I feel like making nanogames again.

[Scribbit]

Rather than post in the old nanogames thread and commit thread necromancy, I am starting a new thread because I want to make some nanogames again. The recent update gave me the idea to put several small games together and call it a nanogame collection, but I know myself well enough not to try to make up my own topics. Does anyone have a good idea for a nanogame?

[Zandor 12]

A man experiences an unusual level of difficulty in renting a video game. Lots of minor, realistic problems ensue.

A ZZT port of that one website that keeps track of how many times you push a big red button.

Kids must reclaim their treehouse from the neighborhood bully

A murder mystery could be interesting compacted to one board, with the player as the investigator. I think this might have already been done though, or my mind is playing a trick on me.

[Quantum P.]

I can't think of any ZZT mystery games off the top of my head. I mean, I can think of quite a few games in which a mystery is part of the plot, but I can't think of any detective-style games.

[Dr. Dos]

I think Sleuth was one.

But it was like made in 1992 so I doubt it's aged well.

[Scribbit]

OMG Big Red Button how can I refuse? I just sat down and made the big red button. It has a counter that goes up to 999. I think I will make a couple more of these and release them in a nanogames collection. This is fun.

[Scribbit]

I'm having trouble with one of the nanogames. I was making the murder mystery game and I wanted a discrete randomizer that goes more than two ways. I had an object check #if any [color] scroll multiple times, and keep looping until getting a hit. It never seems to quit the loop, and I'd like to know if there's something stupid I did wrong that I can fix. the first bit of the code looks like this:

Code: Select all

@randomizer
#cycle 1
/i
:who
#if any red scroll suspect1
#if any yellow scroll suspect1
#if any green scroll suspect1
#if any blue scroll suspect2
#if any purple scroll suspect2
#if any cyan scroll suspect2
#if any white scroll suicide
#who

I've tried setting flags and opening the save file in kevedit, and I've tried outputting text that says which message was sent, but nothing happens. Either I find that no flags were set or nothing appears on the screen.

[Microwave]

Can ZZT check for scroll colors? I tried that code, nothing.

[Dr. Dos]

It can't. I thought it could though.

You can just have an object #put a boulder over the scroll and then check for that colored boulder.

[Quantum P.]

My preferred method of randomness has always been something like the following:

Code: Select all

#if blocked rndp e aaa
#bbb
:aaa
#if blocked rndp e ccc
#ddd
:bbb
#if blocked rndp e eee
#fff
:ccc
#if blocked rndp e g
#h
:ddd
#if blocked rndp e i
#j
:eee
#if blocked rndp e k
#l
:fff
#if blocked rndp e m
#n
'labels g through n follow

The object, of course, has a wall or something to the north and is not blocked to the south. It makes more sense if you look at it like this:

Code: Select all

       start
       /   \
    aaa     bbb
   /   \   /   \
 ccc ddd   eee fff
/ \  / \   / \  / \
g h  i j   k l  m n

Each fork in the road is decided randomly, and you end up #sending yourself one of eight different messages. The code can be made shorter at the expense of readability.



And here's a simpler method, but it uses a counter:

Code: Select all

#if blocked rndp e give torches 4
#if blocked rndp e give torches 2
#if blocked rndp e give torches 1
#take torches 1 a
#take torches 1 b
#take torches 1 c
#take torches 1 d
#take torches 1 e
#take torches 1 f
#take torches 1 g
#h
'labels a through h follow 

[Commodore]

i did something like that when I tried to make a blackjack engine. an object would check if it was blocked randomly to a side then do it again for a234,5678, or 910JQ. then for the king the queen had a 50/50 shot at being a king. but counting the values was a bitch (my plan was to use all the counters in the game so i needed to count using an object moving up and down.)

[Scribbit]

I'd probably do something like that if the whole engine was based on randomness (like a card game) but my plan was just to quickly randomize a couple key events so I'll try the #put over a scroll method.