Discourse Frotz - an Interactive Fiction game bot 🧙

Wooah, a new plugin! :tada: This one is a little less serious, though. :video_game:

Discourse Frotz


It’s no longer necessary to @ mention the bot every step of the way. Once in play, just reply to it.

Git repo: GitHub - merefield/discourse-frotz: A plugin that uses Frotz to give you an interactive fiction experience on your Discourse forum

What is it

It’s a ‘bot’ with which to play interactive fiction aka classic text adventure games on your Discourse forum and is essentially an adaptor to the standard and amazing Z-machine interpreter called ‘frotz’ at David Griffith / frotz · GitLab

How to use it

The setup adds two games, you can add more in settings.

Each entry contains a Title and the name of the story file.

To kick off the interaction you need to @ mention the bot set in settings. After that, replying to a post of theirs is enough.

To list the available games, you first need to mention the bot and ask:

@mybot list games

This will give you the range of options

To start a game type:

start game x substituting x for the option number.

If you want to switch to another game you can do so; the plugin saves your progress on every move so you can return to the first story at any time. The plugin maintains a save for every story for every user that tries it.

To continue an existing game type:

continue game x substituting x for the option number.

NB A full rebuild will destroy all save files. This is a necessary compromise.

How do I play an IF game?

Many “Meta’s” will have grown up with these things. For those less familiar, check out this cheatsheet: Play Some Interactive Fiction

Setup

Create the Bot User

(apologies, automating this is on my list!)

In an ssh session, enter your container and the rails console:

./launcher enter app
rails c

Then do this:

u = User.create!(username: "Frotz", name: "FrotzBot", id:-5, email: "not@really.valid")
u.activate

Your new bot will then be available to set up in the UI. Go to the user’s settings in the UI via the admin button and turn off all emailing. Update the avatar to taste.

Install Discourse Frotz

Update your app.yml

This is a little more invasive than a usual plugin.

add this to app.yml:

hooks:
  after_code:
    - exec:
        cd: $home
        cmd:
          - git clone https://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/frotz
    - exec:
        cd: $home/frotz
        cmd:
          - make dfrotz
    - exec:
        cd: $home/frotz
        cmd:
          - mkdir savegames
    - exec:
        cd: $home/frotz
        cmd:
          - mkdir stories
    - exec:
        cd: $home/frotz/stories
        cmd:
          - wget -O zork1.z3 https://eblong.com/infocom/gamefiles/zork1-r119-s880429.z3
    - exec:
        cd: $home/frotz/stories
        cmd:
          - wget --no-check-certificate http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/hhgg.z3
    - exec:
        cd: $home/plugins
        cmd:
          - git clone https://github.com/merefield/discourse-frotz

before your other plugin entries.

You now also need to add the Discourse BBCode plugin!!

Rebuild with the usual ./launcher rebuild app

Now go to the plugin settings and select the bot user you added earlier:

Stories

You will note I’ve included a couple of stories. You can find more at https://ifdb.tads.org/.
However, watch rate limits here! Getting too many stories from the same location may cause an error.

Also note that the stories are not sitting on https protected servers (tut tut).

If you insist on loading more add them to app.yml. You could also add them manually from the command prompt, but realise these will be wiped on the next full rebuild.

Enable FrotzBot for private messages (caution advised)

Allows users to play in private, but usage will be less transparent. If you have a big enough server this may not be an issue for you. In any case be aware of implications for capacity. As an alternative, encourage users to play in a designated Category.

image
default: OFF

If (s)he is not enabled there, the user will get a polite message:

Restrict FrotzBot by Category

You can restrict the bot to a (list of) Category to avoid filling up other areas:

Keyboard shortcuts!

This is really important to improve the ‘gaming’ experience. And you really only need to remember two:

  • Shift-R to reply to the bot

  • Ctrl-Enter to submit your next move

Limitations and considerations

Not all story formats and games are yet supported nor are likely to be supported. There are many games that don’t work because of the nature of their call and response protocols. Because of the way we are interacting post by post we have to ask Frotz to save state after each move. If one step of the game doesn’t lead to a prompt at which the system can can save (ignoring press any key or More prompts which should be handled), then the story won’t work. e.g. in Act of Murder (great game!) the lady at the door asks if you are a policeman. Unfortunately this is a state of the game that’s unsaveable so fails this requirement and I can’t see a way we would get that to work.

NB Mailing list mode is a disaster with this, so make sure this is not something you use before attempting to use this plugin!

It is arguably a bit wasteful of forum resources as it requires at least two posts for every ‘move’. It is obviously often more appropriate to play these kind of games using a chat interface, rather than a forum, but you might argue this could be used to create Walkthroughs? :wink:

For a less invasive solution, consider: Turning a topic into interactive fiction ;)

Feedback

All feedback is welcome!

Credits

This plugin exploits David Griffith / frotz · GitLab the Frotz Z-Interpreter which is cloned and ‘made’ by the setup script

Thanks to @P16 for allowing me to use excerpts of code from a closed source chatbot we worked on together.

42 Likes

Wooah, back again!

New Feature-rettes

Enable FrotzBot for private messages (at your peril! :wink: )

Allows users to play in private, but usage will be less transparent. If you have a big enough server this may not be an issue for you.

https://github.com/merefield/discourse-frotz/commit/cf8c459307c50adeb4f7eccd39071bdf076dfdc9

image
default: OFF

If (s)he is not enabled there, the user will get a polite message:

Restrict to a list of Categories, or allow all:

https://github.com/merefield/discourse-frotz/commit/b621c91f9e145d4511b7d1b649c10f3044ceb356


default: ON for all Categories

10 Likes

Hi Robert! Thank you, I really like this plugin !
I tried to install it on dev environment (without docker) and my system asked for the ncursesw lib when making dfrotz, after installing that it worked, will it be the case with a prod env with docker?

1 Like

I tested on Production and building on Docker (to my surpirse) worked out of the box. Feel free to deploy to a Production instance and let me know how you get on.

Glad you like it!!

2 Likes

For those like me, who might loose their last few hairs about that:

hhgg.z3,9,7,3
that’s :

  story_header_lines = 9
  story_load_lines = 7
  story_save_lines = 3

and now, how to adapt it
 :sweat_smile:, that’s an adventure inside an adventure
!

1 Like

I’m currently working with the maintainer of Frotz to see if we can do away with those. It’s an approach I ported from restful-Frotz but hardly perfect :slight_smile:

1 Like

Yes ! found it !
kheper.z8,20,15,4 almost works
for this one :


:smiley:

it’s nothing, but there is something weird

) Line-type display OFF
Compression mode MAX, hiding top 0 lines

is displayed once by Pause() with

[Pause notNeeded;
@read_char 1 notNeeded;
rtrue;
];

1 Like

Ha, yeah, there are lots of quirks and a considerable amount of variety in the stories. I cannot promise to support all.

Right now my focus is on:

  1. simplifying code
  2. making the code more secure
  3. adding formatting where pragmatic.

#3 is surprisingly hard.

1 Like

I’ve pushed some improvements to a feature branch:

https://github.com/merefield/discourse-frotz/tree/formatting_security_and_simplification

This does away with the silly suppression settings, introduces translation to BBCode to support formatting and colour, leverages the Dumb Frotz command line options better, obviates the need to write to a text stream and squashes a vulnerability.

This branch requires the official BBCode plugin to be installed.

I’m still experimenting with it. Feel free to do so too.

I’ll probably merge after some significant trials.

1 Like

Does the plugin need the whole frotz repo clone or does it just need $home/frotz/dfrotz to exist? Because I’d rather just compile it once and save the binary between rebuilds.

Not sure why you would care? The resources we are talking about are comparatively tiny. (6MB for the entire repo post make versus Gigabytes for the forum?). It clones the whole repo, then just makes dfrotz. Perhaps that is slightly wasteful, but the simplicity and repeatability is more important I feel. I could go into greater detail and perform a sparse clone, but that would make the build script more complex and less robust. Would it be worth it? Feel free to suggest an optimisation. This is all building inside the container, so will get cleaned whenever the container does.

I’m just trying to optimize for my tiny server, not asking you to change the general install.

1 Like

This is a really cool plugin! This reminds me of a “classic” computer game that was created years ago(I forgot the name).

3 Likes

It’s a great suggestion for a future optimisation if I can keep it simple and robust. Thanks!

1 Like

Yes there are many playable classics. More via the link in the OP.

2 Likes

BIG update: :tada: :kiwi_fruit:

(this has taken months of occasional background work and coordination with Frotz team).

Introducing full colour and monospaced formatting for stories

https://github.com/merefield/discourse-frotz/pull/2/files

This big update comes with a bunch of improvements:

  • ADDED colour formatting and monospaced text support
  • IMPROVED simplified settings: no longer requires calibration of header and footer, just the desired title and story file, whoop!
  • IMPROVED uses Open3 gem for system commands, reducing risk of abuse/vulnerabilities.
  • IMPROVED internal interaction with command line to remove need for stream files, now copes with more/press any key prompts

Now REQUIRES the Discourse BBCode plugin!!

This required the collaboration of the maintainer of Frotz, David Griffiths and one of the very active members of that community, Borg323 who wrote the BBCode extensions against the BBCode Discourse standard. Many many thanks to them! We had to get a bit creative to get the monospaced text stuff to work, but the solution is really great!

Some examples of the new formatting (I’ve not fully tested these stories, these are just examples of formatting)

image

and notice the coloured compass here:

image

KNOWN ISSUES: There are loads of games that don’t work because of the nature of their call and response protocols. If one step of the game doesn’t lead you to a prompt at which you can save (ignoring press any key or More prompts which should be handled), then the story won’t work. e.g. in Act of Murder (great game!) the lady at the door asks if you are a policeman. Unfortunately this is a state of the game that’s unsaveable so fails this requirement and I can’t see a way we would get that to work.

There are probably games that are now compatible with Discourse Frotz that weren’t before 
 please experiment but note the limitation above!

Let me know if you have any issues getting this to work and I’ll refine the instructions as required.

8 Likes

A reminder that you can use keyboard shortcuts to improve your experience with this plugin:

  • Shift-R to reply to the bot

  • Ctrl-Enter to submit your next move

(Standard out of the box keyboard shortcuts).

5 Likes

Hi Robert !
finally had time to go further, so far so good, it worked right out of the box in prod env :+1:

Weirdly frotz is not able to respond in private messages unless I also set it in any category :thinking:
Next step : to play :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

1 Like

Thanks for the report!

I’ve gone ahead and fixed that: https://github.com/merefield/discourse-frotz/commit/34b022e90b65b8c2acb3701384302e9cb0a57a65

NTS: must add some unit tests!

2 Likes

I tried to add :grin: in a source,

it’s going to be fun !

1 Like