Undum

Starborn: the Vorple edition

A screenshot of the story, showing the story text, the map and the keyword listAlmost one year ago to the date I released Starborn, a short keyword-based scifi story made with Inform 7. Now I'm proud to present an Undum-based version, enhanced with Vorple, of course.

The content is essentially the same. Instead of typing the keywords you click on hyperlinks that are highlighted in the text and shown in a separate list next to the story. A clickable, dynamic map of locations is displayed on the opposite side. There's background music, but sound support is still a bit shaky in some browsers. Internet Explorer 7 or earlier will not work.

It uses the yet-unpublished version 1.2 of Vorple and demonstrates the use of the button interface in the map and in the keyword list, and tooltips that are displayed as brief instructions and as labels for the map. Under the hood it uses disposable links and other similar features. It's also using the IF Recorder plugin, probably the first time for an Undum story.

IF Recorder version 3

The tool formerly known as "Transcript recording plugin for Parchment" has been successfully used as a betatester transcript recorder with at least one game, and even in the currently running IFComp. Thanks to liberal version numbering scheme it has now reached version 3 and has been renamed IF Recorder.

Here are the major new features:

  • Works with Undum. Now someone might wonder why anyone would want to record hypertext fiction stories, but even if there's less need to check what kind of input readers give, other reasons still apply: you might want to get statistical data on which choices the readers make, or see if the readers give up at some certain point in the story, or even find out if some of the choices just don't work as they should.
  • Web interpreter template for Inform 7. There's a ready-made Inform 7 template to use with the "Release along with an interpreter" option. This makes it easier to start using the recorder although you still have to set up the database and the server scripts.

The project's new headquarters are at Github along with the instructions and downloads.

More Undum examples

Here's two more small Undum examples, with commented source code. They use slightly more advanced techniques than the previous one.

Monty Hall Paradox

An implementation of the Monty Hall paradox, this example lets the player guess which door holds the best prize in a game show. The correct door is randomized and the story text changes according to the player's choices. The player is asked to give their name before the story begins and the name is later used in the story text.

Combat

A simple randomized combat system. The player character and NPCs are given attributes and combat is resolved by throwing dice. The player has health potions that restore hit points.

Undum Cloak of Darkness

I've made an Undum port of Cloak of Darkness. A literal translation of a parser IF game into hypertext fiction doesn't really turn out to be the best game design there is, but it does demonstrate most of Undum's core concepts pretty nicely.