Processing 1.0 - Processing Discourse - Terminal Deceit (a sort of text adventure)

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Terminal Deceit (a sort of text adventure) (Read 1146 times)

Deurbel

Terminal Deceit (a sort of text adventure)
Feb 22^nd, 2010, 2:31am

A database based detective story! Sort of anyway, I do not have a better way to describe it.

Big thanks to forum member JR for actually writing one of the essential bits of code for me, without which I would have failed my course and this project would never have been.

Try it here: http://www.raggedclown.net/terminal/ . Don't forget to turn your sound on! If you like it, or have comments, leave a message on my blog: http://www.raggedclown.net/ or on this thread. I'm eager for feedback, especially on the user interface.

I had already finished this project at the end of last year after a long and grueling sessions of coding, this was my first really challanging coding project. The result, coding wise, is not very pretty I am afraid, the code will probably have you shaking your head in disbelief. I will try to streamline the code when I find time, and perhaps release more of these kind of stories. The reason for the long wait is sillyness, I couldn't export it properly because my data was not in the data folder something which the processing IDE doesn't have any trouble with, and I was thinking I had complicated insurmountable problem.

« Last Edit: Feb 22^nd, 2010, 3:54pm by Deurbel »

yconst

Re: Terminal Deceit (a sort of text adventure)
Reply #1 - Feb 23^rd, 2010, 7:37am

I like it.

The interface is nice, although I believe that by fine-tuning appearance you could achieve an even more immersive environment.
In terms of efficiency, what I would really like to see is command completion. Being used to *nix terminals command completion is something I really can't live without and I suppose many feel the same way.
Also, may I suggest that "run" is maybe a bit of a misleading description of a command to read files. "List" or "Cat" or "Edit" or simply "Read" would be more accurate I guess.

A great effort, I'd like to see that evolve.

Yiannis Chatzikonstantinou
volatile prototypes

Deurbel

Re: Terminal Deceit (a sort of text adventure)
Reply #2 - Feb 23^rd, 2010, 11:05am

Thanks for the feedback.

Auto-completion would be a nice feature, but quite complex I feel, I need to redesign my parsing and error handling compenents before I can attempt it, since right now it is tangled mess, which can't deal with this added functionality. I will keep it in mind though, it would make annoying typos much less frequent thats for sure.

The read command suggestion is a good one, I thought of trying to remap my commands to those of dos. So instead of 'run file1' it would be 'file1.txt'. This way people who know dos could relate to it easily and perhaps more people could play it. But maybe I need to just go for logic/simplicity with straight forward commands like 'read'.

PS: I read your site, some interesting going on there, I liked your aab program, quite some pretty shapes come out of it. I also noticed you study in Delft, heb je een beetje Nederlands geleerd?

yconst

Re: Terminal Deceit (a sort of text adventure)
Reply #3 - Feb 23^rd, 2010, 4:49pm

Unfortunately not, although my plans are to do so Wink

I guess you are from the Netherlands then, right?

Have you played Uplink? It's a great game that revolves around hacking using components that behave like programs....it is a bit more cyberpunk compared to yours which I believ you want to instill with a detective/'noir' atmosphere. However, I believe that it is a good source of inspiration, at least for the command line thing.

I'd also suggest to take under consideration that not many at least of younger people are anymore familiar with DOS. So, in my opinion you could just adapt the commands to what you want: If you want a 'geeky' feel to it, maybe implement unix commands otherwise maybe just come up with your own, could be a nice idea

Dunno, that's just me.

In a far-fetched scenario this could even evolve into a kind of sandbox world that allows you to wander through a database doing stuff...investigating, solving, exploring...

Once again, nice work!! Oh, and nice twist in the end Tongue

Yiannis Chatzikonstantinou
volatile prototypes

Deurbel

Re: Terminal Deceit (a sort of text adventure)
Reply #4 - Feb 24^th, 2010, 2:45am

Yes I am Dutch born and bred, living in the UK now though.

Hmnn, yes I guess straight forward commands are perhaps the best option, because as you said not many people seem to remember dos anyway.

Uplink looks really cool, I will give it a try, it also looks like implements som other features besides text which is interesting. I had plan to integrate some other types of file as well, such as video. I always wanted to do that bit in thrillers where you watch the same bit over and over again and then zoom in (and through some use of non-existant technology) keep a crips picture and see some detail that is off.

I always had in the back of my head that I could make this in a framework for more stories, but your right I could combine them in to one.

I am really glad you got the twist and like the story and picked on the 'noir' elements, seems like you got it!

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