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86
Confirmed... I have been running Xplorer2 in admin mode to reduce the number of annoying confirmations it asks for, but this disables launching of FARR (unless I first click on the desktop)

There are other implications of admin mode too... I discovered that drag and drop doesn't work into an admin mode application - eg WinRAR drag to admin Xplorer2 does nothing!

For now I've put Xplorer2 back to user level, but hope there is a more satisfying fix!

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General Software Discussion / Re: software to write gamebooks ?
« on: September 06, 2011, 07:57 AM »
Another update: This one worthy of its own new post!

Edward Griffiths has written an extension for Inform 7 specifically designed for creating adventure game books!

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General Software Discussion / Re: software to write gamebooks ?
« on: September 06, 2011, 07:40 AM »
As a teenager I was a huge fan of these types of book, and even went so far as to write my own.

It was not very long (perhaps 30 locations leading to 90 paragraphs of text) and to my adult eye the quality is pretty mediocre, but a great experience none the less.

I can't give you a suggestion of a definitive piece of software to use but here are a few thoughts...

You will need to design a map. I drew mine on paper in the manner that I used to map text adventures as I played through them. I know that there are various mapping tools for Dungeons and Dragons / Interactive Fiction that might help you here.

Tip: You will find that most of FF or LW adventure books are fairly linear and have discreet sections where the player is effectively trapped, unable to backtrack too far, nor proceed until they have solved a series of puzzles. This greatly reduces the permutations that the author has to deal with!

There is a lot of crossover between FF style adventure books and the text adventure games of yesteryear (now more usually called Interactive Fiction or IF). There are some fantastic IF tools - my favourite is Inform 7 - well worth a look! The Inform language is both very straight forward (it is almost natural English language) yet very powerful as it understands basic concepts such as location, objects, weight, light/dark etc.

You may also consider creating the book in the form of a Wiki which would allow you to write and build the adventure on the fly. Although the wiki would have no 'intelligence' (unlike Inform7) and thus could not enforce rules or handle inventory automatically, it still has some advantages: there is no scripting language to learn, yet it can highlight unwritten sections, handle simple text formatting etc. I like WikidPad but there are plenty of others you could try.

Good luck and keep us informed of your progress!

UPDATE: Couldn't resist a bit of searching myself and found this handy (and lengthy) guide to writing adventure books on the Fighting Fantasy website itself!

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Gorgeous sunset - looks like you're having fun :)

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Living Room / Re: Flash TD Game of the Month: Kingdom Rush
« on: August 30, 2011, 06:23 AM »
Finally back home and rediscovered Kingdom Rush in my browser window.

Finished the game on Normal difficulty - yay! hooray!

A very polished game which could easily have been a retail product.

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