Textual Beast

About a week ago I started another project. It's not that I'm ditching Atlas, it's just that I had this thought for Halloween and so obviously it has a built in deadline. Right now I'm hoping to have this ready for Halloween and Atlas in a demo form for Christmas ... but I'll admit right now that the holidays are usually confounding for getting stuff done.

New project is a text adventure, done in AJAX. We've been playing with some code at work and I needed something not-work to push the envelope on. Currently I've got the code for location, movement, basic inventory like pick up and drop, examine and some flexible usage working. I'll be working on characters and conversations next. I'm hoping to update several things about the genre. For instance, you won't have a large inventory. The management will be more akin to RPG style, and there will potentially also be combat rules as well. However, I'm hoping to make some allowances too, like adding a "run to" feature which will let people get quickly to locations they've been to and also more lenient rules about "misses" or incorrect input.

The story itself is gothic in nature. Probably be somewhat violent/gory and not really intended for kids. However if it works and I have fun making it, the javascript engine behind it should be easily portable for other games.