[Entry] project3.code

[Sangfroid]

so~~ here's my entry! i'm going to take Moosaders advice, and take an iterative approach to creating this work. i haven't finalized the name yet

Story
you play as a 'hacker' involved in a small group which is (for political reasons) targetting an unnamed evil organization in order to expose their unknown evil plan. evil organization finds out about the operation when something goes wrong, leading to your friend being captured in a dramatic 'hand yourself in' scenario. can you rescue your friend and foil that evil organization once and for all!? time will tell!

Gameplay
there will be two main aspects to the game:

1. navigating through a text based world in order to progress the story, which involves interacting with npcs, reading dialogs, and finding information/artefacts to help you.. there are no physical enemies or anything like that, the next part is what makes it fun (if anything).

2. using a simulated computer that supports input of real code.. for example, you might come across a locked chest that requires a keycode before it's unlocked. in this case, you'd to create a brute force program in order to find the information needed to progress the story. so in that sense, it's a bit of a programming-puzzler, although it will be basic, and not everything will be as realistic as that scenario.. it's dificult to design everything to be realistic, so i'm giving myself some room to be as illogical as i like, as long as it's fun.

Technical stuff
i'm using C#/XNA to make this, for two reasons really; i wanted the freedom to handle the text drawing code myself, and .NET reflection gives me an easy way to implement user-input code evaluation bridged to actual game code. i'll try to have this running on linux/mono, too, if possible. i know there exists a mono xna implementation but it's not complete iirc. i hope it'll be enough. i will release the source code once i'm finished, but it will be messy, because i'm focusing on getting it working before i overthink structures and optimizations.

Progress!
working on the engine is allowed, so i've been doing just that for now. it's nothing special at the moment, i'm just drawing glyphs in standard grid form. before the compo starts, i'm looking to add functions for: displaying dialog (somewhat of a HUD), user input (for the computer screen), a text map loader, and possibly some screen transitions/cool text-effects to show off.



sorry in advance if any of you find my writing annoying, i'm not very good at it.

[Moosader]

Gameplay
there will be two main aspects to the game:

1. navigating through a text based world in order to progress the story, which involves interacting with npcs, reading dialogs, and finding information/artefacts to help you.. there are no physical enemies or anything like that, the next part is what makes it fun (if anything).

2. using a simulated computer that supports input of real code.. for example, you might come across a locked chest that requires a keycode before it's unlocked. in this case, you'd to create a brute force program in order to find the information needed to progress the story. so in that sense, it's a bit of a programming-puzzler, although it will be basic, and not everything will be as realistic as that scenario.. it's dificult to design everything to be realistic, so i'm giving myself some room to be as illogical as i like, as long as it's fun.

I think that sounds really fun!

[Sangfroid]

well~ there's no way i would have made this on time, so i'm sorry for that - but i have been working on the game muuch~ and it 'will' be finished sometime soon! i have changed the concept almost completely, it is now called Texploit, and I have a bitbucket page here: https://bitbucket.org/iiyo/texploit-game/overview

it's still 'hacking' themed, but presented in a more realistic and challenge based way. you have a virtual computer environment which is supposed to feel almost like a terminal based linux type os. the terminal is complete and includes a fully working text editor. it's also possible to compile C# programs and execute them (although there is currently only one API function which prints to the screen, however it does so via .NET remoting across appdomains, so creating more functions to interface with the games will be very easy).

i have all the levels designed, i just need to create the API functions necessary to complete them, and i also need to flesh out the mission synopsis/briefs a bit!

here's a youtube semi-timelapse of me creating a 99 bottles application within my game as an example of the progress (720p for watchable results): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyDS5kkps6g
i should also point out that the source code is a hellish mess