CREATIVE ADVENTURE TOOLKIT -------------------------- Author: Phil Richmond CLR Licenseware Disk CLU 28 Demo on Disk Ref 910 Details supplied by the author CAT is an Amiga text adventure creator utility that works on the A500+,A600 and A1200 machines. PAL/NTSC It requires 1 meg chip RAM and a single internal disk drive. The current version is 4.5. If you own an earlier version and would like to upgrade, please send your original CLR disk and a SAE to me and I will update it free of charge. C.A.T. will enable you to create your own text games with sound and graphics (Dpaint iffs) which you may freely distribute to your friends or release as PD, Shareware or Licenseware. An autobooting game disk can easily be created using a single keypress. A large manual/tutorial (about 180k) is included on the disk and can be printed out. An example demo database is also included called 'Hazardous Holiday'. C.A.T. works on similar principles to the STAC/GAC/ QUILL/PAW systems which were once highly popular in the mid-eighties. It accepts low-rez pictures 320 x 200 in 8,16,32,64 or 4096(HAM mode) colours. Digitized pics look good in 64 or HAM mode. Pictures can be turned on or off and are normally shown when the player moves to a new location or types 'look' in the current room. A single keypress clears the screen and the text screen is flipped into view. Pictures of objects and characters can also be used and these are displayed when the player types 'look at . Pictures can also be shown in response to a particular player command or input. Pictures can also be shown in sequence to illustrate the consequences of a certain player action. If you own a Tracker or Med music program then you can also add a loading theme tune and store other musics on disk to use as incidental music at various points in your game. The excellent OctaMed V4, given away on a recent coverdisk is ideal for use with C.A.T. Sampled SFX in RAW or Iff format can be used in games There are thousands of atmospheric samples in the Public Domain which could be used. C.A.T. is fine for creating text-only adventures. All the relevant data is entered into a database from options on the easy to use Main Menu and then saved to your 'Development Disk' until your game is completed. The maximum size for a database is 200k, big enough for most games, but databases can be linked together so some really B-I-G games could be created using this method with games being split into 2 or 3 discrete parts or self-contained games in themselves onto 1 disk. Pictures and datafiles can also be crunched using the Powerpacker program to save on disk space. I have also allowed the use of external drive DF1: to be used as a picture and music disk for creators who wish to make 2 disk games - so you can cram even more graphics and sounds into games. In addition to the built-in database I've included a facility for displaying ASCII text files, which are shown using C.A.T.'s adventure text viewer, and this is fine for creating game background details, credit or contact info or a help file etc. These can be shown in response to specified inputs. The parser is fairly sophisticated and can cope with multiple commands which are separated using 'and' 'then' a comma or full stop. Here are some examples that might be valid inputs: take the rope,examine it,tie it to the oak tree examine all but the knife,rucksack then put everything except the stone and gun into the box.drop all and go w,s,se then wait,inventory.get the ornate vase and give it to the blacksmith, look at him then talk to him score,ramsave,save,e,e,n,ramload Sentences/paragraphs can be output in differing colours, underlined, shaded or using flash. There are 'brief' 'verbose' and 'exit' commands. System Messages can be customized to your own preference eg: 'I now have the ' can be changed to 'You now have the '. When you start to write your game you begin adding to the default database which contains essential vocabulary and coding entries to cover 'getting', 'dropping' 'wearing' 'removing' objects and for many necessary commands and actions ie. the 'except' and 'all' commands. So a lot of the hard work is already done for you! Coding is done by entering Conditions and Actions and making use of flag variables. Here are some examples: talk to farmer#f380=room*mess201 attack giant#f381=room*cmessWhat with?? attack giant with knife#f381=room#carried3*mess202# mess203#pic501#pic502#mess204#score+10#f381=0 attack giant with knife#f381=room#notcarr3*cmessYou're You're not holding the knife! attack giant with n2#f381=room#heren2*cmessThe n2 would be useless against the huge, powerful giant... Characters can be designed to follow the player, remain static or move according to a set movement pattern. Objects can be containers and have weight values. There is a Test Adventure facility and timeout feature. Other details: LOCATIONS - 500 (max length around 900 characters) MESSAGES - 600 (custom messages can also be used) CONNECTIONS - 500 (n s e w ne nw se sw u d in out) OBJECTS - 200 (carryable, wearable, container + weights) SYS MESSAGES - 100 (input prompts, standard messages etc.. - can be changed) CHARACTERS - 21 (enough for most games, although objects could also be made to be characters) FLAGS - 500 (can be manipulated, decreased, increased) VOCABULARY - 500 verbs, nouns ; 200 prepositions CODING - Up to 1000 entries for RESPONSES I hope I've whetted your appetite for maybe having a crack at writing a game using C.A.T. I would be pleased to offer help/advice/problem-solving for any budding CATcoders out there and/or playtest any of your creations. I put a lot of hard work into the program and devised it after looking at a lot of different creators and have tried to make the process of creating a game simple and user friendly. (Sorry, a bit of ego tripping going on here) C.A.T. costs œ3.99 from outlets/distributors of CLR utils. A demo of the latest version of C.A.T. (v4.6) with the save option disabled is on SynTax Disk 910. Additions to the new version include an improved text routine so that words and messages can be highlighted with their own pen and paper colours - even individual letters of words can have different colours. The word wrap routine is also now better and faster. - o -