A Text-Based Alternative

[Annacat]

So, after seeing some interesting presentations at Mysterium, I had the seeds of an idea - not quite a full-fledged idea yet, but I'll throw it out there.

For many years now, we've been kicking around the idea of some sort of immersive/interactive Narayani experience, but ran into issues of lack of tools and/or lack of the necessary skills to create visual art.

When I was hearing about Seltani, though, I was thinking about the possibility of something more text-based. (http://dev.seltani.net/) In the past my hesitation with that has been that there hasn't been much multiplayer support for such an endeavor, but with the new open source tools it seems more possible.

Any thoughts?

[laroon]

Sounds cool. Glad to see you're doing well

What's new?

[Annacat]

Whoa, that was fast!

I'm currently at Mysterium (and seriously need to get some sleep!) and am having a wonderful time. In less up-to-the-minute news, I have a semi-new job I really enjoy, working with adolescents with mental health and behavioral challenges in a residential setting.

Anything new in your life?

Also, any thoughts on something multiplayer and text-based? Because I think I could maaaaybe figure out how to pull something like that off...

[laroon]

I'm learning HTML, PHP, MYSQL, Javascript, and CSS, practicing piano hours a day, making updates on my website (and making vids too!), and writing music all the while.

I'm thinking a text based multiplayer thing would have to have a few different chat windows: environment, local chat, global chat. That kind of thing. Different outlets for making sure you get all the information. But that would be cool.

The older games like Zork and Kings Quest did a good job with a lot of text input to tell a story and make a really creative gaming experience. They were single player though...

Without being able to see anyone, you'd have to make it clear to you on your surroundings. So there's that. It might just be a list of people around you in one list, a description of your location in another window, your chat window one place, your action window ("Go East") in another.... inventory and quest log in another thing.

A lot to look at but I'm sure it'd be easy to work with. Narayan based, eh?

[Annacat]

Well, I was thinking something like this:

dev.seltani.net/

For various reasons I think it would be awkward to just toss our Narayan stuff into Seltani, but the tools are apparently open source, so we could do something similar of our own.

We would just have to discuss what sorts of areas we wanted to build, etc.

The creator of Seltani did a demo and I thought it was a pretty effective means of storytelling. I've played around with it a bit on my own computer and it seems pretty evocative.

[laroon]

Oh that's kinda pretty and manageable. I don't see how it's multiplayer, though, other than you can chat to other people.

I was thinking you'd need someone to do something while you do another or something.

[Annacat]

Well, the way Seltani works (and keep in mind, I'm not saying this ought to be exactly like Seltani, it's just an example of a text-based adventure) is that there are instances that are solo and instances that are public.

The majority of the areas appear to be public, and in those places people could not only chat but would see each other's actions as you move through the world. Because the characters would exist in the same "space," players could also use the sort of emoting and action descriptions that people do in MMOs.

The solo instances are more like the Cleft, and they're a minority of Seltani. The main reason for them appears to be if the physics wouldn't work with one player seeing another (for example, a hang-gliding area) but could also be used for private space.

There's also the future possibility of areas for groups (like the Uru hoods) for members, but that hasn't happened yet.

It's certainly quite different than Uru. On the other hand, with our level of resources it also might be a reachable goal, and the barrier to entry would be low if people wanted to contribute.

[mystrivenexile]

Do you have a sample of what such a thing looks like, or do I actually need to sign up on Seltani? I can imagine a text-based multiplayer game but in a few different ways really. There might be a better idea of how to brainstorm stuff if there was a better idea of what the engine is capable of doing.

[laroon]

I currently have the ability to make a choose your own adventure game thing. It'd be simple interface and single player, but it's a start.

I'll be learning more in the meantime

[Annacat]

dev.seltani.net/about Does not require a log in.

github.com/erkyrath/tworld Under the hood, so to speak.

Maybe this will help you techy folks?

As I understand it, the tools are open source so we would be free to use it for our own project.

[mystrivenexile]

I saw the about page and the code, but I was wondering more of what the look/feel of it would be like, without having to figure out how to run it Somebody posted the video on Reddit and I took a quick look. I guess it works as I might expect for everything except for the multiplayer aspect. I still don't quite get that (I just clicked around the video, so maybe somebody else knows?). Most of what I saw was the building-the-world aspect.

Taking yet-another-quick-look but this time at the code, it seems simple enough. I guess I'd have to actually see some of the Seltani side of things to see how it is integrated.

[Annacat]

Yeah, it's a bit hard to explain, since I actually saw a presentation about it and I'm just passing things on secondhand.

Short of actually exploring Seltani (which is pretty cool to do anyway, if you have some free time!) maybe seeing the presentation will help:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsUTW5Z8M9Y&list=PLxkV43WY77wEwMZWR-2ANheDFThPEQYA_&index=2

[laroon]

This is what I can do now:

www.stevenjacks.com/website/olaria/

It's not much, but it's a start haha.

[Annacat]

Very cool, Laroon!

Just so you guys know, I'll be out of town for a couple of days doing family stuff and won't have internet.

[mystrivenexile]

Yeah, that's the presentation I was skipping around through. Will take a look at that portion shortly.

Laroon, that's pretty neat. I'll have to take a look at this and play around with it myself. It's crazy that it just produces a giant block of case statements in the source....