Age of Fable

[apeloverage]

Hi,

People on this forum might be interested in my 'online gamebook' - www.ageoffable.net .

It's doesn't use the Tunnels and Trolls rules, but the influence should be obvious.

Any feedback is welcome.

[Mhegrrrim Skulltosser]

I am impressed with the site.

I like the interface. There was other software I once looked into to do something similar. Looks like the Age of Fable took it one step further. I would love to see T&T Solos built up in this manner. It would be a refreshing way to blend technology in with our classic pencil & paper gaming style. I'm currently playing a randomly generated character, Taruk Few-Clothes.

Thank you for sharing with us. Here's an exhalt

[apeloverage]

Thanks!

I wrote the 'engine' for it myself, it could easily be modified for Tunnels and Trolls - but it's php, which means your host needs to have php for it to run.

However, if anyone does have a host with php and wants an engine to have browser-based Tunnels and Trolls solitaires, let me know.

[Vin Ahrr Vin]

Very nice. An EXALT from me as well!

[khaydhaik]

Oh, you definitely get an exalt from me for your site, apeloverage!

The one thing I found a bit odd was that the people in the sewers didn't remember me from one visit to the next. I met them three times, leaving them be on the first visit, joining them successfully on the second visit, and then being killed by them on the third visit.

But other than that, I was very impressed with how smoothly the game played, how extensive it seemed, and how events that occurred in one part of the game had an effect later in the game. Good show!

I don't think it would be difficult to convert that engine to T&T, if someone were so inclined. But I liked the attributes/skills that you chose for your game, too.

Do you store any player data in a database on the server, in cookies in the browser, or somewhere else? Just curious.

[apeloverage]

Thanks to both of you!

The people in the sewers was a mistake, which I've (hopefully) now corrected.

To answer your question Khaydhaik, the game doesn't store any player data. It's all in the hyperlinks. If you save your game (the little icons next to the choices), it gives you a string of text which you can paste into any browser, and re-start the game with the same attributes etc.

[khaydhaik]

Ah, I see. Very good.

Have you tried my little diversion, Phantom's Bane? In that game, I store all of the player data in JavaScript variables, except for when you click the button to save the game, at which time it saves the player data as cookies. The trouble there is that some people don't enable JavaScript and/or cookies, so those people can't play the game. I also need to change the way the action buttons are inserted into the document, because the current method makes it impossible for some of the buttons to be used in some browsers.

I also have The UGH Monster Attacks! It's a T&T combat game written in PHP. I've been working on converting it to Java, but the thing that's holding me up now is saving and retrieving data to/from a backend database. I've been reading up on Hibernate, and have made use of Hibernate code that others have written, but I haven't actually written Hibernate code or mapping files myself. Ah, but I won't go into those problems any further here.

The thing that a backend database allows you to do is to show high scores and other similar statistics, which many people would enjoy seeing with a game like Age of Fable, so they can see how they stack up against everyone else that has played it.

[apeloverage]

khaydhaik said:

Have you tried my little diversion, Phantom's Bane? In that game, I store all of the player data in JavaScript variables, except for when you click the button to save the game, at which time it saves the player data as cookies. The trouble there is that some people don't enable JavaScript and/or cookies, so those people can't play the game.

Yeah, that was one reason I did mine entirely in php - the player only needs a normal web browser.

I thought your game was pretty good - I'd put more 'flavour' in though (eg different monster names). Also an explanation of the game system would be good - what skill does in combat, what 'pressing' is as opposed to attacking etc.

Also, where does the picture of the knight come from?

khaydhaik said:

The thing that a backend database allows you to do is to show high scores and other similar statistics, which many people would enjoy seeing with a game like Age of Fable, so they can see how they stack up against everyone else that has played it.

But I do want stuff like that!


PS you could also have luck (more likely to find gold, less likely to run into monsters), speed (easier to run away), and charisma (cheaper goods).

[khaydhaik]

apeloverage, if you want to read about the game system, there are some information pages, the first of which is at eposic.org/diversions/mini-adventure/info/. There are links to a few other pages at the bottom of that page.

Many of the images on my site come from clipart.com, to whom I pay an annual fee so that I may use their images. They're not exactly cheap, but they have so many different images to choose from, some of which are cutesy and amateurish, others that are very well done and great for web sites, and some even for printing purposes.

Since your web server has PHP, does it also have a MySQL database server? I use that for my UGH Monster Attacks! game to save off high scores. I'm using PHP for that.

The things I keep wanting to do are really tedious for me in PHP, so I started converting the project to Java. I dunno, maybe I should have looked into the object oriented features of PHP. It's just that I have all of this Java experience, I thought it would be good to put some of it to use for my own web site. I just don't have the data storage and retrieval experience in Java.

Yeah, I could use JDBC, I suppose, but I was hoping to make use of Hibernate. I've read the Hibernate book, the big one that also goes into EJB 3.0 Persistence. So it's just a matter of finding some time to try out what I've read. Sadly, that will probably not be until next year some time. It seems like all of my good web site work happens early in the year, and then tapers off to almost nothing by the end of the year.

[apeloverage]

I have to say I'm out of my depth here! I learned php by my friend telling me how to do some things, and then getting extra stuff from the php.net website - with the foundation of having learned some programming in high school. This means that I can probably do some gee-whiz things, but also don't know a lot of basic stuff.

khaydhaik said:

apeloverage, if you want to read about the game system, there are some information pages, the first of which is at eposic.org/diversions/mini-adventure/info/. There are links to a few other pages at the bottom of that page.

Many of the images on my site come from clipart.com, to whom I pay an annual fee so that I may use their images. They're not exactly cheap, but they have so many different images to choose from, some of which are cutesy and amateurish, others that are very well done and great for web sites, and some even for printing purposes.

Since your web server has PHP, does it also have a MySQL database server? I use that for my UGH Monster Attacks! game to save off high scores. I'm using PHP for that.

The things I keep wanting to do are really tedious for me in PHP, so I started converting the project to Java. I dunno, maybe I should have looked into the object oriented features of PHP. It's just that I have all of this Java experience, I thought it would be good to put some of it to use for my own web site. I just don't have the data storage and retrieval experience in Java.

Yeah, I could use JDBC, I suppose, but I was hoping to make use of Hibernate. I've read the Hibernate book, the big one that also goes into EJB 3.0 Persistence. So it's just a matter of finding some time to try out what I've read. Sadly, that will probably not be until next year some time. It seems like all of my good web site work happens early in the year, and then tapers off to almost nothing by the end of the year.

[apeloverage]

khaydhaik said:

Many of the images on my site come from clipart.com, to whom I pay an annual fee so that I may use their images.

Do you have to keep paying them if you want to keep using their images? I got the impression from Mazes and Minotaurs that you just paid for access, and you could use anything you got forever as long as you credited them.

[khaydhaik]

You only have to keep paying if you want to keep searching their database for new stuff. They keep adding new images to the site. But, yeah, you don't have to keep paying a fee to use the images you've downloaded previously.