Text-and-Wiki-Based RPG: Warning, experimental gameplay!

Hi,

I took some time I had to create something more exprimental that I've been wanting to do for a while.

Beware: Very experimental game play!
Runs on Linux, Mac, and even Windows!

I recommend getting a friend or family member to download the game as well, and trying it out in your LAN. Or check for a friend who's currently on your IM, get them to download it and use a service like hamachi to avoid having to open ports.




Get the game from IndieDB:
Win, 32 bit:

Win, 64 bit:

Linux, Mac, Source:



Features:

• Create your own 15*15 squares old-school-look avatars!
• Up to 5 Players
• Cross-Platform
• Random story every time you play!
• Giraffes and primates, Castles, Dungeons and Treasure, Da Vinci and Spiderman, and everything else that Wikipedia has an article for!
• Export your story directly to .html and show everyone. Especially me. If you came up with a cool story, I'd be glad to post it!

The Wiki-Based-RPG...
... is a text-based adventure, that randomly chooses words from a wiki-article you supply it with. The server plays as the storyteller, who must use these words in his/her story. The clients are the heroes who can reply to the story by doing things, saying things and using weird stuff from their inventory.
Every time the storyteller chooses a word to continue the story with, the game loads the corresponding wiki-article in the background, and searches for 5 new links/words on that page. This way, the game takes you once across the entire game.
The storyteller can choose to use words to use in the next section of the story, or he/she can put them into the clients' inventories for them to use.


More info and an example story on the Game's IndieDB page.

Technical Stuff:
I used the truly awesome Löve2D engine. The game is open source, so if you get the Löve engine, you can compile/edit/mod the source code. The game's scripted in Lua, which is very simple to get used to.


C&C welcome.

Oh, wow, this sounds great
I have to try this!

I'm a bit confused when the server suggests new words and how they're supposed to be added later, but still. Cool idea. I love creative exercises like this.

Anyone up for a game later today, say in ... 6 to 7 hours from now?
EDIT: Wait, I can't guarantee that I'm online then. Sorry. Still want to try this, just can't give a date and time

It's pretty straight forward, but yes, I see how it is confusing when only seeing the front end.
- Server starts a game and sets a start word. Word is looked up on the Wiki. If it is found, it is set as the start word. Internally, it saves the URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Word
- Ingame, the server starts writing the first piece of the game and must use The_Word in his/her text. As soon as the first part is done, he/she gets to choose one of 5 randomly selected wiki-internal links from the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Word by clicking on them. The one he/she chooses (let's call it Word2) is the next word. Internally, the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word2 is saved.
- Once the clients have replied, the server can then once again write a text, this time using Word2. Then, the game picks 5 random links from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word2 and the game continiues.

This is the simplified version, but it should give you the idea.

Would be awesome if you could try it out! If you try it over the net, make sure to port-forward Port 8080, or use something like hamachi.

Well, that's pretty cool!

Congrats!

Yay, I just saw it as well! Check out what it did to my stats!:D
http://www.indiedb.com/games/wiki-based-rpg/stats

Hah, that's pretty neat!

It must be pretty exciting to see articles about your game. It's great to see that in that regard your creative risk-taking paid off!!

Are you still working on this, or are you back to work on CSiS (for which I probably messed up the capital letters)? Or do you - gasp - dare to work on both at the same time?

I work on this when I'm not at home (I got myself a nice Linux-Only laptop, on which i can't work on CSiS).

There was a nice suggestion involving dice rolling, I'll look into that, and voting. Though the main game it feature-complete and should probably not become more difficult.
So I'll probably do a little more work on it, but it's mostly done.

Wow, great stats! That's better than KarBOOM has ever had in a day!

I've never heard of the Love2D (sorry, can't find umlauts from here) engine -- how'd you find it? And why'd you decide to use it?

There was a programmer's convention nearby, which I went to. There was this gamejam, and one of the guys organizing it was vrld (https://github.com/vrld/) who's a long-time user of the Löve2D Engine. Also, I really wanted to use Lua, and he did this great 1-hour introduction to it. That's how we ended up using Löve.

I'm working hard on making the game translatable.

I coded it so that it's very easy to make your own translations: Duplicate the English.txt in the Languages folder, rename it (example: Chinese.txt) and translate it to chinese. At startup, the game automatically loads all language files in the Language subfolder and when you click one of the languages, it replaces all the standard strings with the ones in the chosen language file .

In the meantime, the game's been featured on a podcast, in a youtube video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a09YFtt9N74&t=6m22s ) and multiple blogs in various languages. Yay!

This concept is massive Germanunkol! You hit a sweet spot there . Hope to try it one day soon, keep us posted with your progress!

Thanks!
I'm having problems with input of special characters. The Engine I use (Löve2D) had Problems with non-standard-english characters in the past, and the version that fixes it has not yet been released officially.
So I need to build the source of the engine and somehow distribute it along... which is somewhat of a hazzle. But once that's done, the update is on its way, and then the game can truly be played with any wikipedia version there is.

New version online:
http://www.indiedb.com/games/wiki-based-rpg/news/version-06-released-call-for-translators