Hello everyone,

I am thinking of making a mod for a game called Project Zomboid. The mod will be adding books within Project Zomboid. Players who install the mod will be able to find these books. These books will be labeled appropriately for their text interactivity. I need text stories for these books from you nice folks. If a player reads one with your text story in it, your text story will play out for them. I am new at modding, so the stories needed needs to be in the same principle as the copyrighted titled books "Choose Your Own Adventure". This means the text adventure will have to only be to choose from multiple paths. There will be no pictures, no inventory to hold things in, no dice etc. I am a fan of Project Zomboid and would like to make a mod like this for fans. I am not looking to receive any money. My actions are free for the betterment of the games enjoyment.

I have been looking through https://textadventures.co.uk/ and found text adventures under the conditions described above. Here is a couple of examples that I found...

Virgin Space by ByFernanz
Beyond the Boundary by Lightningslash14

I have not been able to reach the authors of those examples I just mentioned. I have not been able to contact others who's games fall under the conditions mentioned. I thought to open a thread in the hopes to find interested parties. I will of course be adding the names of the authors to anyone's work I have been given permission to use.

If anyone is interested please message me. I will also keep an eye on this thread. I am not sure if I am allowed to open a thread of this nature in the forums. If I have broken a forum rule, please inform me and I will delete / close this thread to comply.

What sorts of games? And is this Quest or Squiffy? How big of a game?

Usually all my games have some randomness (well, a lot of randomness) for them but I could forgo that for this project.

I see there is some confusion. The game called "Project Zomboid" is a standalone game like "Minecraft" or "SIMS", if you heard of them. I am trying to think of games everyone knows. We are talking about a completely different mechanic than Quest or Squiffy belong to. Think PAC-MAM or TETRIS and compare that to Quest or Squiffy. This kind of complete differences is what I mean. Project Zomboid has nothing to do with text adventure, or anything to do with telling a CYOA story.

Project Zomboid is a zombie game that you need to survive through and is heavily based on real world mechanics. Modders create mods to inject more mechanics into the game. In my case, I want to inject books. These books, I will need write them to read like the copyrighted titled "Choose Your Own Adventure" books technique which is only to have multiple choice text directions to choose from, nothing more, nothing less. Players who play Project Zomboid have a chance to find these books on bookshelves. If they find one, they can read it. If they read it, they play out the text adventure as I just described and choose their path in text. The text will appear on screen. The direction choices will appear under the text. You are not taken into the book, you are only presented the text on your screen and goes away when you close the book. The real game players are experiencing is Project Zomboid and not these injections of mods. Injecting my mod, text adventure books, into the game is to only add realism and something to do in Project Zomboid. There are many many mods for Project Zomboid injecting many many things. I want to add my own twist to the modding world and inject text adventure books.

Bluevoss, I do not understand what you mean by randomness. Are the parameters of your style of text adventure writing the same as the copyrighted titled Choose Your Own Adventure books? If it is in the same style, then any randomness or whatever is acceptable. Following only the template of the copyrighted titled Choose Your Own Adventure books will work in my mod. Your next question, how big of a game? A player in Project Zomboid can always stop reading the text adventure for a while and go back to the book later, but the book should not be too long to finish. What is reasonable... 1 hour? I would think 15min to 1 hour for now, give or take. I will need player feedback to know what is the correct threshold. I will send you a private message to further talk about the subject if you are interested.

Creating a mod of this sort for Project Zomboid is a nice way to extend your work. Anyone interested, I will continue to monitor this thread and my inbox.

These books, I will need write them to read like the copyrighted titled "Choose Your Own Adventure" books technique which is only to have multiple choice text directions to choose from, nothing more, nothing less.

I see there is some confusion.

Squffy games are CYOA stories.

Most Quest games are usually more like Zork or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (parser games), if you heard of them. There are some Quest CYOA games, but most of them are parser games.

Also, Squiffy games are website files (HTML, CSS, and JS) which will run in any browser, but Quest games need Quest to run them in a Windows environment (or from this site).

K.V.
Interesting, because I do not know the technical terminologies, and in general, the subtleties on the CYOA genre, I decided to forgo those understandings to directly go to the point of my request. I request stories that run like the copyrighted titled "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. If that technique is called Squffy, perfect! I was hoping for a quick understanding from pointing out exactly the type I am looking for which is exactly like those copyrighted books. I leave it to you all, the creators, to get my point. I apologies that, at this time, I am not looking to converse on those subtleties. If you understand my request and are willing to share your work, please do contact me.

I am a little worried that you, the creators, require me to "speak your language" so my request can be understood. I will try my best to give an example. Here is one...

(Story)
I am on a path and I see a fork in the road. The fork leads east and it leads west. I have a choice.
(available choices)
Go east
Go west

(Story)
You have chosen east. As you walk along the eastern road, you encounter two people arguing, do you speak to them or go on east.
(available choices)
talk to the two people
continue on the road leading east

This type of story telling I wish to have with more complexity and multiple choices than what I wrote.

I would manually take your written words, the story and the choices and manually plug them in my mod. I would connect your story manually with all its interweaving choices.

My mod is not a software. You have never worked with my mod. You have no comparison to work with to get an idea of my mod's working mechanism. My mod is pure code and I am manually writing, as described above, your stories and the interweaving choices into said mod.

If for some reason, my attempts to be straightforward are not as straightforward as it should be, I apologies. I am not sure how else I can explain myself without learning the lingo for CYOA, like understanding words like Quest and Squffy as it has been written to me and possibly other mentions that might come my way after I post this message. I can take the time to better understand the "meaning" of things within the text adventure world after we start a dialogue through private messaging for the interested. For this post, my goal is for me to be able to give a straightforward understanding of what I am asking.

Yeah. You want a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) game.

My mod is not a software. You have never worked with my mod. You have no comparison to work with to get an idea of my mod's working mechanism. My mod is pure code

It seems like you're yelling at me. . .

. . .but I see now. You just want the text and the "paths", and you plan to create your own CYOA engine inside of your mod. You don't need Squiffy or Quest to run anything, because you're just going to take the text and the "paths" (the game's "guts", if you will) and do your own thing.

Gotcha.

I wish you luck (and I'm not being facetious)!

Personally, I would think it would be simple to appeal to the Squiffy folks on this. If they knew where you were going, they could produce game modules you could easily cut and paste in. The trick would be to make sure that everyone prefixed their sections and passages with some sort of text so there would be no collisions.

Actually, using squiffy (and with no tricks, sounds, images or anything) someone with basic skills in it could hammer out a lot of code in quick order.

K.V.
Sorry if I came out as yelling. I sincerely did not mean to make it sound like that. The more elaboration that was asked of me, the more I was presuming I had to be direct to not allow wiggle room in interpretation of my goal.

Bluevoss,
How do I reach the squiffy folks? Am I in the wrong section of the forum? What I want is the "minds" of authors as I do not have it in me to write like this. The rest is pretty doable as you came to that conclusion. Any help you can provide or direct me is more than I have been able to figure out this far by myself.

For anyone else who is reading this and wants to understand what I am asking, yes to both of you in understanding what I am saying K.V. and Bluevoss. Their last comments is what I am looking for.

Sorry if I came out as yelling. I sincerely did not mean to make it sound like that.

I was just kidding. I meant to add a smiley face but forgot.

:)

There is a squiffy forum - just click on the top level (at the upper left of this screen) and you'll see the Squiffy section (about half-way down).

I think what is confusing people is the overall goal. I understand that you want to seat mods together (though they will have to be grouped somehow - either in one big squiffy program or a way to hop from adventure to adventure). But let's go with an example-

Say I write a squiffy program High Noon, that has you trying to get ready for a gunfight you don't think you can win. So you scramble around town and figure out what you need to do to get the best result. You win or you lose.

What then? Do you go on a deep sea fishing cruise? A space adventure? What ties all these stories together?

Bluevoss,
Thank you for directing me to the right place. There is no need I guess for further explanation in this thread as enough has been understood to help me, thanks again.