The silly Video game Thread concept thingy, whatchamcallit.

I came up with this michevious idea at work in the morning. The hilarity of it all kept me going throughout the long allergy-laden day.

An IF (or advanced gamebook if you like those things) based on “The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion”.

Now Merely making an ‘explore the locations’ setup for all those mini quest is a task in itself. But as I thought about the absurdity of it all I came to a differnt conclusion. The vast landscape of Oblivion is relatively spread out and seems to varry only little by little. A smaller game with a more exagerated and compacted landscape would work better. The one that came to mind was a 5$ game I picked up a while back “Two Worlds” (ie #1) Not to be confused with “Two Worlds 2”.

I believe that merely exploreing the world itself would be a blast. Mayby thow in some simple Travel quest here and there.

I know its absurd in its entirety but what games would YOU want to see as IF?
(Given that the final product would be “awesome” in your perspective")

Basically, my ideal game is part XCOM, part The Sims with strong elements of Prom Week, and part King of Dragon Pass. The ludicrous expansiveness of this concept makes the most perfect sense in my head, but would require a major design studio to accomplish even if it was just in text. I am partially-resigned to Dwarf Fortress being the closest version I am likely to see of it in my lifetime.

I would honestly love to play demakes of various games as IF.

Reason being, a text-based Monkey Island, or Gabriel Knight, would be portable and I could play them anywhere and it would just feel cool. To me anyway.

I’ve played a tentative demake of Countdown, and it felt strangely good to play. I’ve yet to play the Return to Zork demake.

I know I’m a minority of one on this, but hey.

Wouldnt a load of ‘SCUMM’ engine games de-make into IF successfully? Much of the visual interface was moot to the game with the exception of ‘timeing’ and ‘find the hidden pixel thats really an important object’?

Wouldnt ‘day of the tentacle’ and a load of other lucas art games be capable of being de-make-able into IF?

Oh, definitely. Once you give some bit of thought into how to translate some visual bits into textual bits; once you define the strength of the game and understand exactly what it is you’ll lose with the demaking (in most games worth playing, the graphics are good enough that it’s a shame to lose them); once you possibly even excise some gratuitous puzzles to get it right where the original game designers got it wrong (I’m looking at a whole bunch of you guys: Simon the Sorcerer 3D, Black Dahlia, you’re just the foremost two in my mind!); once you spen some time thinking about it and how it might best become IF rather than just willy-nilly porting it straight up (which wouldn’t really work)…

…definitely. Almost every adventure game is de-makeable into IF. Some have defining characteristics that you would be sad to lose - for instance, demaking Loom is possible, but a crime; that game is so damn good in every way, and visuals and music are fundamental. Loom could not exist in any other shape or form.

Conversely, Gabriel Knight 1 and GK2 are untouchable (despite the current remake project of GK1. It looks gorgeous, but I’m so, so wary of the voice acting…), but GK3 would probably BENEFIT from a demake.

The Sims: IF version. The AI would be a migraine to set back up, but apart from that, it could mean (with a sufficiently large and obsessed writing team) Sims that speak English and have coherent conversations instead of Simlish.

For a much less aggressive goal - a text-based Limbo would make me smile.

Proteus!

How was I not aware of a third Simon the Sorcerer game!?! Let me google tha–HOLY CRAP THAT’S UGLY

I see you aren’t aware of the German Simon the Sorcerer games, either… I think they’ve what, got up to 7 now?

I’m probably the only one who liked it better than the first two games.

I think it was the German devs who made a demake of the third game, wasn’t it?

Was it actually made? I know it was an AGS project at one point.

The SS series is up to five, I think. (EDIT - Oh way, you said German. No idea about those) It has highs and lows, it’s worth a look if you’re not afraid of some overall old-schoolness (you can’t die or make the game unwinnable, but some of those puzzles are just unfair. “Hush puppies” puzzle anyone?). Comedy factor varies but it’s mostly funny and enjoyable. Voice acting generally good.

…this goes for the first two games in the series. SS3d is excruciating to all but Trumgottist and his masochistic tendencies*, and I have no idea what the other games are like but they look like nowehere near as good. They look casual, infantile (there was always an adult side to the SS series, even it if was as puerile as “young adult”), and with no respect for established characters and their relationships to each other. But that’s the impression I got from firing up SS4.

Anyway, biggest problem with SS3 is the problem with Text Murphy Overseer: a huge cliffhanger for years and years and years. But apparently Tesla Effect did deliver the goods, despite some overall disappointment with some puzzles. SS3 is just… wrong. I can stand the ugliness, but I can’t stand bad design. And thousands of fans felt so disappointed that the bad design and ugly visuals are just part of the reason the game has been forgotten… the more you expect something, the more you revile it when it turns out to be bad.

Make no mistake, though. You can argue that Monkey Island 4 is a decent game and a bad Monkey Island game… I can’t imagine SS3d being called a decent game by anyone (except Trumgottist). Personally, I encoutered a fatal bug at the swamp, that had everything to do with shoddy 3d engineering, that rendered the game impossible to complete.

*Tongue-in-cheek, Trum, I’m pulling your leg. Though I am surprised to anyone stand up for SS3.

It’s mostly that I didn’t care for the first one with its pixel hunting. I don’t remember any details, but I recall that I thought SS2 was a bit better, and that I found SS3 a bit better than that. The end puzzle was quite clever.

Actually, since it’s been so long, I dug up an old Usenet post of mine to refresh my memory. While the post is slightly embarrassing to read, it’s clear that I found the game funny. I think that’s it - the humour worked better for me in the third game than in the two first.

Oh yeah, I can get behind you on that. The second alleviated pixel hunting by having a neat trick - pressing F10 would temporarily highlight all hotspots. And yes, re the humour, I concur - though I didn’t find it as funny personally, I certainly didn’t think that the writing was inferior to the previous games. Just the design.

EDIT - You must also be one of those lucky few that experienced no bugs.

And seriously? Hunting around for those butterflies didn’t faze you? Or the huge time it took to traverse the huge map, even with the shortcuts, especially in the city? Or having to time something, miss, and wait ages for the events to repeat themselves?

Guess you can see what I didn’t like in the game. :wink:

I could see a Pokémon IF work. Battles in the core games are already turn-based and involve one action per turn, anyway, and I think the capacity for high adventure would still be there - just, perhaps, in a different form.

[i]It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

USE FLASH[/i]

Is there an IF that is ‘similar’ to oblivion in its open ended gameplay? A primary quest, tons of side quests, a timer of sorts, etc etc? Because if something similar already exists, then inform me! I’ld like to try it out! Of course I have a love of the mideval fantasy adventure. So point away!

Lots of people attempt to make something like this, then give up when they realise that it requires creating much, much more content than one person can manage in under a decade. The closest approximation that exists is probably Treasures of a Slaver’s Kingdom.

I’m not sure if it has a primary quest, but Flexible Survival seems like it might come close. Tons of sidequests, a huge amount of content, a timer (I’m pretty sure), and a lot of RPG mechanics. It’s innovative in a lot of ways (including a system for allowing you to retain saved games across game updates, though I’m told it’s a bit buggy) and might be the biggest Inform game so far judging by size of the story file (not counting graphics).

It’s a furry erotic post-apocalyptic game, so you should be aware of that going in in case that’s not to your taste. Oh, and don’t visit the main website (which is not what I linked above) at work.

I always thought Skyrim could benefit from being a bit more furry, erotic and post-apocalyptic.

Marry Aela the Huntress and move to Solstheim. For the ‘erotic’ part… well, I don’t know which mod floats your boat. Maybe your thing is jumping down a mountainside in a shower of a million cheese-wheels. Not gonna judge.