Those familiar with Rogue-like games and other tile-based adventures (such as Ultima IV) would be happy to know one of the tools for creating these games is still kicking and breathing. Unless, of course, you’re not into designing games… Read more…
Mike Roberts had recently posted on the IF newsgroups about the TADS 2 update. Those who have been more-or-less involved in the newsgroups are probably aware that the last version Roberts had released for TADS 2 was v2.5.10. This version consisted mostly of compiler and run-time engine bug-fixes, but nothing much in terms of UI had been changed.
I’ve previously written about certain adventure game authors shifting their gears over to other software that are more regularly updated. This post will feature the recent (and not-so-recent) changes to some of the game design software I’ve been checking out, so readers can have a better clue of what they need to be looking for.
[SPOILER ALERT: This article contains some spoilers.]
You get off smelling clean, looking prim and proper in your red long-sleeved shirt from the bathroom. When you reach the kitchen, one of the other passengers on your ship apologizes for grabbing that last cup of English tea. A few minutes later, you’re back in your room, wondering what the hell those rumbles were, and, after a few more hours, arguing with your girlfriend who could have perpetrated the murders.
And it all started when she asked for tea on her breakfast. And all that happens right here in The Vacuum, David Proctor’s debut AGS game.
The game intro
[SPOILER ALERT: This article contains some spoilers.]
There’s always something to be said about objects that allow human conversation, even interaction, without the extras that provide other important clues, such as facial and body movements. Like most other new technologies, a lot of What-If questions accompany their birth, even as they become obsolete, and many of these questions have remained unsolved and unanswered. Yet we play along, as the technology of “chatting”, for example, advances more and people become more isolated in turn.
Chatroom, TheJBurger’s second game, serves to illustrate one of these questions.
Chatroom game snapshot
Similar efforts have been seen elsewhere. Take, for example, Jon Ingold’s interactive fiction (IF) game Fail-Safe, where the player interacts with a dying alien. However, Chatroom goes one step further – it actually implements a simulated Internet chat, with all the quirky and not-so-quirky responses normally seen in a chatroom. Most of the responses were quite spot on, but given that it is a short game set on a post-apocalyptic world where everyone’s pretty much gone, I didn’t really expect a lot from it.
At times I did wonder whether it would have been beneficial to the game’s concept if it were implemented instead as an IF game. AGS’s parser isn’t really that bad, even with the author’s improvements, but I can bet it could have improved more (and better responses might have been added) if Chatroom had been made using either Inform or TADS.
[But then it probably wouldn't have made the One Room One Week AGS competition, which the game was entered on. 
]
Like La Croix Pan (which was also reviewed here), Chatroom can be seen as “one of those AGS experiments,” except, of course, given its implementation time, La Croix Pan remains to be the author’s better work. All in all, I would still recommend playing Chatroom just for the sheer concept. That 10 minutes one this game will be well-spent.
