ADRIFT ADVENTURE CREATOR

              An interactive fiction toolkit.

                 Reviewed by David Froude

I came across this Shareware programme almost by accident.  I
bought a copy of "PC UTILITIES PLUS+" Issue 3 so I could browse
and possibly use some of the utilities on the disk supplied with
the magazine.  There were 3328 programs on the disk and I didn't
find the ADRIFT Adventure Creator until some weeks later under the
miscellaneous section.

I installed the program, version 3.8, to have a play with and was
quite impressed with it.  I then went into the ADRIFT website and
downloaded the latest version 4.  This has only limited save
facilities so I purchased the registration code for about œ14.00.

The program comprises two parts, the Generator - the adventure
creator and the Runner - which allows the games to be played.  It
was created by Campbell Wild using Visual Basic 6.0.

It is a text adventure writer but it does allow sound to be added
and also graphics.  I have played with the sound function and it
does provide a certain something to the game adding the right
atmosphere provided you can come up with the right sound for the
scene or action being carried out.

Like most of the adventure writers you cannot do some actions the
way your mind envisages them and you have to compromise within
those actions and facilities the program allows.

The ADRIFT web site contains adventures written by various authors
which are useful as in many cases the base "code or adventure" can
be accessed to see how the particular writer has addressed the
action taken in their adventure.

The writer itself has the following.

Options - includes various settings including setting fonts, 8
point compass, battle system, sounds, graphics, scoring, map and
so on.

Player - name, description, setting start point, initial position
and how much can be carried.

Introduction and winning - text shown at start up and initial
location for the start of the game.

You may create - rooms, objects, tasks, events and other
characters.

Directions from a room location may be any of the 8 points of the
compass, in, out, up and down.  It allows restriction of an exit
until a specific task has been carried out or not carried out or
an object which must be in a particular state.

Objects may be static or dynamic and may be held, hidden, worn, a
container, on a surface and so on.

Tasks allow actions to be carried out and allow restrictions if
some other task or object are not in a specific condition.  There
is an advanced command construction for tasks which allow for a
variance to what is to be typed in to action the task.

Events allow things to happen independently to the player or
dependent upon what the player does.

Characters may be introduced which the player may interact but
also may independently wander around.

There is also a spell checker which is very useful in correcting
those errors when you hit the wrong key.

There is a manual, some 92 pages or so which can be downloaded and
this is very useful but like all manuals it does not cover every
wrinkle you may encounter in adventure writing.

This brief description does not give full justice to the ADRIFT
adventure software and for those interested more details may be
found by visiting the ADRIFT web-site at http://www.adrift.org.uk.

David Froude                                    31st January 2004
















                              - o -