Shortcut Game System

I’ve been working on the next version of the Shortcut Game System (SGS-B), which is supposed to be a more streamlined version of SGS-A. It’ll have fewer menus to go through to take action and uses autosaves to avoid having a permanent “SAVE” button at every decision point. I think this leads to a more “Choose Your Own Adventure” style of game rather than a classic text adventure, but I am not sure. If you would like to check out the demo version I’ve been using for testing, download using the link below. I’d love to get some feedback.  Download the Test Version of SGS-B Here By far the most time intensive part of the process is writing the actual game, not the game engine. It also happens to be the part that I have the least skills at. So if anyone is interested in writing (or being commissioned to write) a full-ish game for SGS-B, feel free to reach out!

Thank you to Federico, John, and all the judges over at MacStories for your kind words about Smiling Isle! I'm glad the shortcut impressed, and hopefully the next version blows you away.     Introducing the 2022 Automation April Shortcuts Contest Winners By John Voorhees

 Smiling Isle Welcome, adventurer! Journey to an unknown island with a mysterious past to discover the secrets it holds. Well, you would, except you shipwrecked your way onto it and now you have to find a way to escape. Explore the island, learn its history, play with weird contraptions, and hope that maybe you can call for help. Smiling Isle is a text adventure game that runs on your phone without an app! It is designed to be a demonstration of what can be done with the Shortcut Game System that I built. It runs using Apple's built-in Shortcut app in iOS devices, and saves data locally using the Notes app.  To download, first make sure that you have "Allow Untrusted Shortcuts" turned on in your settings (Settings > Shortcuts > Allow Untrusted Shortcuts). Then just click the link below to download. It works best as a widget on your homescreen, so you don't have to open the shortcuts app to access it. When downloading, it will request access to your Notes app. Hi

 SGS-A Player Interface As with all SGS versions, SGS-A is written with two key features in mind: It should run using the Shortcuts app and built-in integrations only. It should be entirely playable from the Shortcuts widget. Using iOS 13 or earlier, this means that no graphics can be shown to the player, and the only way to interact is to select an option from a pre-determined list. (Future versions of SGS will take advantage of iOS 14's changes.) So, SGS-A serves as a game engine that creates a text adventure game out of a plain text file written by the game developer. SGS-A takes advantage of Shortcuts' integration with dictionaries to store information and present the game to the player. A dictionary is a particular formatting of plain text which allows the computer to to match up a list of player-presentable options ("Go North") with computer-readable results ("You Walk North~~N!~Stone Ring"). The most useful part is that the value of any given option c

 SGS-A Game File Top Level Overview The text file for SGS-A games uses Shortcuts' standard dictionary formatting, seen below. Where the values are strings of text, they are surrounded by the quotes. Where they are sub-level dictionaries the quotes are not necessary.  {"Key 1":"Value 1", "Key 2":"Value 2", "Key 3":"Value 3", "Key 4":"Value 4"} SGS-A uses keys at the top level to match up game-specific information with variables inside the system. The top level keys are: Title Starting Position Checkpoint! Count Save File Tag Menu Message Intro Messages Credits End Game Dictionary Item Dictionary Location Dictionary The first 7 in the list are straightforward items that have to do with setting up the game for new players. "Title" is the name of the game. "Starting Position" is the starting state for a new game (formatted as described farther down). "Checkpoint! Count" is the