NetAF

A lightweight .NET 8 library for building text based adventures.

Overview

NetAF is a simple, lightweight library for building text based adventures.

At its core NetAF provides simple classes for developing and controlling the flow of games.

Environments

Environments are broken down in to three elements - Overworld, Region and Room. An Overworld contains one or more Regions. A Region contains one or more Rooms. A Room can contain up to six exits (north, south, east, west, up and down).

Overworld
├── Region
│   ├── Room
│   ├── Room
│   ├── Room
├── Region
│   ├── Room
│   ├── Room

Exits

Rooms contain exits. Exits can be locked to block progress through the game.

Room room = new("Test Room", "A test room.", [new(Direction.North)]);

Items

Items add richness to a game. Items support interaction with the player, rooms, other items and NPC's. Items can morph in to other items. For example, using item A on item B may cause item B to morph into item C.

Item sword = new("Sword", "The heroes sword.");

Playable Character

Each NetAF game has a single playable character. The game is played through the view point of the playable character.

PlayableCharacter player = new("Dave", "The hero of the story.");

Non-playable Characters

Non-playable characters (NPC's) can be added to rooms and can help drive the narrative. NPC's can hold conversations, contains items, and interact with items.

NonPlayableCharacter npc = new("Gary", "The antagonist of the story.");

Commands

NetAF provides commands for interacting with game elements:

• Drop X - drop an item, where X is the item.
• Examine X - allows items, characters and environments to be examined.
• Take X - take an item, where X is the item.
• Talk to X - talk to a NPC, where X is the NPC.
• Use X on Y - use an item. Items can be used on a variety of targets. Where X is the item and Y is the target.
• N, S, E, W, U, D - traverse through the rooms in a region.

NetAF also provides global commands to help with game flow and option management:

• About - display version information.
• CommandsOn / CommandsOff - toggle commands on/off.
• Exit - exit the game.
• Help X - display the help screen for a command, where X is the command.
• Commands - display the command list.
• KeyOn / KeyOff - turn the Key on/off.
• Map - display the map.
• New - start a new game.

Custom commands can be added to games without the need to extend the existing interpretation.

Interpretation

NetAF provides classes for handling interpretation of input. Interpretation is extensible with the ability for custom interpreters to be added outside of the core NetAF library.

Conversations

Conversations can be held between the player and a NPC. Conversations support multiple lines of dialogue and responses.

Attributes

All game assets support customisable attributes. This provides the possibility to build systems within a game, for example adding currency and trading, adding HP to enemies, MP to your character, durability to Items etc.

Rendering

NetAF provides frames for rendering the various game screens. These are fully extensible and customisable. These include:

• Scene frame.
• Help frame.
• Map frame.
• Title frame.
• Completion frame.
• Game over frame.
• Transition frame.
• Conversation frame.
• Visual frame.

Maps

Maps are automatically generated for regions and rooms, and can be viewed with the map command:

Maps display visited rooms, exits, player position, if an item is in a room, lower floors and more. Maps support panning and switching between vertical levels.

Persistence

Game state can be serialized allowing progress to be saved to file and restored later.

Getting Started

Clone the repo/pull NuGet

Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/benpollarduk/netaf.git

Or add the NuGet package:

dotnet add package NetAF

Hello World

// create the player. this is the character the user plays as
PlayableCharacter player = new("Dave", "A young boy on a quest to find the meaning of life.");

// create region maker. the region maker simplifies creating in game regions. a region contains a series of rooms
RegionMaker regionMaker = new("Mountain", "An imposing volcano just East of town.")
{
    // add a room to the region at position x 0, y 0, z 0
    [0, 0, 0] = new("Cavern", "A dark cavern set in to the base of the mountain.")
};

// create overworld maker. the overworld maker simplifies creating in game overworlds. an overworld contains a series or regions
OverworldMaker overworldMaker = new("Daves World", "An ancient kingdom.", regionMaker);

// create the callback for generating new instances of the game
// - information about the game
// - an introduction to the game, displayed at the star
// - asset generation for the overworld and the player
// - the conditions that end the game
// - the configuration for the game
var gameCreator = Game.Create(
    new("The Life of Dave", "A very low budget adventure.", "Ben Pollard"),
    "Dave awakes to find himself in a cavern...",
    AssetGenerator.Retained(overworldMaker.Make(), player),
    GameEndConditions.NoEnd,
    ConsoleGameConfiguration.Default);

// begin the execution of the game
Game.Execute(gameCreator);

Tutorial

The quickest way to start getting to grips with NetAF is to take a look at the Getting Started page.

Example game

An example game is provided in the NetAF.Examples directory and have been designed with the aim of showcasing the various features.

Running the examples

The example applications can be used to execute the example NetAF game and demonstrate the core principals of the framework. Set the NetAF.Examples project as the start up project and then build and run to start the application.

Documentation

Please visit https://benpollarduk.github.io/NetAF-docs/ to view the NetAF documentation.

For Open Questions

Visit https://github.com/benpollarduk/NetAF/issues