I vote android

I think you knew I would.

if I could do two votes id vote the web-based option 2nd

I think I posted this elsewhere, but we're investigating the market to get this put into Android. Part of the problem is that we've got a lack of content (so if you know anybody who could help in that area, or if you're interested in writing yourself, let us know). I just started work on Chainsaw Hero, and I know mindtakerr's working on Castle Wynd chapter 2, but even with those two games, it's not a lot of content.

But yes, we are listening to your cries of "Android!" and figuring out the best way to make that happen.

Is there somewhere y'all have described the process of generating content? All I recall of the process was seeing some zany flow-chart that Chris had written out, and that thing was intimidating.

(Oh, sure, I could go search the site, but... )

No, actually. That's a really good point. Chris' flow-chart thing was just how he works. I actually use a spreadsheet to manage my content and Word to do the actual coding and writing.

A single very simple room looks something like this:


<room>
<id>5</id>
<title>The Home Depot</title>
<desc>Hi! I'm Mike! looks a little nervous, but you succeed at your goal: he slinks away, leaving you alone to shop for a chainsaw. As you browse the chainsaws, one just to your right in particular catches your eye. You can pick up that chainsaw and look at it (east) or pick up a different one (west).</desc>
<exits>
<east>4</east>
<west>6</west>
</exits>
</room>

We use XML, and it's incredibly easy to learn. I know nothing about programming or code (for now, at least) and I can do this. I try to write between 5-10 rooms a day, and a typically story length is 200-300 rooms.

Also, I developed a web application here: http://narratavius.com/xml/ that you can actually use to generate (most of) the XML without having to write any.

I'm considering doing something similar for the iOS (and Android, hopefully) version, too, so that maybe people would be able to get more content created, and they could play and share their own stories as they wrote them, etc.

Interesting.

I can dig using XML; clearly that's a perfect method.

Is there some listing of tags and properties? Looking at the generator I saw more choices than I expected to; I'm wondering if you have cheat sheets of exactly what can be done.

Well, based on your knowledge of XML, there is certainly the ultimate cheat sheet.. which is the XSD file.

You can see that here, if you're interested:
http://narratavius.com/TextAdventure.xsd

Wow.

Actually, just scanning down the page, what struck me was a list of outcomes:
defeat
death
none
success

I assume that's in descending order of likelihood to come up.

Ha! It's in order of when I needed it to exist in the game

LOL, glad you needed death before success!! :p