Text-Based Adventure Game

Text-Based Adventure Game

1. Prescribed Criteria

   • Your game must include at least 10 different player questions in total
   • You must have at least two choices for each input. IE. Yes | No, Left | Right, Buy | Sell
   • You must use a WHILE Loop
   • You must use variables

2. Self-determined Criteria

   • You must have a game based on topics that interest the user

3. Existing Text-Based Adventure Games

   • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
     • The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy on the personal computer is a text adventure made by Infocom. The story centers around two hitchhikers, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect. Minutes before Earth is about to be blown up by aliens, Ford Prefect manages to hitchhike with Arthur on to another alien ship. The game chronicles the unimportant, stupid, and silly journey that they take.
       • Pros
         • The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is an entertaining text adventure. Very well written, with lots of funny jokes, and references to the book.
       • Cons
         • On the other hand, this is not a game for newcomers to the genre. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is considered one of the toughest Infocom games to beat. It changes around several of the classic Infocom terms, and asks for some pretty unexpected answers to questions.
   • The Dreamhold
     • The Dreamhold is an interactive fiction story that is designed to introduce readers to the concept of exploring story via text only. The Dreamhold puts the reader/player into exploration mode, as you wander around a castle of some sort, and you slowly realize that it might be a place of magic.
       • Pros
         • It has a helpful system of “hints” built into the interface, and it simplifies the experience just enough to allow even the most novice of interactive fiction readers to have fun and understand the concept.
       • Cons
         • While all the areas are individually great — it's all hand-crafted and a real pleasure to poke around in, and the player is frequently rewarded with cool scenes happening when they poke at things — there's simply too many, and there's no overriding connection between them. While this is in-game justifiable by setting the game in a wizard's house, it makes the playing experience rough. It's hard for the game to bring together the more than a half-dozen conceptually separate areas into any kind of whole, story-wise or just for the player's navigation, and the situation isn't helped by having such a wide-open map with almost all the areas available from the start of the game.

4. Coding Constructs

   • Variables
     • Variables are containers for storing data values.
   • Arrays
     • In Python, an array is a collection of elements where each value represents an element.
   • IF
     • An IF statement executes a block of code only when the specified condition is met.
   • IF ELSE (ELIF)
     • The IF.......ELSE statement is used to execute a block of code among two alternatives. However, if you need to make a choice between more than two alternatives, you use the IF...ELIF...ELSE statement.
   • ELSE
     • An IF statement can have an optional else clause. The ELSE statement executes if the condition in the IF statement evaluates to 'False'.
   • FOR Loop
     • In Python, you use a FOR loop to iterate over sequences such as lists, strings, dictionaries, etc.
   • WHILE Loop
     • In Python, you use a while loop to repeat a block of code until a certain condition is met.

5. Ideas For Story

   • Player Choices/Player Questions
     • Some player questions + choices include: if the player wants to purchase anything at the inn (yes/no), If the player wants to purchase something, what would they like (water/beer/weapons), If the player purchases water or beer, would they like weapons (yes/no), if the player says yes, what weapon would they like (longsword/daggers/crossbow/broadsword), once the player exits the inn, they can decide to continue to the castle or go back, towards the village (castle/village), if the player faces the dragon, they can choose to save the princess or run (save/run), if the player chooses to go to the village, they can choose if they want to buy anything at the shop (yes/no), if the player says yes to purchase something, what would they like (firebeads/waterbeads/healing-stuff/weapons), if the player chooses to purchase weapons, which one would they like (longsword/daggers/crossbow/broadsword)
   • The story will start with a description of where the character is, then they will start to be given choices and further descriptions once answering those questions. The story will be based in a medieval setting, and the descriptions will be detailed to accommodate for the user's interest in literature.

6. Aesthetic Features

   • My game contains several images at different points throughout the story. It also has text in multiple different colours, and text with a different coloured background. For example, all questions that require input are written in yellow.