I started working on my interactive fiction idea, "A Ghost Without Dying," and I quickly realized I should try to create an authoring program to create all the piles of data - room descriptions, objects, character dialogue, maps, etc -- that the game would need. A lot of this is reinventing the wheel, of course, since text adventures have been around since the 1970s, but I'm trying to familiarize myself with file handling on the TI 99/4A so it's a good exercise. I'm also interested in adding more character interaction than I've seen in classic IF that I've played.
I called the authoring system "Lamplight," and I'm adding sections to it as I go. I created all the rooms, based on a hand-drawn map, and then added descriptions and directions. I wrote an introduction and title screen, then finally started on the main game file. So far all it's really doing is reading data off the disk. Next I'll add in things like the conditions for winning, the movements of the non-player characters, and fight sequences. I hope to have A Ghost Without Dying at least "travel ready" by the end of this week, even if all the game options aren't in place yet.
Once I finish this adventure, I want to move on to a couple other projects, but when I finish those I'll come back to Lamplight, expand its capabilities, and try to create a much more elaborate interactive fiction world. Now that I've created an editor to help with a lot of the file setup, I can devote more time to the maps, puzzles and prose and make the game that much more atmospheric and unique.
I called the authoring system "Lamplight," and I'm adding sections to it as I go. I created all the rooms, based on a hand-drawn map, and then added descriptions and directions. I wrote an introduction and title screen, then finally started on the main game file. So far all it's really doing is reading data off the disk. Next I'll add in things like the conditions for winning, the movements of the non-player characters, and fight sequences. I hope to have A Ghost Without Dying at least "travel ready" by the end of this week, even if all the game options aren't in place yet.
Once I finish this adventure, I want to move on to a couple other projects, but when I finish those I'll come back to Lamplight, expand its capabilities, and try to create a much more elaborate interactive fiction world. Now that I've created an editor to help with a lot of the file setup, I can devote more time to the maps, puzzles and prose and make the game that much more atmospheric and unique.
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