Text-based RPGs: is there any interest in them?

So, lately we've been wanting to create a text-based RPG game that would be played in the console and would use basic grammar parsing to get user input and act on objects in the game (think like old-school games such as the original Colossal Cave, not the more recent roguelikes). My question to you guys is whether or not there is any interest in playing something so retro, and if anyone would be interested in a "construction kit" that would allow you to easily create your own without having to completely code it out from scratch.

Basically, the game would give the user textual descriptions of the location the player is in and any objects that they can interact with in the current location. From there, the player would write out a "command" (which is basically written as "verb [noun]", like "check inventory", "turn left", "move west", "look", and so on) to interact with other objects in the environment. At present, we're looking at creating all of the game's assets in external files (format undecided as of yet, but we're looking at XML or YAML) that would be loaded by the game player which would start running the code that enables player interaction and such.

Whether the interest for it is there or not, we'll be creating our own game for fun, but if there's interest in a "construction kit" for these types of games, we were considering writing up a cross-platform game player and editor that could be used to make these kinds of games. Considering the amount of work that would take in comparison to just creating a stand-alone game, we thought we should get some input to find out if something like this is even worth taking the time to work on.

Thanks!

Strangely enough, I've been thinking about something like that recently, but there'd be a LOT of work and "if thens" required for even one project set up. If you can get something off the ground though, I'm more than interested.

Two days ago my friend said that he wanted to create a text based RPG. I my self don't like them to much, but my friend would love to use the construction kit. 

Strangely enough, I've been thinking about something like that recently, but there'd be a LOT of work and "if thens" required for even one project set up. If you can get something off the ground though, I'm more than interested.

The way we're looking at handling it right now, the game is run on a main loop that receives "events" in a queue. The queue runs these events and modifies game entities, then hands control to the player for input once the queue has been emptied. The player's input is then parsed and any actions taken by the player get added into the queue and start making changes to in-game assets.

The parts that would make up the "game," then, are stored in XML files. These XML files let the designer dictate what commands are available to the player (including all of the aspects that make up a "command" like valid targets and the effect on those targets), what game actors are available (read that as "party members"), the starting conditions of the game (such as starting party, levels, items, equipment, and location), any physical objects, and so on. So most of the actual game information is stored in XML, then read by the game player which actually runs the code that makes the XML files mean something.

Take this XML as an example:

Code: [Select]

<action name="quit" event="Event_Quit" turns="0">
<output>
<help>Exits the currently running game.</help>
<usage>Quit</usage>
<success>Thank you for playing!</success>
<failure>Failed to exit the game!</failure>
</output>
<targets default_class="all">
<target class="all"/>
</targets>
</action>


This code shows how to create a command that would exit the game. The player would type "quit" at the input prompt and the game would close cleanly once the queue got to the Event_Quit (which would most likely be immediate, since the command uses zero turns). If the command succeeded, the output "Thank you for playing!" would appear, otherwise it would show "Failed to exit the game!" If the player typed "help quit" at the input prompt, it would display "Quit - Exits the currently running game." The command itself would be case-insensitive, by the way.

Of course, all we have right now is skeleton code, really, but so far, it works as expected.

Two days ago my friend said that he wanted to create a text based RPG. I my self don't like them to much, but my friend would love to use the construction kit. 

Ha, well, that's good to know. At least someone would be interested in using it.

Right now, we're going ahead and starting work on a basic construction kit to make the game that we want to make right now, which means it will be missing a lot of features that others might want to use. If we can get our own version up and running well enough, and there's enough interest, we'd certainly be willing to start adding extra bells and whistles to it.

And now that we're thinking about it, where would the proper place be to discuss how a system like this would work if other people are interested in using it? New Projects seems like it's focused on actual games, not tools used to create them, and we wouldn't call this "another maker," since it's really a couple of source files and a decent batch of XML. So... where would that topic go?

And is anyone else interested in anything like this?

I like the idea, best of luck to you, I rember making a rather short one in java, it turned out alright

My friend used to have a gameboy dungeons and dragons text adventure, I was looking for it for so long but could never find it. He said it took him a week just to open the front door of the entire church/castle thing that the game takes place in(there are so many commands). I like them a lot because it's a lot of guess-n-check and takes a lot of wit.

Simply said, i would be interested.

Simply said, i would be interested.

Good to know, thank you.

As said, we'll be working on a basic version for creating our own text-based game, and we'll happily release that once it's done, but we're still in the planning phase for that right now. Based on what we're hearing in this topic, though, it sounds like there's enough interest to consider creating a more open-ended construction kit-style editor for it in the future.