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Media (Apple) Businesses Media Apple Entertainment Games

Adventure Story Game for iPod Released 62

Posted by pudge from the sneak-one-more-in-just-for-fun dept.
XO Play writes "XO Play today released an adventure story game for the iPod called 'The Rise Of The Lost,' puts you in the role of Sir Jacob Zaviour. Your mission is to travel through lands and fight the evil Wizard Sazque. As you read through the adventure you will be asked to choose your destiny by selecting from a number of options found at the bottom of the page, similar to the 'choose-your-own-adventure' series. The game costs $9.99 is played via the Notes section of your iPod." It wouldn't take too much to write a generator for such games, as Notes uses small text files with HTML tags for links, as long as you had the data to do it with.
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Adventure Story Game for iPod Released More

Adventure Story Game for iPod Released

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  • Wait a second... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by andfarm ( 534655 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @07:05PM (#8380085)
    If I read this correctly, this "game" is just a bunch of cross-linked text pages. Ten dollars for this is a rip-off -- there's no non-deterministic play (same thing happens every time if you make the same decisions), no "memory" (the only source of state is the current position -- there's no way to implement an inventory!).

    Frankly, I'm rather unimpressed -- the probable quality of the game is VERY low.

    • get creative, and also technical docs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by morcheeba ( 260908 ) * on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:14PM (#8380764) Journal
      You could creatively overcome these limitations...
      - To generate "random" numbers, you could have 10 "links" to each page spaced closely together - (for example every letter of the words "go north" leads to a different outcome). The user would pick one. This is defeatable, of course, but if the result is delayed a bit (you die in the room after the next), it would be hard to track. The links could also be shuffled every time you resync.

      - you can encode inventory with lots of copies of each page. For example, file "Room001-0010" means you have object 2, while "Room001-0110" means you've got objects 2 and 4 (couting in binary here). Sure, it's wasteful, but if you've got 40 freakin' gigs, it's possible. Also, different stages of the game could use different objects, and you could have the user trade them in when they reach a certain stage. Once you've killed the dragon, your sword gets stuck in his gut.

      Just give it time, and someone will write a script to port Zork ;-)

      Get the whole tech specs for the notes format here [apple.com]. You can link to music, so this adventure could be quite entertaining.

      • Deterministic != Bad (Score:4, Interesting)

        by OECD ( 639690 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @09:54PM (#8381808) Journal

        All good points, but it assumes "deterministic" is a bad thing.

        One of the pleasures of gaming is figuring out the worldview of the game designers. With more open-ended games, like RPGs, you can profitably read the rules. I have several games I've never played, but studied the rules like they were Holy Writ.

        The interesting thing about page-linked games (like the old text-adventure novels) is that you have to play it through several times to 'get' what the designer thinks is good/bad behavior. "Should I fight the first chance I get, or try not to fight?" It's the urge to understand the system that underlies true hacking.

        Heck, if Zork gets ported to the iPod, I might buy one. That or they aquire a radio tuner.

        • I wasn't really judging determinism -- it was just the lack of the ability to use it if, if a designer chooses, that I thought was a limitation.
        • Heck, if Zork gets ported to the iPod, I might buy one. That or they aquire a radio tuner.

          I think Zork would be completely unplayable on an iPod. Either you'd have to create a version which listed all possible options from a room (which would take a lot of the fun away), or you'd have to let people enter words by selecting each letter from a list (which would be painful). Many years ago, I had an INFOCOM interpreter for the Psion Series 3, which was a lot of run, in spite of the fact that it only had en

      • Your random number idea is interesting. However, the inventory idea wouldn't work for any but the simplest games -- you see, not only should a user be able to pick up objects, but also drop them in various locations. Even not considering this, let's say you want a game with, say, 32 objects. Not taking "can't happen" situations into consideration, you'd have to make 2**32 = four billion (!!) variations of each possible spatial situation. Youch.

        Given these limitations, porting Zork to this format would be w

    • Re:Wait a second... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @05:07AM (#8384221) Journal
      If I read this correctly, this "game" is just a bunch of cross-linked text pages. Ten dollars for this is a rip-off -- there's no non-deterministic play (same thing happens every time if you make the same decisions),

      I don't remember the box price of the classic Level 9 games in 1980's - I was a teenager then, so my father was paying for my computer games - but they were also text-only and strictly deterministic. And I think they were worth no less than modern video games I buy for my kids today...

    • Re:Wait a second... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by localman ( 111171 )
      Wow -- you've obviously never read a choose-your-own-adventure book. Those are a blast. We're talking printed paper here: now that is simple and deterministic.

      Also, I don't imagine that writing a good choose-your-own-adventure is easy. I don't know if this one is actually good, but for the sake of argument... it's like writing a book, but with the twist of exploring a wider set of plot possibilities.

      A friend of mine [thereverend.com] wrote a wacky online choose-your-own-adventure [bradthegame.com] that was quite popular back when the we
      • It's true that deterministic entertainment is okay for certain forms of media (print, film, etc...), but the common expectation is simply that games on electronic devices have greater interactivity than this one appears to. It's true that I haven't seen this game in particular, but I've seen similar games on the computer, all of which have been of distinctly inferior quality. (Read: they sucked.)

        Anyway, why would I want to play a game of this sort on my iPod? (With the exception of the built-in Solitaire a

        • Re:Wait a second... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by localman ( 111171 )
          Anyway, why would I want to play a game of this sort on my iPod? ... If I wanted choose-your-adventure, I'd pick up one of those books

          Well, if we assume that the iPod one is well written, you might choose it since that's the only medium it's available in. It's not like all the choose-your-own-adventures are interchangable :)

          Just like I still boot up my crappy PC to play CounterStrike even though I'd much rather use my Mac :)

          But you're right that it would be fairly clunky. I guess I'm thinking that cho

  • Great (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @07:08PM (#8380137)
    Does this mean future 3rd party iPod games? I'm definately hoping for more!

    -Teh Pimp

    • Re:Great (Score:4, Informative)

      by martingunnarsson ( 590268 ) <martin&snarl-up,com> on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @02:06AM (#8383668) Homepage
      There might be more to come, but if they are limited to use the notes function in the iPod, don't expect anything fancy.
      If Apple provided an easy way of executing programs from the harddrive and a nice specification of the iPod API, then we'd probably se lots of small games. I wonder if that's ever gonna happen.
      • When I first read the post I assumed some sort of audio choose-your-own-adventure. Perhaps you could combine the notes with various audio tracks. For instance, this might work well in a spy game; after following some instructions through the notes you get a chance to eavesdrop on a phone conversation [go to track 40]. Many possibilities here.

        I don't have an iPod so I'm not sure if this would work.

  • Ever Since I Read This, All I Can Think Of... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @07:14PM (#8380197)
    Now that I've seen this, over and over in my head I keep hearing the same line:

    "You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike."

  • I can't play Doom on my iPOD? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by parksgm ( 723709 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @07:29PM (#8380346)
    Cry me a river...really. Who in their right mind would turn their nose up at the quality of a game on an iPod, which is market primarily as a MUSIC PLAYER?!?

    If you want to play games while you walk around, go get a GameBoy Advance, download games to your cell phone, or strap a 12 volt lantern battery on that old PlayStation of yours and get to it. Otherwise, remember that text based games did entertain quite a few people back in the day, and probably can provide entertainment value even in these days of 4GB portable music players.

    Just because you can't get 85 FPS doesn't mean there is no entertainment value. If you'll recall, the Mona Lisa, which is only ONE FRAME, has been going strong for quite a while now.

    Sheesh.

    • Re:I can't play Doom on my iPOD? (Score:5, Funny)

      by p4ul13 ( 560810 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:01PM (#8380661) Homepage
      Besides; the iPod has solitaire, which is arguably the only game anybody will ever need.
    • Wow...I get modded as a troll for posting a critique of an unfair comment against an innocent little iPod game that only wants to entertain and make people happy.

      Did I mention I also own and like the iPod (in fact, I bought the mini on Friday night)? From that mod, you'd think I was employed by Microsoft.
    • I agree...but more importantly, why would you pay 9.99 for a new text game, when you could go and probably find one of those old text games (hhgttg!) and convert them? And a couple people probably will, and when they do, you can probably just download them for free if you dont feel like doing it yourself! :)

      • Re:I can't play Doom on my iPOD? (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I agree...but more importantly, why would you pay 9.99 for a new text game, when you could go and probably find one of those old text games (hhgttg!) and convert them?

        I agree. And why would anybody buy new music when they can just listen to music that's already around? And why go to see new movies when there are plenty that have already been made? And don't get me started about books...

      • And how exactly do you propose converting a game that requires you to type in commands that are parsed to a format that just allows hyperlinking? HHGTTG would be ridiculously easy if you were given a menu including, say "hang bathrobe from hook" instead of having to experience the frustration of figuring out exactly what you have to do.
    • No one is turning up their noses, but it'd be nice if we could do more. As evidenced by Solitaire, Brick, and Parachute, the iPod is capable of decent graphical games (and other apps), and it'd be nice if Apple would release an SDK allowing their development. Maybe iPod Linux [sf.net] will get there at some point...
      • Agreed. More games and better games than text games would be nice. Ever play Bolo...old school Mac game, but playable in 256 colors and grayscale on 68020 Macs.

        The best part of Bolo was the network play... The scroll wheel would make a great directional control. The more advanced aspects of the game might be difficult to implement due to the lack of buttons, but a simplified version just might be feasible. (but I know nothing of the iPod's processing capabilites, to say nothing of the programming challen
    • >Just because you can't get 85 FPS doesn't mean there is no entertainment value. If you'll recall, the Mona Lisa, which is only ONE FRAME, has been going strong for quite a while now.

      And while it might only be one frame, the resolution is *bitchin'*!

      --Kimota!
  • I absolutely ++love++ my iPod. It's a very well engineered device (the best IMHO), and I think it has huge potential.

    Seeing apps like this (however simple) becoming more available for it is a cool thing...

  • But how do you quit? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ZackSchil ( 560462 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:44PM (#8381032)
    I tried making a similar game a while back. Mine was text and ASCII "art" based though (mostly used for maps but there were other graphics). I got pretty far into making the game before losing interest but I always had one problem. After you navigate about 300 pages, there is no way to get back to the iPod's main features without hitting back 300 times! How did these folks solve the problem? Do you have to reboot the iPod every time you get bored with the game? How do you save your game? (I used an ingenuous little trick for entering 4 digit level checkpoint passcodes)

    • Re:But how do you quit? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ZackSchil ( 560462 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @09:07PM (#8381280)
      I figure I'll karma whore and explain my system for passcodes. When you reached a certain part of the game, you'd write down the passcode it gave you on a sheet of paper, then reboot your iPod (to go listen to music or whatever). The next time you opened the game, on the first screen there would be an option to enter in your passcode. Clicking on it brought you to a screen that looked like this:

      1 - - -
      2
      3
      4
      5

      1 through 5 being links. Each number, say, 4, would lead to a document inside the folder named after it with that number, containing another file that said:

      4 - - -
      - 2
      - 3
      - 4
      - 5

      It would go on like that until the last number, of which each contained its own file. For invalid numbers, it would say "Invalid Passcode" with a link back to the title screen. Valid passcodes linked to whatever state and location the game was in when you read off the code.

      I guess it might be fitting to discuss the method I used for my game. Each time you decided to perform an action, you'd be linked to a different world state (or folder). That way you could actually interact with the game even though the notes feature does not have access to anything more than basic HTML (no scripting at all). Luckily, most world states were only a few files large because the action would usually trigger a puzzle that wouldn't allow you to leave a room. One of the biggest troubles was just keeping all the wold states straight amongst what grew to literally hundreds of thousands of files. If you broke a vase in your house in the game and were allowed to leave, a whole "broken vase" world had to be created. Every single text file for the game had to be duplicated and scrubbed through by a script to make sure that the game "remembered you had broken the vase. This is the main reason why I gave up on the game. Every insignificant event that wasn't self-correcting had to have its own world branch in which that task was completed! Oh, if only for some basic, basic scripting. Or perhaps a game making tool that simulated scripting by allowing me to program with it, then generated all of the event branches and HTML files for me. Then, I'd make a game. A good one. Hell, maybe I'll write the tool! Some day. Alas, for enough free time...

    • I tried making a similar game a while back. Mine was text and ASCII "art" based...

      Dang, some long-dormant synapses just fired.

      There was a text-based game format called SPAM (just try and google that now.) I wrote an editor and player for the format (in HyperCard, no less.) My editor could export to HTML, for a web-based 'click-through' adventure. I wonder if I still have those files... it might make for a whole minute's worth of entertainment between songs...

  • MESE: Already done. (Score:5, Informative)

    by ahknight ( 128958 ) * on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @09:01PM (#8381219)
    As far as a program that uses text files and makes a CYOA thing, that's already done: Multiple Endings Story Engine [codepoetry.net]

    Works great. :) No one's seemed interested so it's not seen many updates, but works great the way it is. If someone wants to write some up I'll happily host them. It's real simple to write. I almost made an editor for it as well, which would be rather simple, too.

  • 3rd Generation Only (Score:4, Informative)

    by metalligoth ( 672285 ) <metalligoth.gmail@com> on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @09:23PM (#8381449)
    Before you mod me down for whining about not having a new feature on my old device, let me tell you that is not the intent of this post.

    The linked notes (which the game relies on), as far as I know, only work on 3G iPods and the miniPod. I couldn't find anything on the game's website that stated this.

    I imagine a lot of not-ultra-techie Mac/Win users might get pissed off if they download the game for their 2G or 1G iPod and it doesn't work. Just a thought.
    • Why wouldn't they spot this? It uses the Notes feature. Your iPod doesn't have Notes. Ergo, you can't play the game. It's akin to saying "this game uses sound for a lot of stuff"; if you don't have speakers, you don't need to be remotely techie to figure out that you can't get the experience.

      It would be different if it said "this uses a version of Feature X", but if you don't have Feature X at all then ninety-nine per cent of people will twig they can't use the thing.
      • You said:

        Why wouldn't they spot this?

        I said:

        not-ultra-techie

        The site only mentions Notes once, and doesn't explicitly say, "Check your iPod to see if you have this before forking over your money." That means many average users will miss that little detail. That is, until they've paid for the product they can't use.

  • I need an iPod now (Score:5, Funny)

    by DavidLeblond ( 267211 ) <me@davidleblon d . com> on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @09:44PM (#8381686) Homepage
    I can finally catch that damn Wumpus on the go!!!

  • I was interested until... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JANYAtty. ( 678934 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @10:42PM (#8382349)
    I dont have an Ipod but I thought this sounded neat when I started reading the article. Then I got to the punchline- its a text based game. I really thought it would be multimedia- hear an audio file, a text description and maybe a low res graphic. "You enter a room, theres a growling sound from the corridor you just came from. which way do you go" {Hear growling and scrapeing sound} [see graphic of small section of map- use dircetional pad to choose direction.] you get the idea.

    • Re:I was interested until... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The article summary did say that the game was played using the Notes feature of the iPod, so iPod users wouldn't be misled into thinking that this was a graphical game. Notes is text only, with some rudimentary markup for hyperlinks.

      There are a few simple graphic-based games on the iPod, but to my knowledge there is not currently an SDK available to allow third parties to develop these. The iPod as it exists today is pretty much a closed platform.

      Doesn't bother me, though --- what it's designed for, it ex
  • is there a port for Thy Dungeonman yet?

  • evolution of the iPod (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @04:00PM (#8390719) Journal
    This doesn't surprise me as much as it seems to surprise other people. Look at how the iPod started...as a simple mp3 player. Then you could take notes on it. Then you could keep your addresses in there. Now you can download MapQuest directions, take audio notes on it, store pictures. When Apple sees people doing things for their iPod (such as Windows users finding hacks so they too can use them...Apple said "hm...ok...we'll make them available for Windows too"), they see if it's viable and if so, they go for it. I don't for one second believe the iPod is done with its evolutionary process.

  • Two words... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bennomatic ( 691188 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @05:06PM (#8391524) Homepage
    "Hello Sailor!"

    I spent two weeks locked in a dark room with Zork III. Worse than crack, those old Infocom games. Too bad that, without a keyboard, you really couldn't replicate the gameplay of those on an iPod.

    Anyone interested in developing same for the Handspring Treo 600?

    • Does that Handspring still use Palm OS?

      Here you go. [latz.org]

      It has a couple of interpreters, and if you hop around it has the games. I just refinished Hitchhikers and am working through Planetfall.

      Note - there are other Frotz's around [csd.uwo.ca], though I got the OS X one through Fink. Using Terminal really brings out the throw-back experience if you set the background to black and get some neon green for the letters. Though I am 'cheating' with a larger than 80*24 screen for legibility. :)
  • Any guesses on the longevity of the the mini's vs. the full size iPods?

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