Hi Aprone.

As you might have noticed there are! gamebooks listed in he database, sites like age of fable and the ff project, ---- pluss of course my favourite the chronicles of Arborell.

These however, though they function in a similar way to Cyoa style afairs do! have a stats system for your character, as well as a distinct middle, beginning and end.

While investigating these I did come across a couple of Cyoa sites, but A, I never found any with particularly good material in the first place, and B, I judged that sinse these sorts of things don't really have stats, combat, or a distinct plot with a defigned structure the way gamebooks do, they didn't really count as enough like games to warrent a database entry, ---- that, and the fact that the quality of those I checked out was just plane awful.

So, something like this would be certainly welcome.

Also, there is probably a second use which you might not have considdered.

If the program which was able to display stories with action choices and linked series of text could be run on the users' own computer instead of on a community website, and if it could be used to export the resultant sections of story text in a random order to a stand alone html or text file which could then be distributed by the creator, as well as making Cyoa community driven stories online, it could also be used to create gamebooks, ---- sinse afterall rolling dice and the like isn't a problem, which could then be uploaded for others to download and play.

i've actually always wanted to write a gamebook, and in fact have a distinct idea for a plot and rule system in mind, however I always find myself running into trouble with what you might call the structural concerns, ie, denoting in a text file which section leads where and does what, ---- sinse manifestly all the usual methods which people use to structure things such as tree diagrams are not really good for me.

If however I could have a program where I could write a section, write the choices from that section, then, when all was finished save the hole business as a set of linked html pages which I could then pass around, ---- it'd make life a lot easier.

also bare in mind there would be others interested in this as well.

for instance, the Chronicles of Arborell runs a yearly competition for ameter written gamebooks, ---- see the windhammer page on www.arborell.com for details, and certainly a stable creation tool would be deffinately of use for people engaged in such things as well.

Also I highly recommend checking out the stuff on Arborell yourself, sinse the author Wayne Densley is fantastic, and is essentially doing what tolkien did in creating a world with it's own history and language, with gamebooks, a randomized adventure game, as well as a lot of historical material, mythology, epic fantasy stories and background.

Okay, plug over.

Hmmm, can't recall making such a request on klango, but I did make a request on the audeasy list for a program to automat the new advanced combat system on chronicles of arborell, sinse as it stands it takes looking at about 5 different tables, and an automated program would be able to make the process muh simpler while keeping the interesting new combat mechanics, anyway, that's another matter entirely, back to gamebooks.

Gamebooks started in the 70's and 80's and essentially functioned much the same way cyoa did with one exception.

Fairly symple dice mechanics were used so that the books could feature combat or rpg type situations such as statistic tests.

Generally, your wrote your characters' stats down separately, ---- along with a record of any items you had, and used dice (usually just 1 or 2 d6).

So, if your character was climbing a mountain you'd get something like "test your strength, if you succeed go to page a if you fail go to page b"

this made them more rpg like than standard cyoa, especially when you included combat mechanics.

Some, like the lonewolf series which are now all available as html on www.projectaon.org, also had an on running story through multiple books where your character could gain skills as they progressed.

The way most sites work who host electronic versions of gamebooks (chronicles of arborell and project.aon are good examples), is that your given html pages in the cyoa style you described with links to other pages for action choices, but then have to write a character sheet and roll dice separately.

the two exceptions to this are age of fable and the fighting fantasy project at www.ffproject.org, where some specially designed backend programming in each web page actually handles all the rolling and stat keeping for you, ---- including combat, but while this is convenient, it's not imho necessary.

I think I am interested in gamebooks, because even though the mechanics of dice rolling and combat are symple, they do give you something to aime at and an actual task with rewards and pitfalls. For instance, in a Cyoa story, if your in a haunted graveyard facing an evil coffin, there's no reason not! to open it.

yes, this might end the story with your gorey death at the hands of a zombi, ---- but hay, it's just a story so you turn back and try again.

in a gamebook though, firstly even if there is! a zombie inside, you have the chance to defend yourself, ---- and you might find some nice treasure for doing it in, and secondly, because it's played in the form of a game like a simple rpg, you can't just turn back, when your dead your dead!

This means the hardergamebooks are actually like puzles, where you need to make the right choices, ---- sort of a mix of text adventures like zork (though without the guess the verb situations), and a tabletop game.

Yep, gamebooks are fun, and as I said, osmething I've wanted to get into writing myself for a while, but have been unable to due to having to handle the structure of all of those pages.

Nobody has yet done the thing with the chonicles of arborell, which is a shame.

Basically the main problem with gamebooks is that combat tends to be a bit dull sinse your limited to what you can do with a couple of D6 dice.

For instance, the arborell combat system up to now has basically worked by having each enemy have a combat value, which is then compared to yours and rolled, and the one who rolls higher gets the hit.

The new system is far more interesting and includes things lik targiting of specific body parts, choice of various forms of attack and defense and even rules for taking into account terrain type and the general size of your opponent.

All this can be used with all the arborell adventures, but unfortunately it involves looking numbers up on about five different tables, which is quite a pain.

Sinse the Author of the Arborell series, ---- while a very good writer, isn't a programmer, there isn't a way to automate this sytem as yet, though it's something a computer program could do fairly easily.

However, I'd advise you to take a look at www.arborell.com and see what you think generally.

Hi Aprone.

Probably a good place to start with arborell is with the gamebook windhammer, it has comprehensive instructions for everything pluss downloadable documentation, and you will be able to see the standard combat system working in that book.

Up to now, combat the chronicles of arborell has worked pretty much the same way as combat in the fighting fantasy project books, ---- though sinse there is no backend on the website you need to do the rolling yourself.

You take your characters' combat value, which is a combination of starting stats, abilities, weapons etc, and compare this to that of your enemy.

you then roll two D6 for yourself and your opponent and add or subtract the difference.

so, if your combat value was 16 and your opponent's 12, you'd roll 2D6 and add 4 to your roll, while if your opponent had a combat value of 18 you'd roll 2D6 and add 2 to theirs.

the one who rolls highest gets the successful hit and the loser takes damage.

This is how standard combat in gamebooks has worked, however just last week, the Arborell produced a more complex combat rule set which you can run with any of the arobrell adventures to make fights more interesting.

This involves a more complex set of decisions, taking your opponent's combat value then deciding what type of attack to use, what part of your opponent you'll aime at, and rolling for what sort of defensive technique your opponent employs, then repeating the process for your opponent's attack.

All of this though involves looking at fairly extensive tables.

My thought was if you had a program which you could run on your pc, which could automate the process,  or at least generate the correct numbers for your opponent's combat value and the type of attack, body part etc, then do the same for efense, this would vastly speed up the process and make the advanced combat system far more useable.

You can find a very comprehensive explanation in the advanced windhammer combat system pdf on the downloads' page.

Hi.

nice idea and well put together program, I especially like the review commands for the tree structure of sections sinse this was the thing I was rather having trouble with.

A couple of issues.

firstly pressing back space with no description in the summary field gives a runtime error.

more seriously though, the program seems to assign the same numeric code to new sections as old ones.

For instance, i was creating a humerous test dungeon adventure.

Starting with a right ad left door, I had the right door have two choices, fight the troll and slam the door in it's face.

The slam the door choice however was given the same numeric code as the right hand door choice. this meant you got the wrong description when opening the right hand door.

I've tried this twice thus far and both times run into the same issue.

Then, while it's great that the program saves your progress (even through runtime errors), it would be good to have a way to delete everything when your starting a new project, sinse thus far for my two attempts I've had to actually delete the hole folder and reextract the contents, so a delete all command would be handy for when you've finished one sotry and start another.

Another point you might considder, is adding the ability into the program to create the correctly named txt files in the program folder, ---- say with ctrl n on each section, sinse I could see if you made a mistake with the numeric code naming in the middle of a gigantic gamebook it could be irritating, though if this isn't possible fair enough.

Also, just a quick question, how much of the formatting is carried over from notepad to the created html pages.

i'm thinking here particularly of blank lines and paragraphs. Is it necessary to write the sections with html format codes eg <p> </p>

Lastly, one feature you might considder adding is the ability to add a link to an earlier section into a later one.

Say for instance you fall down into a room with four doors. You'll have the initial description of you falling into the room and the description of the room, then however you might want it to be possible for you to go through one door and come back.

Rather than having a hole bunch of different descriptions of the same room, one for coming back through each door, it would be easier just to have one description with links to the four doors which you could refer back to in the sections in which you come back through the various doors urging you to choose a different door, ---- eg, if you haven't already done so do you choose open door 1, door 2, door 3 or door 4"

The game book Shards of moonlight on the Chronicles of arborell site has a structure much like this.

In the program, this could work like a copy and past feature, eg, you press c on the choice you wish to copy, move to the section where you'd want to paste it and press v.

So for instance, you'd right the section of the four door room, then just paste it, along wth links to the four doors, after each section when you came out of a door.

Hope this makes sense.

Hi.

Glad this was helpful.

I'd be really interested in getting this project finished. I've always had a desire to create an immersive text rpg, but have never had the time to learn enough programming skills to do so (maybe when my phd is finished, though as it looks like I'll be going to stageschool after that, possibly not).

However, writing a gamebook would be very much along the same lines and I deffinately have some ideas.

As to text file creation in the program, it just strikes me this makes life easier, sise you can very quickly review the full text of any given section in the tree structue this way, as well as more quickly access each file without mucking about with numeric code saving.

The only reason I could see not to is that you'd want to use a different plane text editer than notepad.

I must admit I'm not the best person to talk to about formattig sinse doing everything in Hal it rarely makes a different to me, ---- though it does strike me if you've got the line break code in notepad paragraphs would be relatively simple sinse you could just leave two line breaks, and anyone who wanted fancy formatting could always use html tags.

I'm afraid because of the repeated section numbers bug, I really didn't have something with enough text in it to use the history feature, which is why I never got chance to try it.

for delete all sections, i'd suggest just making it a slightly less easy to use command using keys not otherwise present in the program, say ctrl delete, you could always stick a confirmation in just to be sure.

Anyway, here is the contents of the data ini file:

3
0
5
Introduction
1111
2
right hand door.
2
left hand door.
3
0
0
blank
5430
2
fight the troll
4
slam the door in its face.
5
1
1
blank
3963
0
1
2
blank
7506
0
2
1
blank
8095
0
2
2
1

(My apologies if I've missed another thread for this somewhere...)

So I decided to give it a look, and I'm quite pleased with how it works so far.
I've tried coming up with something similar in the past, but my problem is that I can never make something simple enough to be practical to complete. (Hint hint Microsoft software updates)

Playing around with it, something I quickly wanted to add would be a header/footer to each page. I'd kinda like to add a bit of javascript to help simplify keeping track of stats and rolling dice and such, which would only require adding four or so lines to either the beginning or end of each compiled html file. Of course, that'd be unnecessary and I wouldn't be surprised if I'd be the only one to use such a thing, but it sounds like you want suggestions. ^_^