This is a parser game by Lance Cirone, and it’s the first game I’ve seen use my conversation extension, which is pretty neat.
You play as a group of three kids that are trying to get money to buy equipment to go on an adventure. You explore a ton, look at shops, and pick up odd jobs.
As is normal for an introduction, a lot of areas are incomplete.
What I like most about this is the free exploration of the city and the quirks of different parts. So many parser games (including my own) have a lot of areas you can’t enter (mostly because it’s easier to program that way, but sometimes to narrow the focus of the game). But here you can browse through multiple rooms in multiple houses, which is neat. I found Noxie’s customers really amusing, though that Kash and Cash were a fun concept, and was struck by the difference in the two houses I visited.
With things that I think could be worked on, I think of my conversation system the most, not the way it’s implemented here, just things that could improve it.
For instance, you get new topics sometimes but for a person who isn’t there. Then you look in your topic inventory, and it’s gone! But it’s just because the person isn’t there. Not being able to see that, though, makes it hard to know who it’s for.
That can be fixed by replacing part of the ‘To clear the flags’ phrase from the extension (this replaces the line about new topics):
say "[bracket]New [if currentquip is a clue]Clue [otherwise]Topic [end if][if the target of currentquip is not in the location]for [the Target of currentquip] [end if]- [currentquip]";
You’d have to change it for general topics (since you don’t have clues, you could do something like this:
say "[bracket]New [if target of currentquip is nobody]General [otherwise]Topic [end if][if the target of currentquip is not in the location]for [the Target of currentquip] [end if]- [currentquip]";
And you can make an action that shows all topics possible, in case people want to see them listed for people that aren’t there:
All-topicing is an action applying to nothing. Understand "AT" or "all topics" or "all topic" as all-topicing.
Carry out all-topicing:
repeat with current running through quips carried by the player:
now target of current is talkative;
try topicing;
Besides that, the only other difficulty I had was with the bucket; it wasn’t clear if I needed to be by the bucket, holding the bucket, or somehow separating the bucket from the well to get the cups.
shushgame.txt (53.5 KB)
There is an issue with ask about / talk about some new topics with people that is travelling through the map. I like very much the auto-activity of the NPCs.