Whizzard's Guide to Text Adventure Authorship v1.1 - Part 6 by Kevin Wilson Originally published on CompuServe/Internet Supplied by both Graham Cluley and Richard Hunt @~Continued from Issue 41 12 --------- The other people in your game, NPCs ----------- First, another reprint, then I'll expand my views somewhat. 5 Laws of IF NPC Creation: 1. Never, EVER, EVER have an NPC comment on the player's body odor. Why? Damned if I know. This is just one of those rules that everyone blindly follows without questioning. 2. Make 'em unique, even if ya gotta steal 'em from somewhere else. 3. Don't stereotype them please, I find this endlessly annoying. My one exception to this rule is the senile old wizard, whom I find endlessly amusing. 4. Make their actions consistent with their personalities. 'Sir Robin charges valiantly into battle.' just doesn't make any sense. (For the Monty Python impaired, Sir Robin was King Arthur's cowardly knight.) 5. Give 'em some emotions, and some conflict to sort out. Maybe the NPC's daughter is dying, or they're extremely frightened of the dark and panic blindly when shut into a dark room. Don't let the PC run roughshod over 'em, they have feelings too. If a PC attacks them, they should react according to their personality. Maybe they think it's a joke, maybe they think the PC has gone mad and kill the PC, maybe the police come and arrest the player, or maybe the NPC just dies... NPCs are the backbone of your game. Their unique personalities and quirks will stick in the player's mind far longer than the puzzles you set for him to defeat. What do most people remember, the Wizard of Frobozz, or the key and doormat puzzle? I can't really do a definitive work on NPCs. There are too many possibilities for you to contemplate. Instead, I'll list a few important characteristics below, with a brief sentence on each. 1) Appearance - This gives the player a mental image of the NPC. The smaller the detail, the more it brings out the personality of the NPC. 2) Speech Mannerisms - Such as a foreign accent, odd speech pattern. 3) Body Language - How the NPC stands, gesticulates, smiles, etc. 4) Motivations - Not necessarily known to the player. But it SHOULD be known to you. 5) Interests - Shows in their room's furnishings, their belongings. Tells a lot about a person. If you pay attention to these details, your NPCs will be more believable and interesting to the player. Particularly handle #2 and #4, and everything else will fall into place. Have fun. 13 --------- The player's good buddies, pets ----------- This is a reprint of another article, this one on pets. 1.) The term pets can apply to any object that follows the player around fairly consistently. A pet is not necessarily helpful, nor is it necessarily harmful, it just is. Pets are not constrained to living creatures, nor are they even constrained to animate beings. Take, for example, the radio in Wishbringer that gave you advice. 2.) Pets tend to be very versatile objects, frequently their personality will pervade the entire game. (Floyd, of course.) This can be a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on how it is handled. Okay, here are some pet ideas. Let me know if you've seen any used already. 1) The player is a wizard, with an imp familiar that is more often than not leading the player into danger. 2) (A more general idea) The player is a non-human, with a non-human companion. Part of the game is determining how best to use that companion (say, for instance, the player is a rhinoceros, and has a friendly bird that helps them spot danger.) This could also be interesting if you have a human player, but a really exotic pet, like a shapechanging blob of jelly. (see A Boy and his Blob, on Nintendo systems) 3) Heheh, here's a whimsical thought...Remember that cartoon with the frog that would sing and dance, but only when no one else was around? Well, that could be a rather amusing plot device, especially for those who have seen the original cartoon. (Or maybe you find a talking dog with a similar limitation, or a talking .... horse?) (everyone sing along ... A horse is a ...) 4) Non-living pets. Robots are the pet of choice in this department, but there are a lot of humorous ideas packed away under this heading. In THGTTG, the aunt's thing almost took on a personality of its own, just by following you around, so maybe there's this certain object that shows up everywhere, like a Monkey's paw, or a cursed ring. That's by no means the only way an item can develop a personality, either. The Jack-of-all-traits in Nord and Bert was quite interesting just because of all the things you could do with it. And the two teleport spots in Starcross. Any item that simply has a number of uses and lingers in the game seems to me to become a sort of pet. 5) Non-living interacting pets. Ok, so you don't buy that bit in #5, well obviously, objects can interact with the player in a number of bizarre ways. Maybe the player is losing his grip on reality as a result of some poison in his body, so items start talking to him and arguing among themselves. His couch plays psychiatrist, his TV plays evangelist, his shoes start remarking about the treatment he's been giving them. ("Oi! Not another puddle! Walk around it, you arsehole!") Or perhaps they can just naturally talk. (Via the talking credit card in Time Trax) 14 -----Bringing it all together...Writing your first game ----- More reprints, look out! Welcome to IF 101, the Infinite Permutations of Story in IF. You may be asking yourself, "Why the heck would I want to write a dumb old text adventure?" The answer is simple, but different, for each of you. Maybe you're a writer looking for a new way of doing things, or maybe you were weaned on Infocom? Whatever your reason, doubtless it's a good one. On to the meaty part of this message. There are a few different starting points you can use when writing a game. They are: 1) Setting 2) Atmosphere 3) Plot 4) Characters (Wishbringer started from the plastic rock packaged with it.) I tend to start with atmosphere. Once I have in mind the sort of game I want to write, everything begins falling into place. Just as an example, you decide to write a horror game. Ok, now you have a starting point, which is often the hardest part. Now, concentrating on horror, begin to narrow your focus...is it going to be a thriller, something really campy, exotic and terrifying like H.P. Lovecraft, or how about mixing horror with another atmosphere like space opera to come up with an unusual setting? I think we'll go with the exotic one for now. In horror, you need to think of something that is WRONG. Maybe a monster, disease, or madman. It just has to feel WRONG. We're going with disease, that's always a nasty one. So, what does our disease do that's so bad? Infectious madness? Gross deformities? A craving for human snacks? Horrific transformation? I like the last one. We now have a game about a disease that causes humans to transform into something horrible. But what? Hmm, that's a stumper, so many disgusting monsters, so little time...Ok, let's give 'em claws, pointy teeth, big scabby armor-plated growths to ward off bullets, a funky hairdo, the effects of a 6 month exercise program, and a predilection for Homo sapiens. We need a catchy name ... umm ... er ... Grunts, maybe. It'll do for now. Let me warn you now to use a good ASCII text editor to write your games with. I use one called dcom. You don't want to waste time converting back and forth from ASCII everytime you want to compile. Just make sure it has global search and replace capabilities, you'll need them. Ok, now we have our disease, so we need a few more things to go on. We need a cause for the disease, a reason why the hero is trying to do something instead of heading for the hills, and of course, a setting. We'll start with the disease's source. That will likely have some ramifications in the final solution of the game. So, what do you suggest? Mad scientist, government plot, meteor/comet, ancient Indian burial ground, toxic waste...? I like the government plot, being from Berkeley, home of the conspiracy theory. So, germ warfare gone astray. Now why the heck is the player dumb enough to get wrapped up in this mess? I'll tell you why, he's a member of the local SWAT team, the only survivor of a drug bust that was apparently a covert site for the government's testing. Unfortunately for the player, there was no communication between the local and the federal government on the matter. Now, a nervous trigger finger and a broken vial have unleashed a squad of Grunt/scientists/SWAT team members on the world. Perhaps the scientists killed all the SWAT members after changing, or maybe the SWAT team was changed too, except for the player. Anyways, I would say it likely that he was far enough away from the vial and quick-witted enough to put his gas mask on. If he looks around, he's likely to find out the story behind the disease and an antidote, or maybe he has to find some simple way of changing them back or killing them. The setting? Some woods on the outskirts of . He has to stop the Grunts before they get to the city and begin changing the populace. Well, there's your basic premise. Start vague, and work your way down. It never fails for me. [Next reprint follows] Right. In the last instalment of this post, we determined that we were going to write a horror game based on a disease that turns people into, for lack of a better name, Grunts. Grunts are basically like people except for their sharp claws and teeth, armor plating, and taste for human flesh. We (okay, okay, I) decided that it was going to be set on the outskirts of a town that shall remain anonymous for now, and is released in a drug bust gone bad. Fortunately for the player, he manages to realize what's happening and gets his gas mask on in time. Since then, I have decided that the Grunts are clever, and possess enough intelligence to smash the radios in the vehicles they brought. Don't question the fact that they don't steal the cars, just accept it until we can think of either a good excuse, or a more plausible scenario. (You do a lot of this at first.) Okay, the stage is set. The Grunts have just taken off down the road, and our hero is lying in the bushes, trying to look inconspicuous. First thing we need to do now is to devise his first obstacle. The cars have been sabotaged. He needs to fix one to get back to town before the Grunts. He can cannibalize parts from any of the cars, and maybe find some parts lying around in the tool shed. In addition, he should stock up on good weapons since he's at a government installation (mistakenly believed by the SWAT team to be a drug plant) that had some fairly high tech stuff. (Not to mention some interesting diseases and such.) Anyway, the player should stock up, throw it all in the car that he fixed, and hit the road. He comes to a farmhouse that's on fire. Screeching to a halt, he hears cries for help inside and rescues a kid about 13 years old. We'll call him David. He tries to leave David behind, since it's too dangerous, but the kid hides in the trunk. David, of course, is going to become a horrible pain in the butt. Btw, the farmhouse was raided by Grunts, in case you're wondering. David's the only survivor. Now, I think that the player can use one or two more people in his little 'band', not to mention a love interest, so he manages to outrun the Grunts and gets to a dairy farm on the outskirts of suburbia. Luke, the farm hand, is a bit dubious until screams come from the house, and the two of them rescue the farmer's daughter from some Grunts. It's too late for the farmer. He was a widower, fortunately. Now that our little adventuring band is complete, we would spend time expanding on the characters and bringing them to life. [Last post] Ok. Now, the characters in our horror game are: The player - A SWAT team member. David - Kid that player saved and is stowed away in the trunk of his car. Luke - Farmhand Debbie - Farmer's Daughter We have established that the Grunts retain some vestige of human intelligence. We have also determined that the bacteria may only be spread through an exchange of bodily fluids. The player has had the opportunity to arm himself and acquire companions, not to mention research into the cause of the disease. We are now ready for the confrontation/master plan. The player and his little retinue rush to head off the Grunts, now numbering about 5-8. During the first conflict, the player discovers that the Grunts are pretty much bulletproof. (What good movie monster isn't?) He does have a supply of diseases/vaccines that he may or may not have identified. One of these is the vaccine for the Grunt bacteria. He has a syringe as well, so he'd be well advised to inject himself with some of it. He has enough for several injections. One possible plan would be to head for the nearest zoo and get a tranq gun to use against the Grunts. Or maybe the other diseases in the collection would be of some use? There's a umm ... blister agent, some adrenalin in a usable form, various illegal drugs, etc. The puzzles would consist of using these items in a variety of ways. I'm sure we can imagine the sort of things that would go on in the middle of this game. Lots of tracking down and disabling of Grunts, avoiding Grunts, saving folks, etc. So, let's skip to the ending. The last, biggest Grunt confronts the player atop the area's drinking water reservoir. The player can't just shoot him, or he'll fall down and pollute the water, infecting the populace all over again. So the player plays it slick. He gets out a cattle prod taken from the farm earlier on (retroactively inserted.) He walks out to the Grunt, prodding it back with the prod. He gets scratched up by the Grunt. (Hope he used the vaccine) He forces the Grunt away from the water, then hits him with a syringe full of vaccine. Voila. End of story. Or you could probably think of a better one. This is, after all, just off the top of my head. Anyway, let me now close off this story with some hints and help, explaining why I made this post. Starting out, I like to begin with a broad atmosphere and narrow downwards. Once you have set the stage with a plot, items come naturally and easily, puzzles a bit less so. The characters in your story are of utmost importance. Fiction is, ultimately, about people. There are several distinct sections to a game: build-up, conflict, resolution. Build-up and Resolution are the most important two IMHO. Finally, here's some advice to keep you working on your game. Announce its future release over the Net, and set yourself a deadline. Having people waiting for your game helps keep you to task. I know from experience. @~To be concluded in Issue 43 - o -