The World of Clive Wilson If you started playing adventures on one of the 8-bit machines, you must have come across the name of Clive Wilson. He has written almost 20 adventures of various types over the years, starting on the Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad in the mid-80s. Some of his games, such as Kobyashi Naru, Venom and Zzzzz, were published by Mastertronic; others, such as Nightwing and Demigod, he published himself under his Softel label and then through Zenobi. Several of these games were text only but others were icon-driven and some were collaborations with Les Hogarth. With the advent of the 16-bit home computers, Clive discovered the ST and he and Les wrote Whiplash and Wagonwheel, a 2-disk horror adventure. Recently he has moved over to the PC and has converted three of his text adventures, The Darkest Road, The Unborn One and 'Twas a Time of Dread, using AGT. The games are sold as shareware, registrations being accepted by The Adventure Workshop. I'm always interested to know what makes an adventure author 'tick'. As Clive has written so many games, I wondered what it was about adventure writing that had kept his interest over almost a decade, so I was glad when he agreed to be interviewed. * * * * * @~SM: First of all, what started your interest in adventures? I @~presume playing them came first and you then went on to writing @~them. CW: Back in the dawn of time, I must have been one of the first purchasers of a ZX80. Les and I both bought Spectrums around the same time and we began playing The Hobbit and other adventures. I suppose The Hobbit was the game that hooked me (and is one of the few games I have solved.) We decided to try to write a game ourselves and discovered that we enjoyed writing games even more than playing them. @~SM: What made you decide to write your first game and how easy @~did you find it to do? CW: I suppose we thought that we could write a 'significant' game and we began work on Solaris which was written in Basic. The game itself took about six months to write. As it was our first game we had a lot to learn. Les wrote the plot and designed the graphics while I concentrated on the logic and text. I wouldn't call it easy to write but it was a labour of love. However, I must admit that I cringe whenever I look at it now. It was so s..l..o..w.. @~SM: Several of your early games were icon-driven. Do you find @~pure text games more flexible for the player and maybe for you, @~as the programmer, too? CW: I think we were driven to icons (pardon the pun) by the fact that Mastertronic wanted something a little different. Personally I thought our icon system was really quite advanced. I am still very proud of it (although reviewers tended to be critical.) The games did sell in vast quantities, however. I think pure text adventures are more accessible for players but as a programmer, I must admit I enjoyed the challenge of icon-driven code - I could do whatever I wanted with it. @~SM: The storylines of your games have been very varied. Where do @~you get your ideas from? CW: To begin with, Les used to do all the plotting and it was from Majik onwards that I wrote the plots. Virtually all I seem to read these days is fantasy literature - novels such as Lord of the Rings, the Covenant stories, the Shannara series etc. and I probably draw a lot of my ideas from there. I tend to create a fantasy scenario on paper and then allow the game to emerge from there. @~SM: You've tried several utilities over the years. How do you @~like AGT? Does it compare well with others you tried? And do you @~have any plans to try a different utility? CW: We mainly wrote our games in assembly in the Mastertronic era. To get a game published it really had to be in code and each game used to take about six months to write. When I started writing again on my own, I felt it would be unfair to use the system that Les and I had developed - it was, after all, a Softel thing. I looked at PAW and found I could write a game in just a few weeks so I stuck to that for the Spectrum games. When I decided to convert 'The Darkest Road' onto the ST and PC I discovered that AGT was very similar to PAW. I found it very easy to work with AGT - it is a very simple utility to use. However, I must say that although assembly is the most user-unfriendly way of writing a game, it does offer the programmer the greatest scope. You can do anything you like with assembly and then have the dubious pleasure of debugging something that causes a system crash every time you get a calculation just a little bit wrong. But that is half the fun! @~SM: How different are you finding the 16-bit market compared to @~the 8-bit market? CW: It is a bit too early to say at the moment. I know that my ST games, Whiplash and Wagonwheel and The Darkest Road, have not sold very well (via Zenobi) but then the adventure market in general seems to be in a decline. I'm afraid I don't see any future for it either. It looks to me as if it has had its day and we are all going to have to move on to other things. @~SM: The Darkest Road, The Unborn One and 'Twas a Time of Dread @~are being sold as shareware. How well has the shareware system @~worked for you? Does it rely too much on people's consciences to @~be practical? CW: Again it is much too early to say but I don't think I will make very much out of it. Actually, I didn't really expect to make much from it. I really converted the games simply for the challenge of doing so. May I ask a searching question of the readers? How many shareware registrations have you sent off? I would hazard a guess that the answer to that question is - not many! I think the answer to the second part of your question is a definite YES! @~SM: Are there more PC conversions - or new games - in the @~pipe-line? CW: The answer is, quite simply, no and no. I'm afraid that with the end of the trilogy comes the end of my adventure writing career. I've had great fun over the years but I feel that after some 18 or so games I am beginning to run out of ideas. This, coupled with the fact that the adventure market is now far too small to warrant the amount of time spent on a game, has prompted me to hang up my keyboards for the last time. @~SM: Do you have any regrets about your adventure writing career? CW: Do you mean apart from the fact that we didn't make enough money to retire on? (Joke, joke.) Seriously, the one regret I do have is that more people didn't like our type of games. We always tried to be innovative and fresh but we were continually slagged by the critics. I've played many games that I thought were atrociously programmed and yet seen those same games get excellent reviews. So yes, that is a real regret. The only other regret I have is that the adventure scene is dead. I've seen sales of my games go from the heady days of 65,000+ (for the likes of Se-Kaa and Kobyashi Naru) to sales of less than 50 for the recent titles. But then, nothing lasts forever! Perhaps now I'll have some time to put up my feet and ......... (but that would be telling.....) @~SM. Thanks very much for taking the time to do this interview. Registration for all three adventures - The Darkest Road, The Unborn One and 'Twas a Time of Dread - is œ5.00 per game through The Adventure Workshop, 36 Grasmere Road, Royton, Oldham, Lancs, OL2 6SR. You will be provided with a snazzy folder containing the registered, individually numbered version and a booklet containing the storyline, useful commands and general info, and will be entitled to help by post or phone. - o -