If someone can get me the code to join this site, I’d appreciate it.
If you don’t know, this is kind of like the Quest site, or maybe something like ChoiceScript. GameCow is meant to enable you to write text games online. They’re not parser-driven, but clickable, something like the effect you get with Ramus (in fact one of the effects is a progressive scrolling effect like the one you see in Ramus, or Vorple).
It’s a young site with just a few games listed. Many are demo games, with just a few pages (“This is a demo game.”), or games that are being written or have been left off unfinished. They’re all thrown together on one page, but the blurbs usually give an idea of how completed the game is.
Some games are clearly broken, sometimes because they try to use features that the GameCow engine just can’t handle yet (it seems). So a game might prompt you to save, but then once you do it doesn’t allow you to go back to playing. Or mid-game you get something that says [DropDownMenu] in the middle of a page of text.
To be fair, I didn’t try either of the “Featured Games,” because I was interested in the game production system. Presumably they’re not broken.
It looks like the site is intended to go in the direction of ChoiceScript, where (from what I saw a year ago) the system is kept proprietary, but game writers can use it free. If I recall, there’s the idea with ChoiceScript that authors could try charging people to play their games. I say this because GameCow gives each game a PayPal link that would allow you to donate to the author. (Note to prospective authors – I’ve been published on QuantumMuse.com, and either the readership really don’t like my writing or just no one donates. Not saying it couldn’t happen, but I wouldn’t count on it.)
The website has forums. And so forth. Fairly complete, fairly well-thought out. But then there’s this–
Why they named it GameCow I have no idea, unless it has to do with the video they say they found online. The video pans across a field of cows. Then music starts playing – some kind of modern techno – and the cows start head-banging. As the music gets going the cows begin dancing, doing backflips, and so on, leading to cows that are weird space-creatures from other dimensions like an H. P. Lovecraft acid trip, all moving in time to the music. It’s not at all clear why the video has been included other than the cow mention.
Anyway, you can’t build a game unless you join, and to join you need a code. I’m guessing you get the code from someone who’s already in. So, if anyone can get me a code I’d like to try out the gamecow development system.
Conrad.
