial's direct examples~scenarios, I didn't understand anything on my own, at first)

viewtopic.php?t=3348

I wanted to learn to code, so that's why I jumped quickly from the GUI~Editor to code.

Just in case it's useful for the *next* person, it turns out that in the tutorial, if you look at the next section, it actually shows you the code it asked you to write. I should have mentioned that in the other thread, but the OP had figured it out, so I hadn't bothered.

jaynabonne wrote:Just in case it's useful for the *next* person, it turns out that in the tutorial, if you look at the next section, it actually shows you the code it asked you to write. I should have mentioned that in the other thread, but the OP had figured it out, so I hadn't bothered.

You know, I saw that.
And facepalmed.
Man, I love this place~

Just to point out that the tutorial (along with the rest of the docs) is open source on GitHub: https://github.com/textadventures/quest/tree/gh-pages - happy to take pull requests to correct any mistakes.

Good point. Anyone can edit a tutorial and submit. I might have a look at some. I don't really know html but probably know enough to make edits to existing pages.

So, still working my way through the tutorial but on the side starting to piece together my own game and got to wondering how best to start.
After so long without a proper start it was with great satisfaction that the simplest solution presented itself: waking up.
My question is then, how can I have the game start blank until the command "wake up" is entered.
Alternatively, I could start with a dream sequence and then have the command but I'm pretty sure I know how to do that and am leaning toward the more minimalist approach.

Do you mean no text at all? If so, how would the person know they're asleep to wake up?

That's the point.
But then I'm mad, so.

The point is what? That people won't be able to figure out how to play your game? Well, ok. Then I'll stay away. lol

With absolutely no clue that I'm asleep or that the game is even functioning, the chance I would have thought to type "wake up" is practically nil.

Have a look at the intro for First Times. Even that took me a few moments to work out what was required despite basically telling me.

http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... irst-times

And when it crosses your mind and you find yourself on the cusp of a strange world ripe for exploring?
Consider it the artistic fancy of some fool visionary.
Instead of a maze it's the off-chance that the correct action happens to cross your mind.
Like a puzzle box, one might have a vague notion of acts that may cause it to open but until the correct one is found no progress will be made.

I'd take one look and quit. Seriously. I want to see some form of description, not a blank screen.

Imagine firing up Skyrim and being met with a blank screen and the game refuses to start until you've thought of some random key presses it wants from you. It's no different.

Consider the very topic of this thread.
I couldn’t figure out how to make the program do what I want, but did I quit?
No, I kept hammering at it and even made an account to ask a question that I still don’t fully understand the answer to.
Perseverance.
“For every newbie who bothers to create a forums account and ask for help there, there's like three to five more who just get frustrated and quit without ever informing anyone.”
It is what it is, some might stride up to the challenge, wap it across the chops and demand it come at them.
Others will let it be.

Besides, these are the first tentative steps into a new realm for me.
Who knows what the finished game will look like.
As it stands, I've been handed a pencil and am simply drawing with little rhyme or reason beyond what I've seen, what I like and the ability to make it so.
Sure, they might be malformed images but they are still an effort in mastering something I've come to enjoy, even love.
It will be as it will be.

Silver wrote:Imagine firing up Skyrim and being met with a blank screen and the game refuses to start until you've thought of some random key presses it wants from you. It's no different.

Granted, you're going into Skyrim expecting a specific experience so it's about as different as one can get.
Text and adventure games in general are famous for their obtuse nature.
Skyrim gives you floating arrows that I was forced to mod out because I don't want to be led about.
Would rather figure things out myself, a perspective that is difficult to see this far along in our history as a species.
What it would have been like I wonder, not to have thousands of years of preserved information to go off of.
Gritty, difficult and deadly, but as always it comes down to individual taste.
And of course it all comes to a point of no-return but that's neither here or there.

I've yet to find one that communicates via a blank screen. Good luck with that idea.

How about printing out "Snore" every 10 seconds?

Yeah, sorry, but I think this is really not a good idea.

People go into IF games expecting a certain experience, just the same as with Skyrim. Specifically players expect they'll be able to explore and interact with their surroundings using a set of standard commands, with any non-standard ones clued in the text. 'Wake up' might be acceptable only if there was some indication the player was asleep. If I'm presented with a blank screen that doesn't even respond to 'look', I am assuming that game is bugged and moving on.

And it's bad text games that are famous for their 'obtuse nature', by the way. I'd recommend playing some good ones and seeing how they lay out their premise and respond to the player's input and expectations. I can't think of a single example where the author just did any random thing they wanted 'with little rhyme or reason' and somehow magically came out with a playable game at the end. Writing even the most basic IF takes forethought and planning and careful management of when and how information is conveyed to the player.

Sorry if this seems blunt, but it's just that I'd hate to see you put in all the time and effort required to make a game and then have it all come to nothing based on one astoundingly bad design choice.

Marzipan wrote:Yeah, sorry, but I think this is really not a good idea.

People go into IF games expecting a certain experience, just the same as with Skyrim. Specifically players expect they'll be able to explore and interact with their surroundings using a set of standard commands, with any non-standard ones clued in the text. 'Wake up' might be acceptable only if there was some indication the player was asleep. If I'm presented with a blank screen that doesn't even respond to 'look', I am assuming that game is bugged and moving on.

And it's bad text games that are famous for their 'obtuse nature', by the way. I'd recommend playing some good ones and seeing how they lay out their premise and respond to the player's input and expectations. I can't think of a single example where the author just did any random thing they wanted 'with little rhyme or reason' and somehow magically came out with a playable game at the end. Writing even the most basic IF takes forethought and planning and careful management of when and how information is conveyed to the player.

Sorry if this seems blunt, but it's just that I'd hate to see you put in all the time and effort required to make a game and then have it all come to nothing based on one astoundingly bad design choice.

Bluntness tempered with cohesive reasoning is much more welcome than a simple hammerhead.
As I said, it is the first thought of many and the final idea may end up drastically different.
This world has been in the making for just about three years, it's associated story has only recently come together in terms of background while direct interaction from a singular perspective is little more than a handful of ideas.
We'll see what happens and perhaps it will work.
Like sticking a fork in a wall socket, one can be told not to do that but it will have more of an effect if one is given the details.
And of course there's nothing like feeling a good jolt of electricity for oneself to deter any future bumbling.

Still, it would be nice to get an answer rather than a choir of voices saying don't do that.

An answer: you'll need to:
1) turn off the room heading (or give your room an empty alias)
2) have no description for your room. You might need to provide a custom description handler to avoid it printing anything at all. I haven't tried yet.
3) use "get input" instead of the normal Quest parser so that you can trap all input instead of having it print out the normal "You can't do that" sort of messages. (I assume you want any user input to be greeted with no response as well, unless "wake up"?. But what about standard meta commands like "help", "hint", "about", "save"?)

I'd say give it a try and then come back with any problems. Specifically "how do I turn off this" sort of questions. Those generate an easier answer.

Renegade Proxy wrote:Skyrim gives you floating arrows that I was forced to mod out because I don't want to be led about.

For what it's worth, I very much sympathise with your thought process and the desire to make the game you want. The first thing I do when I load up a console game (especially if it's a FPS) is go to the options to see what elements of the HUD I can disable. Far Cry 3 could have been virtually perfect - a big open-world which you're able to explore at your leisure - but the immersion was greatly marred by the constant pop-up, prompts, maps, etc littering the screen.

However, I have to agree with the others; a blank screen with only one functioning input is a recipe for disaster. It's not so much that players will get bored, but that they will simply presume the game has crashed or not loaded properly.

What you could do, if you won't be moved on this (and I'd kind of admire you if you persisted) is to explain in the intro that the player will be presented with a blank screen, and that the game is indeed functioning as it should.

Parser input games can be hard enough when you DO have clues as to what to do. Especially if you're expecting a command that isn't the obvious "look" or inventory check. I think this author may be in for a rough ride just creating the game if he can't evaluate constructive feedback and insists on ploughing on regardless.

Silver wrote:Parser input games can be hard enough when you DO have clues as to what to do. Especially if you're expecting a command that isn't the obvious "look" or inventory check. I think this author may be in for a rough ride just creating the game if he can't evaluate constructive feedback and insists on ploughing on regardless.

I think that's a little narrow-minded. I've already concurred that his opening to the game would be a mistake, but is there not room for some evolution in the parser adventure game market?

You, I, and virtually everyone else would never dream of making a parser game that opens with a blank screen and only one accepted input, but this is only his game opening remember. If he goes with it and gets a flood of feedback and comments along the lines, "This game wont even load." or "Game freezes on loading.." then he'll finally see the point we are making. But this doesn't mean his time has been wasted, as some have suggested. He simply goes back, changes his opening to something more conventional, maybe change the game's title, and uploads it again.

I meant that if his reaction on this occasion to some feedback is "shut up, I'm doing it anyway" then his response to ALL future feedback, not just on this issue, whether on the forums or in his game comments is likely to be the same. He is right, everyone else is wrong. It's easy to forsee the difficulties that will bring, mostly for himself.

Silver wrote:I meant that if his reaction on this occasion to some feedback is "shut up, I'm doing it anyway" then his response to ALL future feedback, not just on this issue, whether on the forums or in his game comments is likely to be the same. He is right, everyone else is wrong. It's easy to forsee the difficulties that will bring, mostly for himself.

Fair enough, Silver. I'll be interested to see what his follow up is either way.