A.C.E. - ADVENTURE CREATION ENVIRONMENT
               A P.A.W. LOOK ALIKE FOR THE PC

                 An article by Peter Clark
                       and Andy Clark

Last year my son, Andrew, who many of you have met, recently
obtained his Degree at the University of East Anglia in Applied
Computing. One evening soon after he returned home he happened to
mention that he felt a bit at a loss as he had got used to having
a project to work on every day. I took the opportunity to suggest
to him that, if he was feeling that much at a loss, why could he
not re-write The Professional Adventure Writer (PAW) so that those
people who were used to writing adventures on the Spectrum and the
Amstrad machines could continue with text adventures without
having to learn another language. He accepted the challenge and
has been writing such a utility for several months now. As he
works for British Telecom at their research labs at Martlesham
near Ipswich and spends most of his days sitting in front of a
computer screen, it can be a bit of a bind to spend the evenings
doing the same thing but the work progresses and here is his
report on the work done so far. It is hoped that a version might
be ready for testing around October and I hope to bring it to the
Convention if it is available.

                           A.C.E.

PARSER
     Accepts Verb/Noun combinations. Needs extra logic to parse
     Adverbs etc. Parser accepts words to be both Verbs and Nouns.

OBJECTs
     All object attributes are programmed. The maximum number of
     objects is currently 1000 but can be extended to 4 billion if
     really required.

LOCATIONS / MAP
     Completed except for replacing the _ with current object.
     FLAGS Completed. Currently a maximum of 1000 but can be
     extended to 4 billion.

PROCESS TABLES
     Conditions are all programmed. The Actions need implementing
     fully.  This is the most complicated and bug prone part of
     the system.

GENERAL
     The limit on the number of locations, objects, flags etc is
     currently 1000. This can be changed if it is found to be too
     low.

If anybody has any {practical) ideas for any enhancements please
let me know.
Andy Clark clarkap@btinternet.com or 459 Bramford Lane, Ipswich,
Suffolk IP1 5JH




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