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From: meta@pobox.com (mathew)
Subject: Re: A completely new IF editor and player
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Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 00:48:58 GMT
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thedarkjedi <boltoni8@cs.man.ac.uk> wrote:
> I have just started my third year of a Computer Science degree and have
> to do a project.  Since I've always been interesting in adventure gaming
> I thought I'd try to write my own in Java to be played over the web.  I
> have been told this is not ambitious enough, but will also be writing my
> own editor for creating games as well as the player for playing them.

Here's an idea:

A Java mapper.  Make it automatically minimize the number of crossovers
on the map by rearranging the rooms appropriately.  The algorithms to do
that well are fairly subtle, and may be deemed ambitious enough by your
tutors.

Give it a really quick and easy IF-like interface, so I can type the
same directions (nsewud) as I type in the game to move the cursor, and
then type something like the same in upper case (NSEWUD) to indicate the
exits described from the room I'm now in.

You'll also need some way to deal with situations where you go east one
way but down to retrace your steps, for example.

You could also allow the user to type short room descriptions in the box
representing the room.  A companion tool for tracking locations of
objects would be a nice add-on.

Finally, make it capable of dumping out skeleton source code to
implement the current map, for Inform, TADS or Hugo.

Oh, and write it using JDK 1.1.8 so I can get it running on the Mac :-)


mathew
--
No taxation without representation!
