A text adventure game engine

 > ''From a news:comp.lang.tcl posting by mailto:larry@smith-house.org :''
 >
 > webscool wrote:
 >
 > Has anyone written a pure Tcl/Tk engine for text based adventure games?

Larry Smith Toyed with one. It provides for a number of text-based adventure game "chores" including defining rooms and characters, building a vocabulary, clothes, etc. Here is the basic engine, followed by a moronic little space- adventure that shows how it works. It's GPL, and it will be easier to read with a wide window.

The parser is dead simple - a verb, and an object, just like the original Colossal Cave adventure. I've fixed a few bugs - the engine no longer crashes if it doesn't recognize your verb. There was a problem with re-defining "exit" - now if you die in the airlock the interpreter exits, rather than recursing into a vain attempt to leave an airlock. You can "enter" things and "leave" things.

The vocabulary is limited but you can accomplish a surprising amount of stuff using it, with a little imagination. The highly generic "use" verb helps avoid a lot of vocabulary clutter and "guess the verb" games.

Category Games