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Text based computer games:

Started by MoonHunter, June 24, 2010, 07:03:26 PM

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MoonHunter

Which ones do you like (or love or hate) and why?  

I was a player of text games in the way back, but I stopped playing ... okay it was quite a long time ago and I will need the Waybac to get there.  There still seems to be a number of these out here.  What is their appeal to a current game player? An inquiring mind wants to know.
MoonHunter
Sage, Gamer, Mystic, Wit
"The road less traveled is less traveled for a reason."
"The world needs dreamers to give it a soul."... "And it needs realists to keep it alive."
Now posting way, way, waaaaayyyy to much stuff @ //www.strolen.com

RandallS

What type of text games are you thinking of? Interactive text adventures (like Zork)? Rogue-like games like Nethack or Angband? Something else?
Randall
Rules Light RPGs: Home of Microlite20 and Other Rules-Lite Tabletop RPGs

MoonHunter

Actually all of the forms, if that is possible.

Interactive text adventures (like Zork)?
MUD/MUSH games...

These are the two I know of....  Am I missing something?

About the Rogue-like games like Nethack or Angband. These are the beginings of video games.  Sure theya re not pretty graphic games, but the focus is the graphic expression. Yes, technically they are text printouts or the screen print.
MoonHunter
Sage, Gamer, Mystic, Wit
"The road less traveled is less traveled for a reason."
"The world needs dreamers to give it a soul."... "And it needs realists to keep it alive."
Now posting way, way, waaaaayyyy to much stuff @ //www.strolen.com

StormBringer

Quote from: MoonHunter;389910Actually all of the forms, if that is possible.

Interactive text adventures (like Zork)?
MUD/MUSH games...

These are the two I know of....  Am I missing something?

About the Rogue-like games like Nethack or Angband. These are the beginings of video games.  Sure theya re not pretty graphic games, but the focus is the graphic expression. Yes, technically they are text printouts or the screen print.
Go nuts:

The MUD Connector
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

\'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.\'
- Thomas Paine
\'Everything doesn\'t need

winkingbishop

#4
For an actual Dungeons & Dragons experience via MUD I have only one outstanding recommendation:

ShadowGate MUD: firedragon.com port:6969

For many years, it was very faithful to AD&D.  Pretty recently, they have slowly begun to add more customization options.  If you can get your head around this, you now get feats as you would in a 3.x fashion but multiclassing is a little closer to 4e.  There are choke-points every 10 levels for multiclassing.  Last I played there, this was only for base classes.  There are no "prestige" or "paragon" classes yet.

SG is listed as an "RP Enforced" MUD and in my experience this is not just for show.  Out of character speak is only allowed on OOC lines, etc.  They take background and RP pretty seriously, even if at the expense of "fun" at times.

The setting is a very loose or re-imagined Forgotten Realms.  The history is vaguely FR, the deities are very FR, the play area is completely unique.

The only thing the game lacks, imo, is a lively and rotating player base.  The game lacks a good web presence and marketing.  New faces would do the MUD wonders, maybe get me to come back.

This is the location of the wiki, which is more than enough to get started.

http://shadowgatemud.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowgate_MUD_Wiki

The only funky character creation notes worth mentioning are:
  • Paladins must start as a nerfed "Cavalier" class.  They are granted the Paladin class via immortal/admin intervention.

  • Most large, evil or "powerful" races including Drow, Giant-kin and wemic are available only though application and are not recommended for new players.

Unlike a lot of MUDs I've tried, SG really works to get players involved.  That is a double edged sword.  You truly do get to shape the game, but there is a certain level of commitment involved once the staff gets a feel for you that you might not be able to keep.  This is a personal preference, I can't say if it is a good fit for you.

But, broadly speaking, I have never played in a MUD that was more faithful to D&D and also retained quality control.  Some will abhor the idea of staff judging your quality of "roleplaying" while others will appreciate the fact that someone is keeping it from turning into a video game.
"I presume, my boy, you are the keeper of this oracular pig." -The Horned King

Friar Othos - [Ptolus/AD&D pbp]

Simlasa

I worked for several years in a forensic toxicology lab and as a group we played through a bunch of those text-based adventures...
The one I particularly remember was Trinity... that was all about the history of nuclear weapons and trying to stop some big doomsday device (IIRC). I remember our chief biochemist's joy when he figured out that the odd structure in one area was actually a giant Klein Bottle and that entering/leaving it in the right manner would mirror/reverse the outside landscape to give access to new areas.
We never did figure out what to do about the guard dog at the end though...

A while back I got a copy of the The Mist... but playing alone wasn't nearly as fun.

John Morrow

Quote from: MoonHunter;389900Which ones do you like (or love or hate) and why?

Way back in the early days of personal computers, a guy named Scott Adams produced a series of text adventures in BASIC (see here).  I have fond memories of them because they were fairly short and quick to play, unlike slogging through Zork, and I learned a bit about programming and parsing text by digging into their code.

A funny related story is that a high school friend of mine (the late Steve Pearl) worked at a mail-order computer company as tech support years after we'd played those text adventures.  One day he got a call from a "Scott Adams" so he asked, "Are you the Scott Adams who wrote the text adventures?"  The guy responded, "No, I'm the Scott Adams who writes Dilbert."
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StormBringer

Quote from: John Morrow;390820Way back in the early days of personal computers, a guy named Scott Adams produced a series of text adventures in BASIC (see here).  I have fond memories of them because they were fairly short and quick to play, unlike slogging through Zork, and I learned a bit about programming and parsing text by digging into their code.

A funny related story is that a high school friend of mine (the late Steve Pearl) worked at a mail-order computer company as tech support years after we'd played those text adventures.  One day he got a call from a "Scott Adams" so he asked, "Are you the Scott Adams who wrote the text adventures?"  The guy responded, "No, I'm the Scott Adams who writes Dilbert."
You're in luck, now you can too:

Inform 7

There are others out there, of course.
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

\'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.\'
- Thomas Paine
\'Everything doesn\'t need

noisms

Quote from: StormBringer;390838You're in luck, now you can too:

Inform 7

There are others out there, of course.

I've played around with Inform 7. It's great if you don't want to go through the rigmarole of learning how to code, but its much vaunted natural language interface is really a code in all but name.

Definitely recommended though.
Read my blog, Monsters and Manuals, for campaign ideas, opinionated ranting, and collected game-related miscellania.

Buy Yoon-Suin, a campaign toolbox for fantasy games, giving you the equipment necessary to run a sandbox campaign in your own Yoon-Suin - a region of high adventure shrouded in ancient mysteries, opium smoke, great luxury and opulent cruelty.

Lawbag

#9
There were a lot of flawed text adventure games back in those days. Bad spelling mistakes and incomplete parsers meant that to win the game you had to deliberately mispell certain items and actions, and some were even bugged, meaning they couldn't be completed.

One particular text game, I spent almost 9 months on, until I discovered it was incomplete, and had to send away for a corrected version. By then my dislike of actually playing them had be born.

I dabbled only briefly thereafter with the likes of Mist, Riven, Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Infocom and Level 9 adventures. Magnetic Scrolls also get a solid mention too.

After that it was The Secret of Monkey Island which pretty much killed the commercial text adventure, and ushered in the era of  entertaining graphic adventures led by the likes of LucasArts.
"See you on the Other Side"
 
Playing: Nothing
Running: Nothing
Planning: pathfinder amongst other things
 
Playing every Sunday in Bexleyheath, Kent, UK 6pm til late...

StormBringer

Quote from: Lawbag;390899After that it was The Secret of Monkey Island which pretty much killed the commercial text adventure, and ushered in the era of  entertaining graphic adventures led by the likes of LucasArts.
Wow, that is incredibly wrong.

Sierra Online in the early 80s is the correct answer.
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

\'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.\'
- Thomas Paine
\'Everything doesn\'t need

Insufficient Metal

I have fond memories of the old Scott Adams games (Impossible Mission, Adventureland) and the first Zork series, which I was total crap at but enjoyed playing with. I recently downloaded a bunch of the old files and an emulator and gave them another shot -- I still find them frustrating and difficult, just like I did back then.  I remember laboriously making pencil-and-paper maps to try to navigate the game worlds.

Lawbag

Quote from: StormBringer;390926Wow, that is incredibly wrong.

Sierra Online in the early 80s is the correct answer.

There were many more graphic adventures before TSOMI, including the likes of Manic Mansion, Zak McKraken, but I did quantify my statement by the word Entertaining...

Before MI, the graphic adventures were full of difficult and not always logical puzzles that only appealed to the adventure game community.

MI was the first game that made me laugh constantly.
"See you on the Other Side"
 
Playing: Nothing
Running: Nothing
Planning: pathfinder amongst other things
 
Playing every Sunday in Bexleyheath, Kent, UK 6pm til late...

noisms

Quote from: StormBringer;390926Wow, that is incredibly wrong.

Sierra Online in the early 80s is the correct answer.

Those Sierra games were bloody annoying. Especially the King's Quest ones... Oh, the wasted hours.
Read my blog, Monsters and Manuals, for campaign ideas, opinionated ranting, and collected game-related miscellania.

Buy Yoon-Suin, a campaign toolbox for fantasy games, giving you the equipment necessary to run a sandbox campaign in your own Yoon-Suin - a region of high adventure shrouded in ancient mysteries, opium smoke, great luxury and opulent cruelty.

StormBringer

Quote from: Lawbag;391055There were many more graphic adventures before TSOMI, including the likes of Manic Mansion, Zak McKraken, but I did quantify my statement by the word Entertaining...
And so you did.  Mea Culpa.
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

\'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.\'
- Thomas Paine
\'Everything doesn\'t need