Looking for a collaborator to help program an IF game

Authoring Looking for Collaborators
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Hi everyone! I’m a newbie here and could use a hand. Grew up loving Infocom games, recently played a couple of newer IF games, and got the itch to write my own full text-based puzzle adventure game for my daughter (she’s 17 but very much a kid at heart, like me).

I’m hoping to collaborate with someone who has proficiency in any of the IF platforms (e.g. Inform) who’d be willing to help turn this into a functioning game so I can give it to her as a special gift.

The story / map / puzzle concepts are all completed, looks like there will be 20 or 21 rooms. It’s a full-length classic game. All in-game actions are conventional ones, and should not require novel programming skills (I hope).

Happy to provide any additional details. Any replies / suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!

-David

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Do you have an example of what a room might look like when you send it to people? For example, if I had a sample room:

Room: Gem Room
Description: The center of this room is dominated by a large orange gem floating in the air. The light from the gem casts eery shadows around the room.
Important items: The orange gem (Description: This gem pulses with an inward glow like fire, but doesn’t radiate heat.) Touching the gem should send players to Wizard’s Castle.
Scenery items: Eery shadows.

That’s how I would describe a room. What do your notes for a room look like? It’d also be interesting to see a sample room to see how complex it is. If the whole thing already has complete descriptions for rooms and items and if each puzzle is fairly simple with 1 puzzle per location, I might be able to help. If not, it would still help other potential people know if they’d be able/interested in helping.

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Hi Brian, thank you for your prompt and kind reply! I really appreciate it.

Here is a brief demo of how this game might begin:

Inescapable Room

You are in a dark, featureless, and utterly inescapable room…if it is even a room at all. There are no doors, windows, vents, furniture, or any items to be seen. All thoughts of escape feel futile.

No, wait. Your eyes are just closed.

(player types “open eyes”)

“Dollar Hut” Bathroom

Ah, okay. You are in a room after all.

It’s a bathroom, with a toilet (clogged), a sink (cracked), and a robust pile of trash unconfined by any bin. Frayed wires near the floor occasionally hiss and spark. A closed door is to the east.

After getting a full view of this small and disgusting bathroom you are tempted to close your eyes once again.

(player types “inventory / i”)

You are carrying:

a key attached to a long piece of wood

a wallet

(player types “search trash”)

Defying the odds of finding a needle in a proverbial haystack, you find a needle almost immediately! Your bleeding finger rewards your body with a microdose of illicit substances, which you are only able to enjoy for a short time before the gangrenous infections set in.

*your quest has ended*

…after restart or restore, player types “search (or poke) trash with wood (or key)”

A tiny avalanche of horror ensues, but your eyes light up when you see a trading card now visible on the top.

—————–

I could easily provide a standard description of each room with the template you suggested rather than what I wrote above. Could do so in a longer reply here, or a DM, whatever you recommend.

Thank you again,
David

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If everything is in the classic text adventure style, and you’re not using any weird actions or mechanics, many of the current IF design languages are very easy to get started with! I can vouch for both Inform 7 and Dialog in that regard, but I’ve been told Adventuron is designed to get new authors up and running quickly.

If you’ve written all the room descriptions, action responses, and so on, then you’re 80% of the way to a complete game already.

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Many thanks! This was my original plan, but after running into a snag on the very first step of the game I realized I might be better off with a proficient collaborator.

For the first action of the game, I’m wanting the character to open their eyes to reveal a new room…easier said than done. Even after downloading Inform and reading through the reference guidelines (and watching YouTube videos) I realized I might be biting off more than I could chew.

While Adventuron looks user-friendly, I think I’d prefer Inform since the output looks just like the games from my youth.

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Given what you’ve shown here, if you send me the materials I’d be happy to code up everything you have, spending 5-6 hours on it. If it ends up being a lot more than that timewise, I’d have to stop and pass it on to another person.

Given my past experiences, I expect that once you play the game, you’ll find you want to make some adjustments or expand it, so you could at that point open source the code and post questions here for individual options and allow people to peek in and tinker with it (or tinker with it yourself). If you want to shop around for a bit to see if anyone else wants to give it a try, feel free to do so, as it’s your game!

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Much appreciated!

What would be the best way for me to share my content with you? (forgive me, I’m not immediately seeing how to send you a DM…please let me know if that’s what’s best)

My notes are currently in a long and inefficient document writing out all the details and descriptions in a freeform way (including lots of fun responses to things that a player might try). Out of respect to your time I’d want to clean everything up in a much more concise format before I send anything along. We can discuss how you’d prefer I present everything.

You are very correct that I’ll undoubtedly want to tinker with this (probably a lot) even after it’s done. That would only be for additional descriptive details, not to add new rooms or puzzles or characters, etc.

When you say open source the code…does that mean that I could copy / paste the general gameplay code into my own version of Inform and then make tweaks to the details on my end? That would be amazing.

Thanks!

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Sounds great!

To send a DM, click on my profile image. But, just to be sure, I’ll DM you now so that you can respond.

Feel free to take your time. I’ll be very busy Feb 1 and 2 but before or after that should be fine.

When I say open source, I mean you can post the code on github so everyone can look at it and suggest changes, but for sure you would be able to edit your own copy and make any changes you want. I don’t ask for any ownership in the code at all, since this sounds like a personal gift for a friend and I just want to help out.

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This sounds like a fun project. I could certainly help out, but timing is a problem, as I’m already overcommitted. I would write it in Inform 6 using the PunyInform library, so it would certainly have that Infocom look and feel. See how you go with @mathbrush and perhaps treat me as a backup. I’ll send you a PM anyway.

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