Mark Damon Hughes: GameScroll

Mark Damon Hughes | GameScroll

GameScroll is a system for playing and writing interactive fiction like Choose Your Own Adventure(TM) or Fighting Fantasy(TM) gamebooks... But instead of flipping pages, GameScroll runs them as an impartial gamemaster!
Adventures can remember where you've been and what you've done, unlike web-based "choose your own adventure" games!
Runs on every OS!
Authoring system as simple as writing a web page!

Screenshots

(click to zoom)

Installation

Download GameScroll 0.7.1 (303K)
If you don't have Java already, download Java here and install it.
Unzip GameScroll-0.7.1.zip anywhere you want, and it'll create a GameScroll directory.
Run it:

Windows, MacOS X:

Double-click on GameScroll.jar

Linux, Unix:

./gamescroll.sh [FILENAME.xml]
Learn how to write your own adventures by reading the README.html file included in GameScroll-0.7.1.zip.
Questions? Read the Frequently Asked Questions list.
If you're having trouble with Java and you use Windows or Mac, try asking someone at the Sun site. I only use Linux.
If you're having any other kind of problem with GameScroll, or want to send me suggestions or feedback, email me at <mark@markdamonhughes.com>.

Version 0.7.1 (released 2006Jul29)

Version 0.7 (released 2005May03)

Custom commands, such as magic spells or using carried items.
Mapping. Commands to add tiles and text to maps, initially blank, and set a "You are here" marker.

Version 0.6 (released 2005Apr25)

Full HTML markup, including fonts, colors, and inline images.
Choices are hyperlinked, if you prefer to use the mouse.
URL hyperlinks launch in your default browser (you can edit browser.cfg if links aren't working for you).
Additional programming commands.
Author-defined score/character sheet page.

Version 0.5 (released 2005Apr20)

Images and sounds.
Math, text, random, and call functions, allowing you to write more complex adventures.
Platform-native look and feel. If you don't like your platform's native appearance, you can use a command-line argument to change it:
java -Dlookandfeel=gtk -jar GameScroll.jar
You can specify metal, motif, gtk, windows (Windows only), or mac (MacOS X only).

Version 0.4 (released 2004Feb17)

Save on author-specified pages. Users are always able to load saved games from any page, but can only save in pages with a 'save="true"' attribute. This seems to be a fair compromise between full load/save (which makes "cheating" too easy), and forcing the player to retype every choice from the beginning to get back to a difficult choice.

Version 0.3 (released 2004Feb14)

Cross-platform graphical interface (just a text window right now, but it beats the console).
Logging (so you can have a text or HTML copy of your adventure).

The development path up to 1.0 looks pretty clear, now:

Planned for 0.8: Graphical adventure editor, instead of writing XML by hand.
Planned for 1.0: GameScroll 1.0 will be released when all the previous features have been playtested properly.

Last modified: 2006Jul29
Version 0.7.1