Text-Based Inflation Adventure Game with ADRIFT 5

22 posts / 0 new

Sat, 07/21/2012 - 20:04

eljacko15

I've recently begun using a program called ADRIFT 5 which will allow me to create my own text-based games. Naturally, I want my first project with this software to be inflation based, since I figure there will probably be an audience for it here on the BI forums. I want to know what you guys want out of this game. The basic plot is that you are a test subject in a isolated facility designed to test human reactions to inflation in various situations. I need suggestions for rooms, characters, methods of inflation etc.

Keep in mind that this is a text-based game with command-line style controls. It is possible to insert pictures, but I make no promises in that regard.

Sun, 07/22/2012 - 00:54

nineteenthly

I think that if this could be made to work, it'd be fantastic. There's a Star Trek text adventure game out there where the player gets to have sex with Deanna Troi, which doesn't interest me but might be worth looking at for ideas of plot flow. I actually had a go at this in the early 1980s and the problem for me was that it was too linear: ultimately the aim is to get to the inflation and anything which stops that from happening is potentially irritating. The thing is, and i'm only pointing this out as a potential pitfall to avoid, a popular inflation scenario involves making the inflatee helpless and giving them no choices, which could make for a game which might as well be a passage of text - fun, sure, but not really using the medium. Two things which do suggest themselves:

* Make the victim struggle at every stage, so they do everything they can to stop the inflation from proceeding as intended. There's a game called 'Violet' (no, not THAT Violet) where the player has to struggle against distractions all the time. That has possibilities, i think.

* Make the inflatee an object with various attributes. For instance, assuming she's female, present a choice of breasts, belly and full body, different liquids, gases, inflation by pump, cylinder, pellet, magic or "other", with or without a hose, anal, umbilical, oral or subcutaneous inflation, willing or unwilling, with or without deflation, with or without popping and so on.

Just a few thoughts, sorry if they're abstract. I personally would try to use Inform or TADS, and HTMLTADS includes graphics and audio. Then again, i'm old.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Sun, 07/22/2012 - 07:42

Murkstorm

All of my ideas are assuming a male inflatee, so here goes.

* When you sleep in bed at night, you have a hose hooked up, and controlled by the alarm clock. If you can't wake up and turn it off within a short time of it starting to buzz, air begins to be pumped into you, fast, so it's either wake up on time to start your day or risk being exploded if you oversleep.

* Acting skits, such as being in a mock-up of a police interrogation room, dressed as a cop (regular or Keystone-style clown), with another inflatee as the suspect stuck in the chair that will pump him up/pump him for information. One method of solving this room would get you information, without either of you being harmed. The other would involve you leaving the room with the gas going, and waiting for the *bang* of the other man popping before going back in and clowning around a bit before taking a seat in the chair and letting it inflate you a ways before asking the audience how the perp escaped - and having to come up with a way to escape yourself before you join him (or the remains that are supposedly him, if he was taken off the chair by security while you were outside) in scraps on the floor.

* Stand-up comedy as "Kaboom the Clown," with the inflation system rigged so that every time the audience says "Kaboom" you get another shot of gas into your guts. Of course, a lot of the jokes given to you to say have a "What's my name?" punchline at the end...

* Being a teacher in a mock classroom, with one or more "students" whose desks have the controls for your inflation. The better you teach, the higher the grade and the less you inflate (perhaps a "B" is neutral, with higher grades relieving pressure, and lower ones blowing you up). At the lowest setting, past "F" there's the dreaded "Goodbye, Professor" setting that will fatally explode you in 2 turns if you can't get the grade back up to "B" or better in that time.

* A professional wrestling match, with both of you having a hose from your trunks to one of a pair of airtanks or pumps just outside the ring. You might be trying to blow up your opponent enough to get him out of the ring for the required time, without him doing it to you first. You both might be filling up, and need to win (and thus get the gas turned off) before you're immobilized. Or you could be trying to work the simulated crowd enough for their cheering to get you airborne (with a sound-controlled inflation system and the name of the wrestler being cheered the most determining who gets the helium).

* Being inflated into a ball, egg, or watermelon and having to roll/waddle/weeble-wobble to navigate a maze.

* Playing Santa, with a variable volume gut and trying to solve a problem based on it.

* Psychological therapy sessions in a large padded room, with your actions either adding or subtracting air from yourself or the shrink in there with you.

* Being filled with grape juice into a helpless round fruit, some yeast being added, the valve plugged and you're left to ferment overnight. How do you cope?

* You're dressed up in a suit with three rip-cords, one red on one lapel, one green on the other lapel, and another red one hanging from under your coattails behind you. Pull red, and you start to fill up. Pull green, and it stops your inflation, or if already stopped it deflates you. But the green cord will break after an unknown number of tugs, leaving you vulnerable to someone tugging a red cord and leaving you with no way to stop your inflation, praying that there's not enough helium left in the cartridges to burst you.

Sun, 07/22/2012 - 08:40

nineteenthly

Yes, they're great - clearly you can think your way through these better than i! I just got totally stuck on variation - couldn't seem to do anything but trap someone into being inflated and then the player might as well just be turning pages.

I have something to add, which is why i returned. I tried to analyse the situation and got this:

An inflatee can be first, second or third person, which changes things a bit. A second or third person inflatee is your plaything and you have to control them, making them kind of an object in a programming sense. A first person inflatee is a player character and the various parts of their body are the objects. There are also other items which affect the inflatee.

Considering a NPC as an object here:

They can be inflated, deflated, popped or pop (i.e. they can undergo bursting as a result of an external item or as a result of their inflation by itself). They can also die or lose consciousness without deflating or popping.

They can be inflated by: hose in mouth, anus, vagina, navel and/or subcutaneously with something which has penetrated their skin. An oral hose could be in the mouth, lungs and/or stomach.

Thinking of it another way, they can be inflated by: magic (or a process which is similar to magic but more plausible, e.g. diet coke and mentoes), a pellet, cylinder, pump, breath or a balloon. Magic or a pellet do not require a hose, the others do (although magic could include a hose, e.g. unobtainable superfizz being pumped in).

The substances by which they can be inflated are: air, heavy gas, light gas, magically light (i.e. floating) gas, water, saline, other liquid, food, blood, non-Newtonian fluid (which is interesting).

The inflation can end in: "being enormous" in some quasi-permanent way, death without popping, unconsciousness without popping, fatal popping, survival after popping, deflation.

Deflation can be through leakage after piercing, absorption of the inflation medium, leakage without piercing, eructation. Eructation can be oral and/or anal. Or, deflation can be magic.

Popping can be the result of internal pressure or piercing. The piercing, by the way, can depend on a variable - below a certain value it will cause deflation, above that value popping.

Parts inflated can be: the whole body, the torso, one or both breasts, the abdomen or individual organs or members.

Note that most of these are "and/or" rather than "either/or" situations.

Basically, i did this because i think it might help to analyse what needs to be done.

Incidentally, there are also items: a pump, a container of fluid under pressure, a plug, a pin. A container can be a person, a balloon or a gas cylinder (assuming we're talking about air).

There are various variables and formulae which define size: skin compliance and resilience, gas compressibility and so on - they also come into popping.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Sun, 07/22/2012 - 17:40

eljacko15

All these ideas are quite good. I'm not sure how I could fit Murkstorm's ideas into the test subject plot, but nothing is set in stone so far, so the plot could be modified. I plan to make multiple games, so it isn't like this game has to have everything in it. Every idea here seems a bit complex for Adrift. I'm just starting out, of course, and definitely no expert. I'm reluctant to try Inform and TADS because I understand they're quite programming-heavy and I am very, very stupid. I'll try Inform anyway for the hell of it and see what I can do.

Sun, 07/22/2012 - 18:33

Murkstorm

I'm not familiar with how the programming is done in Adrift, but making a chart of how the story flows and of relationships between the puzzles is generally helpful before you start the actual work of making the game.

Sun, 07/22/2012 - 20:52

eljacko15

I'm making all of this up as I go along to accomodate suggestions as they come.

Mon, 07/23/2012 - 00:44

nineteenthly

I'm sure you're by no means stupid! It's just that you may be unfamiliar with the ideas, not have had much practice or your expertise may be in other areas. After all, there probably aren't many authors who could write and compile their own word processor and there's no reason why they should. Same with ADRIFT. As it happens i don't know as much about it as TADS and Inform, but then as you can tell from my posts here, i tend to want to know a lot of details and am over-analytical and over-think. Your post has also made me want to have another go at this at some point!

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Fri, 07/27/2012 - 00:24

eljacko15

Update on progress: So far it looks like inform will offer much more flexibility, and allow me to do what I want to with this game. Unfortunately, it's much more difficult to pick up than Adrift, so it's going to take much longer to start out, let alone finish. But hey, character creation and stuff.

Fri, 07/27/2012 - 00:46

#10

nineteenthly

I think that's a good decision. Are you thinking of using it for a single room games or is it more of a huge map thing? I had a look recently and i like the idea of making items which inflate. Don't know how NPCs work in it though. Good luck - very enthusiastic about your plan - don't give up!

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Sat, 07/28/2012 - 16:09

#11

eljacko15

More of a large, map, I should think.

Sun, 07/29/2012 - 13:01

#12

nineteenthly

Maybe with different rooms a bit like Willy Wonka's factory but with different inflation possibilities in each?

http://www.youtube.com/user/nineteenthly

Sun, 07/29/2012 - 19:13

#13

eljacko15

Kind of, yeah. It's sort of a testing facility kind of thing.

Thu, 08/02/2012 - 20:56

#14

Inflate123

Looooooooong time ago -- my most recent project file is dated 2003 -- LVKane and I kicked around the idea of making a text adventure game, and we didn't get too far (he wanted to use TADS, I wanted to use Inform, and we found them both difficult at the time), but I have always been surprised that more people have not taken a shot at it. I think it's way underutilized as a form of inflation storytelling. Go for it!

I still have my design document -- we were going to do a dungeon crawler with puzzles along the way -- and I would still like to get back to it and make it. But who knows when?

Twitter | DeviantArt

Thu, 01/03/2013 - 05:11

#15

Geoff

I have to say, I'm very surprised you didn't stick with ADRIFT. I've been using it for some time now, and have to say, it is much easier to use than either Inform or TADS, and I haven't found any limitation with it. IMHO it is the up and coming system (it gets updated every month or so) and I wouldn't be surprised to see it become the dominant system for creating text games within the next year or so.

Thu, 01/03/2013 - 22:13

#16

eljacko15

I got farther with ADRIFT than with any of the others, and if I ever do much with this project, it will probably be with ADRIFT.

Fri, 01/11/2013 - 20:50

#17

doubleintegral

Years ago I used to play a web-based, turn-based strategy MMO called Earth: 2025 (now called Earth Empires). It was a game where you build up a country, make alliances, research technologies, attack other countries (led by other players), build up defenses, etc. You got a turn every 45 minutes or so, but the game encouraged you to login and play often by giving you a maximum of around 50 turns before you started wasting turns. Every 30 days or so the game would reset and everyone started over. It was a pretty immersive and entertaining game despite being almost completely text-based.

I have often wanted to make something similar with an inflation twist. I have the programming know-how but I haven't quite wrapped my head around all of the potential gameplay mechanics.

Stories I have written

Fri, 01/11/2013 - 20:58

#18

Thoron

I'm quite intrigued, how far along is this game? :3

Sat, 01/12/2013 - 02:56

#19

eljacko15

Hardly at all, I'm afraid.

Mon, 01/14/2013 - 12:59

#20

Sales_Kital

What about a room with hoses like tenticles that invade the player's ass and inflate them via enema.

Mon, 01/14/2013 - 22:42

#21

eljacko15

That's a good idea.

Fri, 05/17/2013 - 09:15

#22

acronymslayer

There could be an alien that lays eggs in the person (inflating them, of course), and forcing them to la the eggs.

Text-Based Inflation Adventure Game with ADRIFT 5

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