Play Pandora Demo text adventure online

>punch man

You move in to attack the seemingly helpless paraplegic, but he quickly draws a long hunting knife and sticks it in your gut. Violence isn't the answer to this one.

*** What were you thinking Murphy? A paraplegic veteran, probably your best lead for finding Malloy and you lose your head? ***


Ummm ... LMFAO!

I die, even in text based demo games! Of course, who attacks a paraplegic man? Sheesh.

Thanks Doctor!

I think you found the only way you can get killed in my little demo game.

Originally, there were two additional ways to get killed, but I took them out.

The other ways to get killed involved messing with the hustlers and hookers who are across the street by the market (east from the post office). The hooker-deaths were particularly interesting. You could attack them on the street, in which case they would swarm all over you and put a spiked heel through your heart. Or you could show them some money and be led to a seedy hotel where you end up just as dead.

However, I took that stuff out, thinking that it might be too racy for this group. Instead, I just let Tex's good sense prevent him going down those paths.

Anyway, let me remind you that if you have difficulty figuring out what to say or do with the characters in the game, you can just repeatedly type "talk to him (or her)" and the game will do the right thing up to a point and the conversation should provide fairly obvious clues of what to do next.

However, it is a bit more fun or rewarding to try to engage the characters manually.

Hah Hah! The only way to die, huh? I *would* figure something like that out. I like the demo. It reminds me of my old Modus Operandi days. I never really did a single player text game, except for star trek, but I wore the heck out of every Multi User Dungeon practically on the web. Today's MMO's are basically the same thing, just with graphics, anymore.

Star Trek was a lot of fun. The argument of graphical games vs. text games, anymore, is just not much of an argument anymore though. Graphic games are the standard, and I don't see people getting into the text games like they use to. But I tell you, if you have a vivid imagination, the graphics of a text game are better than anything a Playstation 3 could ever hope to achieve. I remember calling in crew people .. having them change uniforms in front of me .. (I was a kid! I thought it was sooo funny they were dressing and undressing in front of me. Ahh what the heck am I saying, I still think it's funny!) Brings back good memories!

I wouldn't mind playing a full version of it. It would keep my interest, that is for sure.

Thanks for reposting that DrPaul! I'd played that back when you first came up with it, but was cool to go through again. Now I feel nostalgic for some of my classic, favorite text games...

Yeah, this is cool. Well-written and fairly intuitive. Good stuff.

Not a criticism, since I know this was more of a "getting the ball rolling" contribution from Dr. Paul, but a more Tex-like interface would include a list of four responses to choose from, with the option of leaving in the speeder to different locations (an ASCII map would be kind of fun). We who know Tex's voice can hear him speak.

An interesting happenstance is that the white text on a black background with no graphics really approximates the feeling of the game. You're in a dark city, tracking down the answer to a dark subject. At least it seems that way to me.

but a more Tex-like interface would include a list of four responses to choose from, with the option of leaving in the speeder to different locations

I'm glad you mentioned this because, when I first wrote the demo, I was torn about how to do the character dialog interface.

Here are the different ways I was considering:

ask/tell with "talk to <character> " option:
You have to figure out what to ask or tell the characters yourself, but if you get stuck, you can just say "talk to <character> and the program will ask the right questions. (What I ended up going with.)

ask/tell with hints:
You have to figure out what to ask or tell the characters while the game keeps track of how you're doing. If you get too many negative responses, the game gives you a hint about what to ask. (What I did in my Zork fan game.)

menu-driven dialog
You get a list of topics to choose from (like in the graphic game.)

The menu-driven interface is the easiest to program. I could have written the game in half the time if I had used menus. The reason I didn't was because the demo was based on Pandora, which everyone here is already familiar, and I was afraid the demo would be too easy if I didn't add some extra challenge somewhere.

But if I was going to do it again, or add to the demo, I would use the menus because the programming would be so much easier, and the interface more familiar to traditional Tex Murphy fans.

I was looking at the next chapter in the PD novel (Chapter 12) where Tex goes to Malloy's hideaway. In the graphic game, Tex just shows up at Malloy's. But in the book, Tex has to do a lot of work to break into the warehouse and nearly gets killed in the process.

I was thinking that short little text adventure games that fill in the gaps which are left out of the graphic game, but are described in the novel, might be a cool thing to make. Maybe I'll try to do Chapter 12 in which you actually have to do the work to break into the building in order to find Malloy.

Does that sound like fun?

Excellent idea! That's one thing I enjoyed about this one: you just saw a video of Tex talking to the man in the game, and here we can be involved with it taking place. That would be a more substantial contribution to the Tex gaming corpus than simply converting what's already there.

DrPaul wrote:I was looking at the next chapter in the PD novel (Chapter 12) where Tex goes to Malloy's hideaway. In the graphic game, Tex just shows up at Malloy's. But in the book, Tex has to do a lot of work to break into the warehouse and nearly gets killed in the process.

I was thinking that short little text adventure games that fill in the gaps which are left out of the graphic game, but are described in the novel, might be a cool thing to make. Maybe I'll try to do Chapter 12 in which you actually have to do the work to break into the building in order to find Malloy.

Does that sound like fun?

Hey, give me anything to play with and I'll get distracted with it.
Go for it Dr Paul!

DrPaul wrote:Hey Guys. Some of you may recall a few years ago, I wrote a small text adventure game based on Chapter 11 of the Pandora Directive novel. Chapter 11 is when Tex finds the postal code on the brown wrapper, goes to the Mission District Post Office and then to the Garden House where Malloy is staying.

Anyway, some of you guys weren't able to get the game to run, so after all this time, I think I made it a little easier for you. I've added a Java z-code interpreter to the webpage, so you can link there and play the game right in your browser. Of course, your browser has to be Java enabled. Most are, but sometimes the setting have Java disabled.

Anyway, if your haven't tried it before, give it a try now. Here's the link:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/pdrallos1 ... andora.htm

That's cool, I enjoyed that very much, thanks for that I've only ever played one of these games in the past when I was about 10, it was a Star Trek game set in the Kirk era. It was quite enjoyable.

My only 2 suggestions for this game, one of which has already been raised:

1) Selective dialogue
2) Multipath and multiple outcomes

To finish, a question: when can we expect the full version?

Hey Joel, I bet we played the same game! That Kirk era Trek game was great! One of the first games I played ever. Well after Mario bros. That was my first ever.

Most likely, Thomas. I don't remember a lot about it to be honest apart from picking a fight with a Klingon only to be stabbed or something along those lines. I think there was also a scenario where if you walked into the wrong room, you got killed aswell.

The original Drug Lord was a good one too, kind of like the first ever GTA.