DnD engine?
Rexx Magnus
source for a combat/interaction engine written in inform (or anything else
if it comes to that) that supports 3rd edition D&D rules?
Google appears not to be forthcoming.
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Joe Mason
> Is anyone aware of either a compiled game, or somewhere that I might find
> source for a combat/interaction engine written in inform (or anything else
> if it comes to that) that supports 3rd edition D&D rules?
Well, there's Neverwinter Nights.
The D&D 3rd Ed rules, while much more open than previous versions, still
has a license that makes it impossible to use them in computer games. I
don't recall if they're specifically excluded, but it was done on
purpose to make sure they could license them (as with Neverwinter)
without worrying about knockoffs. So you're out of luck.
Joe
Rexx Magnus
> Well, there's Neverwinter Nights.
Yep, got that was thinking more along the lines of just IF though.
> The D&D 3rd Ed rules, while much more open than previous versions, still
> has a license that makes it impossible to use them in computer games. I
> don't recall if they're specifically excluded, but it was done on
> purpose to make sure they could license them (as with Neverwinter)
> without worrying about knockoffs. So you're out of luck.
>
> Joe
That's what I was wondering about, quite a rpgs have popped up for the
pocketpc, some even similar to IF with graphics, but none purely text.
They claim to be produced under WoTC's open game license - something that
I think I'll have to read up on a bit more.
Laurent Vogel
Rexx Magnus wrote:
> Is anyone aware of either a compiled game, or somewhere that I might find
> source for a combat/interaction engine written in inform (or anything else
> if it comes to that) that supports 3rd edition D&D rules?
>
> Google appears not to be forthcoming.
not directly DnD, but for the record rogue was ported to Inform
- and I did also write a port, which I never bothered publishing,
but which I could publish if anyone's interested (I wrote it
so that I could play rogue on my psion)
Laurent
Adam Thornton
Rexx Magnus <tras...@uk2.net> wrote:
>That's what I was wondering about, quite a rpgs have popped up for the
>pocketpc, some even similar to IF with graphics, but none purely text.
>They claim to be produced under WoTC's open game license - something that
>I think I'll have to read up on a bit more.
I would think you could do OGL content, but I don't remember if enough
of d20 is Open Content to actually implement a working game in it
without reference to non-Open pieces.
In short, though, the answer is probably "no," and even if it weren't,
isn't a CRPG in Inform going to be pretty, well, bland for this day and
age? It is my firm belief that IF is a better narrativist than
simulationist medium.
Adam
Jaap van der Velde
>Is anyone aware of either a compiled game, or somewhere that I might find
>source for a combat/interaction engine written in inform (or anything else
>if it comes to that) that supports 3rd edition D&D rules?
For a game truly supporting 3rd edition rules (or in fact 3.5), you
might take a look at "Temple of Elemental Evil" by Troika (the same
that created the great Fallout).
And if you do, you may notice that there is a lot of "extra" stuff
in the system that is really quite hard to code, but adds little to
the game experience.
As someone else alread noted, doing a text-based CRPG may not be a
very wise choice in this day and age. But if you decide that -is-
what you want to do, I'd suggest taking something a bit simpler than
3rd ed. I've though about doing a 2nd ed AD&D game a couple of years
ago and decided against it after a "simulated game".
Here's what I did: I had a 2-person chat-session set up between
myself as the DM and a text-adventure-loving friend of mine as the
player. I acted as a parser before responding as a DM, filtering out
all input of the player that wouldn't be parsable in my game. (I'm
sad to say I lost the transcript in a crash a while ago :-( )
We tried both a "tunnel crawl" and a more open session (in a town)
and as you can imagine, only the tunnel crawl sort of worked out.
The town allows the player so much freedom, the amount of different
input (both verbs and objects) you need to be able to process really
becomes staggering.
The player concluded I filtered out too much of his input and felt
like he was being railroaded as a result. Also, a lot of the game
mechanics are taken away from the table and into the game, making
them invisible. This sounds like a good thing, but it turns out to
be a bad thing. (no DM rolling dice when you didn't expect it, no
last minute rulings on a tricky subject, no real bartering but a
hidden percentage being applied)
As a DM, I started to feel that though I could imagine programming
most of the responses to the player's input, there would be too many
different ways of doing things. And 1 of the things I like best about
RPGs is their openness. Without the players having a large degree of
freedom to give shape to their characters, the whole point of an RPG
evaporates and it just becomes a story with silly rules.
The D&D rules are intended to give some structure to open roleplaying
and to take some ruling-responsibility away from the DM. By basing a
CRPG on the rules, you are turning that around: you are creating a
universe that only operates within the bounds set by those rules,
forcing the player to limit the roleplay to whatever room that leaves.
Just my view on it, of course. Hope it helps,
JAAP.
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Boluc Papuccuoglu
<n...@spam.thanks> wrote:
>On 14 Oct 2003 17:48:55 GMT, Rexx Magnus <tras...@uk2.net> wrote:
>>Is anyone aware of either a compiled game, or somewhere that I might find
>>source for a combat/interaction engine written in inform (or anything else
>>if it comes to that) that supports 3rd edition D&D rules?
>
[snip]
I think a very laudable effort was made by Infocom in its heyday with
the release of Quarterstaff. Unfortunately it was only released on
Macintosh. Quarterstaff is basically classic IF with the following
extensions:
Character Statistics and Skills
Party management (moving together as a group or as individuals,
sending members ahead to scout, etc.)
NPC which can become PC's and vice versa.
A graphic interface with map, inventory diagrams, etc.
I did not get far enough in the game yet to tell if it's got a magic
system but I think that is a requisite if you are going for a FRPG
experience, after all part of the appeal of a RPG is being able to
choose from a variety of character abilities/classes. And the magic
system in Spellbreaker or Meteor, Glass and Sherbet is on par with
most requirements in RPG's so that's not impossible.
Since Quarterstaff did not have a character generation sequence, all
the puzzles could afford to be with a single solution. However, if you
are going to let your player choose whether he/she is good with
fighting or can use magic, you would be well advised to offer all
essential puzzles alternate solutions. At least one game in this
year's comp tackles this.
So basically you need the normal Inform library plus a few custom
extensions to support the above-mentioned features. A little effort
goes a long way in this regard, IMHO, and it is almost certainly not
worth the effort to try and implement _every_ single aspect of a
tabletop RPG system.
Rexx Magnus
> The D&D rules are intended to give some structure to open roleplaying
> and to take some ruling-responsibility away from the DM. By basing a
> CRPG on the rules, you are turning that around: you are creating a
> universe that only operates within the bounds set by those rules,
> forcing the player to limit the roleplay to whatever room that leaves.
>
> Just my view on it, of course. Hope it helps,
> JAAP.
*snip*
If I were to do it, I'd probably only use the rules for combat and the
like, with the rest of it sticking to the usual 'freedom' inherent in IF
without skillchecks for mundane actions.
Adrien Beau
>
> I would think you could do OGL content, but I don't remember if
> enough of d20 is Open Content to actually implement a working
> game in it without reference to non-Open pieces.
If I recall correctly, all rules dealing with character creation
(especially the various statistics) are non-Open.
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Joe Mason
> On Mercredi 15 Octobre 2003 03:56, Adam Thornton wrote:
>>
>> I would think you could do OGL content, but I don't remember if
>> enough of d20 is Open Content to actually implement a working
>> game in it without reference to non-Open pieces.
>
> If I recall correctly, all rules dealing with character creation
> (especially the various statistics) are non-Open.
Also levelling up.
Hey, I guess that means you can just make your own completely new
generation method - say, Ultima IV style Tarot readings - and XP
system...
Joe
Seebs
Joe Mason <j...@notcharles.ca> wrote:
>The D&D 3rd Ed rules, while much more open than previous versions, still
>has a license that makes it impossible to use them in computer games.
Rules are not protected by copyright, however, so it doesn't matter what they
say. Allen v. Academic Games. (IANAL, this is not legal advice, but I'm
sick of Hasbro's bullshit.)
-s
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Seebs
Jaap van der Velde <velde at bigfoot dot com> wrote:
>For a game truly supporting 3rd edition rules (or in fact 3.5), you
>might take a look at "Temple of Elemental Evil" by Troika (the same
>that created the great Fallout).
But you might want to avoid it, given that the game is mostly unplayable
due to unpatched bugs, and the "copy protection" mostly means it won't
run on a random set of systems.
Stuart "Sslaxx" Moore
> In article <v4rpov8qhtte1v9h6...@4ax.com>,
> Jaap van der Velde <velde at bigfoot dot com> wrote:
>>For a game truly supporting 3rd edition rules (or in fact 3.5), you
>>might take a look at "Temple of Elemental Evil" by Troika (the same
>>that created the great Fallout).
>
> But you might want to avoid it, given that the game is mostly unplayable
> due to unpatched bugs, and the "copy protection" mostly means it won't
> run on a random set of systems.
Yes, Atari's insistence on that copy protection scheme is most unfortunate.
NeverWinter Nights was also blighted by it.
Bye,
--
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AIM: MrSslaxx ICQ: 144089571 YAHOO: mrsslaxx
WEBSITE: http://www.sslaxx.demon.co.uk/
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Daniel Phillips
>Is anyone aware of either a compiled game, or somewhere that I might find
>source for a combat/interaction engine written in inform (or anything else
>if it comes to that) that supports 3rd edition D&D rules?
>
>Google appears not to be forthcoming.
The closest that I know of that is basically full rpg in text form is
Eamon, which is lurking somewhere on the 'Net. I'm sure it has
nothing to do with any D&D rules, however. Somehow, I think you may
create adventures with it. It may probably even be on the IF-archive.
Not sure, though.
Daniel Phillips
bandi...@toppler.zworg.com
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Be warned, may mistakingly bounce back as spam.
Eric F.
them after some searches (could find only the z5 compiled version). I'd
be interested in studying them.
Laurent Vogel
Eric F wrote:
> Are the Inform Rogue sources available on internet ? I couldn't find
> them after some searches (could find only the z5 compiled version). I'd
> be interested in studying them.
I found the z5 compiled version only too. This is why I hinted that,
if requested, I could publish my version of an inform port...
Okay, I'll dig and find it in my archives and put is on a web page
somewhere. This will be made available typically before the end of
this month.
Laurent
Eric Forgeot
Ok, I thought you where involved in the rogue.z5 project. So you made
another version then ?
Je suis intéressé, merci :)
Baggins
> The closest that I know of that is basically full rpg in text form is
> Eamon, which is lurking somewhere on the 'Net. I'm sure it has nothing
> to do with any D&D rules, however. Somehow, I think you may create
> adventures with it. It may probably even be on the IF-archive. Not
> sure, though.
Yes- Eamon was awesome. A little buggy, but awesome. And no, it doesn't
have anything to do with D&D.
It *is* in the archive at
ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/appleII/eamon/
You'll need an Apple II emulator to run it. I belive there was an attempt
to port it to MS-DOS at one point, but I doubt it was very successful.
-Baggins
Seebs
Baggins <reverse_th...@oohay.moc> wrote:
>It *is* in the archive at
>ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/appleII/eamon/
>You'll need an Apple II emulator to run it. I belive there was an attempt
>to port it to MS-DOS at one point, but I doubt it was very successful.
I played an MS-DOS version of it.
I thought it sounded neat, until I realized that any special properties you
gave an object had to be moved into every new adventure.