[Satan]

Wooo, I have a lot to say here, let's try to keep this short and simple.

WARNING: Personal stuff here, you can skip if you'd like :)

Basically I've known this girl long distance for about 4 years, we dated for a little bit but we were both going through some shit and honestly we were just to immature to handle anything, but we've taken some time apart, and recently we've come to the decision we've matured quite a bit, so we're going to take another shot at it in about a month or so, and I want to ask her out, but not with any simple text.

WARNING END.

I'm planning on writing a text based game with Python, and I would absolutely fucking love if ANYONE could give me tips, advice, suggestions, I'm planning on making it kind of like some silly quiz mixed with some RPG crap, I'm new to Python, trying to use Sololearn to learn it, but I work a lot better learning with other people/being taught hands on with someone walking me through, so if anyone has any spare time to teach me a thing or two I'd love that.

Meanwhile what do you guys think of a text based game to ask someone out? I feel like it's kind of cheesy, but in a way I think she'll appreciate the thought and get some amusement out of it (hopefully)


TL;DR: I need coding advice/tips/text based game ideas.

[Glitch]

i think that is super cute and I say go for it ! ^_^ I'd love it if that had happened to me XD

[Coda]

If you have specific questions there are a few programmers (including me) around.

[Satan]

@Glitch Yay glad someone thinks it's a cute idea!

@Coda Yeah that's why I posted here, in hopes someone can help me out if I get stuck.

So far I'm figuring out printing and yes and no prompts (first time ever trying to code with Python! It's exciting), then I'm planning on doing something like "You ran into a wall, clumsy go back" so I'm going to have to figure out a way to do like a return to last choice, if that makes sense.

I HAVE THE PERFECT PLAN FOR IT!! Just coding it and getting it to work seems so intimidating.
I had a little bit done when I lost it all yay :D so now I'm going to try to do it all in the python program,
then put it in something browser friendly so she can play it without downloading Python.

[Coda]

If you really want to use Python instead of Javascript, then you're going to have to buy web hosting or something. It's not impossible to use Python's built-in web server, but then you'd have to set up your router to let you run a website on your own computer. Then you can make a web address that looks like "http://1.2.3.4:8080/" that you can send to her. It's not super difficult, but it's technical enough that it's hard to explain blind without knowing what you're looking at.

Otherwise, she's just going to have to install something -- although you could probably put together some reasonably minimal self-contained "download this and run it" package.

[Satan]

I was planning on using this. https://trinket.io/python I started writing the code there but their save system is weird and I lost it, otherwise it seems to be pretty good for something basic! Unless it's going to get complicated, I have no clue what i'm in for :D

[Coda]

It doesn't really have a "save" function per se, you really just need to share it to yourself to keep tabs on your code.

Personally I recommend working locally and then copy-pasting your code into Trinket when you want to test or deploy it It's safer that way.

[Satan]

Yeah that's what I was planning on doing after I realized I lost the code, gladly Python is already installed :) so question will there be any reason for extra files for a simple text based game?

[Coda]

Well, that depends on just how "simple" the game is.

Speaking from lots of experience building text-based games as a kid: You need SOME good way of organizing all of your data. You CAN build a game by writing a function for each room; this does work (it's how I wrote my very very first one when I was around ten years old) but it's really awful and you end up regretting it and wondering how to improve on it.

You can store all of the data in the same file as the code, but structure it nice and cleanly so you can treat it all as data instead of as different branches of code. This is great for demos and toys and other small stuff, but as your game grows it starts getting clumsy trying to manage everything in a single file.

The end result of engineering a large text-based game tends to be that you end up with your code split across several files so that you can quickly find what is responsible for what, and your data split across several files so you can add and remove content without having to modify the game code itself or disturb the rest of the data.

[Satan]

Hmn, well I plan on it to be pretty simple! I would like the coding to look nice an neat though, not like she'd ever see it nor understand it if she saw it, but I just really like having things more organized.

I mostly just plan on it being like a multiple choice type thing, "Type yes or no, enter a number, go left or right" then possibly have a way for her to return to a previous choice if she gets curious about all the options. I guess it would be kind of like a maze for her in a way, a text based boss battle at the end would be hilarious though but I'm not even that far in my plotting.

Also 10?!?! How did you even know where to start, when I was 10 I was learning binary then trying to figure out what I'd use it for!! I wish I wish I started coding that early, I always thought it would be a fun job, just so lost on where to start though.

[Coda]

Well, I started writing code when I was 5. I wasn't good at it, mind you; I started off retyping and modifying examples out of books and then built up from there, putting together the pieces I had learned to make new things. There's a reason that game's code was so hard to manage and why I wished I knew a better way to do it.

The typical way you'd build this kind of thing is to define a data structure. Consider something like this:

rooms = {
  "Entrance": {
    "description": "You're in the entrance.",
    "exits": {
      "north": "Hallway"
    },
  },
  "Hallway": {
    # and so on
  }
  # and so on
}

[Satan]

When I was 5 I was finding new ways to run Thomas the train off track to his unfortunate doom.

I think I kind of get what's going on with that, I really like the structure way better than what I was planning... I'll need to figure out how to use that in the way I want.

Also I found this link: http://coding-grace-guide.readthedoc...adventure.html

Think that will pretty good at helping me?

[Satan]

I'm using notepad and writing out all the options and everything before I attempt to code them :D

[Coda]

The only reason I was that good at age 5 is because my dad was going back to school to get a second degree, and like most little boys I wanted to be like daddy. Instead of discouraging me because it was hard, he gave me the manuals and set me up a floppy disk and gave me the chance to try it on my own, answering my questions when I had them.

The dynamic changed over time. By the time I was 18, my dad was asking me questions. Not because I was a better programmer, but because we had specialized in different directions -- I knew user interfaces better, he knew databases better.

[Satan]

Ah, well that's really awesome!

Anyways I figured out something I want to put in! A puzzle!! A game we play together just had a really simple puzzle and she loved it.

Hey, do you have any suggestions/may I bug you when I get stuck?

Also I recall you saying something about JS, would it actually be better to write it in JS?

[Coda]

Javascript's primary advantage is that it can run in a browser with no special installation necessary. Its primary disadvantage is that as a primarily web-based language it's limited on the kinds of things it's allowed to do, particularly when it comes to reading and writing data on the local computer.

So whether or not JS is "better" depends on what exactly you want to do with it.