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Text Adventures On Cell Phones

Posted by Hemos on from the you-have-been-killed-by-a-grue dept.

Sargent1 writes: "According to this article, a company called Bedouin wants to get people playing text adventures on cell phones and PDAs. Bedouin's going to get the games from this open-source-like community of authors that has been making the games and tools for free. The company is offering them royalties if they put their games under contract, and the authors aren't sure they want their games sold like that, since they're used to giving them away."

11 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Smock my knickers! The resources are already here by Spatch · · Score: 5
    The Interactive Fiction archive at ftp.gmd.de/if-archive has a wide variety of interpreters for the Infocom z-machine standard, including some for the Palm already. You can play any Infocom story files you have around, or grab some new games from the IF Archive's extensive library. Most every game released by the IF community ends up here eventually. There's also a yearly Interactive Fiction competition open to all; it's a good way to get to know the new luminaries of the genre.

  2. WAP MUDs by hattig · · Score: 4
    How about WAP Multi-User-Dungeons then? That would be fun. You wouldn't have a chance, there would be no room for the description, and when you encountered an enemy (BERT), it would be:

    55444555#555122337778 (KILL BERT in mobile phone keypad characters :-) )

    Okay, so in normal use you would map directions to the keys, and the * and the # could bring up the more advanced options, but still...

    Next: NetHack for Nokia 7100. Then Quake.

  3. I can see it now... by Randy+Rathbun · · Score: 5

    You are in a maze of twisty little passages all alike. There is a sign on the wall.
    >read sign

    "Pepsi. The choice of a new generation."
    >n

    You are in a maze of twisty little passages all alike. There is a sign on the wall. Your sword has begun glowing.
    >read sign

    "Nike. Just do it."
    >n

    Your have entered the lair of a troll who, besides smelling really bad, has impeccable fashion sense. He is wearing Bugle Boy jeans and an Old Navy performance fleece shirt.
    >quit

  4. Why I Hate Mobiles by JimPooley · · Score: 4

    Oh my god!
    Now I'm a big fan of text adventures. I even used to write them back in the 80's - with a sophisticated natural language parser and non-player characters that could do just about anything the player could.
    But playing one on a tiny screen when you have to hit a button up to three times for each character? No thanks!
    Still. Could be worse. Imagine if they had speech recogition to get around the typing problem? Instead of all the idiots bellowing "Hello! Hello! I'M ON THE TRAIN!!!!!" and so on, there would be people shouting :-
    "Go North!"
    "Go East!"
    "Open Door"
    "Open Door With Red Key!"
    "Kill Troll!"
    "Kill Troll With Sword!"
    and so on....
    ***SHUDDER*** I'd invest in earplugs...

    --

    "Information wants to be paid"
  5. HRM by jbarnett · · Score: 4


    1-800-your-mud

    "Hi Welcome to your mud, please please # then your ID and pin number then pound again to login"

    #************#

    Logged in as "SOLVAS the Great"

    You are standing in front of a tower:

    `w`

    You head west, here you are in front of a small lake:
    'LAKI the queen of the NORMILZA empire' is stand here

    `say so how are you, a/s/l?`

    LAKI: 18 Female, sitting on a bus

    `say really I am also on a bus which bus`

    This would never happen though, because there isn't and would never be beatiful 18 year old females playing muds...

    Second, isn't like a cell phone charge $1.49 or something PER MINUTE?!?

    --

    "`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
  6. MORE RESOURCES by Jerf · · Score: 4
    • The Unofficial Infocom Home page - along with information, walkthroughs, and even the Invisiclues for most every infocom games, you can also download Zorks 0 - 4 completely legally
    • If you dig your way through that page, you'll eventually find the "where to get Infocom games" page... most every link is dead and you'll get disappointed real fast, but there is ONE EXCEPTION, and its the JACKPOT: Joey Jim's Superstore Infocom Classics Masterpieces Collection Online Download for $17 (american). It's the every-game-except-HHGTTG-and-Shogun, and you can find HHGTTG online as mentioned elsewhere. It has the manuals and the maps. Since you can't seem to get the physical version anywhere anymore, this place is the only place I know to get the goods.

      Darn near all of them work on the Palm Pilot, just look for the .dat files and convert them with the include z2pdb converter.
  7. As if cell phone drivers weren't bad enough... by JimTheta · · Score: 4

    Oh gee, that's f***ing great. Now in addition to following some yuppie going 55 in the fast lane talking to his broker, I gotta follow some 23 year-old dorkus playing Nethack.

    Hey, Buttwipe! Stop fighting the ice griffin and watch the road!

    -JimTheta
    --
    My stupid web site
  8. Spelling on a phone... by Speare · · Score: 4

    For those of you who think spelling things with up to four presses of a digit, see www.tegic.com. They use dictionary and probability data to shorten,

    • 22
    • B 666O 777R 444I 66N 4G

    into,

    • 2
    • B 6O 7R 4I 6N 4G

    I thought it was clever, and the website has a scenario demonstration.

    Still not quite the way I would play Spellbreaker, though. "Frotz me!"

    --
    [ .sig file not found ]
  9. Ideal Game For Phones - Planetarion by szyzyg · · Score: 4

    Planetarion is basically an online, realtime strategy game...

    When I say realtime, I mean that it takes ohous for things to happen - 8 hous to fly acoss the galaxy to attack someone.

    This game is teh kind of thing that suit's wap technology - in fact having a mobile phone client would enhance the game somewhat.... Imagine getting an automatic phone alert when an attack fleet is on the way....

    Imagine leaving an impotant meeting because your planet means more to you than business!

    (www.planetarion.com BTW)

  10. Play all the old Infocom games on your palm pilot by Ricdude · · Score: 5

    You can get a Z-code (infocom's platform-independent bytecode) interpreter for your palm pilot at: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Way/2367/do
    wnload.htm

    It is free, works well on all the infocom games I've tried so far (Zork III, Planetfall, Infidel, Leather Goddesses of Phobos). Great way to pass time waiting for the dentist, car, etc...

    Activision sells an Infocom compilation CD (everything but Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and Shogun) for about $20-$25. You can play HHGG on the web (or at least used to), and dig up the Z-code file in your cache. Many other entertaining games are available from the interactive fiction archives.

    --
    How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
  11. My graffiti needs to improve by georgeha · · Score: 5

    takc swokd

    >I don't understand takc

    take swokd

    > I see no swokd.

    lieht lamp

    >I don't understand lieht.

    George