Discord Text Adventure Bot

This is a Node.js bot for Discord that allows you to play classic text adventures (such as Zork) in Discord. It is not hosted for you, so you will have to run it yourself.

• Roadmap
• Game Support
• How to Use
  • Installing Dumb Frotz
• Installation
  • NPM Installation
  • Manual Installation
• Creating a Bot User
• Bot Commands
  • Get Bot Info
  • Get Bot Help
  • List Available Games
  • Set Target Output Channel
  • Set Target Listening Channel
  • Start an Adventure
  • Quit an Adventure
  • Set Yourself as Bot Admin
  • Kill the Bot
• Config
• Development
  • Tests
  • Linting
• Issues, Bugs, Questions, Suggestions
• Legal

Roadmap

This is a list of eventual upgrades that will be made to the project.

• [x] Host the base bot code as a NPM project, so it can be installed as a NPM global command
• [ ] Ability to run multiple different games on different channels
• [ ] Ability to save state of game

Game Support

This bot uses an implementation of Frotz as its interpreter for text adventure games, called Dumb Frotz. So anything that runs in/on Frotz can be run by this bot.

Generally speaking, that means any game with a .z[number] file extension. Please open an issue if you find a game that does not work well with this bot.

How to Use

You must have Dumb Frotz installed on the machine that will run the bot, so that Frotz can be run from the command line, IE:

dfrotz /path/to/my/game.z5

Please refer to the Installing Dumb Frotz section below for more details.

You must also have Node and NPM installed.

Once you have Dumb Frotz and Node installed, refer to the installation section.

Installing Dumb Frotz

If you are a Windows user, you have a pre-compiled version of dfrotz available here (see the dfrotz.zip file). All you have to do is add the dfrotz.exe file to your PATH and you will be good to go!

For macOS and Linux users, you'll need to manually compile the lastest version of Frotz in its "dumb" mode. This is well documented on the Frotz GitLab page.

Installation

See below for the two different methods on installing the actual bot. You can either install it from NPM or manually; whatever works for you best.

NPM Installation

You can install the bot software from NPM. You'll still need to install Dumb Frotz, but you can get the bot by running the following:

npm i -g discord-frotz

Then, wherever you want, create a configuration file called discord-frotz.config.json, based on the config.json.example file available in this repository.

Once the config file is created, just run discort-frotz from the same directory as the discord-frotz.config.json config file, and it will use that config file to start the bot.

If you set up everything correctly, the bot should be online in your server and ready to play. Refer to the Bot Commands section for more information.

Manual Installation

First, clone or download the latest version of the project from the Releases section here on Github. Then, cd to project root and install all dependencies:

npm install

After that, remove the .example from config.json.example and fill in the information inside that file accordingly. You will need to create a bot user to get the token. Refer to the "Creating a Bot User" section below for more information.

Once your config.json file is set up, make sure that the bot user that you created is added to the Discord server where you want the bot to output to.

Then, run node app.js or npm run start from project root to start the bot.

If you set up everything correctly, the bot should be online in your server and ready to play. Refer to the Bot Commands section for more information.

Creating a Bot User

To create a bot user, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Discord site and sign in (or make an account)
2. Once you are signed in, follow this link to get to the developer page
3. Click on the "My Apps" section on the left side (if you aren't already in that section), and then click "New App" and setup your new app. This app will wrap your bot user, so name it appropriately
4. On the new app's page, click the "Create a Bot User" button
5. Click the "click to reveal" button next to the Token section in the bot user this is the token that you will use in the api.discord.token field in the config.json

That's all the steps to create your bot user. The last step required is adding the bot user to your server, if you would like:

To add the bot user, following the instructions found here. These instructions are for a python server but they apply just the same to your bot as well.

After the bot user is added, you can boot up the application and interact with it normally in your server.

Bot Commands

The bot has a set of commands that can be run to load games and play.

Get Bot Info

Useage: $info

Will cause the bot to print out its current state.

Get Bot Help

Useage: $help

Prints out help information on how to use the bot.

List Available Games

Usage: $list

Lists all available games (based on your config.json file).

Set Target Output Channel

Useage: $targetChannel

Will set the target output channel to the channel in which this message was sent. You must set this before starting a game, or you will not see the output of the game.

Set Target Listening Channel

Usage: $adventureListenChannel

Will set the channel that this command is typed in the be the only channel that accepts commands for the bot.

Start an Adventure

Useage: $start [gameName]

Starts the specified gamename, which is the name specified in the config.json.

Quit an Adventure

Useage: $quit or $q

Quits the current game. Will only work when in game mode (aka when a game has been started with the $start command).

Set Yourself as Bot Admin

Useage: $admin [admincode]

Sets your Discord account (the one that sends the $admin ... message) as the admin account for the bot. The admin account has special priviledges and can run special commands.

You can and should send this message in a private message to the bot, as the admin code will be visible in chat history for anyone to see otherwise.

Kill the Bot

Useage: $qqq

This command can only be run by a bot admin.

Stops the currently running game, closes the connection with Discord, and kills the bot.

Config

As mentioned prior, all config should live in config.json, and an example config is provided for you: config.json.example

Development

Tests

Tests are written using Mocha, and run with the following:

npm run test

Linting

Linting uses eslint and is run with the following:

npm run lint

You can also run eslint with the automated --fix flag using:

npm run lint-fix

Issues, Bugs, Questions, Suggestions

If you find a bug, have an issue with the implementation, or just have a suggestion, please just open an issue. I'll try to respond to you as quickly as possible. Don't bother getting frustrated, I'll happily help you set up an instance of this bot if you get stuck.

Legal

The name "Discord" is copyright and trademarked Discord Inc.