THE COMMODORE KEY

Adventure Games

Roy Wagner

While Roy's column is directed to C-64 owners, this particular installment will also be of interest to all adventure gamers regardless of your machine.

"You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building down a valley.." —- COLOSSAL CAVE

"You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here..." — HOUSE OF BANSHI

THE PAST

And so begins two of the best known computer adventure games. These games were originally coded and played on large university computers. They were created by college students "playing" with their campus computers, using the latest state-of-art coding. From such "play" came a whole new genre of computer games.

For those readers who don't know what an adventure game is, I will offer a brief explanation, and thereby limit my discussion. Adventure games had their origins in DUNGEON AND DRAGONS and similar role-playing games. These were lead by a "master" who created the world that others explored through trial and error "movements" of characters. These adventures gave the players the opportunity to explore the world of "make believe", to encounter imaginative creatures of all kinds and resolve challenging situations.

For the players of these games a vicarious adventure could be experienced and challenging problems could be solved by groups of players. To be good, these adventures required a good master directing the adventure. Expanding on this idea, Don Wood and Will Crowthers created an adventure world and put it into a computer program. In the program, two word commands from the player, such as "GO NORTH", "GET SWORD", and "CLIMB TREE", were used to interact with the situation. These word combinations were made up of verb and noun. The program contained a limited vocabulary. With each word combination entered, you received a descriptive response. If the program did not understand your entry, you were told so.

This program was named the COLOSSAL CAVE, but as it circulated from one college campus and industrial computer to another, it came to be known as ADVENTURE. About this time one campus was working with a computerized language parser. (A parser breaks a sentence into its parts, and with these parts interpret meaning.) The students used this parser to create their own adventure, expanding on many of the original ideas from COLOSSAL CAVE. This program, with its sentence parser, was known as the HOUSE OF BANSHI on Compuserve. It was originally named from a nonsense word used at the MIT Lab for Computer Science. This all-purpose interjection was "Zork".

A young programming analyst who was quite enthralled with the ADVENTURE program wanted to translate this concept to his microcomputer (a TRS-80 with 16K). Scott Adams succeeded in doing so and has, to date, programmed and marketed 14 adventures for the TRS-80, Apple, and Commodore 64. He has also programmed graphic and graphic/sound versions of these games. His adventures still use the original verb-noun parser.

THE PRESENT

I do not know what ever became of Woods and Crowthers, but their adventure game lives on. A somewhat abridged version is available for Commodore computers from most large User Groups or mail order services that distribute public domain software. This original ADVENTURE game was converted to our machine by Jim Butterfield, a recognized Commodore expert/guru.

Many commercial adventures have been marketed using the two-word convention. Most have not stood the test of time. They were found awkward to communicate with due to a limited vocabulary (you kept guessing words hoping to find the correct combination of verb and noun used by the programmer). Many required you to find a way out of complex puzzles, situations, and circumstances. Without hints, these became a quick lesson in frustration and futility. An exception to these frustrating adventures are those by Scott Adams from ADVENTURES INTERNATIONAL. There are 14 available all programmed by Scott for several different machines.

Marc Blank and Tim Anderson went on from their friendship at MIT in 1977 to become the founders of INFOCOM. Their first release was a three part microcomputer version of ZORK, their first adventure. The original required nearly a megabyte (1 million bytes) of memory on the mainframe computer. The three part micro version has about twice the material and uses only about one quarter of a megabyte.

INFOCOM has set the highest standard for "text only adventures" or "interactive fiction" as it has come to be called. In these, you are able to use complete and compound sentences to communicate your movements and actions. These adventures encompass several areas of interest: pure adventure (Zork series), wizardry/fantasy (ENCHANTER and SORCERER, also known as Zork IV and V), science fiction (PLANETFALL, SUSPENDED, STARCROSS), mystery (DEADLINE and WITNESS) and sea tales (SEASTALKER for beginners or those 9 years and up, and CUTTHROAT for experienced adventurers). They are challenging and backed with pleasant humor. The documentation for each game is sensational and very thorough. Hint books are available for an extra cost and I highly recommend them. The hint books relieve nagging frustrations and offer helpful clues. They suggest things to try that are not necessary for completion, but add more fun to the game. The INFOCOM parser is the best currently available and continues to improve. The vocabulary for their adventures is now over 1000 words per game. As a result, there is less difficulty in communication, as the games recognize synonyms.

Another type of adventure that is common is one that uses graphics along with text interaction. Some simply use graphics to illustrate the scene, while other use graphics to provide clues not expressed in the text, or provide animation to add excitement. Most "real adventurers" feel that graphics take away from what the imagination creates without them. Graphics, however, use large amounts of disk and internal memory. Disk accesses are frequent and these take time away from actual game play. This is a time when a picture is not worth the words it takes to describe the scene. What you see is often NOT what you can GET or to which you can GO. Make sure any graphic adventure you buy has the option to turn off the graphic displays, as after the first few times, the pictures are not worth the wait. In my limited exposure to these, my favorite one is Datasoft's DALLAS (based on the TV series). It is all for fun, with great sound, graphics, and animation.

WHAT'S NEW

Scott Adams has written a new parser called SAGA (Scott Adams Graphic Adventures) which is being used to improve all of his previous adventures and has been used to produce a new Questprobe series. This latter series will give us specific adventures using the MARVEL COMIC BOOK HEROES (Hulk, Spiderman, etc.). Commodore has licensed the first four to be produced for the Commodore 64 before any other machine.

INFOCOM'S newest release is CUTTHROATS, an adventure wherein you seek to find treasure from one of four possible sunken ships. The ship you explore is randomly selected each time you play. They will soon be releasing an adventure based on the popular book trilogy/radio show/TV production, HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. As to future INFOCOM releases, Michael Berlyn has said they are working on a parser that is "100 times smarter" for an adventure that is "20 times the size of their current releases.

A new direction in adventure games, of a vein similar to the above mentioned AHGTTG, has been released by TRILLIUM (related to SPINNAKER). They have produced an entire line of games produced in collaboration with famous science fiction authors. These include: FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury, RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA by Arthur Clarke, AMAZON by Michael Crichton, SHADOWKEEP by Alan Dean Foster, STARMAN JONES by Robert Heinlein, NINE PRINCES IN AMBER by Roger Zelazny, and THE GRAND ADVENTURE by Philip Jose Farmer. (Quite a library of authors!) I am currently completing FAHRENHEIT 451. I find it to be different from other adventures. It fills a gap between the pure text and the graphic-text adventures. It is a detailed adventure requiring a lot of work, some would call it 'tedious. It comes with excellent documentation (general instructions, a list of all vocabulary, and some hints). The game uses both sides of two disks and had a very reasonable retail price of $32.95. A more complete review will appear in another issue of this magazine.

THE FUTURE

The future is very bright for adventure gaming. With several types of adventures from which to choose, they appeal to all ages. Scott Adams/COMMODORE, INFOCOM, AND TRILLIUM along with several other software companies are going to keep us well supplied with new and different adventures. We should, for instance, soon be seeing adventures released that interact with laser video disk players.

For those needing some ideas about holiday gifts for C-64 owners, this column recommends the following: adventures (any from INFOCOM), role playing (Ultima II or III, Questron), arcade (Jumpman, Lode Runner, or any from ATARI, except Robotron), nonarcade like sports game (any from SSI, or SUMMER GAMES), wargames (Combat Leader or Operation Whirlwind), miscellaneous greats (Flight Simulator II, Pinball Construction Set, Mule, Archon, Chess from Odesta, Millionaire, and Relax!).

Let me know what you think of these and other games that I haven't mentioned. Have a fun and safe holiday season.

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