Beached! V2.0 has been released after a mayor overhoal.

[size=150]Hello all![/size]
After just than one week on the forums, Beached! has received many replies, complaints, requests and compliments.
Over 700 visitors have played the game so far. Thank you all for that!

All the feedback has been processed and Beached! has been overhauled thoroughly:

  1. Hundreds of grammar and spelling errors have been corrected.
  2. The rudeness of the game has been downgraded quite firmly.
  3. Many, many bugs have been crushed.
  4. Many misleading location exits have been fixed.
  5. A walkthrough map has been added to guide you through the puzzles.
  6. The text parser has been upgraded from a ‘2-words-max’ processor to one that actually reads small sentences (WIP continuously).
  7. A graphics on/off button has been added to make the game more accessible for people using narrator software.
  8. The loading time of the game has been reduced by 75%.
  9. Apple Macbook users or Windows safari users must have Quicktime installed to get the game running.
    (Windows Safari users should also copy QTCF.dll from the Quitcktime map to their system32 map)

I hope you will enjoy the upgraded version, still available at: https://beached.000webhostapp.com/

I didn’t spend much time so far but here are some things I immediately noticed:

examine sand
The response I get: ‘Use your eyes, please. It’s just pebbles here…’

While the description is clearly talking about sand. This is a bit of a trend in the game. On the same screen the game tells me: ‘You spot a cascade’. But when I ‘examine cascade’, the game asks me if I’m mad! :smiley:

Would it also be possible to implement ‘x’ as a synonym for ‘examine’? And maybe ‘it’ that refers to the last typed noun? This is mostly because I’m lazy.

What did you use to make this? Just curious.

The game has been written in javascript/HTML.
Beached! part 1 was a test to see if I could actually program an interactive Fiction game. It’s purpose is to gather as much feedback as possible to make part 2 a truly complete game.
Suggestions like the ‘X’ or ‘it’ you mentioned are most welcome. I hope part 2 will be much more complete than part 1 is, thanks for your input!

Not a problem, I appreciate the effort so far and you already have a good base to work from. I know it’s not easy writing a parser game from scratch, I’m doing the same but with Java for the same reason (just to see if I can!) .

I’m interested to see how the final game will be so I’m going to follow your updates. :slight_smile:

Hello! Your link (beached.000webhostapp.com/) doesn’t appear to be working O:

Verityvirtue, I’ve checked the links and they seem to work fine. Maybe the server was offline for a minute or so?
Has anyone else had this problem as well?

You might want to play some existing games first, so that you get an idea how things are supposed to work. Writing an IF system without being familiar with the genre doesn’t sound like a good idea.

There’s a relation between interactive fiction (novels) and text adventures, isn’t there? Some prefer oldskool typing while others prefer point&click.
In general, it’s the story that counts.

I come from the generation that grew up with Zork, Colossal Cave, Guild of thieves, etc. Beached! is a similar game with an emphasis on atmosphere through graphics and sounds.
Not you regular interactive fiction maybe, but isn’t it worth taking a look despite of that you think?

It will help in getting to know the common conventions :slight_smile:

Like the aforementioned “x” as a synonym for “examine” (and also “look at”). There’s lots of little things one expects from a text adventure parser. The error responses are another example. If you don’t tell the player what the problem was, it’s difficult to figure out what the parser expects. If a verb is not recognized for example, the player should be told that it was not recognized instead of getting a “try something else” or “i see no reason to do that” response, which implies that the command was perfectly fine but it just doesn’t do anything currently.

Here’s some of the basics explained:

pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/play-if-card.pdf

Great guidelines, thx. A few items were not yet included in the parser for part 2, but now will. Good feedback.
By the way, the ‘X’ has been implemented in part 1.