QB Express "Text Map Game" Entries
Included with QB Express Issue #5 - December 30, 2004
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THE CHALLENGE
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This challenge was to create a text-based game using only one "map" made entirely out of text. The game had to have a character (represented by the DOS smily face character) that players move around with the arrow keys. Everything else was up to the programmer.

This challenge was inspired by one of my personal favorite QB games of all time, Virtual Pimp. This game was made by Mike Kristopeit and Eric Boudreau, and uses a very simple text-based interface. It is a crime-based RPG, reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto and all those economy simulating games like Drug Wars. It's got very addictive gameplay, and a lot of cool random events that keep things interesting. Your game doesn't have to be anything like this; the only thing it has to have in common is that you play as a smily face on a text-based map. Other games that have used text graphics in a similar style are: Jocke The Beast's Dark Woods 2, Lost 2 by Groovy Concepts, P.R.O.G.U.E. by Dunric.

In Issue #4 of QB Express, I posted several screenshots of text-based games for inspiration and answers to questions I received about this competition. There was also some discussion about this competition on the official competition message board thread at my site.

Here is a complete listing of the rules for this competition:

    Rules

        * Your character must be the standard DOS smily face character. (CHR$(1), I believe.) He or she must be moved around with the four arrow keys.
        * Your game map / environment must be text-based, and consist of only one screen. No scrolling screens or walking into a "building" that is on another map.
        * Your map may adjust based on user input, but it can not change completely. For example, you can have your character pick up items, shoot bullets, interact with other characters that move around the map, open doors, push walls, etc. -- but you can't, for example, have your character push a switch and have everything on the map change. That would mean you're loading a second map.
        * Your game may be of any genre -- RPG, puzzle, shooter, strategy, dating game, etc.
        * Your graphics must be entirely text-based. Absolutely nothing but text. (You may use as much colored text as you want.)
        * You can use any screen mode you would like.



CONTEST ENTRIES
===============

We had two entries for this competition:

    * "The Numbervold" by Ryan Szrama
    * "1st Encounter" by Thomas Nixon


1.) The Numbervold

Ryan Szrama's entry for the Text Map Game competition is The Numbervold, a neat RPG. This was the only entry to come in during the original month-long entry period for this competition, and he has already released it to the public. Jocke The Beast and Wildcard helped promote it on QBasic News a few weeks ago, and you can find out a bit more about it on Jocke The Beast's message board.
The Numbervold

Here's The Numbervold's story, straight from the manual:

    "The Numbervold is a wild, harsh frontier area inhabited by only a few people and many monsters. Even the land itself is known for its mirages and illusions that have led travellers off course for days at a time. It's almost always impossible to tell just how for you travel across the deceiving terrain."

    "A single village sits in the Numbervold, inhabited by adventurers, a few shopkeepers, and more than a few loonies. The village is constantly plagued by monsters springing up out of lairs that just seem to appear in the Numbervold. As such, the Elder is always looking for some brave young bravo to purge the countryside of the foul monsters and their dens. Work is never scarce in the Numbervold, as you adventure as one such bravo. Gain glory, prestige, and most important of all, gold, as you fight for bounties and for your life in the Numbervold!"

Having played The Numbervold quite a bit, I have to say that it's a pretty neat game. It has an interesting gameplay mechanic that I haven't seen used before in any game before: your character is placed on a field of random numbers that dictate how far he can move in any direction. Since your goal is to travel to specific locations (the town or the dungeon), you often have to take a round-about path to get there, and usually involves some strategy to get from point A to point B without overshooting it or getting catapulted nine spaces out of your way.

"The Numbervold" plays like a pretty standard RPG with random enemy encounters, hit points, gold that you collect, magic potions and spells, and townsfolk who like to have one-line conversations with you about random topics. There is no real story to this game other than what is posted above, and the only real goal is to level up and purchase spells. In a future version, Ryan hopes to include various quests and townsfolk at the inn to gossip with, but for now these features have not been implemented.

Although the game is pretty barebones when you actually play it, reading the manual gives it a whole lot more personality and context, and definitely adds to the experience. It also explains some of the strategy to the battle system and lets players in on a few secrets to find more gold or how to defeat a powerful Lair Beast.

Overall, pretty standard tried-and-true gameplay, aside from the whole "number" aspect to move around the map -- which sets this apart from a completely generic RPG, albeit slightly. There's a lot of gameplay time to be had here for the patient -- spells to buy, lairs to conquer and gold to find -- though there's not really much "spice" to break up the repetitive gameplay. As far as I can tell, "The Numbervold" pretty much goes on forever, but every round is more of the same.

    The Verdict: A fun game for a while, with a unique concept and quite a few features to explore, but it's in desperate need of a story or at least some goals to give the player motivation to sit through the repetitive random battles and Lair Beast fights.



2.) 1st Encounter

Thomas Nixon's entry to this competiton is a dark, scary mix of survival horror and RPG stylings set on a ring-shaped space station around the Earth constructed to protect our homeworld -- though nobody expected it would be the site for the first bloody encounter with hostile aliens. Here's the plot, straight out of the game itself:

    "World leaders decided to prepare defense to stop attacks from space. They built a massive ring that went around the world and was able to defend every inch of the Earth."

    "The ring required many people to work on it. You decide to join up for a job after being fired from your current job as a Software Designer. You go through a virtual training program on Earth to prepare you for living and working in the ring."

    "After the few weeks of traing you are shipped to the ring with another couple hundred people. Once getting there you never really liked being in space. You developed horrible sleeping patterns and would spend most of your night working overtime."

    "You had been working overtime in your office tonight. You finally decide to go to bed and try to get some sleep. As you are finishing up the power flicks off. This hasn't happened before. Very dim backup lighting comes up, You can't see all that well. You hear screams from down the hall, human screams..."

1st Encounter uses some unique text tricks to create a dark, murky atmosphere that looks almost as if you're carrying a flashlight through a dark room, illuminating only the area immediately around you. Only the areas of the map immediately surrounding your character are visible, and areas farther away from you gradually fade darker and darker until you see nothing but pitch black. This helps create the scary, claustrophobic feeling of other dark games like Doom 3 or Resident Evil nicely. This was only enhanced by the dead smiley face graphics littering the game map in pools of dark red "blood" and the dreary gray and black hues used to color the map. This flashlight or "fog of war" effect was by far the best aspect of the game, and actually made the random battles with angry sharp-clawed aliens fit with the atmosphere.


As far as the gameplay of 1st Encounter goes, there's really not much to it. You walk around the map, fighting random battles with aliens, while searching for an escape pod to send you safely back to Earth. The game is fun while it lasts, but it is unfortunately about four minutes long your first playthough, and after you memorize the path you have to take, it can be be beaten in less than a minute. Every time you play, the game uses the same map maze where you must find some hidden power-ups, then find the escape pod where you fight a final battle with a large alien before you make your escape. Battles use a standard turn-based text system, and you fight only two types of enemy through the course of the game: a randomly-occuring alien with sharp claws and the stronger final boss. Once you beat the game, you're treated with a one-paragraph ending that completes the story for you. That's really just about all there is to it.

I really liked the engine that Nixon put together for this game, and I wish that he had developed it into a longer story with a more challenging map. Due to the restrictions of this competition, he could only have one map, but he certainly could have made it more confusing than it was, and added more than just two super power-ups. I also think that the hit point balance was a little off for the game, since there wasn't really any challenge to it. The aliens didn't do enough damage to present any real threat so long as you had ammunition for your gun. If you started with only two or three bullets and had to find more ammo and health on the map as you went along, all the while just barely escaping death, this would have much more interesting. I would have also liked a little bit of interaction with your "dead" co-workers...maybe they're not quite dead, and if you press the action button next to them, they murmur some final words to you and die. Or maybe you could even find another survivor who gives you weapons or something. Anyway, there was a lot of potential here and I wish Nixon had time to develop this further. But since he rushed it out on the last possible day, I see why it's a bit lacking. Oh, and an alien game set on a ring around a planet...can anyone say Halo?

    The Verdict: A cool concept that should have been developed more. As it stands, this game is too short, unchallenging and linear.




RESULTS
=======

Winners of this competition will receive an award image to put on their websites (eventually, once I get around to it...actually, I still haven't made the images from the first compo...) and also, um, bragging rights. Woohoo!

First Place: "The Numbervold" - Ryan Szrama
    Because of its greater number of features, challenge and polish, "The Numbervold" squeaks ahead and wins this competition.

Second Place: "1st Encounter" - Thomas Nixon
    A cool concept with a lot going for it, but the game needed more flexibility and gameplay.





This readme was taken from QB Express magazine, Issue #5 from December 30th, 2004.  It was written by Pete Berg.
You can find QB Express at Pete's QBasic Site: http://www.petesqbsite.com