Adventuron

Adventuron
Authoring system
Links	Home page Download Run online
Developer	Chris Ainsley
Format	HTML
Interaction style	Parser
System	Browser
System details
Latest version	1.0.0 Beta 68k / 2021
Status	Beta
Uses interpreter
Multimedia support	Graphics, sound, some color effects
License
Notes
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Adventuron is both a Text Adventure Development System & Engine, created by Chris Ainsley.

Adventuron also has experimental support for choice based games, however these features are not largely used.

Features

• Cross Platform Editor (editor runs on any modern desktop OS with a modern browser).
• Cross Platform Engine Compiles to single HTML file, run on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
• Good Parser (verb/noun1/noun2/prepositions/adverbs/adjectives + more).
• Ability to target 8-bit computers, by activating "8-bit" mode.
• Multimedia features. Music / sound effects / animation / video
• Excellent Theming Support (fonts, colours, layout).
• English language + Spanish language support.
• Input buffering.
• Save Slots.
• Rollback.

Web Based IDE

Adventuron contains an in-browser IDE (integrated development environment) that allows games to be created inside a desktop browser.

Strangely, the only version if Adventuron currently available is Adventuron Classroom, an educational variant of Adventuron, that has an integrated tutorial aimed at 8 - 12 year olds - however, other than the branding and integrated tutorial, this version is fully featured. The tutorial sidebar can be disabled via the menu.

Adventuron Classroom contains three panels:

• The Tutorial panel (on the left) - this can be disabled from the menu.
• The Editor panel (in the middle) - where code is edited.
• The preview panel (on the right) - where you can instantly play your games.

Autocompletion

Adventuron's editor has an autocompletion feature as shown below:

Tutorials

Adventuron's documentation contains two tutorials:

• Tutorial A, a one hour tutorial by Chris Ainsley, learn to code The Cave Of Magic.
• Tutorial B, a three hour tutorial by Chris Ainsley, learn to code Excalibur Sword Of Kings. This is also the tutorial integrated into the editor.

Theming

Adventuron supports custom fonts, colouring, and granular text colouring via an embedded markup language.

Smaller images can be directly embedded in the game sourcecode via base64 representations.

Adventuron is good, but not perfect, at building 8-bit or 16-bit like text adventure games.

Games

There have been over 90 games created with Adventuron, mostly available on itch.

Most games opt to use a retro-aesthetic, but Adventuron support modern fonts, and Adventuron games have no upper limit on multimedia sizes if media is not embedded.

The Witch's Apprentice by Garry Francis

The Treasures Of Hollowhill by John Blythe

Mushroom Hunt by Polyducks

Over Here! by Aureas

Mobile

Adventuron's engine runs in mobile as well as desktop browsers however mobile browsers are not currently supported for content creation.

Strengths

• In active development.
• Lots of documentation.
• Excellent theming.
• Active community.

Weaknesses

• Adventuron is a database-driven format, and is generally less flexible than z-machine, except with regards to multimedia, and arbitrary size limits.
• Adventuron's scripting format is verb-centric and not object centric. This can make it difficult to locate all behaviour for a single object in the code.
• Non commercial use only.

Jams

Adventuron typically runs game-jams several times a year, the most recent of which (in February 2021) is the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

• Adventuron Cavejam, August - September 2019.
• Adventuron Halloween Jam, - October - November 2019.
• Adventuron Treasure Hunt Jam, February - March 2020.
• The Next Adventure Jam, June - July 2020.
• An Adventuron Christmas Jam, November - December, 2020.
• Text Adventure Literacy Jam, February 25th - March 31st, 2021. (CURRENT JAM)

The Text Adventure Literacy Jam is the first 'Adventuron' organised jam to:

• Invite entries using other systems.
• Have a parallel gamejam in the Spanish language.

Links

• The official Adventuron website.
• Documentation.
• List of games, via [CASA].
• Twitter.
• Discord.
• University of Pennsylvania - Featured in reading list for the Interactive Fiction & Text Generation (CIS 700) course. Also some of the coursework was based on the Adventuron tutorial.