Adventure 2000

                     John Ferris

Another Convention and another badge for my collection. When 
I examined the badges I discovered to my surprise that I had 
actually been to the first Convention. I remember going there 
and the place being packed out, but that's about all. 

The new venue for this year, the Coventry Hill Hotel was 
convenient for me, being a Coventrian, although I was 
expecting to be living in Derby by now. It seemed strange to 
arrive at a convention without being stressed out by having to 
negotiate the M6 and the dreaded Birmingham Inner Ring 
Road.

Up to a few weeks ago, I would have thought the Coventry ring 
road was pretty tame in comparison. However, I was in the city 
centre at a computer shop buying a new 15" monitor (Axion 
make, œ104, pretty good value.) All I had to do was to get the 
car to the service area (loading bay) behind the shop, about 30 
seconds walk from the shop counter, to save me lugging the 
thing through town back to the car park about 15 minutes away.

Naturally, having walked back to the car, I proceeded to get 
extremely lost by taking the wrong exit on our "tame" ring road. I 
tell you, it was a maze of fiendish and sadistic proportions. Little 
one-way sections meant I could see the road I wanted, but 
couldn't get there. I visited familiar places and places that I 
never knew existed (I'm sure I travelled back to the 18th 
Century at one point) and this was my hometown. Eventually I 
pulled up somewhere, looked at my roadmap (yes, I keep one 
of my hometown, I know my limits) and eventually worked my 
way to the service area and bought the monitor.

So if anyone got lost in there, you have my sympathy.

The Coventry Hill Hotel is about 4 miles from the city centre, 
perhaps a little out of the way for those who have to travel by 
train. I appreciated being able to unload the PC through a door 
right into the convention room. There were no stairs or tight 
corners, just a short lug, less than 20 yards. There was plenty of 
space in the room and no shortage of plug sockets.

For the first time ever to my knowledge, there was no 8-bit 
presence at all this year. Not even my favourite Amstrads were 
to be seen.

I was just setting up the PC and even before I had got the 
keyboard in then a lady, whose name I have shamefully 
forgotten, came up to me with a very familiar expression on an 
unfamiliar face. The expression then every conventioneer 
knows. The one that means "You're gonna play the Megapoints 
compo whether you like it or not, sonny."  Yeah, that's the one. 
But this lady was just so nice about it. 

This year's game was written with ACE, the adventure writing 
system for the PC based upon PAW. Ace has been in 
development for at least 18 months and should be released 
next year, sometime. I tend to enjoy the megapoints games and 
this one was no exception. I liked the way the game was 
structured and just how it "felt." Karen Tyers was hovering close 
by looking to catch any bugs and any strange inputs we 
players/competitors/playtesters came up with. I can't remember 
who won, just that I didn't come last. One fragile male ego 
intact, then.

The Adventure Probe Convention Video was playing and I 
spent some time looking for faces and wondering where some 
of them have gone to. It was nice to be reminded what some of 
those I email looked like, albeit 10 years ago. It was interesting 
listening to some of the old-timers (Hi Amster) talking about that 
convention. There were actually representatives from various 
software houses there to collect awards. But, that was 
yesteryear.

I had Unreal (an arcade game! Shock horror!) running briefly on 
the PC. However it gave Jenny Perry and, strangely enough 
myself, a small dose of motion sickness. I think it was how we 
were looking down at the monitor.  I also had the Masterpieces 
of Infocom running later which did seem popular. Peter Smith 
and myself explored some of the entries for the year 2000 IF 
competition from the Internet. Some of the games were, well, 
very odd indeed.  One game, called "At Wit's End" did catch our 
eye and seems worth playing. We didn't know what was going 
on until we read the instructions on baseball and then we were 
off. Essentially the game (up to where we got to) was a 
succession of locked cell puzzles; situations where we had a 
limited number of moves in which to save ourselves. Deserving 
of closer scrutiny and a proper review. Peter?  Or Shall I?

Frank Fridd was demonstrating Colditz Escape as rewritten in 
Phil Richmond's Creative Adventure Toolkit for the PC. Phil 
actually modified CAT in response to Frank's programming 
needs. The game looks pretty good and the screen display is 
quite novel. Frank has done a fair bit of research into the 
subject. One little (and I do mean little) drawback with the 
graphics in CAT is that it can't use jpegs, it needs bitmaps (or 
was it TIFFS?) and these take up a lot more disk space. I think 
it's a limitation with the programming language Phil uses, not 
with Phil's impressive programming skills. On a different note, 
next year Frank, if we are spared, we will get chance to put the 
world to rights. I won't make the mistake of having "stuff" to do 
on Convention night again!

That's a key point why I enjoy the annual Probe 
Convention/Adventure200x outing. It's not just that I get the 
chance to play on PCs all day and not feel guilty. It's that I can 
get to put faces to names and talk about a common interest with 
people who don't think I'm sad or mad (either that or they hide it 
well.) It's about having a laugh and a joke and even a serious 
discussion with someone you only see once a year, it might be 
the only time each year you speak.   

The Alternative Awards

Despite my half-heated efforts, the Alternative Awards seem to 
be taking a life of their own. People are even asking if they get 
one this year. Sorry Jenny, nothing for you this time, although if 
I had stayed long enough to see those new boots you were on 
about I might have thought something up. Nothing for Karen 
either, I'm afraid. My problem is that there are no other Awards 
for the Alternative Awards to be Alternative to. Someone needs 
to start the Alternative Alternative awards. Anyway, only a few 
this year:

The Charlie Dimmock Award for Most Unusual Water 
Feature goes to the convention room at the Coventry Hill Hotel. 
The indoor waterfall was most ingenious, but I was a little 
concerned that the live light fitting was an integral part of the 
exhibit.

The Rip Off of the Day Award goes to the Office World shop 
that sold CDR disks at over a pound each. Our judge noted that 
single disks could be obtained for almost twice the going rate, 
compared with a certain shop at the centre of a maze of one-
way streets, all alike. While I'm having a moan, some words of 
advice from someone who was once bitten. These mail order 
firms and/or Internet suppliers do not necessarily give the best 
price deal. If you are looking to buy some software, especially if 
it isn't new, then check out the computer shops in town first. I 
was surprised. Look out for software that has been re-released 
as part of a collection, often cheaper than the original price. 

The Just Resting my Eyes award goes to Edwina Brown. It 
was uncanny how Edwina managed to avoid being 
photographed whilst, er, resting her eyes.

The Award for the Most Gratuitous Beard goes to Jon Scott. 
There really ought to be laws against this sort of thing. I've 
broke out into a cold sweat just thinking about it.

The Grubbiest CDs award goes to Jill Nott's Odyssey disks. 
Someone please buy the poor lass a cleaning kit for Christmas. 
Actually Jill, the game has been mentioned in PC Home 
magazine, although the reviewer wasn't really impressed with 
the voice acting in the game and only gave it 60% or so. How 
are you getting on with it?


Last but Not Least

Finally, Vicky Jackson announced that she was escaping the 
British climate and going to live in Spain. I would just like to add 
my thanks for her contribution in organising the conventions 
over the years with Larry Horsfield.  I can't really appreciate 
what it takes to organise a convention, but it's probably not 
easy. Thanks, Vicky. I hope everything goes well for you. 

I hope to see you all again next year and hopefully, a bunch of 
new faces as well.








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