Text-based game

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Interface of the 1971 text-based Star Trek game Star Trek text game.png
Interface of the 1971 text-based Star Trek game

A text game or text-based game is an electronic game that uses a text-based user interface, that is, the user interface employs a set of encodable characters, such as ASCII, instead of bitmap or vector graphics.

Contents

All text-based games have been well documented since at least the 1960s, when teleprinters were interlaced with mainframe computers as a form of input, where the output was printed on paper. With that, notable titles were developed for those computers using the sprinter in the 1960s and 1970s and more numerous game titles have been developed for other video terminals since at least the mid-1970s, having reached their peak popularity in that decade and the 1980s, and continued as early online games into the mid-1990s.

Although generally replaced in favor of video games that use non-textual graphics, text-based games continue to be written by independent developers. They have been the basis of instigating genres of video gaming, especially adventure and role-playing video games.

Overview

Strictly speaking, text-based means employing an encoding system of characters designed to be printable as text data. [1] : 54  As most computers only read binary code, encoding formats are typically written in such, where a bit is the smallest unit of data that has two possible values and each combination of bits represents a byte. [1] : 52  That said, a text-based game is any electronic game whereby information is conveyed as encoded text in the user interface.

Although technically graphical when displayed on a computer monitor, text data is sometimes contrasted with graphics as the former is text-only; data representation conveyed via an output device is restricted to a given set of encodable characters and the total number thereof, as well as graphical capabilities. For example, ASCII uses 96 printable characters in its set of 128, [2] : 27  whereas ANSI uses both ASCII and 128 additional characters from extended ASCII and allows the text to be variously colored, allowing for further possibilities. [2] : 19  Text data also has the advantage of requiring small processing power and minimal graphical capabilities by modern standards, [3] as well as significantly reducing production costs compared to graphical data. [4]

History

Text-based games trace as far back as teleprinters in the 1960s, when they were installed on early mainframe computers as an input-and-output form. At that time, video terminals were expensive and being experimented as "glass teletypes", [5] and the user would submit commands via the teleprinter interfaced with the mainframe, the output being printed on paper. Notable early mainframe games include The Sumerian Game , Lunar Lander , The Oregon Trail , and Star Trek . [6]

In the mid-1970s, when video terminals became the cheapest means for multiple users to interact with mainframes, [5] text-based games were designed in universities for mainframes partly as an experiment on artificial intelligence, the majority of these games being either based on the 1974 role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons or inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's works. [7] [8] As with other games, they often lacked functionalities such as saving. Proposed reasons for the absence of the ability to save included the fact that early computer games were often simple and gaming sessions were brief, as well as hardware limitations and costs. This may partly explain why earlier computer games were developed instead under the episodic structure, but such computer games whose source code could be accessed by anyone could be modified, and as designers wrote larger game worlds, gaming sessions lengthened, and the need to resume where left off became inevitable. This started in 1977 with Don Woods' revision of the 1976 text-based adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure (later renamed to Adventure), which saw expanded gameplay and story and, notably, the ability to save. [9]

Text-based games were also early forerunners to online gaming. From the late-1970s [3] : 79  until the worldwide dominance of the Internet in the mid-1990s, home computer users could still interact remotely with other computers by using dial-up modems, connecting them via telephone wires. These computers were often directed via text-based terminal emulators [10] to hobbyist-run bulletin board systems (BBSes), which tended to be accessible—often freely—by area codes to cut costs from more distant communications. [11] Without a graphical program for clients, most online computer games could only run using textual graphics, [10] and where the user did have such a program, the often limited bandwidth of the modem made downloading graphics much slower than text. [3] : 79  Online games designed for BBSes initially used ASCII as the character set, but since the late-1980s, most BBSes employed colored ANSI art as the graphical standard. [3] : 79  These online games became known as "BBS door games", as connecting to a BBS opened the "door" between the client and the games on the BBS. [10]

However, terminal emulators are still in use today, and people continue playing MUDs (multi-user dungeon) and exploring interactive fiction.[ citation needed ] The Interactive Fiction Competition was established in 1995 to encourage development of and explore independent interactive fiction titles, and has since held annual competitions for who can develop the best such game. [12]

Genres

Although text-based games are not limited to any specific genre, [4] several notable genres started as and were popularized by text-based games.

Text adventure

Text adventures (sometimes synonymously referred to as interactive fiction) are text-based games wherein worlds are described in the narrative and the player submits typically simple commands to interact with the worlds. [13] Colossal Cave Adventure is considered to be the first adventure game, and indeed the name of the genre adventure game is derived from the title. [14] As text-based adventure games reached their peak in popularity in the late 1970s and 1980s, [13] notable text-based adventure titles were released by various developers, including Zork [14] and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Infocom. [14]

MUD

An MUD (originally Multi-User Dungeon, with later variants Multi-User Dimension and Multi-User Domain), [15] [16] is a multi-user real-time online virtual world. Most MUDs are represented entirely in text, but graphical MUDs are not unknown. [17] MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view depictions of rooms, objects, other players, non-player characters, and actions performed in the virtual world. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language.

Roguelike

A procedurally generated dungeon in Rogue, a 1980 text-based video game that spawned the roguelike genre Rogue Screen Shot CAR.PNG
A procedurally generated dungeon in Rogue, a 1980 text-based video game that spawned the roguelike genre

The roguelike is a subgenre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Many early roguelikes featured ASCII graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many monsters, items, and environmental features. Computer roguelikes usually employ the majority of the keyboard to facilitate interaction with items and the environment. The name of the genre comes from the 1980 game Rogue . [18]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ASCII art</span> Computer art form using text characters

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters. The term is also loosely used to refer to text-based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font such as Courier for presentation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bulletin board system</span> Computer server

A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user performs functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users through public message boards and sometimes via direct chatting. In the early 1980s, message networks such as FidoNet were developed to provide services such as NetMail, which is similar to internet-based email.

A multi-user dungeon, also known as a multi-user dimension or multi-user domain, is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based or storyboarded. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, and non-player characters, and perform actions in the virtual world that are typically also described. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language, as well as using a character typically called an avatar.

<i>Zork</i> 1977 video game

Zork is a text adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and split the game into three titles—Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master—which were released commercially for a range of personal computers beginning in 1980. In Zork, the player explores the abandoned Great Underground Empire in search of treasure. The player moves between the game's hundreds of locations and interacts with objects by typing commands in natural language that the game interprets. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's commands. It has been described as the most famous piece of interactive fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roguelike</span> Subgenre of role-playing video games

Roguelike is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most roguelikes are based on a high fantasy narrative, reflecting the influence of tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.

<i>Rogue</i> (video game) 1980 video game

Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman with later contributions by Ken Arnold. Rogue was originally developed around 1980 for Unix-based minicomputer systems as a freely distributed executable. It was later included in the Berkeley Software Distribution 4.2 operating system (4.2BSD). Commercial ports of the game for a range of personal computers were made by Toy, Wichman, and Jon Lane under the company A.I. Design and financially supported by the Epyx software publishers. Additional ports to modern systems have been made since by other parties using the game's now-open source code.

<i>Colossal Cave Adventure</i> 1976 video game

Colossal Cave Adventure is a text-based adventure game, released in 1976 by developer Will Crowther for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. It was expanded upon in 1977 by Don Woods. In the game, the player explores a cave system rumored to be filled with treasure and gold. The game is composed of dozens of locations, and the player moves between these locations and interacts with objects in them by typing one- or two-word commands which are interpreted by the game's natural language input system. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's attempted actions. It is the first well-known example of interactive fiction, as well as the first well-known adventure game, for which it was also the namesake.

The computer art scene, or simply artscene, is the community interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork.

In a bulletin board system (BBS), a door is an interface between the BBS software and an external application. The term is also used to refer to the external application, a computer program that runs outside of the main bulletin board program. Sometimes called external programs, doors are the most common way to add games, utilities, and other extensions to BBSes. Because BBSes typically depended on the telephone system, BBSes and door programs tended to be local in nature, unlike modern Internet games and applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lunar Lander (video game genre)</span> Moon landing simulation games

Lunar Lander is a genre of video games loosely based on the 1969 landing of the Apollo Lunar Module on the Moon. In Lunar Lander games, players control a spacecraft as it falls toward the surface of the Moon or other astronomical body, using thrusters to slow the ship's descent and control its horizontal motion to reach a safe landing area. Crashing into obstacles, hitting the surface at too high a velocity, or running out of fuel all result in failure. In some games in the genre, the ship's orientation must be adjusted as well as its horizontal and vertical velocities.

Text mode is a computer display mode in which content is internally represented on a computer screen in terms of characters rather than individual pixels. Typically, the screen consists of a uniform rectangular grid of character cells, each of which contains one of the characters of a character set; at the same time, contrasted to graphics mode or other kinds of computer graphics modes.

ANSI art is a computer art form that was widely used at one time on bulletin board systems. It is similar to ASCII art, but constructed from a larger set of 256 letters, numbers, and symbols — all codes found in IBM code page 437, often referred to as extended ASCII and used in MS-DOS and Unix environments. ANSI art also contains special ANSI escape sequences that color text with the 16 foreground and 8 background colours offered by ANSI.SYS, an MS-DOS device driver loosely based upon the ANSI X3.64 standard for text terminals. Some ANSI artists take advantage of the cursor control sequences within ANSI X3.64 in order to create animations, commonly referred to as ANSImations. ANSI art and text files which incorporate ANSI codes carry the de facto.ANS file extension.

<i>Kroz</i> 1987 video game

Kroz is a series of Roguelike video games created by Scott Miller for IBM PC compatibles. The first episode in the series, Kingdom of Kroz, was released in 1987 as Apogee Software's first game. It was also published on Big Blue Disk #20. Kroz introduced the scheme of the first episode being free and charging money for additional episodes, a technique which defined the business model for Apogee and was adopted by other MS-DOS shareware publishers.

<i>Mystery House</i> 1980 video game

Mystery House is an adventure game released by On-Line Systems in 1980. It was designed, written and illustrated by Roberta Williams, and programmed by Ken Williams for the Apple II. Mystery House is the first graphical adventure game and the first game produced by On-Line Systems, the company which would evolve into Sierra On-Line. It is one of the earliest horror video games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kelton Flinn</span> American computer game designer

Kelton Flinn is an American computer game designer who is a major pioneer in online games. He is a co-founder of the seminal online game company Kesmai, which they began in 1982. His best known title is the first graphical multi-player online game offered by a major service, Air Warrior (1987).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multiseat configuration</span> Single computer that supports multiple local users at the same time

A multiseat, multi-station or multiterminal system is a single computer which supports multiple independent local users at the same time.

Island of Kesmai was an early commercial online game in the multi-user dungeon (MUD) genre, innovative in its use of roguelike pseudo-graphics. It is considered a major forerunner of modern massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs).

The history of massively multiplayer online games spans over thirty years and hundreds of massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) titles. The origin and influence on MMO games stems from MUDs, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and earlier social games.

Online games are video games played over a computer network. The evolution of these games parallels the evolution of computers and computer networking, with new technologies improving the essential functionality needed for playing video games on a remote server. Many video games have an online component, allowing players to play against or cooperatively with players across a network around the world.

A variety of computer graphic techniques have been used to display video game content throughout the history of video games. The predominance of individual techniques have evolved over time, primarily due to hardware advances and restrictions such as the processing power of central or graphics processing units.

References

  1. 1 2 Morley, Deborah; Parker, Charles S. (April 16, 2014). Understanding Computers: Today and Tomorrow, Introductory (15th ed.). Cengage. pp. 53–54. ISBN   9781285767307.
  2. 1 2 Bangia, Ramesh (2010). Dictionary of Information Technology (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Firewall Media. ISBN   9789380298153.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Wolf, Mark J.P. (2012). Encyclopedia of Video Games: A-L. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO. ISBN   9780313379369.
  4. 1 2 Edwards, Benj (March 10, 2016). "7 Classic PC Games With ASCII Graphics". PC Magazine . Ziff Davis . Retrieved May 1, 2019.
  5. 1 2 Edwards, Benj (October 13, 2016). "The Forgotten World of Dumb Terminals". PC Magazine . Ziff Davis . Retrieved May 1, 2019.
  6. ↑ Edwards, Benj (April 4, 2017). "The Forgotten World of Teletype Computer Games". PC Magazine . Ziff Davis . Retrieved May 1, 2019.
  7. ↑ Cobbett, Richard (May 19, 2017). "The history of RPGs". PC Gamer . Future US . Retrieved April 30, 2019.
  8. ↑ Bollmer, Grant D. (September 3, 2018). Theorizing Digital Cultures. SAGE Publishing. ISBN   9781473966932.
  9. ↑ Hanson, Christopher (March 8, 2018). Game Time: Understanding Temporality in Video Games. Indiana University Press. pp. 92–94. ISBN   9780253032829.
  10. 1 2 3 Edwards, Benj (January 14, 2016). "The Forgotten World of BBS Door Games". PC Magazine . Ziff Davis . Retrieved May 4, 2019.
  11. ↑ Edwards, Benj (November 4, 2016). "The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems". The Atlantic . Atlantic Media . Retrieved May 4, 2019.
  12. ↑ Alexander, Leigh (October 22, 2014). "The joy of text – the fall and rise of interactive fiction". The Guardian . Retrieved May 1, 2019.
  13. 1 2 Lebowitz, Josiah; Klug, Chris (September 10, 2012). Interactive Storytelling for Video Games. Focal Press. p. 16. ISBN   9780240817170.
  14. 1 2 3 Lowood, Henry; Guins, Raiford (June 3, 2016). Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon. The MIT Press. ISBN   9780262034197.
  15. ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. pp. 9–10, 741. ISBN   0-13-101816-7. [pp. 9-10] TinyMUD was deliberately intended to be distanced from the prevailing hack-and-slay AberMUD style, and the "D" in its name was said to stand for "Dimension" (or, occasionally, "Domain") rather than "Dungeon;" this is the ultimate cause of the MUD/MU* distinction that was to arise some years later. [pp. 741] The "D" in MUD stands for "Dungeon" [...] because the version of ZORK Roy played was a Fortran port called DUNGEN.
  16. ↑ Hahn, Harley (1996). The Internet Complete Reference (2nd ed.). Osborne McGraw-Hill. pp.  553. ISBN   0-07-882138-X. [...] muds had evolved to the point where the original name was too confining, and people started to say that "MUD" stood for the more generic "Multi-User Dimension" or "Multi-User Domain".
  17. ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. p. 3. ISBN   0131018167. Confusingly, although the term MUD applies to virtual worlds in general, the term MU* does not—it is used strictly for text-based worlds. The introduction of computer graphics into the mix therefore caused a second spate of naming, in order to make a distinction between graphical MUDs and text MUDs.
  18. ↑ Harris, Christopher; Harris, Patricia (January 15, 2015). Teaching Programming Concepts Through Play. Rosen Publishing. p. 53. ISBN   9781499490121.
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