2008-01-16 13:41:07

It seems that I got SAPI working. I toyed around with the effects a little, and I was surprised how decent the results were.  Because my primary programming project is a roguelike (not an audio game), I wrote some dungeon crawling style stuff while trying out the SAPI effects..
Well, if you ask me an audio only dungeon crawler would work surprisingly well! The idea is to use a text adventure like interface combined with Rogue-style random dungeon generation. I have uploaded an example of how it mind sound like if you play the game. It goes a little fast because there are no delays which would otherwise be there because of user input. I.e. to take the battle axe you type 'take battle axe', to attack the orc you type 'attack orc' etc. text-adventure as I said.
What do you think of this? Would you want to play such a game?

Here is the demo link:
http://todoom.sourceforge.net/audio_rogue.zip

(I hope it works for you. I have only tested it on Windows XP. The game is based on SAPI 5.1)

2008-01-16 14:20:35

Well firstly, unreservedly, absolutely, completeely and totally yes! I would absolutely love to play such a game. exploration and discovering things is something I love in a game, and I've always fancied the roguelike genre. The main issue I've had is that betwene working out the screen layout using my screen reader, and checking the commands, each turn took me rather a long while which did interupt the game a bit (though the extra commands you added into warprogue did help with this situation). Obviously though with a text adventure interface run by Sapi, this would not be a problem at all, and there would stil be imho the really fun thing about roguelikes, the exploration factor.

There are only two things that occur to me. firstly, is overviewing the layout of the map, and knowing where you've been before. say for example you come upon a locked door, and need to go and find a key, then find the door again, or you find a healing fountain which you attempt to return to when your injured.

Perhaps it might be necessary to give the rooms coordinates or to have commands (as in warprogue), for the player to check distance and direction of various rooms or objects.

Then, what about the dimentions within rooms, particularly as relates to things like missile combat? while it probably wouldn't be necessary to have sapi give precise measurements for each room it might be helpful to know "There is an orc five meters away" or at least "There is an orc at long range" So that the player can then either get out their boe or start charging forward.

Just a couple of things that occurred to me.

I deffinately will be looking forward to this one and I think it's a fantastic idea.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-01-16 14:23:05

I would be more than happy to give anything like that a go as well.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-01-16 15:07:41

dark empathy wrote:

There are only two things that occur to me. firstly, is overviewing the layout of the map, and knowing where you've been before. say for example you come upon a locked door, and need to go and find a key, then find the door again, or you find a healing fountain which you attempt to return to when your injured.

Perhaps it might be necessary to give the rooms coordinates or to have commands (as in warprogue), for the player to check distance and direction of various rooms or objects.

My idea was to go with dungeons like in the original Rogue game. They were based on a 3x3 grid i.e. no more than 9 "rooms" per level. A "room" in that grid could also be a corridor or simply don't exist at all. The resulting maps are small and easy to navigate, even without any coordinates. That these maps "look" kinda boring does not matter in an audio game IMO. The important thing is that the content of the rooms is interesting, not that there are many rooms with unusual shapes and complex connection schemes.

Then, what about the dimentions within rooms, particularly as relates to things like missile combat? while it probably wouldn't be necessary to have sapi give precise measurements for each room it might be helpful to know "There is an orc five meters away" or at least "There is an orc at long range" So that the player can then either get out their boe or start charging forward.

My plan was to abstract the exact location of things in the room away, just like in a text adventure. Just like in the example. The "A battle axe is lying on the floor" message does not mention the exact position of the axe, and why should it? You can take the battle axe anyway. Like in a text adventure (I know I am repeating myself). Monsters would not have an exact position either, only North, South, East, West so that they can block exits. In the example you cannot go north because the Ork is blocking your path. These "fuzzy" locations are enough in a game where you can only move in four directions, and room by room anyway. The difference between ranged and close combat would be abstracted away, too. It is always simply "attack X". I do not see the need to make things more complex.

I deffinately will be looking forward to this one and I think it's a fantastic idea.

I have not decided to actually do it yet, but I like the idea, too.

Anyone else interested in the game? Vote now! wink

2008-01-16 15:27:11

Well 3x3 would certainly make navigating easier, but presumably, as in the original rogue, there would stil be many levels of the dungeon with different combinations of roomss.

As for combat, well while I agree that it wouldn't be necessary to explain the position of every object, a minimal combat system might be nice, ---- Eg, certain weapons against certain monsters, with perhaps a minimal missile combat system simply using the phrase "long range" to describe where the monster is, with a percentage score depending upon factors like how good the missile weapon is and how fast the monster is, and a single command such as charge or approach (again possibly with a chance modify for the monster's speed), to get in close.

I will admit this idea has been influence by the fact I've been playing smugglers 3, a really great game, which manages to reduce complex 3D spaceship combat down very nicely (but the gooditude of Smugglers 3 requires another topic methinks).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-01-17 04:20:05

dark empathy wrote:

Well 3x3 would certainly make navigating easier, but presumably, as in the original rogue, there would stil be many levels of the dungeon with different combinations of roomss.

My original idea was to follow Rogue quite strictly i.e. there would have been no multi-level puzzles. In fact  there would have been no puzzles at all.

However, I have changed my mind, and will probably add some simple console RPG style puzzles (like "put that stone on that elevated plate to open that door" etc.). My new idea is to have no hard size limit for the dungeon and to add a command called "location" which outputs the player's current location in the game world using absolute coordinates i.e.
You are at 2, 10, 33
(z, y, x coordinate scheme).
Combined with the fact that hopefully no two rooms are exactly alike (or at least not many adjacent rooms) navigation should work decently.

As for combat, well while I agree that it wouldn't be necessary to explain the position of every object, a minimal combat system might be nice, ---- Eg, certain weapons against certain monsters

There would be a combat system of course, with hit points, attack power, armour class and all that rpg stuff. Special weapons like silver weapons vs. werewolves etc. are certainly a good idea and easy to implement.

, with perhaps a minimal missile combat system simply using the phrase "long range" to describe where the monster is, with a percentage score depending upon factors like how good the missile weapon is and how fast the monster is, and a single command such as charge or approach (again possibly with a chance modify for the monster's speed), to get in close.

Doesn't sound too bad. But if I do this I will start simple. If you do not start simple you never get anything done. A more complex combat system can still be introduced when there is actually a working game.

2008-01-17 08:48:48

sounds good, and I agree on starting simple and working upwards from there. Perhaps also jus as in roguelikes you know when your backtracking because more characters are written to the screen, you could considder adding a command such as "visit" to see if you've been there before which would help in backtrackingn.

One idea I've always considdered for a game which might work well in text, is rather than having a manual with all the monster weapon weaknesses etc written out in a list for you to look at, or having monster types weak to certain weapons, have the information available in the game, say by reading scrolls or engravings or talking to npcs.

so for example you come upon the diary of a soldier from the orc wars, and reading it you find that orc chain male is vulnerable to piercing weapons. sorry if this is a stupid idea, but I've always thought it's rather strange the way that in a lot of games you automatically know the weaknesses of various creatures, sinse in real life, other than common knolidge such as wearwolves and silver, you probably wouldn't have a clue, and finding out could imho add quite a lot to the exploration factor of the game and be a way that more experienced players would bennifit.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-01-17 08:54:46

Rings a bell. Diablo 2 gave you information on monsters based on how often you had fought them before, so it certainly isn't stupid I'm pretty sure.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.