RAMBLINGS OF AN OLD TIMER

                        By Simon Avery

This is a rather overly sentimental journey in my experiences of
the adventuring fraternity over the last decade.  I hope you take
the time to read it, and that you won't get put off by me being
maudlin.

I've been adventuring for nearly twelve years now and have seen a
lot of changes in the scene as a whole. As you well know, twelve
years in computing terms is a very long time. But this isn't about
the hardware so much, more about the games themselves, and the
people playing them. If you will bear with me, I'll talk about the
games themselves first.

The first adventure I ever played was on the shiny new Dragon 32
called Castle Adventure, published by Virgin and written entirely
in unprotected Basic. The reason I bought it at Menzies was I
didn't have enough money to buy the latest arcade game, one of the
very few times, I now realise, that I was grateful for being poor.
Looking back on it, (I still have that game, and the Dragon) it
was an amazingly bad adventure, with non-logical actions and a
plethora of sudden deaths. But in my starry-eyed state, I thought
it was wonderful. I played all the adventures I could get my hands
on for the Dragon (surprisingly, it came to treble digits) until
there came a time when nobody played with their Dragon, or even
admitted to owning one.

A few years passed, then I was given an Amstrad CPC (with disk
drive) as a present from my non-present father and that unleashed
entire new vistas for me. I tentatively put out tendrils to search
for like-minded adventurers until a chap called Mark Eltringham
introduced me to Adventure Probe. I still remember the day when I
opened up its smudged photocopied pages and realised I was not
alone, there were >hundreds< of similar nutters out there, all as
equally besotted with the verb-noun input as myself. It was about
this time that I really got myself involved in adventuring, not
just playing them, but writing about them and, also, writing the
things myself.  Up until the date I retired from the Amstrad, and
got a PC, I had written around 35 Quilled and Adlan adventures. To
my knowledge, nobody else has written this many (I count each part
of multi-part games as a separate game, for they take the same
amount of programming) and I think I am justifiably proud of that
fact.  Certainly, some of those games were of a low standard, but
I have never looked back and regretted anything that I have
written or done, for I firmly believe that one learns from one's
mistakes.  I think I have done my part for 8-bit adventuring,
though it was not without some regret that I sold off all my CPC
equipment and software.

The games themselves have changed a great deal in my twelve years
in this hobby. They are, with one or two exceptions, infinitely
better than the adventures of the early eighties. One thing that
still niggles me is the large amount of money made by the
commercial companies (Delta 4, CRL to name but two) in this boom
of adventuring for what were, even then, appallingly bad games. It
disappoints me to think of all the prospective adventurers who
might be with us now if they hadn't been put off by playing a
horrible adventure such as "The Experience" (A one-roomed spoof
which retailed for œ1.99 and had all the excitement of a dead, red
herring, which indeed it was.) The games being produced today,
especially on the 8-bit machines, are of a supremely high quality
for the simple reason that making money is no longer involved.

The adventure writing utilities have also improved dramatically,
as you would expect. When you compare TADS to, say, GAC, there is
simply no comparison (I'm conveniently forgetting the hardware
requirements, but I'm sure you will excuse me this once). GAC was,
and still is, a horrible program which makes horrible games. Sorry
all you GAC programmers, but I for one have reset the computer
many times in frustration due to the delay in GAC parsing a simple
phrase.

The games being produced on the PC, however, are not so good as
their 8-bit brethren. This is my personal view. Since I run a
shareware library, I receive a large amount of PD and shareware
adventures. The vast majority of these are American and written
with AGT (the GAC of the 90s) and are nowhere near the standard
of adventures being written on the Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad. The
exception to the American games are those from Adventions,
creators of Unnkulia.

Of the English games I've played on the PC, nearly all have been
of a high quality, especially those written with TADS. I am
perhaps a little biased towards TADS, it being the utility I use,
but there is no arguing it is a superb piece of programming and
the games written with it run smoothly and powerfully. I also
think that because TADS is a little harder to learn than AGT (or
so I believe), only adventurers who really know what they want to
write persevere, so the finished game is usually of a higher
standard. Of course there are exceptions, but these are few at the
moment since TADS is still a fairly new offering. I do have a pet
theory as to why PC and other 16-bit adventures are not so
playable as their 8-bit counterparts. It goes something like this:

The 8-bits are coming to the end of their lifespan. Sad, but there
you have it. The 16-bits are still fairly young, by that I mean in
regard to their expected time of existence. The PC is going to be
with us well into the next century, if only because so many people
use them. This means that prospective authors are still glitzed by
all the snazzy hype associated with a mainstream computer, and,
rather than get down to creating something original and fresh,
they find themselves drifting away and getting deluded by visions
of fame and fortune.

Now let's get this straight, text adventures will never again be
profitable. They will never again be fashionable. The mid-eighties
were the only time when text adventures could make money, and
often, only if they had accompanying graphics. It is somewhat
reassuring to me that the English writers making adventures
nowadays (even on the PC, ST and Amiga) know this and aren't
bothered about it. They know that if they can get enough money to
pay for the electricity used during the game, and maybe a little
bit more, they aren't doing too badly. The only adventures to make
money these days are those like "Day Of The Tentacle", "Secret of
Monkey Island" with the point, click interface. I positively dread
the day when a utility comes on the market that promises to create
games like this. Can you imagine the quality of such adventures?
It was bad enough with GAC when the authors, having graphic
capabilities at their fingertips, felt they had to use them,
resulting in badly-drawn pictures that totally destroyed any
atmosphere the game might have had.

Now, the people. I came into mainstream adventuring (if there ever
was such a thing) rather late so missed out in knowing some of the
earlier personalities such as Sandra Sharkey and others. One thing
that makes me feel >really< old however, is that I'm still here
and most of the people around in `the good old days' are now gone,
or hiding. To name but a few who have vanished; Dave Adams (great
bloke who disappeared without trace), The Wayfarer, Mark
Eltringham, Jim Struthers, Allan Phillips, Tim Kemp, Dave Havard
and the latest, Tony Collins. With the exception of the latter
(for reasons to be explained in another letter), the others just
trickled away, nobody seeming to notice that they were there no
longer. Perhaps adventuring's a transitory thing, perhaps it's
just a phase people go through then give up and get on with
`normal' life. I don't know the answer, all I know is there is a
small core of stubborn adventurers who have stuck with it
through thick and thin, such great names as: The Grue, Barbara
Gibb, Barbara Bassingthwaight, Bob Adams, Mandy Rodrigues, Larry
Horsfield and the others. I hope they never wake up and realise
how much time and money they've spent on adventuring.

Since I left the Amstrad, just over a year ago, I've lost some
good 8-bit friends who just got plain fed up with me banging on
about how wonderful my new machine was, but I've also met some
great new friends who I'd never had dealings with before (Hi Sue,
James, Jean...), so I guess it just about evens out in the end.
The 8-bit machines are dying, as surely as night follows day. The
mere fact that no new 8-bit computers are being built or sold
(with the exception of the odd 8-bit games console, but I don't
class them as computers) means that the number of users will
diminish as spares become harder to find and games get released
ever more infrequently. This won't happen for years yet, but it
will, just give it time.

The same will be said of 16-bit computers in another ten years,
you can't stop progress, and I can't see why anyone would want to.
Even 16-bit computers are getting rare in the shops now, PC 386s
and up are 32-bit machines, at least at local bus level, so
perhaps the end is in sight even for those machines? 64-bit PCs
will be appearing very shortly if they're not out already, clock
tripling is already a fact so even a 33Mhtz 486 PC can be speeded
up to 99Mhtz. The PC is where the computer is heading, Atari and
Commodore are mere flashes in the processing pan of life. Sorry,
BMK, but your Jaguar's heading for a fall.

I apologise again for this sentimental journey. There is nothing
new in what I have written, nothing radical nor exciting. If you
disagree with anything I have written, then please write a
response. I know I am getting cynical in regard to adventures. It
has been a long, long time since I have played a game that I have
really, and I mean, REALLY, liked. I think the last time I really
loved a game was when I first played GrueKnapped! on the CPC, and
that was about four years ago. Don't get me wrong, I still like
playing adventures, it's just that they have lost their shine. I
no longer wake up in the middle of the night with the answer to a
puzzle shouting from my lips.  It is rare that I come across a
puzzle that I haven't seen before, in some shape or form. Some
wise man said that there were only four types of joke, I feel the
same about puzzles. This doesn't stop me writing them, but I just
know it could be so much better.  I wish I had the answer. Perhaps
it's something that happens to all adventurers when they first
lose their `Adventuring virginity'; when they first come across a
puzzle that they've seen elsewhere, or a plot that they've played
through already. It is time to do some serious thinking about
where adventures are heading, and how to get them there.  TADS has
taken the text-only adventure as far as it will go.  Where next?
Do you really want adventures to go any further?  The only
alternative I can think of is virtual reality, but this is a pipe
dream for the average adventure for years to come, and even then
will be beyond the back-room writer.

I've seen good games, I've seen bad games, and on the whole, the
bad games are winning.



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