Ramblings of an Inveterate Games Programmer.

       A SynTax interview conducted by Richard Hewison.

@~Anthony Taglioni may not be a name that you would instantly
@~recognise, but you know him better by his nickname within the
@~industry - Tag. As one half of a creative duo, Tag, along with
@~artist and designer Pete James, has created two graphic role
@~playing games that have kept many people busy into the early
@~hours of the morning fighting orcs and goblins in the name of
@~adventuring. 'Bloodwych' was originally released three years ago
@~through Mirrorsoft, and their latest collaboration is 'Legend'
@~which was published by Mindscape just a few short months ago.
@~For those who don't know, 'Bloodwych' employed the first person
@~view (as seen in Dungeon Master) but had the novel addition of a
@~two player option. 'Legend' uses a 3D isometric view displaying
@~the player's party of four in all of their animated glory.

@~In this interview, I tried to find out exactly what makes
@~a computer RPG programmer tick...

@~RH: How long have you been working in the industry?

"I've been working at playing with computers since I first got
myself a Spectrum back in '82 and my latest prodigious
performance was 'Legend' - out now from Mindscape for PC, Amiga
and ST. Like probably everyone else I started just playing games
and fiddling with BASIC but then I became interested in playing
with machine code and don't you just love Z80?

My first work was for Incentive Software. They had just released a
game call 'Splat!' on the Spectrum and I just had to make a copy
of it and just had to tell them what lousy tape protection they
had. Before I knew what was happening I had my own tape-protection
system called 'Power-Load 48' and Incentive was handling it for
me. Thus started the rocky road of being a self-employed
leisure-software engineer.

I did a few conversions - 'Zodiac Master', 'Lords of Midnight',
'Spy Vs. Spy', 'Superman' (hangs head in embarrassment) and then
the ill-fated 'Star Trek' licence which tolled the death-knell of
Telecomsoft. I even helped my brother Philip with a C64 conversion
of 'Mooncresta' that he'd done for the Spectrum. I even tried
running a software company - Starlight Software and you might even
recall such classics as 'Deathscape' or 'Red Led' on the eight-bit
machines."

@~RH: How did 'Bloodwych' come about?

"I used to play too much D&D type games at University and remember
one night trying to fall asleep wondering just how to put D&D onto
a computer. I don't think anyone's come anywhere near close yet
and don't expect that it will happen but there's no harm in trying
to fall asleep. Anyway, my friend and colleague, Pete James, was
suffering similar insomnia and, being an artist, was drawing
screens for a first-person perspective game on his C64. He really
fancied creating a two-player game and had the idea of a
chess-like game based in a dungeon.


It just so happened that Dungeon Master appeared around this time
on the ST and what a product that was! Three weeks later we'd
played it to death, even taking just a party of short people. My
own record is twelve hours with just two characters. I was talking
with Mirrorsoft at the time and suggested that I could do a DM
conversion for them on the C64. They ummed and arred a lot and
Pete carried on drawing screens until they finally said 'Yes!' and
I said 'No!  We've got a better design and it'll be
two-player-simultaneous'. They said 'Ok but we want ST and Amiga
as well'.

This was my biggest project by far. Five versions to produce -
Spectrum, Amstrad, C64, ST and Amiga - and just a few C64 screens
and lots of memories of killing orcs to go on. When I was
role-playing I don't think I ever played D&D or (so-called) AD&D.
I was with a group of systems fiddlers and we designed combat
systems, magic systems, thief systems.. Basically, the DM was God
and there was never a rule book to refer to.  Lucky that we had
good DMs. Bloodwych slowly grew. I did the ST and Amiga and C64
while my brother did the Z80 versions for Amstrad and Spectrum. It
wasn't easy trying to fit 512k of code into a 48k Spectrum or even
a 64k Commodore but with the odd tuck it all squeezed in. The
Spectrum had just seven bytes free at the end! We felt it was
pretty important to do the eight-bit versions especially since the
game was originally designed on the C64. It was a shame they
hardly sold."

@~RH: Did you always intend to do a data disk and why was there
@~only one?

"Mirrorsoft asked us for a data disk a couple of months later so I
made up some fresh spells and added the option to recruit monsters
while Pete made a fresh dungeon and drew some fresh graphics and
'Data Disk Volume One' was duly written. We tried to make the Data
Disks much more 'zappy' than the original.  The puzzles were
tougher and the 'magic of the ancients' felt so much more
enjoyable. Mirrorsoft somehow missed the Christmas release and
that was the end of that. I think they sold a couple of copies in
France.

Until recently, I still felt 'Bloodwych' to be the best
first-person perspective role-playing computer game. The product
did suffer from having a small view window but until 'Ultima
Underworld: The Stygian Abyss' (PC only) there hasn't been
anything to compete for game content and it's still great fun in
two-player mode. By the way, if there's anyone out there who wants
to buy 'Bloodwych', I'm selling it and the Data Disk at a price of
five pounds for either of the two or eight pounds for both (Data
Disk is only on ST and Amiga, and the C64 version is disk only)
via mail order from:

TAG,
8 Peveril Mount,
Bradford,
West Yorks,
BD2 3JY.

(Cheques should be made payable to Anthony Taglioni)"


@~RH: So where did the idea for 'Legend' come from and how did you
@~go about designing it?

"After much time and a lot of wondering what to do next, Pete and
I were playing Dungeon Quest one night. It's a great game that can
spread over an entire floor until you finally feel you've had
enough. Pete had some lead figures he'd painted and looking at
them I re-discovered the great view you get when you get down on
the floor amongst the figures. Suddenly, like the proverbial bolt
from the blue, we had 'Legend'. I don't think the game really
changed all that much from those first enthusiastic ramblings and
notes we made that night. We re-designed the non-dungeon parts a
couple of times and the magic system was designed much later but
where can you go wrong with such a tried and tested environment as
looking down over your party of fearsome adventurers while they
dash around smiting anything they see?

We toyed with the idea of moving in phases of player then monsters
and even of making it a game of 'pass the mouse' with each player
controlling their own character. We soon saw, however, that
keeping the game real-time just had to be the most fun to play
even if a lot harder to write. There was almost a C64 version but
it was abandoned due to lack of memory and Z80 versions were never
on the cards. Maybe it's piracy and maybe it's because there's
less demand for full-priced adventures but the poor sales of Z80
'Bloodwych' left me feeling that, for me, the Spectrum's day had
passed.

Pete and I work pretty well together. Every once in a while we
have 'mega brainstorming sessions' that work really well and, for
the rest, I write code and he draws graphics. Pete had done the
maps for 'Bloodwych' so he was the logical choice for map-designer
once I'd written the map editor. He probably took about three
months on-and-off doing the Legend maps and testing that they hung
together as interesting dungeons. The Moonhenge dungeon is my
favourite and that grew from a doodle on the map editor while Pete
was off making coffee.  The first room has seven exits and the
whole dungeon just keeps wandering around. I always get lost in
it.

The puzzles probably took about a week to design. Pete did most of
the map-related puzzles and I did most of the so-called logic
puzzles. You can usually spot the ones I did because the room
looks like a puzzle rather than looking decorous.

I'm still very pleased with the magic system. Despite comments in
some less than charitable magazines, it is unique and original.
Instead of writing spells into the game, I wrote a system where
you make your own spells from a list of a sixteen spell effects.
For example, a classic fireball is, essentially, a flying damage
spell as is a magic missile. So, we give you a component for
making spells fly and a component for damage and a component for
area-effect and what you do with them is a private matter between
you and your mouse. Just start by realising that there is a
significant difference between the spell flight/area-effect/damage
and the spell area-effect/flight/damage. You can make very many
worthwhile spells with the system and even now, after two years of
playing and testing, I still occasionally discover a fresh rune
combination to add to my spell book."


@~RH: Are you pleased how it turned out?

"I think the game turned out very well.  Maybe some of the puzzles
are a bit too tough but that's what hintbooks thrive on I suppose.
We did a special demo level for Amiga Power magazine and I made
half a dozen fresh puzzles for it.  The playtesters at Mindscape
called me after two days to tell me they were still stuck on the
second puzzle so I had to tone them all down a lot. Sad but that's
life. The puzzles probably ended up more fun to solve due to the
extra attention, though, and Amiga Power practically devoted an
entire issue to saying what a great game 'Legend' is."

@~RH: What will you be working on next?

"I'm not sure what'll be next. I'm currently doing a PC conversion
of Captive for Mindscape plus a map generator to go with the
Captive hint book."


@~RH: How do you see computer adventures and RPGs going in the
@~next few years?

"I've really got no idea of how computer adventure games will
progress from here. 'The Stygian Abyss' is, I think, the best that
is likely to be done with the first-person presentation and it's
shown me just how limited the format really is. I expect that
future hits will feature much more interaction in encounters and I
suspect that animated sequences are coming heavily into fashion.
These, of course, chew memory like nobody's business and so
floppies stop being a valid medium for playing from. I think the
ST and Amiga will soon be seen as poor competitors to the PC with
its powerful processors and ever better graphics cards and sound
boards and ever faster hard drives. Consoles will be able to
compete and are here to stay as ROMs get bigger and battery-
backed ram cards become common.

I saw an article last month about an interface device that you
control with alpha waves. Basically, you control your machine
directly from your mind. How long will it be before we have
machine output directly back to the brain? Won't that be
something?"

@~With that thought in mind (excuse the pun!) it was time to leave
@~Tag to get back to slaving over his melting keyboard. All there
@~is left to say is a hearty thanks to Tag for taking time out of
@~his busy schedule and that as many SynTax readers should go out
@~and buy 'Legend' now!

@~Legend retails at œ30.99 on ST, Amiga and PC and can be found in
@~all good software outlets. (Shop around and you can probably get
@~it cheaper through mail order if you look hard enough). A
@~comprehensive hintbook (written by yours truly) is also
@~available now at the very reasonable sum of œ5.99 directly from
@~Mindscape International if you happen to get stuck.

@~(End of plug and interview!)