The Beginning Of An Adventure

The Electron is designed as a high-resolution graphics micro, not for text display, and so adventure games are not the first thing one would think of for the 'baby brother'. But adventures have been written for 8K and 16K machines, so why not for the 32K Elk using its 8K Mode 6? Electron owners are just as likely to graduate to adventures as owners of QLs or IBMs. So it has come about.

This is a highly readable introduction to the art of amateur adventure creation. Like most other books in the category, it restricts itself to Basic, though the general principles mapped out here do in fact pass over into machine code if you are really aiming high.

All the main issues involved in the adventure trade are given a pretty thorough airing, as one might expect from an author who is both a computer studies teacher and an adventure addict. In some ways the book is more suitable for someone who knows a bit about the adventure world and can appreciate Mr Bradbury's subtle insights.

He suggests that the sophisticated parsers of The Hobbit and Zork may be unnecessarily complicating and actually hamper the adventure game - a heresy with more than an atom of truth in it.

Nevertheless you will have to be a very persistent reader and programmer to write an adventure with the help of this book. If you have already started, got some way, and perhaps got stuck on some point, you might find the answer here.

Unlike some other guides, this one does have a complete short mini-adventure listing in an appendix. The points made in the preceding chapters do not refer to this listing but give examples of procedures that could be used to do certain jobs in any game.

Text compression, so vital for the Electron, is dealt with thoroughly and helpfully, with program listings included.

I have been enjoying adventure games for nearly as long as Mr. Bradbury, but he managed to give me plenty to think about, particularly on 'brainstorming'. This is a worthwhile book for the serious game creator, and a good read for those who are very experiences or just mildly interested.

Peter Voke