Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[hawkeye_de]

Just to satisfy my curiosity:

Is there any commercial (not for free) pure ASCII game out there? I've searched but did not found one.

[Mech#4]

I don't think so, well, not to my knowledge. As far as I know, game development on the PC went from text adventures like Zork to rudimentary dungeons like in "Might and Magic", simplifying a bit of course but...

Spoiler: Conjecture (click to show/hide)

If I was to guess the process; Gaming developed a bit of a baseline for graphics with consoles in the 80s like the Commodore 64, which may have graphics similar to ASCII (Like "Berserk") but set a bit of a standard for games to have at least recognisable figures rather than letters and numbers.

The original "Rogue" was apparently sold, but that's more there was a version which used ASCII rather than the game solely being in ASCII.

I don't remember playing any growing up in the early 90s.

[hawkeye_de]

The original "Rogue" was apparently sold, but that's more there was a version which used ASCII rather than the game solely being in ASCII.

I don't remember playing any growing up in the early 90s.

I was a little ambiguous here: With ASCII I do not mean necessarily ASCII art/graphics but for instance had ASCII-based roguelike like Nethack in my mind. But interesting to know that Rogue was actually sold and was not necessarily free...

[Sharp]

Well there is Exile which you need to buy to play I believe, although apparently it's changed it's name to Avernum and is now 2d Isometric

URW used to require payment but now its free/donation.

[PrimusRibbus]

Well there is Exile which you need to buy to play I believe, although apparently it's changed it's name to Avernum and is now 2d Isometric

Avernum was the year 2000 remake of 1994's Exile: Escape from the Pit. There's also a second remake from 2011 called Avernum: Escape from the Pit.

Amazing games, but none of them are ASCII or roguelikes.

[Draxis]

Cogmind's going to be, but is still pre-release at this point.

[puke]

I had a commercial copy of Rogue on the Atari ST.  It used tiles, though.  Tiles which I spent long hours hacking into other images with neochrome.

[puke]

Also, plenty of BBS 'door' games were paid.  At least, they were supposed to be.  Generally free for users, but SysOps would shell out some cash for them.

Here is this, also: http://www.classicdosgames.com/video/ascii.html

[EnigmaticHat]

Rogue was sold.  That doesn't mean that it was bought if you get what I mean.

[puke]

ZZT was shareware (and ASCII / ANSI), but had a paid version to unlock extra features.  I think thoes guys went on to become Epic (of Unreal fame), partially due to the success of ZZT.  Played the shit out of ZZT games that other BBS users made, but never made any myself.  I always used ACK to make my adventure games. ACK was not ASCII.

I feel like there was some sort of Trek clone that was a paid ascii game.. maybe several?  There were about a billion "Trek" type games where you warped to a grid coordinate and basically did turn-based Star Raiders kind of stuff.

And in that vein, there was Star Fleet: The War Begins. First of a series, though I think only the first one was ASCII.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fleet_(game_series)

http://www.old-games.com/download/5584/star-fleet-1-the-war

[gimlet]

Dammit I was gonna say "Empire, Wargame of the Century" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire but looking at screenshots that one has graphics - I must have been thinking of the shareware version from 1984 "Empire 5.0/5.1"

The other one I distinctly remember was a shareware air traffic controller game that was all ASCII

There were a ton that used non-ASCII charactersets by changing the "code page" and very rogue-like - the IBM PC version of Temple of Aphsai used those iirc:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Apshai
Basically any games for the original IBM PC that were playable on the monochrome green monitor (the "MDA"), not the "CGA", were coded like that.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Monochrome_Display_Adapter  lists a couple others.

[n9103]

There was also Super ZZT, that followed on and expanded ZZT.

[varsovie]

Rogue...