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Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2017 9:30 pm
by R-Tape
Without cheating. If so which one and how long did it take?

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2017 9:43 pm
by Rorthron
The Hobbit.

27 years.

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2017 9:48 pm
by Blerkotron
I seem to remember beating Subsunk, but I can't remember if I had any magazine help or not.

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2017 11:38 pm
by Spud
Never got remotely close to completing any. I generally give up after I've visited all the locations accessible by a simple north/south/east/west. I might try to solve some of the puzzles but get de-motivated very quickly and end up typing all the swear words I know in and then reset and play International Karate.

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 12:40 am
by AndyC
I completed a few back in the day, Heroes of Karn and the Famous Five one spring to mind. I might have also done the 48K version of Never-ending Story, although I can't entirely recall whether I gave up on that one (possibly it was one where you could bugger it up by missing a crucial item early on?)

Generally it took a long time to get through them and a significant amount of effort with mapping and saving progress. I don't think I'd have the patience for it these days.

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 6:50 am
by Juan F. Ramirez
Never. The closest was Gremlins the Adventure.

I've never progressed much in any.

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:10 am
by Pobulous
These I completed on my own:

Quest for the Golden Eggcup - I even managed to find a shortcut of using the prison as a container to hold objects.
Kobyashi Naru - although I never realised until just now that it had a sequel - that's my Christmas sorted. I could never get anywhere with Venom by the same author.

These ones I had minor assistance:

Colour of Magic I used a clue to get past the pirate.
I completed Rigel's Revenge but I needed help on using the bomb.

I remember getting nowhere at all with:
Venom
Bored of the Rings
Sherlock
and many others

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:31 am
by Morpheus
If i remember rightly

The Hobbit
Mountains of Ket
Urban Upstart
Snowball

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 9:28 am
by Ralf
Two or three in my native Polish language.

Text games have the biggest language barrier of all types of games. You don't need much English skill to play Manic Miner but playing Hobbit is a different story. And In the 80s my English knowledge was unfortunately too poor to play any text games.

It changed in the 90s but at that time I was already using PC. Actually I learn then a lot of English from adventure games by Sierra and Lucas (King's Quest, Space Quest, adventure games about Indiana Jones and so on). But it was usually done with some solution.

There are two problems with text/adventure games:

- you can get stuck and it's not fun. You start walking in circles, typing random stuff, clicking everything. At such moment it is really better to use solution than to grow your frustration

- early text games had bad parsers. You couldn't type "GET SWORD", you couldn't type "TAKE SWORD", you couldn't tipe "COLLECT SWORD" because it had to be "PICK UP SWORD" for example. It again was very frustrating to fight with game limited vocabulary, especially if you had a limited vocabulary yourself ;)

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 9:49 am
by AndyC
I often heard the criticism of bad parsers, but to me the problem was always the opposite - adventure games attempted to have more of a parser than they ever should have. If you look to the games that spawned away from the genre, like the Dizzy series and point and click games, they were always attempts to simplify the vocabulary and instead focus the challenge of finding the right approach to a problem.

I'm a great believer that a good adventure would need nothing more than directions and simple verb-noun interaction. If I type USE KEY and I have a key which can be used with either something I have or something in my current locale, then it should just work. Get things down to that level of simplicity of interaction and the player should never get entirely stuck. In the worse case scenario, the player can at least exhaustively attempt everything to get back on track.

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:19 am
by R-Tape
AndyC wrote: Tue Dec 19, 2017 12:40 am Generally it took a long time to get through them and a significant amount of effort with mapping and saving progress. I don't think I'd have the patience for it these days.
I would consider setting time aside to focus on one adventure, and if it was engaging enough the mapping etc could be part of the fun. But only if I knew there are none of the usual traps (mentioned above: guess the verb, repeat same thing 3 times for action, nonsensical puzzle solutions) that result in wandering in circles.

I played When Alex didn't do it last night (TAP yet to be added) and it's very good, but if I didn't cheat early on I my brain would never have thought of this solution:
Spoiler
USE AFTERSHAVE (you pour aftershave on slippers, slippers become smelly)
USE SLIPPERS(SMELLY) The dog holding your keys in its mouth is now interested in the slippers and drops the keys.

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:49 pm
by Ralf
I often heard the criticism of bad parsers, but to me the problem was always the opposite - adventure games attempted to have more of a parser than they ever should have. If you look to the games that spawned away from the genre, like the Dizzy series and point and click games, they were always attempts to simplify the vocabulary and instead focus the challenge of finding the right approach to a problem.
I would agree. Point and click game is actually a text game with very limited number of basic actions (look, get, move, use,talk) represented either by words or by icons. On the other hand a classical text game may require you to pour, dig, connect, eat, repair, rotate, smell, sing, decode and so on. And if the author was really mean, he could expect you to type things like navigate, lubricate, infuriate, purify and whatever verb exists in the language ;)

I have seen in a few games (or instructions to them) a list of vocabulary used by the game. And actually I like this idea, it really limits your erratic wandering in the mist ;)

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 4:46 pm
by R-Tape
I liked the Sam Mallard option menu, that encouraged me to make a lot of progress, but it still couldn't resist making a trap of having to examine the same picture 3 TIMES!
Ralf wrote: Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:49 pm erratic wandering in the mist ;)
If you ever make your own text adventure there's the opening scene sorted.

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 4:54 pm
by kolbeck
No, not even when trying to cheat :lol:

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:04 pm
by PaulJ
Depends on the definition.. I first played Adventure One (Abersoft) in 1983. I then played many other 'colossal cave' variants (on many machines) over the years, slowly making progress. Sometimes I then went back and tried the same things on the Speccy version - sometimes it worked, others not. Eventually I completed it around 1998. Sat in bed with a small windows portable PC (HP I think), and then went back and did it on the Speccy version.

As for any others... ermmm nope!

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:22 pm
by R-Tape
PaulJ wrote: Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:04 pm Depends on the definition.. I first played Adventure One (Abersoft) in 1983. I then played many other 'colossal cave' variants (on many machines) over the years, slowly making progress. Sometimes I then went back and tried the same things on the Speccy version - sometimes it worked, others not. Eventually I completed it around 1998. Sat in bed with a small windows portable PC (HP I think), and then went back and did it on the Speccy version.

As for any others... ermmm nope!
A mere 15 years then.

That reminds me - I completed your text adventure this year "The Firm" from Rediscovered Realms, made a map, ran out of paper and had to squish the drawing up and everything. It was fairly short but there were none of the usual text adventure failings.

I tried "Bounty" and got lost and cheated.

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:36 pm
by Morkin
Pobulous wrote: Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:10 am Kobyashi Naru -
That's the only one that I can remember finishing back in the day without using hints from magazines etc.

I finished Lords of Time but had to look up one single hint when I got stuck near the end. I was a bit annoyed with myself about that.

There are newer offerings that I've finished, like Sam Mallard and On Reflection. Both those titles adopted a modern approach to their design like LucasArts did back in the day with their point & clicks, reducing the number of unfair deaths and dead end which require a reload of an old save.

Were there any adventures back in the 80s that didn't allow you to die/mess things up, like Monkey Island etc.?

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:44 pm
by Wall_Axe
tried one about a computer convention, couldnt get very far even though i really tried!

Rigels Revenge, there seems to be a machine gun in one direction and then if you go into suburbia someone follows you and kills you,
if you go in another direction you get hung by your legs and then killed,
now only one of those situations is probably the one that is winnable, but it is daunting when you dont know which one
cant think of anything to try but any hints would probly spoil it

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 7:56 am
by R-Tape
Wall_Axe wrote: Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:44 pm tried one about a computer convention, couldnt get very far even though i really tried!
Which text adventure was that?

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 7:59 am
by R-Tape
Okay Populous and Morkin say Kobyashi Naru, does that mean it's fair and something a tired middle aged man can expect to complete over an Xmas break? (For sake of example)

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 12:46 pm
by Morkin
I reckon so - it's icon driven so you don't have to go snaffling for synonyms (good name for a prog band).

I remember dying in the game but it wasn't common, and if you use snapshots you should be OK.

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:41 pm
by Juan F. Ramirez
As I said before, I've never complete a text adventure, assuming 'text adventure' is about typing for actions. But if we include adventures with icons I could say I've complete only one, Dinamic's Cobra's Arc. Nice controls and graphics but very easy to complete, though.

Image

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:52 pm
by R-Tape
You didn't complete a Dinamic game Juan, you dreamt it :-p

(ta for the tip)

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:56 pm
by Morkin
Yeah, I'm amazed that anyone has managed to get a screen grab of a Dinamic game without seeing the words "juego terminado" on it somewhere... ;)

Re: Have you ever completed a text adventure?

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 3:10 pm
by Juan F. Ramirez
Have I told here that I once finished Abu Simbel Profanation?

... yeah, using infinite lives. Even with that, my mental health suffered a lot! :D