Code design poll
Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 11:18 am
Before I start - apologies for being a bit off-topic but I'd like you collective opinions on a slightly dragon related teaser
First some background and context. A couple of months ago Richard Garriot (the man behind the Ultima games) posted up his original game code complete for a coding competition, this same code became Akalabeth and evolved into Ultima i. The same code was "ported" to become Ring of Darkness (ported being a vague term here but the similarities between these games is undeniable). The competition was to get the game working either through a web browser or through the unity framework. For a bit of fun I entered the competition and chose to use Javascript mainly because of the simplicity in converting 80s era basic into a modern untyped script language. Simplicity came back to bite me in the rear as I'd failed to think through how to get keyboard input in a strictly single threaded scripting environment and ended up writing a fair chunk of code to turn the original code into an event driven engine. Having submitted my entry I figured why let all that work go to waste. I can't publish the game code I'd produced for the competition as the T&Cs prevent that but I can certainly re-use my creativity and methods so I came up with a plan - create a new game, in the style of those (very) early cRPGs with more than a hint to Garriot's work and to Humphrey's own interpretation that was the cause of many wasted hours for a lot of dragon owners. The guideline was simple, just code like the old days, let it grow and evolve.
The problem is that I've struck upon a problem in terms of design consistency.
The original games were strictly text only - in fact the original Garriot code was just a player wandering around a dungeon type map. I've used an interpretation of RoD's world as a broader sheet though, sticking to text only but frankly it is hard work as there is little to guide around the map and it is down to just dumb exploration unless you know where you're going - not particularly user friendly but very much of that era. At the moment it feels more reminiscent of the likes of ADOM (http://www.adom.de/) but without any modern visualisation. Having coded up the world map and town map gameplay I need to decide what to do with the dungeon map gameplay. Garriot went for the blind text only (you have to request a render of the local area when you want it), his later games though produced a basic 3D view using line drawing (sound familiar?). RoD uses exactly the same view. Producing line drawing in Javascript is a nightmare but I have ways to simulate this however it would then make the dungeon map game completely at odds to the rest of the game and that also irks me.
So to the point then - what would be the better option?
1) Stick with the strict text-only rule and no auto-visualisation
2) Ditch the text-only for the dungeon and do the line drawing 3D
3) Go even more retro and use ASCII art 3D
4) Go roguelike and maintain an ASCII map at all times
5) Go RoD style and abandon the text-only rule completely
There are plenty of grey areas there too so I'm open to suggestion.
I'm reluctant at this stage to provide a link to the site as it really is not finished (although it is playable) and I have a significant bug to fix that causes the game to freeze at random. If you're desperate to see it, just ask
First some background and context. A couple of months ago Richard Garriot (the man behind the Ultima games) posted up his original game code complete for a coding competition, this same code became Akalabeth and evolved into Ultima i. The same code was "ported" to become Ring of Darkness (ported being a vague term here but the similarities between these games is undeniable). The competition was to get the game working either through a web browser or through the unity framework. For a bit of fun I entered the competition and chose to use Javascript mainly because of the simplicity in converting 80s era basic into a modern untyped script language. Simplicity came back to bite me in the rear as I'd failed to think through how to get keyboard input in a strictly single threaded scripting environment and ended up writing a fair chunk of code to turn the original code into an event driven engine. Having submitted my entry I figured why let all that work go to waste. I can't publish the game code I'd produced for the competition as the T&Cs prevent that but I can certainly re-use my creativity and methods so I came up with a plan - create a new game, in the style of those (very) early cRPGs with more than a hint to Garriot's work and to Humphrey's own interpretation that was the cause of many wasted hours for a lot of dragon owners. The guideline was simple, just code like the old days, let it grow and evolve.
The problem is that I've struck upon a problem in terms of design consistency.
The original games were strictly text only - in fact the original Garriot code was just a player wandering around a dungeon type map. I've used an interpretation of RoD's world as a broader sheet though, sticking to text only but frankly it is hard work as there is little to guide around the map and it is down to just dumb exploration unless you know where you're going - not particularly user friendly but very much of that era. At the moment it feels more reminiscent of the likes of ADOM (http://www.adom.de/) but without any modern visualisation. Having coded up the world map and town map gameplay I need to decide what to do with the dungeon map gameplay. Garriot went for the blind text only (you have to request a render of the local area when you want it), his later games though produced a basic 3D view using line drawing (sound familiar?). RoD uses exactly the same view. Producing line drawing in Javascript is a nightmare but I have ways to simulate this however it would then make the dungeon map game completely at odds to the rest of the game and that also irks me.
So to the point then - what would be the better option?
1) Stick with the strict text-only rule and no auto-visualisation
2) Ditch the text-only for the dungeon and do the line drawing 3D
3) Go even more retro and use ASCII art 3D
4) Go roguelike and maintain an ASCII map at all times
5) Go RoD style and abandon the text-only rule completely
There are plenty of grey areas there too so I'm open to suggestion.
I'm reluctant at this stage to provide a link to the site as it really is not finished (although it is playable) and I have a significant bug to fix that causes the game to freeze at random. If you're desperate to see it, just ask