Jolt Country

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/

This guy is just plowing through character role-playing games on his blog. Let me see if I can find a few links to ... one sec:

Here is everything he did for the original Bard's Tale:

url=http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/search/l ... d's%20Tale


And I guess it bears mentioning that he is doing it with the PC versions of these games. "But wait," I hear you saying, "the better versions of these games were often on other systems!" Sure, sure, but eat a dick for a second, you guys and your Amigas, Atari STs and Apple II Gss get everything. The PC is almost completely forgotten for this sort of thing. We have no champions. (I confess I really should organize my thoughts on the games I've played better. But if I could, I would only be doing it as well as the CRPG Addict.)

His posts have made me start up Starflight again. As if I don't have a billion other things to do. But Starflight beckons.

It is a great blog that has already hit upon several games that I was curious about back in the day but never played or invested much time into. Of course, it also makes me feel pretty dumb that I was never able to beat Dungeon Master (which he just did), even if I was much younger the last time I tried it.

That blog has me playing Starflight again as well. Because, hey, I didn't want to work on actual projects or anything.

For anyone who wants to know what CRPG stands for, it stands for "Computer Role-Playing Game".

Pinback is making fun of me, with his last post, because I told him that it stood for "Canadian Role-Playing Game," and he believed me until I told him it was actually "Computer" instead.

Sorry, everyone.

sgranade wrote:That blog has me playing Starflight again as well. Because, hey, I didn't want to work on actual projects or anything.

I know that Sarge already knows this, but it was his tweet that was responsible for getting me into that blog and firing up Starflight again.

Sarge was also responsible for me seeing the Thrynn in a new light. I used to think of them as sort of joke of a race until you reminded me that they were space dinosaurs.

But I had already made up my crew before thinking of them that way! And there's no Thrynn in it! I now loathe my crew. I think this is what the writers of "Enterprise" felt after the first episode. :/

If one wants to play a Canadian Role-Playing Game, he might want to consider Anachronox. Even though it was made in the US, the currency in the game is the "loonie," just like in Canada! Perfect for pinback!

I see he's covered Beyond Zork. I've always had a soft spot for that game, even though it's not particularly good as either interactive fiction or an RPG.

I think I'm going to get some Thrynn for my crew, just because SPACE DINOSAURS now.

But that will leave my Elowan weeping, branches quietly shaking, back at the starbase.

When you make the change, make sure your (I assume) human captain tells the Elowans that he's "sorry we had to leaf you behind!!!!!!!!"

A few good Canadian Role-Playing Games are Bard's Tale Eh, Wizardry Eh, and Legacy of the Ancients Eh.

They should have Bob and Doug's Excellent underground adventure...or something.

I find it ever increasingly difficult to play text adventures or RPGs. I just don't seem to have the patience anymore. Time was I could play stuff like Jinxter for weeks, thinking about solving the puzzles all day long then going home and trying stuff out. Now if I can't solve something in two tries I just give up and log onto facebook. Maybe it's the huge amount of useless information we're all swimming in these days.


THE
SLOWLY FLAT-LINING
AARDVARK

pinback wrote:For anyone who wants to know what CRPG stands for, it stands for "Computer Role-Playing Game".

I thought it meant a really bad piece of software, "Clearly Rotten Piece of Garbage," sort of like your old friend Michael Raugh used to refer to bad software as "like rancid tuna."

AArdvark wrote:They should have Bob and Doug's Excellent underground adventure...or something.

I find it ever increasingly difficult to play text adventures or RPGs. I just don't seem to have the patience anymore. Time was I could play stuff like Jinxter for weeks, thinking about solving the puzzles all day long then going home and trying stuff out. Now if I can't solve something in two tries I just give up and log onto facebook. Maybe it's the huge amount of useless information we're all swimming in these days.

Text-Based Adventures at one time were state of the art in puzzles. But we've gotten more power and capability in computer games.

Compare a text adventure vs. We Create Stuff's Map pack for Portal which is a complete replacement for the standard game, and might actually be a better set of puzzles than the original. I know much more of them stumped me than the ones in Original Portal.

"Video killed the radio star." - The Bangles

A visual and audio-based puzzle is going to be much more interesting than a text-only puzzle unless the game creator is a very good writer. In one movie or TV show they pointed this out where kids in a classroom are reading the first sentence of Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

So the teacher asked, why didn't he say "It was a crazy, mixed up time"? The kids finally got it: because he wanted to create a literary allusion, he wanted to show us something in a different way.

Today in film you could do the whole thing with pictures too, possibly without sound, and it might be more powerful than the original if done right.

Every new medium brings new ways to tell a story. What IF needs to do is work like radio and do a better job of painting pictures for the mind.

Sure that wasn't The Buggles?

I agree about the IF medium being updated. What if....

What if there was a way to put audio clips in the game. Sort of like they did in Zork 3 (Want some rye? Course ya do!)
So I guess I just answered my own question.

I now go to the Jack in the box drive thru and get a plate of shit and head for the closest Wal-mart.


THE
HEALTH FOOD
AARDVARK

Im pretty sure all the latest IF systems allow you to integrate graphics and sound into your story/game. The only language I am really familiar with though is TADS and I know HTML-TADS 2 and TADS 3 both allowed sound and graphics. I even made a demo once of a simple top down graphical tile based birds eye view map you could move around on in TADS 3 just to show the power of the language.

Oh here it is on BAF's Guide:
http://www.wurb.com/if/game/3012. It isnt much but it does demonstrate the possibility of making an RPG using TADS 3. I still plan to develop that long shelved WIP further some day when I have a lot more free time than I do now. Perhaps when i retire.. :P

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Pinback is making fun of me, with his last post, because I told him that it stood for "Canadian Role-Playing Game," and he believed me until I told him it was actually "Computer" instead.

Never gets old, does it!

"Never gets old, does it, eh?"