Last week I completed the Hyperion lessons, leaving me with a finished engine and basic game about rearranging some objects into the correct rooms.

I worked a little on making my own original game with the engine, but in the end I wasn’t inspired. As much as I have fond memories of early text adventure games (Scott Adams’ Adventureland, Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), it doesn’t seem like I have anything to bring to the table. Plus I’d rather get on with the XNA lessons.

I added a couple of things to the engine before I finished though:

• Lots of command aliases like “get” or “take” instead of “pickup”
• Directional commands are implemented differently from the way that 3D Buzz guys did it
• Partial text matching for items so that you can “drop gre” instead of “drop green ball”

So, that’s it for Hyperion. On to the next block of lessons.

techknight Game Development, Learning 3dbuzz, hyperion

The Hyperion engine is now complete enough to start a game:

Next up are game rules and fleshing out the rooms and items.

techknight Game Development, Learning 3dbuzz, hyperion

I’ve been continuing the 3D Buzz XNA Xtreme 101 lessons before work this week… Now the “Hyperion” text adventure game engine is starting to take shape. As the methods are discussed, I like to pause the video and fill them in myself before seeing how the instructors complete them.

I’m curious to know how someone new to programming would feel at this point. This early portion of Volume 1 jumps right into development with only a small amount of whiteboarding and explanations, promising in-depth discussion later on. It seems like a good approach, giving a feel for making something “real” before trying to lecture people on the intricacies of C#.

techknight Game Development, Learning 3dbuzz, hyperion