intfiction.org

Easy question for the Inform pros out there.
Hopefully, there is an equally easy answer.

I am trying to create an IF that is ludicrously simple in terms of its game "world". I want each room to be logically connected to the next in a linear fashion. By that, I mean the player follows a straight path from one room to the next. I won't need N/E/S/W directional markers. And users can't skip rooms along the path.

The reason behind such an (odd?) request is that I'm developing a sort of children's riddle game. The primary objective is to solve one puzzle before you can proceed to the next room. Typically, the puzzles will have one-word answers. If, and only if, the player provides the correct answer to the current room's puzzle, he may proceed to the next room.


If all of this is unclear, let me give an example:

Room 1:
"You are sitting in a room. You see nothing but the door and it's locked. Keeping the door locked, is an electronic keypad which you have access to. The keypad display reads "2+2=". What number do you punch on the keypad in order to unlock the door?"
(If, and only if, the player types "4" and presses Enter, he proceeds to Room 2)
(If the player enters anything but "4", then some text may appear offering a hint, etc.)

Room 2:
<another puzzle. completely unrelated to the one that came before it. when correctly solved, player then moves to...>

Room 3:
<another puzzle. completely unrelated to the one that came before it....>
You get the idea.

Any ideas on how I would get started?

I admit that I am new to Inform, but I have read the documentation and most of that is geared towards creating rooms with objects, and the interactions between objects. Indeed, I was able to create a simple adventure game just fine using some template examples.

I'm a little stuck on my "riddle" game, though. So any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks in advance,


- Anthony

Maybe this can get you started:



The basic idea is to unlock the next room when you say the magic word. It doesn't have to be a say -- you could make a custom action, or match to the text exactly too. The awkward 'answering yourself that it' is due to the name of the answering action (whose rule gets triggered by the say command).

Other oddities (explained as best I can, I'm no Inform pro ):

* 'to a random room' is what you need to code when you're thinking 'to the room' due to Inform syntax.
* truth states are specialized properties which only can be true or false.
* the 'topic understood' will match the text you enter, in this case the text entered for the answering it that action.
* don't forget to unlist the block answering rule if you use the answering it that action (i.e., the 'say' command).

Sounds like you're making a choose-your-own-adventure. I believe there's an extension or two on the Inform site that makes that easy. Er, it has Adventure Book or something in the title...?

_________________
Blog at Gamasutra :: Programmer's Guide to Inform 7 :: Seattle I-F

Thanks George...

The logic here seems like it should work for my application. I suspect there is a more elegant way of doing it, but I'll certainly use this as a starting point and streamline it as I go along.

Not quite. Remember that my story path is completely linear. There will be no forking or choosing of paths.

You appear in "Room 1". The only way to get to "Room 2" is to solve Room 1's riddle. For argument's sake, let's say there are 10 rooms until you end. To "win" the game, each and every room must be completed in order.

One refinement might be to take the topic matching code and abstract it, so from this:



to something like this (not tested):



And you would then define the appropriate properties on the rooms. Might be easier to manage once you had a bunch of rooms.

Eh? One path goes forward, the other loops back with a hint...

_________________
Blog at Gamasutra :: Programmer's Guide to Inform 7 :: Seattle I-F

I'd probably approach this by finding the part in the manual that identifies how to define a new cardinal direction (I remember seeing it somewhere, probably next to the part where they explained how to cancel the old cardinal directions). Then you can name new exits anything you wish. You can name 13 new exits and definre each of those for each room as leading to the next in the sequence. In other words, one exit per room, named after the answer to its riddle. So for example if the answer to room 1's riddle is 'yes' then you can use 'Room 2 is yes of Room 1' instead of, say, west of Room 1. But you would have to define yes as a new direction, first, which unfortunately I can't give you code for off the top of my head, but I remember it seemed pretty simple. I still kinda think in MUD-brain, where defining any text you wish as an exit verb is a trivial operation; it's more unusual in Inform but I think it'd work fine for a standalone quiz game unless you had hundreds of rooms or something.

P.

It also seems like an IF language might not be the best choice of tool for this kind of game, unless you have some other reasons to use one. You could make a trivia game like that with a few lines of HTML and JavaScript.

Juhana is probably right--this is not a game that plays to Inform's strengths.

However, I think the absolute simplest way to do it would just be to make every room have no exits and then change them to have appropriate exits:



This is automatically a one-way connection (you can't return to room 1), which is probably what you want.

As for interface, I'd put a person in the room who asks you the riddle and to whom you reply the answer: