Interview with Laurence Creighton Laurence Creighton's name is well known to Spectrum adventurers. Over the years, he has written a large number of text adventures on that machine, first using the Quill and later with PAW. His games are now being made available to PC and Amiga owners through Zenobi Software under emulation and Laurence is still writing new ones. Yet he is still typing away on his Spectrum despite the fact that he now also has a PC. I beamed myself down to sunny South Africa to find out why he has stuck to the Spectrum, despite the advances with 16-bit machines. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Hello Laurence. Welcome to SynTax. Could you start by telling us @~a bit about yourself? Hi Sue, and thanks for the opportunity of appearing in SynTax. Before we start let me add that I am writing this in mid-November and it's only 17C (62F). So much for "sunny" South Africa! I'd like to correct your statement above, in that I tried the PAW and gave up on it. I found it too complicated and even with its limitations I preferred to stay faithful to Ye Olde Quill. I was born in Worthing, Sussex and we lived in Canon's Park, near Edgeware, for many years until my parents decided to emigrate to sunny S.A. We lived in Johannesburg for two years (yuck) - there is always hostility between Jo'burgers and Capetonians! I did most of my schooling here in Cape Town, which is the most beautiful city on Earth I feel - and even more laid-back than San Francisco. After I matriculated with honours in Science, I went to Pharmacy School and became a pill-pusher! For a few years I managed a large retail business and four years after graduating I resigned to wander about in Europe. I ended up "home" in London where I stayed for a year, but the snow and ice drove me back to "sunny" South Africa. I'm single, have all my hair and teeth, stand 1.7 metres (ñ 5'7") which puts me in the "not so tall" category. I love eating out - steaks and pasta being my favourites (but not at the same time...) I watch a lot of TV and make a point of going to a movie once a week: adventures being my favourite (who'd have guessed!) and "Rambo"-type films I adore. I love all sorts of music - from Bach to the Beatles - but my great love is Folk. Bob Dylan (in his old style: prior to his motorbike accident), and of course the Prima Donna herself, Joan Baez. My Sunday morning ritual of only classics usually brings forth Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, but Mendelsohn and Handel aren't far behind. I love Soapies on TV and for reading, I prefer disaster stories, like plane crashes or ships sinking at sea (am I sick?) @~How many adventures have you written, and which was the first? To date I've written seventeen, all of which were published - the latest is about to be released. I've just completed the 18th one, or will have as soon as I've killed a very virulent bug! My first adventure was "THE LOST TEMPLE OF THE INCAS". @~Out of all the adventures you have written, which is your @~favourite and why? I wish you hadn't asked me that one, Sue! To be quite candid I think I'll have to use a pin... but if you are trying to corner me into a confession, I suppose "THE MUMMY'S CRYPT" is my personal favourite. I suppose I say that because, in my opinion anyway, it reeks of atmosphere! You know: a sarcophagus with an arm dangling out of it and so on. Once I started on this adventure, the ideas and puzzles came flooding into my head - each one better than the one before. @~Do you plan your games completely before you start or do you @~just dive in and see where they take you? The latter. I sketch a rough plan down on a large sheet of paper fully annotated why I'm doing what and to whom etc, but as I progress I think "mmm, let's do this here or let's place that obstacle there". Most of my games take their own course and I let the cards fall where they will.... @~Where do your ideas come from? Sue, as I stated in the previous question, they just pop into my head. I may store them away in the grey cells for future use, but mainly it's a domino-effect: as one idea comes to my head it knocks another idea into my consciousness and that idea triggers off another thought, and so on. I must add that more than once I've scratched my head wondering why I created this or that, and what is the reason a particular person serves. More than once (because I didn't make adequate annotations, a whole segment of a game became lost on me), I'll end up with an object being stylishly created, but for the life of me sometimes I can't remember what I was driving at. Pre-senile dementia maybe...!? @~You have written so many games you obviously get a lot of @~enjoyment from programming. What it is that particularly appeals @~to you about it? Being creative: straight and simple. There is an indescribable satisfaction in starting with a blank Quill (so to speak), and ending up with my favourite three words: "It's a wrap." Candidly, half the fun is not so much the writing (but it plays a large part, believe me) but the self-playtesting and ironing out the kinks. I'll give you an example: in my latest game which is to all intents and purposes finished, you speak to an old man at the start who gives you your quest. This man you meet again right at the end, and if you speak to him then, he gives you the whole shpeel again. I've loaded the bl--dy thing with conditions and mugtraps but still I get this bug. It's a headache, but it's great fun - to me that is programming: going through the database line by *%!& line to try and fathom out where this virus is coming from! @~Do you play other authors' games as well? Can you tell me some @~you have especially enjoyed - and why? Oh yes indeed, I play adventures often. (Where does he find the time I hear a chorus of voices asking - or does South Africa have 36 hours in the day?!) I can't narrow it down to anything in particular, or a particular author, but as far as I'm concerned an adventure must "flow". If you find an object it must be obvious what to do with it OR when a situation arises it must be reasonably obvious what object to employ. An adventure written with a "hee hee I'll catch 'em all out" attitude is asking for a game to be thrown to the back of the cupboard. I think the adventures written by Jack Lockerby are far and above the better ones on the market. His games are a shining example of what an adventure should be. @~When you got your PC, you programmed a game with AGT but then @~decided to go back to the Spectrum. Why was that? What @~advantages does Quill have for you that AGT doesn't? It was pointed out to me by John Wilson that not too many people have PCs - well not for playing adventures anyway - and thus a PC-only game has limited participation. However, a game written on the Quill (or PAW for that matter) for the Spectrum would meet that market, and the Amiga and PC users by way of the fantastic emulator. John sent me the emulator with a few adventures that I wrote, and I was stunned how effectively I could play them on my PC. I rewrote the one and only game I'd written for the PC using the Quill and actually got better results. The AGT is a fair utility, but has some drawbacks. One is the parser: if you hide an object behind a tree for example, and type in "look under tree" it achieves the same end. I took this up with the AGT's author, who conceded that I was right but that this was hard-cored on the EXE file and couldn't be modified or amended. Then there are no sound or color effects with the AGT nor is there Ramsave or Ramload - almost indispensable in adventuring. @~Do you think you will eventually work exclusively on the PC? Yes. But only when the Spectrum has been placed in the Science Museum and the last adventurer has crossed the last chasm. There is still a fair-sized "band" of us, and as long as there is I'll keep writing for the Speccie. When that becomes history, I'll continue writing, but by then I pray someone brings out something a little better than the AGT. I still feel Gilsoft let everyone down when they didn't bring out a PC version of their Quill, or even of the PAW. @~What are your future plans, programming-wise? Well Sue, I didn't read ahead, and I think I answered that one above! I'll continue to write adventures - as long as I keep getting inspired. Meanwhile I'll write for the Spectrum as long as players enjoy them. @~Thanks very much for taking the time to do this interview. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Laurence's games are available through Zenobi Software, 26 Spotland Tops, Cutgate, Rochdale, Lancs, OL12 7NX. Contact them for more details and a catalogue. - o -