OK, this may be a potentially stupid question (or at least one with a relatively simple or even obvious answer) but... title. I was having idle thoughts about making a short, simple combat-less text-based porn game, but I know nothing about programming. I'm assuming it's some kind of Flash, but is there a simplified way of doing it? Is there a template for making a game like this simply (so I just have to write the scenes and hook them together with links) or do I have to learn a lot about coding first (keep in mind I don't want to make anything more complex than a simple "choose your own adventure"-type story)?
What engine was used to make CoC and TiTS?
- Thread starter Jash
- Start date
CoC/TiTS were made with Flash. Specifically, ActionScript 3. Making an AS3 game will require a great deal of effort on your part, especially if you're not familiar with the language.
If you want basically a CYOA-style story game, there are a LOT of better alternatives. Twine, Squiffy and Quest, Ren'py, probably others.
If you want basically a CYOA-style story game, there are a LOT of better alternatives. Twine, Squiffy and Quest, Ren'py, probably others.
The more practical answer to this is that the engine is homebuilt, though runs through Flash. Still, it depends on what you're trying to do. As said, a CYOA that goes down a tree of options? Lot of smutty sites just for that. Something where you run around and hook up sex scenes? That's going to be a lot more effort, though you could try lowballing it and using something like RPGmaker if you really wanted that sort of thing.
It's a laundry list of things. Off the top of my head:
- It was Fen's first real time coding a game, so he didn't know what he was doing at all.
- There's no standardization, meaning some NPCs in camp exist as status effects of all things, while others operate entirely differently.
- The way Fen set everything up made it extremely laborious to add new content in (esp. combat, if I recall). Especially compared to TiTS.
- The real killer: CoC went open source, and a bunch of people dramatically changed the code around. Often in ways Fen didn't understand or otherwise has trouble coping with, making it even MORE time consuming the get anything done.
TL;DR CoC is babby's first game, but Fen learned a bunch and made TiTS a heck of a lot more stable. Then Geddy swept in and improved a bunch of things under the hood, but this time without the "Let's make the lead coder not know wtf is going on" part.
Ok here a an even stupider question than the OP asked if someone had enough time on there hands and the skills to do so could they take all the content and re-code it entirely from the ground up so it no longer has all these issues and Problems? and while I'm at it if someone who knows what they are doing were to take up this task how many hours would it take 20+, 30+, 50+, or 100+?
Of course it's entirely possible to recode a game with all of CoC's content. However, the time wise the answer is definitely 100+ and that + could easily represent allot of hours. The thing is CoC's content is not in some kind of universal consistent format that you can write a program to automatically translate for your new engine. You would have to go through every scene, enemy, etc and manually recode it for your new engine. It's unlikely anyone will ever consider it worth the time investment. Even the mod is just gluing things on to the original codebase. Even if it were somehow possible most of the momentum behind CoC is gone. Lots of the original writers have moved on to other projects and Fenoxo is financially committed to TiTs. If you love CoC it's better to hope we will someday get a CoC 2 using TiTs codebase (or a new engine).
For the original posters question about writing a text based game, my suggestion is the use Twime as a relatively easy environment to develop in, and is cross platform.
With more skill Ren'py seems really good as well but the engine seems best suited to games that are image heavy
I also develop some purely using html and javascript but probably best to someone who is a programmer to some degree, especially with browser compatibility issues.
With more skill Ren'py seems really good as well but the engine seems best suited to games that are image heavy
I also develop some purely using html and javascript but probably best to someone who is a programmer to some degree, especially with browser compatibility issues.
1,000+, easily. Considering the sheer volume of content in the game (at least 1-1.5 million words), the fact that you'd have to basically remake the mechanics from scratch, and how messily the content's all intertwined with itself and the code base, and how you wouldn't have access to many (maybe most) of the original documents.... yeah, it's really not worth the effort. Especially since that would by no means cause FenCo to start writing new content for it, having better code doesn't really help the end-user at all.
The TiTs engine is opensource you can find it at https://github.com/Fenoxo/sourceTiTS. However, it's not under a permissive licence meaning while you are allowed to view its source you're not actually allowed to do anything (like make a derivative game) with it. Fenoxo has said people may use the CoC code for non commercial projects but (to the best of my knowledge) he has not granted any similar permissions for TiTs.
Twine, ChoiceScript, inklewriter, Inform 7; etc.Tangentially related, but Fen should really consider making a user friendly engine of his own or contributing to some vanilla projects. Even Triple AAA studios like Bioware have used them. Dragon Age Keep used StoryNexus for the Last Court, and you're certainly not worse writers than Bioware. Failbetter Games has a pretty good blog on it: http://www.failbettergames.com/home/i-want-to-write-for-games/
Color me interested. Gonna have to peep that in detail when I have a few free hours.
Making things is fun, but dredging through the patchwork love child projects of others is not. It is, indescribably tedious, and I would probably burn out at about 5% of the way in if I were to try. The task is not complicated, because the mechanics aren't complicated, and much of the code is text walls anyway. But... that's such a dreary, slow and unrewarding task, reverse engineering others' code. Object oriented stuff so often ends up messy because you can approach things so many different ways. (Even so, I still prefer OO. And hate Java, despite it's simplicity.)
I've only paid much attention to Mutations.as and MarbleScene.as, and I would guess that those are probably simpler than the 'game engine' stuff. But, there are still a lot of things that strike me, which could be standardized, encapsulated and cleaned up better.
I could... use ming with the python wrapper, and code it in python, because I absolutely adore python and it makes everything fun and clean. The fact that the game is completely non-intensive, in GPU and CPU, makes cross language stuff a lot more viable. Actionscript is not terrible, but it's not fun.
OOH OOH, HTML5 is viable too (canvas, javascript), I didn't think of that, that would be a learning experience for me. It's kind of replacing flash anyway, and would probably work with mobile systems very well. It's taking over, the wave of the future. (I bet, rewriting a textual porn game isn't the best resume material, hah.)
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There are people using HTML/Javascript, Twine, and Ren'Py to make games similar to CoC/TiTS with images. We're talking buttons, inventory, smut, and I play them and love it. Here's a few examples.. "A Spell for All" by cmacleod, "Demon on a Starship" by rimyrr, and "Superpowered" by BAAL7734. It can be done and done well. I've heard of Twine with Sugarcube being supereasy to learn and can look nearly identical to CoC. Just put your own spin on it and I'm suggesting Twine to cut your teeth on but if you can quickly learn code, you can do wonders with HTML 5. And yes Ren'Py is easy to code in but you would have to really finesse and finagle it to get it to look similar to CoC/TiTS but once you get the setup done right, adding on is a breeze.
If I get any names wrong, I apologize!! It got really hot today and didn't sleep well.
If I get any names wrong, I apologize!! It got really hot today and didn't sleep well.
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I can quickly learn code, once you learn a certain language 'archetype' you don't really learn languages anymore... you just, rapidly refresh a particular set of semantics and then promptly forget it when you're done with it, hah. Or at least, I do... If I were to attempt anything like this, I would probably do it from scratch, using 'engines' like those would probably frustrate and slow me down more than not. Just getting straight into it is simpler, it guarantees you don't run into 'engine limitations' later that you have to work around to get what you want, and it's that much less to learn.
Besides, I would strive to replicate every position, font and graphic perfectly, not just, nearly perfectly. It would only be to improve the code structure, I'd make a point of not sneaking in any subtle changes.
And by Python, I meant the same, to do it without any game engines like Ren'Py, then compile it to C, and compile that to flash. But just HTML5 script would probably be best, and highly portable and browser ready.
I would need a looot of encouragement to do such a thing.... Kitteh mentioned an "HTML version" in the first post of the mod thread, but I'm not sure how that's coming.
edit: Thank you for all the references, as I really don't know anything about these tools (or this 'genre' of games), and would not have found them myself.
Besides, I would strive to replicate every position, font and graphic perfectly, not just, nearly perfectly. It would only be to improve the code structure, I'd make a point of not sneaking in any subtle changes.
And by Python, I meant the same, to do it without any game engines like Ren'Py, then compile it to C, and compile that to flash. But just HTML5 script would probably be best, and highly portable and browser ready.
I would need a looot of encouragement to do such a thing.... Kitteh mentioned an "HTML version" in the first post of the mod thread, but I'm not sure how that's coming.
edit: Thank you for all the references, as I really don't know anything about these tools (or this 'genre' of games), and would not have found them myself.
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