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TextBlade

Note: this is all ridiculously out of date, as development proceeds at an accelerated clip. Please remind me to come back and update this once things are stable.

TextBlade is a game engine I specifically created to help run text-based JRPGs (primarily to support making them for the Games for Blind Gamers jams).

Note that you still need to write code to use TextBlade; you can leverage a lot of our base code, yes. Each game will need its own requirements and customization, so go ahead and write your own code for that.

Creating a Game

Just copy VoidWalkers. It's a very minimal tech demo.

Creating a Location

Let's add a location to our game: a starting town called King's Vale.

  • Modify your game.json and add a StartingLocation attribute. Set the value to KingsVale
  • In Content, create a folder called Locations with a file called KingsVale.json
  • In KingsVale.json, add a Name, Description, and "LocationType": "Town" attributes.

Run the game again. You should get a print statement indicating you're in King's Vale.

Adding Code to the Location

  • Add the attribute LocationClass to your .json file, and specify the class name, e.g. ThroneRoom
  • Create a matching ThroneRoom.cs file anywhere in your project (outside of Content of course)
  • Add the [LocationCode] attribute to it
  • Add whatever custom code you like to the constructor

Note that TextBlade manages and serializes/deserializes global game-wide switches; access them via the TextBlade.Core.Game.GameSwitches.Switches class.

Game Switches

The game code allows you to set boolean switches for things, like global conditions (e.g. is quest XYZ done?).

By default, whenever you complete a dungeon, TextBlade also sets a switch for you; the switch name is CompletedDungeon_{dungeonName}, where dungeonName is the dungeon's name, without spaces or other special characters (e.g. North Seaside Town becomes NorthSeasideTown).

NPCs

NPCs need a name, like Dock Worker, and can say multiple things. If they say multiple things, the NPC rotates through them in order as you talk to him again and again.

Quest Givers

A special type of NPCs, quest givers say one thing when a quest is pending, and another once the quest is completed. Since they're so special, talking to a quest giver automatically sets the switch TalkedTo_{questGiverName} where questGiverName is the quest giver's name, without spaces or special characters.

Credits

TextBlade includes a credits command. If you want to show credits, such as citation of audio resources, create a Credits.txt file (with a capital C) in your Content directory. Typing credits will read this out.