Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

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ainslec
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Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by ainslec »

Hi, I'm the author of Adventuron Classroom and I am making this post (my first post) to let you know that Adventuron can now be used to author ZX Spectrum text adventure games ( via a source code translator ).

PROOFS OF CONCEPT

There have been two "proof of concept" ports to come out of this development recently:

1 - Escape From Dinosaur Island DX - https://adventuron.itch.io/dinoisland

Escape from Dinosaur Island DX is set on an island, where your balloon has crash landed, and there are some dinosaurs in various places. There is also soup. It's a beginner level text adventure, not too small, not too large.

Image

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2 - The Cave of Magic - https://adventuron.itch.io/cave

The cave of magic is a single puzzle text adventure game which is there to serve as a basic tutorial on how to build text adventure games with Adventuron.

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HOW TO MAKE AN ADVENTURE WITH ADVENTURON - TUTORIAL

A tutorial on how the cave of magic was written is available here :



https://medium.com/@model_train/video-t ... a194aeab44

POSITIVES

* Well, you can write Adventuron games in a browser window, and it has a very rapid development procedure.
* It is also unencumbered by 8-bit memory limitations, so if you are writing your magnum opus, and suddenly run out of kilobytes on the PAW port, then you can continue onward with your game, and possibly drop your 8-bit plans (not ideal).
* Adventuron has a few features that PAW doesn't have an in converting the source code, it essentially implements code patterns in PAW source code to emulate the adventuron features.
* Adventuron has many documentation resources, and is a very fast system for building adventure games. John Wilson regularly writes (albeit mini) games in a morning. It's possible to put together quite well designed games in a small time-frame. Not every adventure has to be mammoth, and given modern attention spans, more smaller adventures can be fun.
* Adventuron 2 PAW is very well documented (click the documentation button at the bottom to read the PDF documentation.
* Adventuron 2 DAAD is coming soon (target lesser 8-bit and 16-bit micros with the same sourcecode).

NEGATIVES

* This tool can generally be used for a QUILL++ set of features. Even though Adventuron has many powerful features, obviously not every feature can map, and even features that approximately map to PAW might not map well enough to be compatible. For that reason, where there are incompatible features, the feature is simply not allowed.
* It's not (yet) a turnkey solution. You have to copy the code out of the adventuron window, into another window (adventuron 2 paw), then copy the result into a textfile on the local filesystem, then run the inpaws compiler, then take that tapfile and load it into PAW.
* If you are going to be distributing games that use the PAW interpreter, a PAW license is still required. This is documented at the bottom of the page here.
* Adventuron's graphics are not passed through. It certainly is something I'll be looking at, with externs and the like, but for now, it's text only. It's possible to use the PAW editor and overlay graphics atop of the exported source, but it's not the cleanest solution, so you are better waiting off for a better solution (which will come).
* There is a danger that if a lot of lazy text adventures appear that these adventures will start to look and feel a bit samey. I think a well written adventure, that has it's own colour scheme, own font, and own personality can feel distinct but perhaps the default settings will be used too much?

MORE ABOUT ADVENTURON CLASSROOM

Adventuron Classroom is targeted at education, and its integrated tutorial, which may be especially interesting to Speccy lovers, is to remake Excalibur: Sword of Kings, from beginning to end.

Games made with Adventuron can be packaged as standalone HTML with the Adventuron interpreter, but now, with the "Adventuron 2 PAW" source code converter, Adventuron games can also be targeted at the Spectrum by leveraging the PAW interpreter.

If you have an 8+ year old child why not partner up and make a text adventure game together? Or simply go through the tutorial together. The tutorial also includes an introductory adventure game to play through in order to learn the basic concepts of text adventure gaming.

Anyway, here is a little screenshot of the code editor, because animated gifs don't seem to work in the forum.

Image

More links:

More information about Adventuron Classroom (including sample games) + links to documentation.

Adventuron Classroom's Editor (which requires a NON MOBILE BROWSER).
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Morkin
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by Morkin »

Looks interesting.

Used to dabble with the Quill back in the day, would have been nice to have easy reference objects, locations etc. in this way rather than having to remember or keep referring to numbers..!
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ainslec
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by ainslec »

There is always a need for good adventure games out there.

My own bias for adventure games, are games in which there are a lot of puzzles and object interactions. I also like graphics too, but right now, any graphics you create will only be shown on the adventuron version, not the ported spectrum version.

If you create your graphics in Multipaint, to be ZX compliant, there is every intention of being able to integrate your graphics into the game in a later version of the converter.

I'm also looking for adventure games that are suitable for absolute beginners, and teach the player the mechanics of playing adventure games in the pre-game.

The beginning of Dinosaur Island or Excalibur both try to educate new players (especially children) in how to play this genre of game.

Adventuron 2 PAW automatically chooses a legible font too (will be configurable in the future).

At the end of the day, just play with it, and if you don't have fun, or if you feel frustrated, I haven't done my job.
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8BitAG
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by 8BitAG »

Having coded an full-length adventure from scratch in a few evenings this week, with Adventuron, I can confirm it's the quickest and easiest tool for coding an adventure I've ever used. :)
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by Ralf »

Definitely an interesting project.

I agree with the others - the first new feature you should do before anything else is graphics import.
It's quite hard to find people who would enjoy text games in 2019 and it's even harder if the games are text only.
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by 8BitAG »

Ralf wrote: Wed Aug 07, 2019 11:39 am I agree with the others - the first new feature you should do before anything else is graphics import.
It's quite hard to find people who would enjoy text games in 2019 and it's even harder if the games are text only.
I'd say that was bollocks. Graphics add very little to a text adventure for me. But I've been playing text adventures for thirty-odd years. :) I always feel that people who moan about the lack of graphics aren't people that play text adventures anyway.

The graphics import isn't anything to do with Adventuron, but a limitation of PAWs. That's for someone else to address. Most of the people writing text adventures these days tend to write pure text adventures anyway.
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by llewelyn »

I agree with you 8bitAG about the graphics. Lets face it even at their best they're nowhere near as good as ones own imagination.
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by Joefish »

It's great to have more game dev tools. I've never tried to write an adventure myself, although I think I'd rather have something visual done in Windows rather than write scripts.

However, if 'Cave of Magic' is supposed to be a tutorial, I don't think it sets a very good example. It has some pretty major flaws for something so simple. It's neat that it supports shortcuts like I and X, but it falls over when you type 'EXAMINE (singular thing)' and it says 'You see nothing special', but 'EXAMINE (plural things)' gives a big clue. Then you type 'GET (item)' and it says 'You see (item)' but you then have to type 'GET (item)' again to pick it up.
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by ainslec »

Hi Joe,

Thanks for the feedback.

You are right about tree / trees, and about get apple being required to be entered twice. It was bothering me too, but a bit of public shaming is good for the soul.

The Adventuron version, the ZX version, and the source code has been updated to address the criticisms.

I also added a new loading screen to the game, but I'm not an artist.

The updated version is named "ZX-Spectrum--The-Cave-Of-Magic-V101.tap".

With regards to graphics, yes, I also personally prefer adventure games with graphics, but many people don't care or in fact prefer games without graphics. The tool is what it is.

The Spectrum ports currently do not carry across graphics, but as said previously, it probably will in time, via the Adventuron 2 DAAD tool and the maluva plugin.

The cave of magic isn't a dog whistle for one puzzle adventure games, it's a minimum viable product demonstration of the technology. I do hope people put together games much better than the cave of magic, which is objectively, rubbish.

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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by Ralf »

I'd say that was bollocks. Graphics add very little to a text adventure for me. But I've been playing text adventures for thirty-odd years.
I agree with you 8bitAG about the graphics. Lets face it even at their best they're nowhere near as good as ones own imagination.
All right, I suppose we differ here.

First I'm not any kind of big fan of text games. I play some from time to time, even created a few walkthroughs for Rzx Archive but it's not my favourite genre.

For me pictures were always some kind of reward in a text game. When you finally managed to open some door or escape from some hole and you could see a new location. A great feeling.

And another thing. I like games for Zx Spectrum. I like this distinct look, clever taking attributes into account.
But a text game without graphics looks and feel exactly the same on all systems. It doesn't matter if it's Speccy, C64 or modern PC.
So even if you play it on Spectrum, it's exactly the same experience as you'd play it anywhere. And it makes a lot of charm go away for me.

Just my personal opinion.
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by 8BitAG »

Ralf wrote: Wed Aug 07, 2019 3:30 pm And another thing. I like games for Zx Spectrum. I like this distinct look, clever taking attributes into account.
But a text game without graphics looks and feel exactly the same on all systems. It doesn't matter if it's Speccy, C64 or modern PC.
So even if you play it on Spectrum, it's exactly the same experience as you'd play it anywhere. And it makes a lot of charm go away for me.
I would completely disagree with this and say that they really, really don't (in a large amount of cases) feel exactly the same on all systems as they do on the Spectrum.

Text-only games can be, and often are, incredibly distinctive on the Spectrum. It's one of the only platforms that you can instantly pick out in a batch of screenshots. Particularly PAWed Spectrum text adventures which often feature unique coloured text compared to homegrown efforts elsewhere.

The amount of text on a line and the amount of text you can fit on a screen at once, not to mention memory restrictions, can greatly shape the form and content of a text adventure. There's a rhythm to the text. A different pace to the delivery on the Speccy, simply because of the screen resolution that you have access to using the homebrew tools. A Quilled or PAWed game is a completely different beast to something like an Infocom or Level 9 adventure. And a Spectrum-produced Quilled or PAWed game, if done well, is also very distinctive.

I've written (and ported) text adventure games across a whole host of 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. I've played, playtested and reviewed hundreds of 8-bit text adventures over the past thirty years or so. And I can firmly say, there is nothing quite the same as playing a text adventure on the ZX Spectrum. Spectrum homegrown text adventures lose something, imho, when they're ported onto other machines.

(Getting back to Adventuron... Chris has cleverly managed to capture a lot of the distinct Spectrum-ness so if you want to recreate a Spectrum-like game in that engine, you can.)
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by ainslec »

I'd certainly agree with 8BiTag that adventure games on the Spectrum have a unique feel, which I adore.

Dinosaur Island DX (on the Spectrum) to me is not just plain old text, it uses colour to draw attention to important details on the screen, and to make the game look more visually appealing without graphics. It'll never look as visually appealing as a game with (good) graphics, but text is not just text as much as a car is not just a car. The quality of the content, style, layout, and flow, is really important.

This converter doesn't carry across graphics because it's not a trivial task to carry bitmap graphics into PAW, as PAW never supported bitmap graphics back in the day (directly), only vector graphics. I'm not arguing against graphics in adventure either, after all the Adventuron version of Dinosaur Island DX and The Cave of Magic have them - and some of my favourite adventures had amazing graphics (Robin of Sherwood, Gremlins, The Famous Five).

If you want to write (and play) a game, on the Spectrum, with images, you can take the source code produced by Adventuron 2 PAW and splice it with some location graphics edited on PAW. Or just write in PAW proper, and use the graphics editor there.
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by Morkin »

Re: the graphics discussions, I'm split on this. While I don't think they're necessary (Level 9's offerings came along oozing with atmosphere), I remember being excited by The Hobbit when I saw a new location graphic appear.

I also liked the Speccy styled graphics of Dinosaur Island (which is pretty good BTW). :)
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by RWAC »

I've been playing around with this and it's very impressive.
If I was to create a game with it, how easy would it be to convert it to the spectrum?
Would I be better off sticking with PAWs?
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by 8BitAG »

RWAC wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2020 9:18 pm I've been playing around with this and it's very impressive.
If I was to create a game with it, how easy would it be to convert it to the spectrum?
Would I be better off sticking with PAWs?
If you know PAWs and your real ultimate intention is to create a game for the Spectrum then, yes, you'd be better off sticking with PAWs. (I'd actually recommend using inPAWs. personally, for a quicker development loop.)

Moving from Adventuron to PAWs is perfectly doable, though. (I've ported across several games now) And Adventuron is a great tool to develop a game with. You just have to be aware of potential issues with memory and the possible need to recode elements not yet supported by the Adventuron to PAWs conversion process. (You also do really need to know a bit about PAW, because you'll always need to tidy up and fix little issues in any converted game)

These are the Adventuron games I've ported across to the Spectrum...
http://8bitag.com/games/deer-creek.html
http://8bitag.com/games/trolls-revenge.html (I even jury-rigged a way of getting the graphics into this one)
http://8bitag.com/games/hoppit2.html

Using the Adventuron to PAW tool is certainly a lot easier than having to manually convert an Adventuron game to PAW, which is what I did for John Wilson's Ramsbottom Smith and Behind Closed Doors 7. :)
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by 8BitAG »

Things have moved on a bit since this thread was first posted, by the way.

There is now an Adventuron to DAAD tool, which has allowed Chris to port a version of Escape from Dinosaur Island DX to the Spectrum +3 that includes the graphics... See...
https://adventuron.itch.io/dinoisland
...for download.
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by firelord »

I tried the online version. It is very good and simple.
Convertion tool "Adventuron 2 DAAD/InPaws" doesn't work though.
It shows error for "at" and "msg" (Non expected attribute provided : msg)

Is there a workarround? What is the simplest way on making an adventure on PC (Win/Linux) and converting it to ZX?
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by 8BitAG »

firelord wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 8:32 pm I tried the online version. It is very good and simple.
Convertion tool "Adventuron 2 DAAD/InPaws" doesn't work though.
It shows error for "at" and "msg" (Non expected attribute provided : msg)
This is a very old thread... over two years old now! (Well, nearly three years since the starting post!) It'd probably be worth checking with Chris what the current status of the tool is and which specific build of Adventuron you need.

Which version of Adventuron are you using and what are you trying to convert to DAAD? You have to specifically work in 8-bit mode to create a compatible adventure.
Is there a workarround? What is the simplest way on making an adventure on PC (Win/Linux) and converting it to ZX?
Adventuron *is* nice and easy to use but you will always need to do some post-export editing to make a really decent Spectrum game, imo. There is a Discord group if you have questions and an active community in various places. Chris is also reachable on Facebook and Twitter.

Other options for coding on PC to make Spectrum text adventures include using inPAWs with a text editor (such as Visual Studio Code) to create a PAWs game. Or to use DAADready! and a text editor (again, such as Visual Studio Code) to create a DAAD game.
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by firelord »

8BitAG wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 9:12 pm
Other options for coding on PC to make Spectrum text adventures include using inPAWs with a text editor (such as Visual Studio Code) to create a PAWs game. Or to use DAADready! and a text editor (again, such as Visual Studio Code) to create a DAAD game.
Thanks for the reply :)
I know it was an old thread but It seemed an active project.
I tried the online https://adventuron.io/classroom/ . Copy/pasted code (with 8-bit compatibility checked) and the online convertor to inPaws/DAAD (which seems old) showed the error I posted above . Is there another more recent tool for doing a conversion?

Adventuron scripting language is extremely easy to use. InPaws is a bit more messed.

The process is -as I understood- you create a file with your script and then you convert it (using InPaws/DAAD) to a TAP that contains data for ZX version of Paws.

So, my 3 options for PC are Adventuron/InPaws/DAADReady . This saves me a lot of searching time :)
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by 8BitAG »

firelord wrote: Wed May 25, 2022 6:28 am I know it was an old thread but It seemed an active project.
It is. Lots of games being made with Adventuron and there's just been another successful TALP game jam where the winner was an Adventuron game.
I tried the online https://adventuron.io/classroom/ . Copy/pasted code (with 8-bit compatibility checked) and the online convertor to inPaws/DAAD (which seems old) showed the error I posted above . Is there another more recent tool for doing a conversion?
What are you trying to convert? Ticking the "8-bit compatibility" mode, only means that any code you create from that moment onwards has access restricted to just features that can be used in an 8-bit game.

If you're copying and pasting code then you are not necessarily pasting code that is suitable for porting to an 8-bit machine.
Adventuron scripting language is extremely easy to use. InPaws is a bit more messed.
As an experienced user of both, having produced many finished games with each of them, I'd say that both languages are equally easy to use.

If you are creating a ZX Spectrum game with Adventuron then you are going to ultimately end up with code in PAWs/DAAD format, so it is really useful to actually understand how an inPAWs/DAADready source file works as well, anyway.
The process is -as I understood- you create a file with your script and then you convert it (using InPaws/DAAD) to a TAP that contains data for ZX version of Paws.
Yes, you're either translating the Adventuron commands to transpose them into a source file for PAWs (via InPaws) or a source file for DAAD (via DAADready).
So, my 3 options for PC are Adventuron/InPaws/DAADReady . This saves me a lot of searching time :)
There are other popular options, such as PunyInform. There are also other less used tools such as Lantern or AWS.

Which system to use really depends on what type and size of game you want to make, and what sort of features you want in the finished product.
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by firelord »

Thanks for the detailed answer.

I do not want to make anything fancy. My target would be a ZX Spectrum simple game (I use adventuron because the online development enviroment is great and very easy to use & understand).
I have used ZX Paws in the past for a CSSCGC game entry. I have completely forgotten who it worked. So, now instead of re-learning Paws I thought it might be simpler to begin with my PC and then move to ZX.

I copy/pasted code because -as I understood- the way to convert Adventuron script was by the online converter.

I guess I must abandon Adventuron and go from the start to InPaws code.
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by 8BitAG »

I copy/pasted code because -as I understood- the way to convert Adventuron script was by the online converter.
Oh, perhaps that's the issue then. Like I said, this is a *very* old thread. The export to DAAD/PAWs is now done through Adventuron itself, rather than the standalone converter, as far as I'm aware.

My question was (and is still) what is the source of the code that you're trying to convert? Did you follow the tutorial to make an 8-bit compatible adventure?

The tutorials take you through all the processes of making a simple game and exporting it for 8-bit platforms. Obviously, as Adventuron is in active development, things change so the tutorials might not exactly line up.

See...
https://adventuron.io/documentation/8bit.html

...for the end part of the process; once you've coded a simple game in the 8-bit compatibility mode.

Edit: I've just tried out one of the demo games included in that tutorial, and it works fine...

Image

(Didn't see a PAW export option in the menu, but DAAD export worked okay... Although I prefer PAWs, DAAD is a better option for export from Adventuron anyway as Uto has added all sorts of nice little load from disk/128K code extensions that mean you don't need to worry as much about the size of the game or the number of messages.)
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Re: Create Spectrum Text Adventures with Adventuron Classroom

Post by firelord »

ok thanks.
I guess the problem was the outdated online converter.
I'll check again :)
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