Letters

@~Any letters sent to me that aren't marked 'not for publication'
@~and which deal with adventure-related matters will be considered
@~for inclusion, maybe being edited in the process.
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@~First one about SynWin from ...
John Moore, Stafford

Time I put pen to paper figuratively speaking. There are a few
hints that everyone has probably figured out already about the
very useful SynWin accessory. If, like me, you went through the
nausea of creating a SynTax main directory then subdirectories for
all the back issues, then copied all the floppies to the hard
disk, well done. It is worth it in the end. Thank you, Alex.

My tips ... To save space on your hard disk once you have copied
all your issues over, click on your main SynTax directory, use the
File Manager search command to find Reader. Make sure you have the
check box for subdirectories checked and delete all. Do the same
for index*.asc in all issues except the current one, then delete
all. I also deleted the software house adverts from the back
issues. Sorry about that but I still have the floppies. You will
be amazed at the space saved. At the end of the day you can
customise your hard disk issues any way you want.

@~I'm all for saving hard disk space (where DOES it go?) so thanks
@~for the tips. The indexes are about the largest sections in each
@~issue but people do like them so I keep them going ... Sue
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@~Next, Internet info from:
Marion Taylor e-mail 100343.2015@compuserve.com

Dear Sue,

I was wandering around the CompuServe adventure libraries the
other week, looking for The Legend Lives!, the latest Unnkulian
(yes, I found it - rated *difficult* said Dave Baggett and he's
not kidding), however, while I was there I noticed the following

which should go some way to answering Bill's question about
adventure sites on the Internet. Here's the direct quote...

"Interactive Fiction Competition '95 - Inform Entries. The IF
Competition was held in October of 1995 on the Usenet groups
rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction. The challenge
was to create a short text adventure - ideally, one which a player
could finish in two hours. Authors could enter games created with
either TADS or Inform, the two most popular and most portable text
adventure creation systems.

The Official FTP Site of the IF Competition is "ftp.gmd.de" (look
in the directory "if-archive".) This site has everything a
text-adventure fanatic needs: adventure creation tools (including
TADS and Inform), interpreters to run various games on many
different systems, articles on adventure design, and a multitude
of games in many formats, both short and full-length."

I did download one of the files (8) adventures and some of them
looked pretty good... but first Curses and now The Legend Lives!
have stopped me having a real go at them. Nice idea, a two-hour
adventure.

Hope this helps, Bill.

@~I >MUST< get online! I keep hearing about all these great areas
@~to explore ... Sue
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@~And finally text adventure views from a new reader, welcome
@~to ...
Adrian Sill, 19 Sherwood Drive, Five Lane Ends, Skellow, Doncaster
DN6 8NY. e-mail adrian@wrox.com

I still play Infocom's games and would like to see this sadly and
vastly underrated genre make a comeback. I am trying to develop a
text-based and dynamically expanding virtual world which will look
similar to the old-style text adventure games, but which is
infinitely more enjoyable because it will feature:


a near-perfect parser (the user should be able to get a sensible
response from anything they type),

an infinitely expandable landscape (the player's world would
effectively consist of modules which are linked by road/path/river
etc.) which is regularly appended to,

the world will not be restricted in any way, and will simulate a
'real' world by being totally open and allow the player to do
whatever they wish i.e. no quests,

multi-player across the Internet (or at least a local network for
the time being),

'real' characters that have many, many different personality
traits, priorities, assets, vocabularies and lifestyles (it should
be difficult to tell them apart from other computer players).

Basically I want to drop the player into a world that they feel is
real, rather than just a database of logic puzzles. It is
obviously a huge undertaking, not logistically but workwise. I
would appreciate any ideas / suggestions.

@~Please write to or e-mail Adrian if you have any input.
@~Describing this as a 'huge' undertaking sounds a bit of an
@~understatement! Let us know how it goes ... Sue













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