Okay, first off thanks for this incredible tool. I am a total green horn when it comes to making a game, but this is giving me what I need to combine other things I know how to do (Graphics, sounds, writing) and make a passable game. Although I'm hoping it will be better than passable when I'm done.

What i could use some help with right now are some small things I have ideas for adding, but don't know if it's possible, and if it is, how to put it in.

First, I would like to add in some jump scare pics, using images that flash in and out fast. I can do it with gifs, but would prefer to be able to just flash an image when needed.

Second, I want to add a simple combat system. Basically just the player having a weapon handy and people that attack them when they go into certain rooms. No frills, just an automatic back and forth till one is dead. The player generally speaking, the fights are to add tension and paranoia, it's not a fighting game. If possible have it output a message based on what weapon was used to kill the attacker with. IE, if they have a knife it gives them a message about cutting the attacker to ribbons.

Third, a timer that activates whenever they are in the hallways, so room specific. Or possibly just a timer that starts when they are in any location for too long and gives them a short time to move on before... well . A little fire under the backside as it where.

I am not familiar with this code yet, but I can use html and have done some simple game modding before. So I can usually wrap my head around working with code when I have to, but it isn't my strong suite.

Any help is much appreciated.

here's some useful links:

http://quest5.net/wiki/Main_Page
http://quest5.net/wiki/Tutorial
http://quest5.net/wiki/How_to (3 physical combat links are in here, and a few links for magic too)
http://quest5.net/wiki/Libraries

Quest's "Coding Bible" wiki links:

http://quest5.net/wiki/Category:All_Fun ... t_Commands (page 1, range: A-S)
http://quest5.net/w/index.php?title=Cat ... h#mw-pages (page 2, range: S-Z)

You can also type in whatever you want in the search box too in the upper right, as well as clicking on the other "coding elements" (under the "Quest Documentation") on the left side too.

New to this myself but I think there's a timer feature available in the editor? As for combat someone will probably be along soon to give you advice but you'll have to code it yourself. If you have a look at some of the other threads I think it crops up quite a bit so there's examples kicking about. It's not the easiest thing for someone to implement into a game.

Edit: I completely missed the post aove with all the links for some reason!

Thank you for the answers. I decided to skip actual combat and just have that stuff happen as narrative events that can be triggered.

I could still use some help on setting up a countdown timer that resets when they change rooms. And with making a picture flash on the screen for about 1 second. I looked through the docs, but didn't find anything that seemed to cover what I need.

All I really need is a script/command to remove a, or all, picture(s). Then I just have to set it up to show the pic when they first trigger the event, then run a timer to clear it after a second or so. So they trigger the event, pic pops onto the screen, then clears. Add a nice noise and it's a classic BOO! moment.

The timer I am not determined to use, if that would be difficult to set up, I just like the idea of forcing the player to keep moving around instead of being able to sit and twiddle their thumbs while they decide what to do next. A timer with a random countdown value between 1 and 5 minutes that starts when they enter a room and they die if it runs out, but they can't see it, so they would never know just how long they had before "it" found them. That would be fun.

Also, what are your thoughts on puzzle complexity. Right now I am going with the simple "find the keys to escape" puzzle type, with roughly 12 steps to win the game. Which will require hunting through an asylum with over 150 rooms (I already have the building set up), some of which will be instant game overs if they enter, and others will contain narrative fights with surviving lunatics that can also kill the player if they run into too many.

Being that it's my first game, should I stick with what I'm doing and focus on making the place as scary and intense as possible, or do you think I should also try to work in a more advanced puzzle or two?
I plain to get this done in time for Halloween and do a cross promotion campaign with it, including three different versions of the game. I can offer links to your own games/sites from the page I put this game up on to anyone willing to help me out with some more elaborate puzzle ideas/code.
I'm especially keen on the notion of a puzzle they have to work out in real time if I can also get the countdown timer incorporated.

Any thoughts are welcome.

Acidhedz wrote:Being that it's my first game, should I stick with what I'm doing and focus on making the place as scary and intense as possible, or do you think I should also try to work in a more advanced puzzle or two?

I usually keep plugging away at one problem at a time until I hit a block. Then I switch to working on another puzzle. Working on an advanced puzzle is usually more fun XD My mind wanders when I stay too long on one idea. I can't say I'll finish anytime soon...

I'm working on my first game too and I discovered it's easier for me to partially build the puzzles in separate games (probably because I'm learning Quest at the same time) and then just incorporate them into the main as I go along.

Well, the game actually starts off with a six step puzzle just to get out of the first room. With ways to mess up and be unable to get out.

After that what I have so far is a basic hunt down the keys or other items needed to get outside, without getting killed. I will probably include rooms that are traps and will require puzzles of varying difficulties to escape in the more difficult versions. My plan at the moment is to get the basic game done, then create the other two versions by moving things around and adding more layers.

I think my fear is that if I try to get too cute, or get too sadistic, I will make a game that could be great for horror gamers, but ends up being more or a rage quit game. My sense is that horror game lovers like being freaked out, disturbed, disgusted and even frustrated. My concern is with how far to go. Particularly with the frustration.

I could make it so they can't go more than a few rooms without having to figure out a way to get doors open, the question is... should I?

As it is the basic version of the game will have that first room puzzle, plus 12 or so additional steps they have to do to get out. Which will require carefully searching through over 150 rooms. What difficulty level would you consider that? It really comes down to the process of elimination in the end once you're out of the first room. Since it's a horror game, is that enough puzzle difficulty? IE, keep the puzzles simple and just work on trying to scare the crap out of people? Or is it too simple? I aim to make the player paranoid to open doors, which is precisely what they have to do to find what they need and win the game. Is that enough, or should I try to work in more complicated puzzles as well?

There is also the issue of making sure it fits and makes sense. I have always hated games that stick weird, complicated puzzles in stupid places. IE, the Fatal Frame series that uses odd seals and things on doors... in houses with thin Japanese walls (paper windows) that you could kick your way through without much trouble, tiny Japanese ladies as the PCs or not. Or the classic wooden doors that are somehow the nemesis of anyone carrying around big, sharp metal weapons... which are often magic. I wont add anything that doesn't work in the context of the location and story.

Firstly I wouldn't make the first puzzle too difficult. You're wanting to entice people into the story. Too punishing a first room and they may just quit and play something else. Also, 150 rooms? Sounds like a lot to me. How are you planning on holding people's interest over such a vast area? Because there's nothing worse than exploring empty room after empty room. It's just boring.

I think if you can scare the crap out of people and give puzzle lovers something to test their wits on, I'd say go for it. I view this situation as more of a self imposed workload situation. The way I see it, if the story is presented well, the horror fans will return and try again to get past the first puzzle and the puzzle lovers will enjoy the extra scary dimension.

When it takes too long to solve the puzzle, you do run the risk of losing a player's attention. If it takes 10 obscure steps to solve a puzzle, then how do you go about keeping the horror level high? How do you let the player know he's getting closer to solving the puzzle so he won't give up? For me, puzzle difficulty and puzzle sickness are not the same thing. You can only repeat the same sequence of actions for so long before you want to choke at the sight of the same auto response. So something has to keep the player occupied while he is working on the main problem. I've seen this addressed in different ways. I've stumbled upon distractions like mini puzzles or mini adventures while I was searching for the solution. Other times, I got encouraging words whenever I took a step in the right direction. Or I'd get hints when I started heading in the wrong direction XD Sometimes, the storytelling is simply amazing and I keep going just to see what it will say next.

I can write 2000+ word articles and short stories in a few hours, so the work is no biggie. Once I have the main story set up and working I will go though and fill everything else out. I only downloaded the app Wednesday and already thought the game up, and have it well under way.

The game is going to be set up so that they only have to deal with smaller chunks of it at a time. Notes will be used to direct them to the correct "zones" they need to be searching in later when most of the building is open. Even if 90% of the rooms are empty, it's the 10% that hold nasty surprises that will have the player dreading to open every door. Which is the main source of fear in all the most successful horror games. You have to open that door to go on, but there could be something on the other side...

Acidhedz wrote:The timer I am not determined to use, if that would be difficult to set up, I just like the idea of forcing the player to keep moving around instead of being able to sit and twiddle their thumbs while they decide what to do next. A timer with a random countdown value between 1 and 5 minutes that starts when they enter a room and they die if it runs out, but they can't see it, so they would never know just how long they had before "it" found them. That would be fun.

Also, what are your thoughts on puzzle complexity. Right now I am going with the simple "find the keys to escape" puzzle type, with roughly 12 steps to win the game. Which will require hunting through an asylum with over 150 rooms (I already have the building set up), some of which will be instant game overs if they enter, and others will contain narrative fights with surviving lunatics that can also kill the player if they run into too many.

Some thoughts on the above:

First, I'm not a fan of real-time text adventures. It goes against the expected norm, and it tends to tick people off. Now, that in and of itself isn't a complete reason to avoid it, but if you're planning on making someone explore 150 rooms, then life *will* intrude at some point. If you do have real-time elements, then there should be some way to either pause the game or reach certain "safe" places where the player can step away as need be.

Second, regarding "some of which will be instant game overs if they enter", unless there is a way ultimately to tell which rooms are instant death, I wouldn't do this. I personally would not play a game for long if it arbitrarily kills me off. If there are clues, fine (even if I miss them or don't know what they are to begin with). But it should not, in my opinion, be a crap shoot when you go to open a door. If the game becomes "save - pray - open door - restart", well, I have better things to do with my time. That's not horror - it's just irritating. While I can appreciate you wanting to make a horror game, in the end, there has to be something compelling for the player. It has to be fun and not just slogging through rooms. Life can be tedious enough without playing a tedious game on top of it!

Acidhedz wrote:Even if 90% of the rooms are empty, it's the 10% that hold nasty surprises that will have the player dreading to open every door. Which is the main source of fear in all the most successful horror games. You have to open that door to go on, but there could be something on the other side...

Sparsely populated worlds isn't good game design. People don't play text adventures to have occasional surprises. Your two big mistakes here are having (90% ?) empty rooms and sudden deaths. I'm not against sudden death per se, but only if I think "that was a bit stupid of me" afterwards and not because I took the wrong turning somewhere. Especially if I'd invested a bit of time into playing it and had to fully start over. I'm more for the carrot than the stick.

There will be options to check each door in a variety of ways before players open them, any that are deadly will have clues that indicate going inside would be a bad idea. Whether or not the player reads the clues properly is another matter.

There is no way to save game progress? Tis a most basic of functions after all.

Regardless I just thought the "shot clock" would be a good way to induce panic sometimes, I'm not set on figuring it out and implementing it. I suppose I could still use the idea, but only for a few specific rooms. I think that would be simple enough to stick in using the built in GUI functions. They go into a room, the timer and a sound triggers along with a message telling them to hurry up and hide, give them three or so options to choose from, only one is a safe hiding spot that will stop the timer.
I nice panic inducing "puzzle" that forces them to act quickly.

Scary stuff ceases to be scary if it's going on all the time. The Shining is considered a classic horror movie because hardly anything happens for most of the movie, then everything goes nuts in the last 20 minutes or so. That's called tension and it's a basic element of horror writing. Also, I said IF 90% of the rooms were empty. And by empty I mean no one inside to kill or attack them, every room will have stuff in it. I will also be scattering psychological stuff through the rooms.

My style is Lovecraftian, proper horror. Not the current trend of sensory overload, gorefest garbage. The most popular horror game I can find seems to be Amnesia. Which almost singularly involves running away from monsters and hiding. There is no combat, if they catch you, you die. Every door you open runs the risk of having some nasty... thing, on the other side that can kill you. I can't really do monsters that chase you down in a text game, so I will settle for putting some nasty surprises inside some of the rooms.

But in The Shining there is still a narrative present. It's not like you're watching an empty screen until the last twenty minutes when the film bursts into life. Getting to explore empty rooms in a text adventure is never interesting. Try this one out for size:

http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... ising-star

Not sure if you've seen this, but you might find it interesting.

http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-pla ... geography/

I believe I said the rooms wont be empty, there will be stuff in them. Including clues about what is going on, story elements about inmates that may be inside with the player, jump scares, stuff to mess with their heads, and occasional danger. Not every room is going to contain really interesting things, that would be unrealistic, but plenty will. I only said that few will be dangerous, not that I would put nothing at all in them.

The setting is an institute for the criminally insane, so the map is built around an easy to remember pattern. Like a prison. Each ward, cell and floor is labeled clearly so they will always know where they are. IE, Cell 2threeA = Cell 2, 3erd floor, Ward A.

4 floors with 3 wards of 11 cells each = 132 cells + security and other rooms. And, most sections are locked off to start with, so the map they have to deal with will only be large after they've played for a while. It starts small, then expands as they unlock more areas. Which has been a standard of games since the very first RPGs.

I already have background music done, recorded several sound FX, I'm building up a collection of creepy pictures, the map is finished, and I am working on getting the main obstacles set up. Once I have that done I will go back and populate the rooms with stuff. Once I have the majority of the text based work done I will copy the file over to my work computer and start adding the images and sounds.
And less than a week ago I didn't even know this program existed. I am not bragging, once I know what I want to do I drive forward till I hit a block, which at this time consists of only one thing. What I asked at the very start.

Do any of you know of a way I can set up a command that will either flash a picture, or remove a picture so I can use a time delay, to set up picture jumpscares?
And if there is no standard save game option I need to be able to set up save points.

Quest is basically an embedded HTML browser. So you have full access to HTML entities for layout as well as JavaScript for any interesting scripting you want to do. I don't know if you have any experience in that area.

The easiest way I can think of doing the picture jumpscare (if I understand correctly) would be to create a hidden, floating HTML div over the screen and put the picture in that. Then you can use simple JQuery/JavaScript commands to show and hide the layer as you wish. If that sounds good to you and you need further direction, please ask.

Well you already have your heart set on how you're designing it so I'll leave you to it. I guess we'll find out one way or another?

As for timers etc there's options in the UI for timers. Have you read the wiki yet?

http://quest5.net/wiki/Main_Page

jaynabonne wrote:Not sure if you've seen this, but you might find it interesting.

http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-pla ... geography/

That is actually a really good article. It sort of confirmed some of the ideas I had about how IF should work and also went into depth about some things I hadn't really thought about. Thanks for sharing.

I highly recommend any of Emily Short's writings on IF. She has an in-depth, comprehensive one on conversations, for instance, that I gained a lot from.

Acidhedz wrote:Not every room is going to contain really interesting things, that would be unrealistic, but plenty will.

Well monsters in houses aren't very realistic. Vampires aren't very realistic. Space travel beyond the moon isn't realistic.

The whole point of games (that aren't simulators) and fiction such as horror and sci-fi is to be unrealistic whilst maintaining a suspension of disbelief. So that point doesn't really come into it. Your imagination is free to do allsorts in those genres. But we're more talking game design and what will leave your audience gasping for more or what will have them bored rigid and playing a different game instead. Fiendish puzzles from the outset when no time has been invested in the game is one way to send people packing as is epic-maps where people have to trawl vast areas. I like the idea of areas being controlled. You have a few rooms with puzzles in and more areas open up as things get solved. You're controlling the speed of the narrative and giving out the carrots freely to keep people playing.

jaynabonne wrote:I highly recommend any of Emily Short's writings on IF. She has an in-depth, comprehensive one on conversations, for instance, that I gained a lot from.

Cheers. I'll bookmark the blog. I learnt quite a bit from that one article so do want to see what else she has to say!

Silver wrote:

"Acidhedz"

Not every room is going to contain really interesting things, that would be unrealistic, but plenty will.

Well monsters in houses aren't very realistic. Vampires aren't very realistic. Space travel beyond the moon isn't realistic.

The whole point of games (that aren't simulators) and fiction such as horror and sci-fi is to be unrealistic whilst maintaining a suspension of disbelief. So that point doesn't really come into it. Your imagination is free to do allsorts in those genres. But we're more talking game design and what will leave your audience gasping for more or what will have them bored rigid and playing a different game instead. Fiendish puzzles from the outset when no time has been invested in the game is one way to send people packing as is epic-maps where people have to trawl vast areas. I like the idea of areas being controlled. You have a few rooms with puzzles in and more areas open up as things get solved. You're controlling the speed of the narrative and giving out the carrots freely to keep people playing.

The point of any game is to offer an experience. In horror it is to be scared. Being able to escape a cell in maximum security without needing to think about it a bit is neither realistic or scary. Good horror relies heavily on things making sense and being realistic, until they aren't. A lot of the scenes in Poltergeist rely on the realistic mundanity of the activities taking place, getting a late night snack, cleaning up after breakfast, settling down to sleep, etc... to give the horrific paranormal events context and meaning. The chairs stacking themselves at the beginning is scary (or at least startling) because chairs don't do that sort of thing on their own.

Considering that Sing Sing can hold around 1700 prisoners I would have to say that my little 132 cell asylum is a mini. I went with something realistic, but manageable. For both myself and players.

As for the way I am pacing the game, players are meant to feel overwhelmed yet claustrophobic. It is a big place, but they are trapped in it. Trapped inside with the criminally insane and something supernatural. And the only way to get out is to go searching through this place for the various objects that will allow you to escape alive.

If you work to make a horror game worrying too much about players quitting then you don't understand horror as a genre. It is meant to be difficult and scary. Horror players want to be spanked, the harder the better. Sure, some will quit, but if you succeed in dragging players down into your world... Frustrate them, make them feel helpless and out of their depth. Scare them, terrify them. Make them sweat just opening a door... you will be a legend. Of course some balance is required to keep them from giving up, but there in lay the fun, seeing what you can get away with.

Consider the popularity of the indie game Slender. A game with almost no story or content, and the same basic gameplay repeated several times. And yet it is very popular because as simple as it is, when played the right way it succeeds in freaking people out.

From my point of view I'm not making a text adventure, I'm using a text adventure program to make a horror game. I don't know how to use Flash or similar, but I can type, create sounds, music, and images, which is all I really need for this program. Text based game play is just the container, the content is still based around trying to make you fall out of your chair and/or leave the room because you can't take any more. I will try to mess with your head. I will try to present things to you that you don't want to read, see or hear. I will be using sound, pictures, and everything else I can to try and make you stop playing, not because the game is hard, but because you want to actually sleep again some day. Making a horror game that a lot of people stop playing because it's just too scary is not failure, it is success. I will try to put things in your head that will not leave you alone. That will give you nightmares.
If I can make you crawl through the game at a snails pace because you are doing everything you can to stay safe, the game works and is at the least making you paranoid. If I can make you spend 10 minutes debating on whether or not you really need to unlock that door and go in that room, I have done my job and made a horror game. If I can make you stop playing and go turn on all the lights I have done my job very well and actually scared you. If I can actually make you lose sleep, then I have reached the goal of every person who works in the horror genre, I got in your head.