Sue takes her life in her hands to do an ... Interview with The Grue! There can't be many adventure players who haven't heard of grues, especially if they are fans of Infocom games. Grues are seldom seen - mainly because they eat anyone who gets close enough! The grue who I'm going to interview this issue isn't just any old grue - he is The Grue!, well known to readers of SynTax. All grues lurk in dark places, mostly underground caverns, waiting to leap on anyone who foolishly ventures in without a light source. I therefore made sure I had some spare Duracell batteries in my pocket before I dared to enter The Grue's lair. SM: I hope it's safe to come in. I'm going to have to start by asking the obvious question - why did you pick on the name Grue? GRUE: It was whilst I was playing Infocom's 'Spellbreaker' and during the adventure you had to turn yourself into a Grue. This I thought was a wonderful experience, except in my case it went dreadfully wrong! Every time I cast the snavig spell to turn myself into a Grue, I died! Hours later and after countless times of restoring my position and still dying, I finally realised what I was doing wrong. At the start of the game I had used the frotz spell on myself to provide a light source, thus eliminating the need to carry a light source around with me, as I was now a light source myself. Unfortunately, Grues and light do not get on well together, so by changing into a Grue whilst I was also frotz'd proved fateful for me, and I had to start the adventure all over again. A few weeks later some clever clogs told me that I didn't need to start the adventure again, all I had to do was unfrotz myself! I was so elated when I eventually became a Grue, I decided to remain one as a tribute to my cock-up. SM: How did you initially get interested in computers? GRUE: Totally by accident really, my brother bought a computer first mostly to play arcade games on. I thought they were fairly boring, in fact I thought his computer was fairly boring! One day he bought a text adventure game and suggested I take a look at it, well I did and thought it was even more boring than his arcade games. A couple of weeks later and he was still struggling with this text adventure and asked me if I would have a go with it. To my complete amazement I actually solved the bit he was stuck on at the time, so I just carried on with the game and a few weeks later I had finished it. It turned out to be the first of many and I can still remember now the satisfaction of solving that very first puzzle. SM: As well as obviously being a fan of Infocom's adventures, which other authors / publishers / specific adventures have you especially enjoyed? GRUE: Without hesitation I would say Brian Moriarty formerly of Infocom and then with LucasArts is my favourite author. The text adventures he wrote whilst with Infocom are pure class and his first graphic adventure (Loom) he did with LucasArts is a vastly underrated adventure. I have also admired the adventures from Legend but their game 'Companions of Xanth' was a big disappointment for me. LucasArts are without doubt the leader in the adventure market at the moment but I think Electronic Arts also produce fine games, I only wish they would do them more often. Specific adventures I've enjoyed, apart from Infocom's text adventures I really enjoyed the text games from Broderbunde, 'Mindwheel' 'Brimstone' and 'Essex', also the Unnkulian series of text adventures are excellent even though they are shareware. Recently 'Myst' and 'Dragonsphere' have been two well above average products. SM: You initially wrote your own game, The Four Symbols, on the Amiga using Hatrack, then converted it to the PC and ST using TADS. What made you decide to write a game yourself and why did you pick TADS rather than any other utility, such as AGT? GRUE: The thought always lingered on in the back of my mind, I wonder if I could write an adventure? So after more than ten years playing and solving other people's games, I embarked on my personal voyage of discovery. Not because I thought I had a great idea for a game or anything, I suppose it's a bit like why people climb mountains...because they are there! I thought Hatrack was a great tool for writing games but for all its advantages it also fell short in many areas and I felt 'The Four Symbols' suffered because of the utilities limitations. I had looked at AGT but also felt it was rather limiting with the number of objects etc, what I really wanted was to try and produce a game that played as good as an Infocom game. A fellow adventurer, Neil Shipman had told me about TADS and how good it looked. As it was shareware he sent me a copy and was forced to agree with his evaluation of it. TADS seemed to be the perfect tool for creating a text adventure but it did seem terribly complicated, but undaunted I sent off my registration and set to work. SM: How easy have you found TADS to use? GRUE: Initially I found the basics fairly easy but spent a huge amount of time reading the through the manual and the source code of a sample game, over and over again. Once I had made a start with TADS it turned out to be much easier than I had anticipated, but because the system is so powerful you start to dream up puzzles equal to the power of the programming system. Then TADS can become a more difficult system to use. Having said that I would still recommend TADS before any other text adventure system. SM: You sold Four Symbols yourself, also releasing a cut-back version into the public domain so that people could test it out and then register if they wished to get the full game. How successful has it been, selling your own game? GRUE: Releasing a cut-back version was a complete failure as only one person decided to register. Overall selling my own game was a much bigger success than I imagined, I had decided that if I could sell twenty copies I would have done really well, considering that text adventures are a minority interest to most computer users. In the end 'The Four Symbols' sold far, far more than the twenty copies I had anticipated but even if it had only sold ten copies I would have still been please with my first effort. SM: I know you're working on a second TADS game now ... and I know it's still pretty hush-hush, but can you tell us anything about it yet? GRUE: Gosh! You reporters are always after a scoop! The game is called 'Trinity',..... OH! you like to know a bit more than that? Well I thought it would be fun to think of an Infocom title and put a alternative story to the title. For example you could have a game where the player has to travel to Cuba and cut off Castro's beard! You would then call this game 'Infidel'. With Infocom's game 'Trinity' refers to the test site of the first atomic bomb and in my game 'Trinity' refers to the Holy Trinity, although there are a few similarities in the my game which are intentional it is not a complete spoof of Infocom's game. SM: Do you find it's easy to get ideas for puzzles and situations for a game? And how much planning do you do, before you sit down at the keyboard and start typing? GRUE: Yes, I do find it easy to think of puzzles and situations for a game, in fact I had lots of ideas left over from 'The Four Symbols'. I find that once I've thought of one situation, others just seem to flood in. I do very little in the way of planning, I might have a general idea of what the game should be about but nothing else. Then I will sit down at the keyboard and type in the first things that come into my head, most of which is complete rubbish! It's amazing but out of this rubbish there is always something which is worth using in the game and so it goes on until it's finished. It might seem a very odd way of producing a game but it works for me. For example with 'The Four Symbols' I had an idea for an ending but no idea about anything else, so I wrote the game backwards. With my new game I had the basic idea of the story but the rest has been made up as I've gone along, now it's about 50% complete and I know the next part will be situated in Rome but have absolutely no clue as what the player will encounter next, I'll just sit down and type in more rubbish again and see what happens. SM: So, you started as an adventure player, then became an adventure author some years later. Which do you prefer now - playing or writing adventures? GRUE: Playing adventures is still my preference, it's much easier and doesn't take up as much time. Perhaps this is why it takes so long for me to write a adventure, as I often get distracted when a new game comes out that I particularly want to play. Writing adventures is more like work although even that sometimes can be a pleasurable experience, especially when your playtesters don't find any bugs for you to track down, which can be one of the most miserable experiences you can have. SM: Finally, what do you think is the future of the text adventure? We keep being told it's dead - do you agree? GRUE: Unfortunately I have to agree, now we have great graphics, sound, digital speech and video, it is asking a lot for a text game to compete on that level and it can't sadly. What I will be sorry for is the loss of homegrown text games which is inevitable. There must be a lot of budding authors out there, some of whom may have brilliant ideas but unless someone brings out a utility for them to program a great graphic game with sound/speech etc, their ideas will be lost. SM: Thanks very much for taking the time to do this interview. @~This interview was written some months ago. 'Trinity' is now @~almost finished! - o -