How would I make a text-based adventure game?

[prettyboycashobtainer69]

I want to make a text-based adventure game with gamemaker. I don't want to take the time to learn how to use other programs and/or languages. I'm somewhat familiar with gml, but I don't know how since the show_message_ext is now obselete, and the manual says that show_message should only be used for debug purposes. Plz help

[wer2chosen]

I would think it would not be worth it, if it is text only. They are very easy to make in any available language. Organising the data is the hardest part. I used 3x5 cards when I made a couple in the 80's on my commy. LOL The rooms are data basically you store in an array. roomid, room desc, exits(room they lead to), items in room. You create a simple parser. You should be able to dl some old mud source and look at it. There use to be a kids book in the 80's that walked you through making one in msbasic. Now a graphical adventure would be worth foing in gamemaker. Text in GM is not the easiest thing. There is also an open source infocom engine I remember you could use that.

[Thew]

If you use Gamemaker for this, you'll want to store room data in a ds_map or ds_grid instead of an array. You'll draw your text with draw_text() or draw_text_ext().

I've done text-based games in Gamemaker before, but I had buttons you could click to interact with things, instead of a parser.

[prettyboycashobtainer69]

Thx guys!

[Blind]

You could also write it like a Book, with rooms as pages.

[wer2chosen]

Yeah you can like your own text adventure. The 3x5 let me see how they connected. I would probably use post it todays now that I think about it. It took me a while to save up for cork board blocks to turn my wall as a 18 year old into a bulletin board.

[Sera]

GM is great for a lot of things, but text-driven games aren't exactly one of them. It's doable, but more work than it rightly needs to be.

A quick Google search brings up several engines literally built around making this exact sort of thing. Maybe give a couple of these a gander. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-tools-to-create-your-own-text-adventure-games/