Someone told me that it was possible in the current version of Quest to code in riding animals and being carried by other characters.

What I want to do is make it so that I can ride a pony, or be carried by someone else on the back of their pony, or be carried by someone who is riding a pony. Also, I want to be able to carry someone while I am riding a pony or have someone ride on the back of my pony.

Will Quest let me have all of this going on? It would also be fun if other characters could, at random, get on ponies and ride off on them, things like that. But I don't want most of the ponies to be "characters" as such, I want them to be just controllable animals. One or possibly two of the ponies will be able to talk and be a character, but I also want it to be ridable like the others, because the player isn't supposed to find out that the pony can talk until later in the adventure.

I hope this makes sense!

Hmm, I don't have the program installed on this computer currently but I'll give you some ideas to start with.

If you're using QDK (the editor), it would be easier since you're fairly new at it.

You could use a flag where if you want to ride the pony, the player types “ride pony” and when that happens, a flag called riding_pony is set. In the game properties for “after each turn”, have an IF statement that puts the pony in the room with you if the flag riding_pony is set.
You might even want to have to pony objects. One that describes the pony as just standing there. The other describing the pony as if you’re riding it.
So when “ride pony” is typed, the first pony goes into an object room where the player can never go and the second pony is placed in the room with the player. AND the riding_pony flag is set.
Then after the player is done riding the pony, the flag would be turned off and the ponies would be switched again to show that it is just standing there again.

There’s probably another way too that involves making the pony a riding type but that could get a little more confusing, especially since I can’t check into right now myself.

Hope that helps…

Wherever you go, there's your pony! - to Steve

Hey Lucy,

Neat idea! Your idea brought back memories of a text-adventure game called "Ghost Town." (if anyone can locate it for me, I'd be most pleased, since it's been nearly 20yrs since I've played it).

You could really do something magical with your concept. You could make the story more realistic if you include different room descriptions when you enter or leave on a pony; such as:

1. (entering room) The pony gallops chaotically through a shallow stream and halts at the water's edge. It takes a sip of water then smiles.
2. (leaving a room) The pony bucks and tosses you into the field (then have field desc show)
3. (between rooms) Clear the window and print an imaginative narration, such as a journey the pony takes you on, maybe giving you an object on the way? How about throwing in some music?

How about a list of commands to give the horse?

As far as the code goes, I'm working on something similar, but have been investing my time into completing my webpage, so haven't had time to delve into it further.

Keep me posted on tricks you come up with, like timing intervals and such that work.

-W. Wyzwurd

Erm.... Why two different objects?

I'm sure you can just set an object property, and give the pony a riding property of something (describing who's riding it, etc).

The way I'd think about it, is how are you going to have the players 'rising' the horse...

I take it you're thinking about multi-player games Lucy?

Erm.... Why two different objects?

...it was off the top of my head!

riding property...that's right. I think that's where my mind was at when I mentioned a riding type. I need to play around with the properties thing in my own games. I could probably use it in one that I'm working on. Let's just say there's a rhino charging you and when you take it out, I created a second rhino as the dead rhino. I guess it's the same type of problem.

oh and thanks for

witch wyzwurd wrote:wherever you go, there's your pony

Oh, I do think there's a dead/alive (or alive/not alive) property, which would do quite nicely (at least easy to set anyway).

And with object actions, you can easily set up a little custom action thast prints out a message saying "The rhino is rotting away slowly, with a big gap in it's side." or another saying "The Rhino trotts around, basically ignoring you" if it's not dead.
- Same could apply to other objects.

actions...right.

properties, actions and types...all characteristically related in objects.

For QDK users, study the help section about all these nifty things. It's helpful and FUN to see what you can do.