Game idea possibility.

[jupider]

First off, Greetings. Secondly, long time ACK fan; used to tinker around with it years ago when it was "abandonded" by Mr. Hopkins. Thirdly, I am extremely excited that it has been picked back up and updated. Fourthly, that isn't a word. I think. I don't know, Firefox didn't put a red squiggly line under it so it may be kosher. In any event, I would like to ask anyone whom may or may not still be lurking around this forum if my idea for a game would be feasible with the new game architecture.
Back in 1996, a gem of a game came out for Windows 3.1/95 titled "Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures." If you're not familiar with the game, I can explain it simply by saying it's a randomly-generated maze of areas where you are challenged with a series of "fetch" missions to complete the game. It was followed up a year later by "Star Wars: Yoda Stories." Same game, different theme. Google them. I was looking to recreate this genre with this engine by simply maxing out ACK's memory of rooms and/or worldmaps to create a game that could replicate the gameplay of said games.
It would need to be able, via macros, to generate a "path" of rooms/maps and populate said rooms/maps with NPCs that would allow the player to reach the end via "red paperclip" gameplay. Again, Google it.
Well?

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Welcome to Jolt Country and our little cluttered and dusty corner [or basement] of it - the ACK subforum!

I was looking to recreate this genre with this engine by simply maxing out ACK's memory of rooms and/or worldmaps to create a game that could replicate the gameplay of said games.
It would need to be able, via macros, to generate a "path" of rooms/maps and populate said rooms/maps with NPCs that would allow the player to reach the end via "red paperclip" gameplay. Again, Google it.
Well?

Not sure what you mean by red paperclip gameplay but I did google it and found this very interesting story of a guy who bartered his way up to a house starting with just a red paperclip. That sounds like a great idea for a game! One red paperclip - Wikipedia

Not familiar with those old Win 3.1 games as I never used win 3.1 when I had it, I always just kept using DOS as I was comfortable with it and the cludgey new mouse driven GUI microsoft came out with was terrible. Win95 was a big improvement but then it was becoming bloatware and worse it was buggy as hell, fortunately real DOS was still there so I still used it most of the time. I didn't really start to use windows until Windows 98. I loved Win98SE and stuck with it for a long time before finally switching to XP. Then stuck with XP for a REALLY long time before finally switching (very recently) to Windows 7.

Anyway, whatever game you base your ACK game design idea on chances are ACK wont do what you want it to do if the game your attempting to emulate wasn't a top down tile based 2d turn based game to begin with. ACK does have some potentially powerful scripting called macros you can use to make ACK do many things but even that is still quite limited by the many inherent limitations of the game engine and quite a few things that are hard coded into every ACK game. At best you can use player made hacks or patches which may turn off one or more of these hard coded things or provide some way around them to further customize things but you'll have to read the documentation on the megapatch to find out if any of that will be useful to you.

If you have any questions regarding usage of something in the megapatch there is a megapatch thread where the brains behind it "rld" will certainly do his best to clear anything up regarding his hacks.

Check out the stickied ACK Development thread for the link to rld's megapatch thread.

[jupider]

Not sure what you mean by red paperclip gameplay but I did google it and found this very interesting story of a guy who bartered his way up to a house starting with just a red paperclip.

You hit the nail on the head. Basically a series of "give item A to NPC 1 so (s)he'll give you item B, which you give to NPC 2 to get item C to take to NPC 3", etc., etc... (and for the record, both the above previously mentioned games are 2D top-down tile-based. That being said, they were NOT turn-based; they would actively move around/attack even if you were just standing still.)


I know it's entirely possible to do this in a predetermined way, but I was looking to see if there could be a way of randomizing it so it was different each time. I'll tinker around and see if I can find a way...

And according to the first post for the mega-patch, there doesn't seem to be anything that could benefit this particular game idea.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

I really hope you figure out a way to impliment this neat sounding plot device (the red paperclip). Just a couple ideas off the top of my head that might or might not help you on your quest.

It would need to be able, via macros, to generate a "path" of rooms/maps and populate said rooms/maps with NPCs that would allow the player to reach the end via "red paperclip" gameplay.

The following macro commands will probably be most useful to you in the macro you will be creating:

SUCCESS: setting this variable to ‘0’ will cause a spell’s 2nd action not to cast (if used in the spell’s first action), or will prevent the player from boarding a vehicle (if used in the vehicle’s boarding macro), or will prevent a portal from transporting the player (if used by the portal in a macro, run by an action, triggered by passing).

PORTAL: Gives the portal number of the portal that was just stepped on; can be used by the SETPORT command (for example, the command SETPORT PORTAL # # # #) to perform a last-minute destination change for a portal, if the portal has a macro that runs when it is stepped on (via an action).

A good example of portal magic is in the manual where an ACK example of Ultima style moongates is explained.


And for the NPCs you can always have duplicate rooms so you can have different versions of the same rooms with the same npcs (or different versions of them) in each. You can also make complex dialogs that can run macros and other macros triggered elsewhere can change global variables that can be checked in npc dialogs to determine dialog options or responses.

[joebonked]

Also, ack has a good cut scene ability. Using mosaics, but mostly bmps can be animated and timed in animation. I have even simulated a player walking around a bmp backdrop. My latest one is fishing in a lake.
for that use the pause command and waitkey
you could even simulate going through hallways like ultima5 dungeons.