Spot on severedhand. Thank you. This has spurred me on.
I indeed think there is a need/space for old-school two-word parsers on mobile platforms with subtle enhancements here and there from the old days such as catering for more descriptive content of rooms and items but yes, two word parsers to allow interactivity with the game to progress through the old school type text Adventures.
I think modern day Interactive Fiction has gone too far down the road of modernisation, catering for full sentences which in my opinion has made it prohibitive in mobile device gameplay and furthermore removes some of the ‘romance’ and ‘speed Adventuring’ of the good old days.
Mobile devices small chicklet keyboards / stylus etc (and the Kindle) are crying out for two word parsers in my opinion (but with more descriptive text for rooms and objects if authors wish).
Also the complexity of the modern day Adventure game generators such as Inform may put off would be authors from making games whereas two word parser games are, as you may see with Visionary, relatively easy to contruct.
Don’t get me wrong. Modern day authoring tools like Inform are excellent and a lot of hard work has been put into their being, but in doing so, has removed the position further away from old school text Adventures and conditioned players into their expectations of how to play modern IF.
A few of the responses to my entry (“R”) into the IFCOMP 2010 have made me realise the vast expectations (conditioning) of players nowadays playing ‘Interactive Fiction’ vs the ‘text adventure’ era.
I guess there is a clear divide between old school text Adventures and modern day Interactive Fiction. The two are most definately different beasts.
My entry into IFCOMP bore this out.
People seem to have been ‘conditioned’ into certain ways of playing IF such as being surprised that my game did not have the option of “X” (object) but instead you had to type EXAMine (object) or LOOK (object) to learn something and also why you had to type ‘GO CAVE’ instead of just “West”. Also the ability to ‘ASK Bob ABOUT Fred’ and other such options, although good in modern day progression again removes romance and speed adventuring, conditioning again into new Adventuring.
The results for the IFCOMP are now out and 24th out of 26th place isn’t that bad :mrgreen: - I’m quite happy really - I put it down to:
- a bug about examining objects in the game
- the expectations of conditioned players to modern day IF
- the lack of descriptive text for locations and objects
- “FEED SHARks”
- Screen size by AdvPDA when playing on the PC.
- My theory of my “Text Adventure” not being modern “Interactive Fiction”
There may be other stuff why people didn’t like it but I also got some nice comments to suggest two word parser text Adventures are not stone cold dead although they do need a defibrillator.
Two word parsers with better descriptions designed for browsers for mobile play may be the electrical charge for old school text Adventure rebirth.
I am just rambling at this point. I’ll sum up…
I have stuff floating around in my head which will be realised eventually for the rebirth of old school text Adventures using two word parsers (yay!) and the games would be playable from the net or on a Kindle or downloadable to mobiles devices (and desktops for that matter!).
I am currently studying at uni as well as having a full time job, wife and kids and cat to juggle but I’ll get there.
It may be ‘another engine to make adventures’ but I believe it will fill a market where I believe there is a hole at the moment both in gameplay type (two word parsers for mobile play) and ease of use to create new old school text Adventure games.