LootHunter: So, do you really think that creating a text parser is easy?
timppu: Depends how simple parser one is creating. :) The early ones seemed quite simple, mainly just understanding "verb + item", two or at best three words at a time, and quite often saying they don't understand what you are trying to say unless you said specifically what they expected you to say.
And when adventure games moved on from text parsers to point & click interfaces, this became irrelevant...
Maybe one way to demonstrate the relative simplicity of puzzle adventure games would be that you'd set up such "game" without computers.
Whoa, whoa.
timppu: The reason
why there used to be so many adventure games back then was because adventure games are easy to develop, and they don't take much of computing resources. How many other gaming genres do you know which can be developed completely by using a text-based parser mechanism?
Basically anyone could create a simple adventure game quite easily,
as long as one knew some simple programming language like BASIC. Just some if-then-else, one after another. That's what I'm arguing about. Today, of course, with engines like RPGMaker and RenPy (or Unreal and Unity if you are apt in the programming) that handle most basic functions for you, you can write such scenarios easily. But back in the day you had to code EVERYTHING by hand - parsers, graphics output, object interaction (pathfinding or timed events in KQ, for example). Making adventure game with more or less complex content would be no easier than Breakout-like arcade or Sokoban-like puzzle.
