First of all, I have to ask: There's a limit on how long you can use the free version game creator?? Bugger. It'll take me 30 days just to figure this thing out. I am NOT good with coding. Period. I guess I'll put QuestPro on my X-mas list. lol

Secondly, I have to say: A text based game with sound and images?? Absurd!! ^_~ No, actually I love the idea!!!! I am a freelance anime animation artist and to make my pet project story into something fun with my own graphics would be.. uh.. well fun! ^_^
Does this program support gif animations by chance?? I love to animate. It's my passion. Not a problem if it doesn't. Just curious.

How bout distribution? Using QuestPro to encrypt the game, who exactly would buy these old text games anyway?? (has anyone tried eBay?) And how do you keep the game from being spread around the net? Impossible probably, but hey, might as well ask if you got any ideas.. Not a lot of people are into these old type games around where I live.. I know that.. hehe.. but I used to love them. I was always bad at playing them, but I've always wanted to create one!

What length of game is preferred by most? Time-wise and room-wise please. I read all the comments on the games listed and demos are shunned so I understand that demos are bad unless you have a full version ready to buy but what length is likable? And when does extensive object interaction get TOO extensive? (or would 'stupid' be a better word???) lol Oh and don't worry about typing errors and punctuation. I am very picky with my writing and spelling so spell-check is not a problem here.

I have many ideas to help you improve this game and I know not a lot of them can be implemented soon but here they are. And if they are implemented please do tell!!

-VEHICLES Must have a way to have a vehicle. In my story, the main character has a dragon that she can summon and ride to other places. Simple really. Can only go specific places and the dragon will automatically know where to go when place is specified.

-EATING Is there a way for the character to consume things and get stat changes? Such as a healing potion that gives you a bit of a rise to the HP stat or poisons that slowly kill off the characters HP after a certain number of actions? There is stats and death and monster fighting stuffs right?? I forgot to ask that.

TIME Is it possible to give each action a specified time to complete the action to make way for a day/night scene switch. Or to enable different actions to happen at different times of the day. After a dinner scene at 6PM, the NPC people in the dining hall aren't going to still be eating dinner at midnight... you know what I mean?

FAMILIARS/PETS Okay so I'm musing about the idea of a Pokemon-style game where you could use creatures to battle eachother. **Don't make fun of me for liking Pokemon. I have connected with it on a spiritual/mental level and besides it's anime. I love all anime and I draw anime animation style.** Anyway, this could also be used for like a little wizards pet/familiar that can do small things for him if he's wrapped up in something.. or imprisoned!!
"Tell familiar to take key."
"Tell familiar to give key to you."
"Tell familiar that it was bad to eat the key."

Okay, it's 8AM and I've been up all night. I'm bushed. Nice to meet you all and I hope you liked my ideas. I know I write a lot but I like to get all my thoughts down at once. Woot for being a newbie eh??

Anyway, on with your post Arasan:
Text games used to have sound and graphics (I played an Acorn Electron game which had pictures of scenes and "beep"ed every now and then : ) ).
I would guess that it would support .gif's. If not you could always have a HTML file that had the .gif picture in it and launch the HTML file....

The game *could* be baught - but probably wouldn't be. And stopping anything being put around the net is almost impossible.

Length: Personally I like long-ish games. Maybe complateable in a week or two. Timewise - around 20 hours I guess. But that's also dependable on the interaction required (examine every item, ect..) and how many side quests there are (if any).
I can see you take care over your spelling and punctuation from your post, I try to but errors still get through on occasions (pluss eye downt speel-chek).

Vehichles are a possibility - but you have to code them (I'm not sure if it's in Al's library... But he did an example... Must add his example page to my Fav list!) for yourself.
The same goes for Eating and Pets or other Non-Playable-Characters (NPC's)... I haven't heard "familiar" in a long time - didn't a novelist invent it as a witches spiritual helper (or whatever) that was in the form of a cat?

That timer suggestion sounds interesting... Reading the systems clock is quite easy to impliment... Alex, did you have this on "the list" or not?

Hope this helps out a bit...

No, Quest will only display the first frame of an animated GIF file. Animated GIF support is on the "to do" list though.

How bout distribution? Using QuestPro to encrypt the game, who exactly would buy these old text games anyway?? (has anyone tried eBay?) And how do you keep the game from being spread around the net?

To distribute your game you distribute the ASL or CAS file, but there's no way to copy protect any files in Windows, so there's nothing you can really do to stop people "pirating" any games you might sell. However, I doubt very many people would pay for a text adventure game, although it's not unknown.

VEHICLES Must have a way to have a vehicle.

MaDbRiT has a vehicle library, although it's for Quest 2.x - but it should be usable from Quest 3.x (There is a link to MaDbRiT's website is on the links page). You could try coding a vehicle yourself though for ultimate flexibility. It would just need to be a room, and commands you type in that room would alter where the "out" exit points.

EATING Is there a way for the character to consume things and get stat changes?

I've deliberately left out built-in "eat" support because it is really easy to implement - you just need to add a command such as "eat #@thing#" and then in the script for that command, you might check a property to see if the thing was edible and act accordingly. Or you could just make it run the object's "eat" action, and then you could code "eat" behaviour directly into each edible object. The script that runs when the object was eaten could then easily adjust stats accordingly.

TIME Is it possible to give each action a specified time to complete the action to make way for a day/night scene switch.

Use a timer to time a certain length of time, and when the time is up, you could set a variable or something which could then be checked in whatever script you want to time-limit.

"Tell familiar to take key."
"Tell familiar to give key to you."
"Tell familiar that it was bad to eat the key."

Again, there's no built-in "tell" command, but it is easy to make one yourself. You can either add specific commands like "Tell familiar to take key", or you could create a more general "tell" command such as "tell #@character# to #dothing#" and then have a script which might look for specific words in the #dothing# string variable and act appropriately.

CW: Reading the systems clock is quite easy to impliment... Alex, did you have this on "the list" or not?

quote:

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MaDbRiT has a vehicle library, although it's for Quest 2.x - but it should be usable from Quest 3.x (There is a link to MaDbRiT's website is on the links page).

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Yes I do, there is an example for (Quest 2.1x) on my website - it is presented as a library you just 'include and use'. Though there are actually TWO subtly different libraries, one for vehicles you ride ON, one for vehicles you ride IN..

Note that a "vehicle" could be anything from obscure ideas like a magic carpet, through conventional (e.g. a bus) and including animals (Horse, Elephant whatever) "Vehicle" is just a generic term for something that transports the player - nothing is hard coded.

Although the old lib will (quite possibly) work in Q3.1, it was written specifically to work round some limitations in the earlier Quest 2.1x which simply aren't there in the new version, so it really isn't necessary to use code that is quite so evil & convoluted any more. :-)

Something that old lib did, which is perhaps not immediately obvious, is make the vehicle appear as an object in the room, (using an associated "trick" room behind the scenes) not just a room you 'moved west' or whatever to enter. This meant you could move the vehicle around the game world and wherever you put it, Quest automatically described it as present. If you code it as just a room, you have to build a test into every possible location the vehicle can visit to see if the 'vehicle' should be described, or arrange some sort of test on the current room each move.

These are the little 'issues' that cause what seems initially simple to suddenly mushroom in complexity. :-(

Anyway, at the risk of delaying release of the new version of "typelib.qlb" once again, I'll slide a vehicle type into my forthcomimg upgrade.

Anyone who can suggest particular requirements or features for a vehicle type is welcome to e-mail me their thoughts, or better yet, post them here.

Oh and slightly offtopic.. I found a utility to make sierra/lucasarts type games! Point and click baby! I still love those types of games to death!

Anyway, back to text based games in general... thanks for the information and your welcome for the suggestions. I'll be keeping tabs on this site most definitely. I will be making my game(s) soon when my own computer is fixed.. it's not much fun to write something on someone elses computer and right now that's all I have access to at the moment.