Onyx: A Text Adventure

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qbradq
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Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by qbradq »

Onyx is now officially a demo. I re-wrote 80% of the NES-side code and probably 50% of the compiler in the process and now have a complete demo story in place.

The current story is only about 3,000 words. I could probably fit a story of about 10,000 words with only minimal changes needing to be made. I am no writer, so this story is awful. It's just an aimless exploration of a pretty contrived situation. There's no action, no real resolution. It's mainly there to make sure I can fit everything into UNROM-64.

Right now I am using the FamiTone2 sound library with DPCM support and it just plays one of the demo songs that FT2 comes with. Right now the song size is 4.5KB and the DPCM samples 2.5KB. I can go up to around 8KB song data and 4KB DPCM.

I intend to try to get contributors for the project. I would love to get a writer as I think my story is crap, but I'm afraid the parser I wrote might be a bit too dumb for a non-programmer to use. I am also going to try to find someone that would like to compose a background track or two.

Instructions
DPad moves cursor
A selects options and clears prompts
Select changes the background color
onyx_000.png
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onyx_001.png
onyx_001.png (7.26 KiB) Viewed 2224 times
onyx.nes
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Last edited by qbradq on Thu Jun 09, 2022 7:59 pm, edited 5 times in total.
calima
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by calima »

You may be interested in NTC compression:
https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php ... 7&p=244513

GPL license though, so would require open sourcing your game.
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qbradq
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by qbradq »

Thanks for the suggestion! That looks like a really cool library. My method is getting only slightly worse output size when compressing your COPYING file. But it makes a lot of assumptions, like forcing upper-case. I also have binary data embedded into almost every string as part of my scripting engine. I'm not sure how NTC would handle that.
Dacicus
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by Dacicus »

qbradq wrote: Wed May 18, 2022 10:29 pmI am looking for feedback on the interface. I think it's not quite clear how the player is supposed to navigate the menu.
After trying it out, I agree that the navigation is not clear. I found it odd to use the same button for both scrolling text and confirming responses/movement. I tried pressing down as the first thing for scrolling, in case it matters. Next, the more text blends in with surrounding text, so it was difficult at times to tell when there was more to read. Maybe make it blink or enclose it entirely in a box? Navigating the responses and movement directions was straightforward with the D-pad, but I found it awkward to also use the D-pad to get from the movement area (NESW) to the responses area (look around, etc.). Maybe use select to switch between the two areas? The easiest way to minimize confusion could be to just list the directions in the intro text.

BTW, I found the story interesting. Is there more to it? There were no movement or response options after stuffing the work hat into your pocket at the party.
calima
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by calima »

Oh, about the font: if you're not going to have an empty line between text lines, you should use a font with a smaller height. The current one is not easy to read.
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by Bavi_H »

qbradq wrote: Wed May 18, 2022 10:29 pmI am looking for feedback on the interface.
Having to use the B button to select things feels unusual. I think using A to select things is more common?

Consider clearing the bottom panes between commands. Because the text in the bottom panes is still visible during the MORE prompts, it sort of feels like I have to select the same command in the bottom panes repeatedly to see the text.

If you want to keep the scrolling text feature, the division of the text into MORE prompt points sometimes feels excessive. For example, having a MORE prompt both before and immediately after the CHAPTER 1 text felt annoying. (On the other hand, I wonder if less frequent MORE breaks with more text per scroll would make it harder to find where the new text starts, and if players would find themselves re-reading the old text?)

Instead of scrolling the text, I wonder how it would feel if the top pane cleared and started over after each command or MORE prompt? (And maybe center the text's vertical postion on the screen. And maybe rename the MORE prompt to NEXT or just a button symbol like A or B.) If you go with text on seperate screens like this, I can see how having CHAPTER 1 on it's own screen might feel okay. For example, the CHAPTER 1 text might need to feel seperate from the room description that follows, in case you were able to re-enter that location.

Dacicus wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 9:25 amI found it odd to use the same button for both scrolling text and confirming responses/movement.
I was okay with using the same button.

Dacicus wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 9:25 amthe more text blends in with surrounding text, so it was difficult at times to tell when there was more to read. Maybe make it blink or enclose it entirely in a box?
I think blinking text may be annoying. But I did find it unclear to have the command panes still populated when the MORE prompt was shown. I would suggest clearing the bottom panes between commands.

Dacicus wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 9:25 amI found it awkward to also use the D-pad to get from the movement area (NESW) to the responses area (look around, etc.). Maybe use select to switch between the two areas?
I am okay with using the D-pad to switch between the bottom panes.
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qbradq
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by qbradq »

Dacicus wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 9:25 am BTW, I found the story interesting. Is there more to it? There were no movement or response options after stuffing the work hat into your pocket at the party.
I really appreciate you playing that far and having kind words about the story. I'm not a writer so it's rough going sometimes :) There are no more options at that point. I do plan on finishing the first chapter as a vertical slice to make sure the compiler and parser have all the bells and whistles I'm going to want. I appreciate your other criticisms as well. I agree that the MORE text blends in too much, and that movement between the compass rose and the options area isn't intuitive the first time around.
calima wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 10:17 am Oh, about the font: if you're not going to have an empty line between text lines, you should use a font with a smaller height. The current one is not easy to read.
The current font is the IBM PC BIOS, and I agree there's major eye strain going on. I spent some time last night refactoring everything to include lower-case letters and I changed to the "Who's Cuter" Chicago font that I think teeples did. I think it helped. I will update the first post shortly with the new screenshots and rom.
Bavi_H wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 10:53 am But I did find it unclear to have the command panes still populated when the MORE prompt was shown. I would suggest clearing the bottom panes between commands.
This is a good suggestion. I find myself confused by this at times too.
Bavi_H wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 10:53 am Having to use the B button to select things feels unusual. I think using A to select things is more common?
This is a heresy unto the gaming gods. Let B be the select button! o_O

Thanks everyone!
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rainwarrior
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by rainwarrior »

I also feel that A for confirm, B for cancel is the norm, but it's NES so maybe there's room for odd-feeling configurations. It definitely took a few moments and a few resets for me to realize what the right button was.

I think it would help to see text scroll in line by line. Seeing the first paragraph of Chapter 1 just pop-in all at once, and leaving half the introduction paragraph above, a little jarring to have to rediscover my place in the text. Eventually I realized that the place to resume is always just one paragraph at the bottom, but the sudden jump is a disconnect. Alternatively, maybe a little red arrow or something pointing to the first line of the new paragraph would help guide the eye?

Interface idea: for directions, what if we just held A and pressed a direction to go that way?
- Put an "A" in the middle of the compass when directions are available, to indicate what to press.
- While holding A, hide the dialog option cursor to indicate you're no longer operating it.
- When holding A and a direction, show an arrow pointing in that direction.
- When A is released, if the direction is still held, go to the new place.
- If A is released but no direction is held, return to the text options.

Got stuck with no options after removing my hat. Seems that's the end of this demo, maybe it'd be nice to put a little text right there to say so.

Anyway, it seems to be working well. Hope to see more of it later. :)
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qbradq
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by qbradq »

rainwarrior wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 3:17 pm I also feel that A for confirm, B for cancel is the norm, but it's NES so maybe there's room for odd-feeling configurations. It definitely took a few moments and a few resets for me to realize what the right button was.
I didn't realize this was such a big deal. My wife didn't like B for confirm either. So now it's A, and I've replaced the MORE prompt with the text "PRESS A" so there's no confusion.
rainwarrior wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 3:17 pm I think it would help to see text scroll in line by line.
I implemented this right quick and it does help the eye track a lot better. Thanks for the suggestion!

Thanks for all the feedback. I'll be thinking about the holding the button for directionals.
calima
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by calima »

The new font's much better. I have another suggestion to improve the readability, padding. Currently you have black padding outside the areas. I'd change this to blue padding inside the areas. The TV safe area is still respected, but readability improves when the letters are not immediately next to the white border.
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qbradq
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by qbradq »

calima wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 11:43 pm The new font's much better. I have another suggestion to improve the readability, padding. Currently you have black padding outside the areas. I'd change this to blue padding inside the areas. The TV safe area is still respected, but readability improves when the letters are not immediately next to the white border.
Thanks for the suggestion! I have made the wireframe thinner and increased the padding. I seems to look nice.
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Dacicus
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by Dacicus »

Nice work with the changes so far. One more thing that could be improved is how the cursor stays at the same spot after you select an option, which sometimes ends up pointing to blank space depending on how the options change. This may be part of a larger issue in that you can move the cursor to any spot, even if there is no option there. IDK about the best way to fix this, but my thought is to specify the default cursor location for each location.
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qbradq
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by qbradq »

Dacicus wrote: Sat May 28, 2022 10:43 am Nice work with the changes so far. One more thing that could be improved is how the cursor stays at the same spot after you select an option, which sometimes ends up pointing to blank space depending on how the options change. This may be part of a larger issue in that you can move the cursor to any spot, even if there is no option there. IDK about the best way to fix this, but my thought is to specify the default cursor location for each location.
My wife had the same input :)

I am looking for some advice regarding the fitting of the ROM for the competition. I need more than 32Kb ROM to fit a story of decent length plus music, but I don't think I will need more than 48Kb. Is it OK to submit a UNROM-64 image with bank 2 completely empty? I can't seem to convince FCEUX to run a 48Kb ROM image.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by rainwarrior »

ROMs generally have to be powers of 2 in size to work in an NES emulator.

A compilation cart might be able to make use of your leftover space, if that's needed. (E.g. for 8k CHR for an NROM entry.)
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qbradq
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Re: Onyx: A Text Adventure

Post by qbradq »

Please excuse if there's a better place to ask this question, but is fan-fic OK for a competition entry? I had the idea to adapt the 1937 short story "by the waters of Babylon" into a text adventure using this engine.
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