I have been working with Java for about a year now and I have yet to make anything real come of it (Outside of android - I built a personal safety application) So I wanted to see if I could drum up an idea for a text adventure built in Java I wish it to be open source as well.

I have been brainstorming this idea for a while now for a while and I have a basic idea of how I want things to flow.

You get the stereotypical introduction of your character being passed out in the woods with no recollection of where they were or what they were doing when they got there. You are saved by two brothers who take you home and nurse you back to health. After you wake up get your equipment you are then set free for the rest of the tutorial. After the tutorial is over a Portal shows up in the middle of town. This portal is used as both an in game catalyst as well as an "Expansion System" to make the game more fun by using user generated content and and mods.

So the portals menu will lay out like so:

- Locations

- Quests

- Community Portal (Link to game site)

- DLC (Link to github mods page)

- Save

- Exit

Naturally you can being up a basic menu offering save / exit / inventory and ETC anywhere in the game so long as you are not in combat.

So the portal acts as a kind of stargate that can take you places. As well as give access to the UGC.

So this is my idea.. What's the general opinion?

The best way to start writing a text adventure is to come up with a decent story and how the protagonist exists and interacts within that new world you have created. Then develop the engine around that.

I found that writing an engine from the ground up before I knew what type of adventure it would run led to me engineering in limitations about what the player could do. I knew how the story should play out, but had written a generic parser and system which was similar to other really basic text adventure games.

You can't beat a blank pad of paper and pen to hammer out a design first.

Good luck.

The best way to start writing a text adventure is to come up with a decent story and how the protagonist exists and interacts within that new world you have created. Then develop the engine around that.

I found that writing an engine from the ground up before I knew what type of adventure it would run led to me engineering in limitations about what the player could do. I knew how the story should play out, but had written a generic parser and system which was similar to other really basic text adventure games.

You can't beat a blank pad of paper and pen to hammer out a design first.

Good luck.

Thanks for the advice! - Pen and Pad it is for this stage! - Might make a dev journal of it.

That's a start. A beginning point. The seed of an idea. There's a lot to grow after you make the tutorial, but at least this is a good jumping-off point.

Can it work? Sure. Will it be any good? Remains to be seen.

The above description is not very detailed which leads me to believe it describes the base idea for the game engine.

(Text, Menu Driven, Hub-Based Questing)

Being a general description, you can literally do ANYTHING with the story.

So go for it. Make the tutorial. Let's see where this goes...

Thanks for the input! - I'll be working on refining this idea over the next few days / weeks.

-TO BOTH OF YOU!-

Thank you both for the advice / encouragement because I have been other places that generally shun a newbie from eking out something of their own.. I wanted to start with a text adventure / RPG because it was something that seemed simple and written in Java meant it could be run just about anywhere right from the package itself.

Good plan needs work but lets see what I can get my brain to plop out. I'll keep posting to this thread with my findings!

You get the stereotypical introduction of your character being passed out in the woods with no recollection of where they were or what they were doing when they got there. You are saved by two brothers who take you home and nurse you back to health. After you wake up get your equipment you are then set free for the rest of the tutorial. After the tutorial is over a Portal shows up in the middle of town. This portal is used as both an in game catalyst as well as an "Expansion System" to make the game more fun by using user generated content and and mods.

So this is my idea.. What's the general opinion?

Why are you settling for "stereotypical introduction" when you know could be original? Good stories and immersion experience need a conflict that is being solved. The main character needs a motive to be the ones solving it. Just my attempt to build something like that, only an example:

Why not try with the character being a hunter that is on a regular hunting trip when something goes wrong? Hunter has a reason to know how to handle firearms and reason to be in the forest. Or you could try with something else and see if that springs up ideas that could interestingly connect to other parts of your story / the gameplay mechanics.

Maybe the person in the forest stumbles on something ancient / alien and activates it by accident examining it, activating the portal system all over the world. So the character feels a bit guilty and has the motive to get to the bottom of the phenomenon that he (seemingly) caused.

About tutorial sections, I think it is important that you teach the player the basics BEFORE you start to drive the story forward. The players needs to be in the character before you can make the player feel afraid, thrilled, curious or angry about the things that happen to the character. Why not have the tutorial part in the forest and after that something happens, blackout, portals appearing, other characters etc. That way already by the time the character blacks out and the world is in upheaval, you'll have the player at the edge of their seat :)

I don't think I have tried a text adventure in a couple decades and back then they didn't have tutorials (not as far as I remember anyways). So I gotta ask, what the heck does a tutorial for a text adventure look like or involve?

You get the stereotypical introduction of your character being passed out in the woods with no recollection of where they were or what they were doing when they got there. You are saved by two brothers who take you home and nurse you back to health. After you wake up get your equipment you are then set free for the rest of the tutorial. After the tutorial is over a Portal shows up in the middle of town. This portal is used as both an in game catalyst as well as an "Expansion System" to make the game more fun by using user generated content and and mods.

So this is my idea.. What's the general opinion?

Why are you settling for "stereotypical introduction" when you know could be original? Good stories and immersion experience need a conflict that is being solved. The main character needs a motive to be the ones solving it. Just my attempt to build something like that, only an example:

Why not try with the character being a hunter that is on a regular hunting trip when something goes wrong? Hunter has a reason to know how to handle firearms and reason to be in the forest. Or you could try with something else and see if that springs up ideas that could interestingly connect to other parts of your story / the gameplay mechanics.

Maybe the person in the forest stumbles on something ancient / alien and activates it by accident examining it, activating the portal system all over the world. So the character feels a bit guilty and has the motive to get to the bottom of the phenomenon that he (seemingly) caused.

About tutorial sections, I think it is important that you teach the player the basics BEFORE you start to drive the story forward. The players needs to be in the character before you can make the player feel afraid, thrilled, curious or angry about the things that happen to the character. Why not have the tutorial part in the forest and after that something happens, blackout, portals appearing, other characters etc. That way already by the time the character blacks out and the world is in upheaval, you'll have the player at the edge of their seat

That is actually a really epic idea! I had not thought about it like that - LOVING this plan though I should tweak it a little so as I am not copying word for word.

I don't think I have tried a text adventure in a couple decades and back then they didn't have tutorials (not as far as I remember anyways). So I gotta ask, what the heck does a tutorial for a text adventure look like or involve?

I mean like basics of movement (From room to room obviously) basic commands and so on like that. - Some people have never played them and I want to promote people being able to get into the game by keeping things simple and well explained from the start.

What do you mean by text adventure? Something like "IF"?

I mean like something like Zork or even Adventure (Those originals)