Combat system in Dark Forest: Reborn

'Well...that geyser of blood emanating from my chest is proof I have high blood pressure.'

'Unfortunately, his spine is now clearly visible from the front.'

Fallout   

This post is a demonstration of Dark Forest: Reborn combat system. Our system is unique and provides user with the 'do whatever you want and still get game reaction' experience. 

The world of Dark Forest: Reborn is cruel. You will face local conflicts with highwaymen, clashes of criminal groups and even war. Every event in the game tests your abilities. Will you be able to stay Human?

Let us pretend that misterious forces took your poor body and placed it on the battlefield. Your forces are carving towards the centre of enemy army through the infinite waves of mad savages. They surge forward and it seems their strength is infinite. Your rusty sword is the only weapon you have.

John had only one choice

What will you do? 

- You can try to run away.

- You can join friendly forces in their attack.

- You can try to hide.

- You can cry and ask for help.
- You can just wait and do nothing.

- ...

Every choice will give you additional choices. Your main task is to survive, but it is a really difficult task in the world where your allies are dead and the battle is lost. Let's try to help?

As you can see, you have freedom. Do you want to hit his head using your sword? No problem. His arm? Left or right leg? Yes! If you are strong enough, you can even finish him with a single fatal blow. 

Not enough strength? Try to use words or even so called 'green magic', a gift from high-tech civilization.

You should be fast. The world of Dark Forest: Reborn is a living world - your opponent will not wait for your actions and words, he will keep fighting and hitting you until your death.

Will you be able to protect your allies? Will you save your friends, or maybe your decision will be to kill yet another enemy general? Your glory is important as well: if you show yourself as a good warrior, you will gain reputation that will help you in future adventures.

You should understand your strong and weak skills and abilities. Plan your actions. Don't use everything you have on weak enemies. Save something special for their bosses!

Your energy and time are limited resources. Sometimes it's a really good idea to try to find your opponent's weak spots first.

More details about our combat system will be revealed soon. We're also going to discuss other ways of solving your problems in Dark Forest: Reborn. Smashing everything to pieces is fun, but sometimes you don't want or just can't do such things.

Teaser of an upcoming Dark Forest: Reborn saturday announcement

Dark Forest: Reborn contains a lot of unusual and cool features that you won't find in any text-based game.

Here is the subset of our special strings for an upcoming Saturday announcement that will feature yet another unique game mechanics of Dark Forest: Reborn:

- This is your fatal mistake.
- Die, human fool!
- Your heart is mine!
- Blood! Your blood? Mine blood!
- Enjoy the last few seconds of your life...
- Blood and oblivion!
- I will loot your pathetic corpse!
- This is green magic! You can't!
- I can't see! You coward!
- My face! My eyes! Why!?
- Where are you? Help me! Help!

Basic set contains up to 1000 lines of text, and it's only the beginning.

// Subset given above is also an easter egg for those who love post apocalyptic games ;)

Dark Forest: Reborn announcement

Dark Forest: Reborn - Escape from the last underground citadel of devastated Earth and find your new world where you will save, romance, trick, betray or even kill people...using magic of words in this immersive text-based roleplaying game!

Intro

Hello, lovers of games with deep storylines, compelling characters and interesting gameplay. Long time no see. 

We have been discussing interactive fiction and text-based games: old-school stuff, games that are already forgotten, etc. Our articles contained mostly abstract analysis and criticism, so some of you might be wondering 'Wtf? Everyone can criticize! If you think you know how to create perfect adventure game, why not go and create it!?'. 

Well, guess what, friends? We are creating perfect text-based adventure game right now. It is called Dark Forest: Reborn, a next generation text-based rpg of romance and adventure.

Awesome logo. We payed 10$k for this. Really.

Key features of Dark Forest: Reborn

- NPCs that support natural language interactions and relationship modeling using a modern chatbot's AI core.

This simply means you will interact with cool characters using phrases like ‘Hello!’, ‘How are you?’ ‘I am your friend, trust me!’, ‘Do you prefer human meat or maybe I should bring some fruits?’.

You will test your perception, charisma and conversational skills. Based on your words and actions, our characters will decide if you are nice person or not. If not, watchout!

- Choices and real consequences. The game won’t tell you how to play.

- Nonlinear and replayable game world that adapts to your personality.

Do or say an evil thing and the world around you will look (or even become) evil.

- Real-time combat system with a bit of gore and awesome finishing moves.

- Game setting inspired by Arcanum and old fallouts in the style of Andre Norton and Stephen King’s fantasy novels.

Plot

Distant future. Humanity is doomed. Earth is dying. You are imprisoned in a sealed citadel deep underground. Old machines give you everything you need to live. You spend your time trudging through the citadel and researching its chambers. You have almost accepted your lonely fate, when a tragic accident changes everything.

It appears that a group of brilliant Earth scientists were living in this citadel before you, until the day they all mysteriously disappeared. They left behind, however, a monstrous ancient device that gives you a second chance, a way of once again reaching the world outside.

The world of Dark Forest: Reborn is full of ancient swamps, poisonous hills and abandoned strongholds of fallen civilizations. During your journey you will face strangers, and change their fates forever. Some of them will curse you. Some of them will be ready to give their lives for you. After your adventure you will be judged, and the fate of every character and the world of Dark Forest: Reborn itself will be revealed.

Characters

Dark Forest: Reborn mixes classic text adventure game mechanics with mechanics of interactions with NPCs via natural language dialog.

For example, in location 'House of Cannibals' you may find daughter of the Cannibals, Qara, 21 y/o slender black-haired girl with tired face who lives with her family in the depths of the forest. Your main task will be to escape the House of Cannibals. Qara's motives are not clear so it's up to you to choose your way of completing the quest: you can try to capture her and force her to help you, you can try to gain her trust or just ignore her and escape the House of Cannibals on your own. Everything depends on your personality, kindness, cruelness or even madness.

Maybe Qara doesn’t like her family and wants to escape the House of Cannibals too? Or maybe she just wants to eat your entire body alone? She definetly prefers red wine so maybe your fate is just to become a part of her dinner...or maybe this girl will be your best friend. Or even girlfriend.

Test your perception, charisma and conversational skills and find out the truth!

No, no, this type of 'flirting' with NPCs like Qara is not okay. You will learn it after the meeting with her family.

This style is more suitable.

Concept arts

If you think interactive fiction and text adventure developers have no concept arts - you are wrong.

We have no cool pictures to impress you. Our game will create cool pictures in your mind instead.

System requirements and release date

Too early for this information. One thing is clear - Dark Forest: Reborn will run only on the most powerful graphics controller you have - your imagination.

Our crew

One software developer experienced in gamedev and natural language processing aka DarkForestCrow – at your service, two writers, one native English speaker/writer will be found soon (that bastard escaped from our catacombs).

We are friendly, our NPCs are not!

Support Dark Forest: Reborn now!

Subscribe to receive important updates and news and be our first player! 

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and IndieDB.

You can also find the list of our contacts here.

Modern text-based adventure games development #3: Solutions

    Time for another post of thoughts. Previously we discussed problems that are common for modern (and not only) text-based adventure games development. Again, this is not a tutorial. I'll write some tutorials for those who are planning to develop their own games later (yes, there are tons of such tutorials already on the internet so hopefully I will change my mind and will not do that).

Looking at fellow developers that suffer from poor development tools

So, text-based adventure games usually have such problems:

1.) Poor natural language processing capabilities.
2.) Primitive gameplay and game mechanics in general.
3.) Primitive characters or even no 'real' characters at all.

    Why is it so sad? I think the roots of these problems are in interactive fiction community ideology that is obsolete. Ken Poirier from a comment section on our facebook page also added that one of the problems with text parsers is that games are often designed to be compatible with the old z-machine system. Well, this is one of the reasons. You can read about z-machine here.

    All things listed above can stop you on your way to creation of your unique text-based game. So, what can you do about that?

    Again, if you want to create simple ('traditional') interactive fiction game as fast as possible - take a look at Twine or Inform and come back later. You can also skip everything below for now.

    I see only one way of text-based games development that can help you achieve good results without forcing you to study things you will never use again:

    You can develop your text-based game like it's a real game. Yes, strangely, but text-based games are computer games too, so you can just...program text-based games using any programming language you know. This is the only way to create something really unique and the only way that gives you complete freedom in your creativity, as well as useful experience, knowledge and portfolio.

    You may think 'but why do I need to create everything from scratch and create yet another set of crutches?', and I am ready for that.

    Below are some ideas about text-based games in general. Text-based games are simple (if we talk about development process) - you don't need graphics with outstanding landscapes or cute pixel 
art characters, you don't need marvellous music, you don't need top-notch voice acting - just something that allows you to print text on the screen. And maybe a good compelling plot. Maybe.

    Let's pretend we want to create a text quest or any kind of interactive fiction. If you played some text adventure games you could see that usually the gameplay of such kind of games goes in this way: 

    Process input text-> Display output text -> Repeat

    Actually, that's all. 

    So, do we really need some special software tools like Twine, Adrift or Inform to create such a game? A lot of people are working right now developing these tools to help you to do what exactly? - request user input via text field, process (in a very simple way) received input and then just display a response.

    That's all. Literally. 

    If you need something advanced - these people and these tools will answer you 'sorry, mate, we can't do that, do it yourself'.  Maybe they can offer you natural language processing? - No, of course no. Easy-to-implement ways to create game world that is more complex than connected rooms? - No. Tools to create your NPC with replics, emotional state, memory? - You know the answer.

    You may think again (I see you like to think) 'But actually you can simplify any kind of games in this way. Crysis processes some inputs, analyzes it, displays some korean soldiers, then you hear pew-pew and that's all'. No. It's not that simple: you need graphics engine, 3d models, you need sound libraries, you need voice acting, you need animations, you need physics, you need math, you even need artificial intelligence...Not that easy to create everything solo.

    I am just saying that fellow reader can create text-based games from scratch using any programming language with it's basic functionality.

    Text-based game usually takes input strings and displays strings as answers based on some conditions. For example, your game can have such kind of conditions: current game zone, player's stats, completed quests, previously received input strings, game difficulty settings, current input string.

    Then, if your game receives 'How are you, friend?' input string, it displays output string 'Go away, animal!' doing something like this:

if (player is in zone1)
  if (player's charisma is equal to 1)
    if (player completed quest 'Have sex with Bishop's wife')
      if (previous player's replic was 'Hello, mister Bishop!')
        if (current input string icontains 'how are you')
          if (difficulty is equal to 'hardcore 18+')
            do_some_stuff(x)
           display("Go away, animal!")
          else
           do_other_stuff(y)
           display("Go away, retarded sickfuck!")

Just a bunch of simple if-clauses. Looks ugly. But this is the example of what is actually going on when you play any game - it receives some input signals and based on that signals and some constants and variables produces output:

if (variable1)
  if (variable2)
    ...
      if (variableN)
        do_simple_things()
        set_some_variables()
        display(x)

    Of course you will not write code like that. Well, if you are new to programming, you can even start with this code. In case of text-based games the amount of if-clauses is not huge. Good object oriented design will eliminate the need of this stuff and checks will be hidden. How to reduce the amount of explicitly-written conditions and write good object-oriented/meta abstract code for videogames? How to create your own game world model? What about roleplaying system? Items, objects interactions? Eventloop? Topics that are already covered in myriads of artices. But actually you can do that, and the process will be easy since it's just a text-based game. You'll still be able to focus on storytelling, replics and descriptions of things (usually it's 90% of interactive fiction development). And the development experience of doing these simple things yourself (even if you think that you produce worst code in the world) will be priceless. 

   What about natural language processing? I'll definetly write an article about some simple and useful algorithms you can use. The simplest thing you can do right now to improve players experience is to introduce synonyms checks and even simple regular expressions checks. That's right, son, don't just write 

    if inputString is equal to 'go north'

write 

    if inputString matches setOfRegexps

where setOfRegexps contains things that match 'I go north', 'I fuckin want to go north', 'I go to the north', 'I run north', 'I jump to the north'.

This is possible solution too:

    if inputString.icontains(mapOfSynonyms['go']) && inputString.icontains(mapOfSynonims['north'])

where mapOfSynonims is a map/any data structure that contains sets of your synonyms: [{'go', 'run'}, ['north', 'N'}]. Surprise - most of modern text-based games don't do that.

    Text-based game that understands 'hello' but can't understand 'hello, how are you?' fails one of the main tasks of text-based game - text processing. It was 'okay' 30 years ago. But now you need something more to impress players.

I didn't want a list of tutorials here again but, well, I feel I still need a list of resources for complete newcomers in gamedev world:

1.) Good python tutorial. Contains code for a text-based game with rooms and items.
2.) Question on stackexchange with example of game code with tons of if-clauses and tips for the ways of improving it.
3.) C++ article about writing of text adventure game from scratch.

    If you choose the way I described above - you can even say someday 'Hey, guys, I don't want text-only game anymore. I want to add awesome graphics and sound' - and you will do this, and the code you written for your text-based game will not be useless.

    That's all for now.

    Do you feel comfortable playing text adventure games with 'traditional' design? Maybe you faced problems with processing of different types of inputs with the same meaning in other types of games?

Modern text-based adventure games development #2: More problems

    In my previous post I stated some common problems you may face during the development of your game that contains text (wow, text?).

    Even if your game of this type has decent storyline, compelling characters and good writing (perfect example of bad writing is this blog. Joke, this blog is the best.), probability of success is still low. And if your writing is poorly done, cool landscapes and voice acting will not save you - because you have no graphics and no sound at all.

    I also mentioned visual novels - well, this can be a good choice for your state-of-the-art story/dialogs-driven game. Community of visual novels players is larger than interactive fiction players community (I am not even sure if IF-players community is alive) Add pretty faces of characters painted by decent artist, add sexy voice of your cousin and - voila - the best game of all time is ready.

    It's not that easy in real world. There are hundreds of visual novels with awesome arts and ourstanding voice acting - and with writing that looks like a writing of a retarded monkey translated via google (again, this blog) With stories that are so primitive that you think 'One more word and my brain is dead'. 

    So, good story, characters and dialogs are must-have for text-based game. Suppose that we already have it.

    What other kinds of problems do we have?

 - We have text only but still text component of the game is poor.

    Game understands 'go north' but fails to process 'lets go north'. Game understands 'look' but can't do a shit when gets 'look around'. 

    It's not only poor natural language processing but the traditional mechanics of such types of games itself - it's a tradition in IF community to let player say 'go north' but forget about processing of other types of this phrase like 'I want to go North'. Just start to play Make it Good or any other interactive fiction game here and you will understand what I am talking about. 

    Your game has no graphics, no sound - and still it can't even process input strings that are slightly different from the strings that are direct orders - well, how can we say then that your game is a true text-based game?

 - Limitations of frameworks. 

    Almost every framework for IF development has typical and primitive understanding of what is a text-based game: such kind of a game must have rooms with a maximum of 4 doors or directions like north, south, west, east; such kind of a game must have 'look' and 'examine' mechanics; if you want to add roleplay to your game you better shoot yourself instead of doing this.
    These framework will not let you create your own game world - because creators of these frameworks surprisingly can't understand that 'text-based' doesn't mean 'has simple mechanics and primitive world model'.

 - No real characters. 

    That's right, guys, I reviewed Galatea recently and, actually, this is the best example of NPC in interactive fiction we have right now. Such a shame. 
    You can't say 'Hello, girl. How are you? What is your name?', you need to write ugly stuff like 'Ask X about Y' and repeat it again and again for any kinds of things you want to discuss.

    And it's not only the result of poor functionality of IF development frameworks.


Summary of the main problems I see so far:

1.) Poor natural language processing capabilities.

2.) Primitive gameplay.

3.) Primitive characters or even no 'real' characters at all.

    I think that modern text-based game must contain not only decent storytelling and writing, but also it must:

1.) implement game mechanics that is more complex than just 'man goes through some rooms and examines things'

2.) have at least one compelling NPC with opportunities to chat and opportunities to establish relationships.

3.) offer natural language processing (it's a text-based game so one of the main tasks is to process text, surprisingly for typical IF authors)

IF developer in a cruel world of gamedesign

    Moreover, good characters design is a must-have for every game in my opinion. It's one of the best means to bring some life into your game world. Through characters players can observe the effects of their actions on your game world in a natural way. 

    When a player comes back into your game and your character says 'Hello, bro. I am so glad you are here again!', your game makes a step forward to player's heart.

    That's all for now. Any other kinds of problems you see that I didn't even notice? Maybe story-driven text-based games are obsolete and it's useless to discuss such things?

Modern text-based adventure games development #1: Problems

I decided to write yet another abstract post with my thoughts about text-based and interactive fiction games in general.

Am I really trying to think and to do something right now?

What are the problems of such type of games? What are the problems of developers who tries to create their state-of-the-art text-quests? I think this topic is very interesting. Moreover, almost every modern computer game contains some text, dialogs, lore, any kinds of descriptions so my monologue will not be only useful for developres of text quests and writers of interactive fiction.

You may take a look at some of my thoughts about typical examples of old and modern text-based games here: Galatea, Make it Good, Star Wars: Escape the Flagship.

So, you want to create your text-based adventure game. If you want to create it for yourself and your friends only (joke, developers of text-based games have no friends), then you just develop it. Then one or two guys in the world play it. Everybody is happy.

But what if you want to create something enjoyable for more than just one miserable person who plays your game only because he feels sorry for you (actually because he thinks you are a psycho who can do something bad if he will not check your game out)? 

You have a lot of problems then, son.

Because, guess what, text-based game is a text-based game and you are not a Hemingway. You need a good writings, you need a good plot, you need some compelling characters, you need good additional interesting mechanics ideas. Just go to textadventures.co.uk and launch some games - you will see a lot of problems. I hope. 

Some games there have good story but awful writings and awful English (even worse than mine). Some have perfect English but boring plot and obscure characters. Others have good plot and good English but simple and boring mechanics. Who is the audience of these games? Like with any other types of games, you have three main circles of players:

1.) Creator of the game.
It's not as bad as you may think (and even not that bad as I think). Some writers write novels just to read them after a year or so. Art for single person in the world is still an art.

2.) Creators of the games of similiar type.
Interactive fiction community is the best example in this case: they use similiar tools, they write their games, they play their games. Community is pretty closed and bounded (I am not saying this is bad).

3.) Usual gamers.
Mmmmm...usual gamers...Millions of players...success.

You can easily reach the audience of type 1 and 2, but what about type 3? Do you have some awesome pixelart pictures with landscapes and characters to impress those people? Do you have some insane chiptune soundtracks? Voice acting? Maybe you have beautiful animation?

No. You have text. Player writes some text as an input and the game displays some text as an answer. Nothing more.

Probably, you have a good story. Maybe some plot twists. Decent dialogs. But you can't show your compelling story or charming characters. You can tell something interesting about your game but it's not easy at all to impress people using text only. Especially in modern world of powerful graphics engines and pixelart freaks (I love them).

I will continue my analysis soon and will describe some features that are must-have for modern text-based games.

Do you think authors of visual novels have their answers for these questions? Visual novels have huge audience.

Top 10 games of all time by Dark Forest Crow

Every blog has such kind of a post.

This list is the source of inspiration for us during our jorney.


1.) Fallout 1, 2

2.) Neverwinter Nights 1, 2

3.) Planescape: Torment

4.) Baldur's Gate

5.) Diablo 1, 2

6.) Mass Effect 1, 2, 3

7.) System Shock, Bioshock series

8.) Jade Empire

9.) Wasteland 2

10.) Jagged Alliance 2


I didn't mention Arcanum because I simply didn't play it. Fallout 2 is the top 1 game which defined my games world view. 

Wife of mister Bishop, one love, never forget <3