Previous Next

Gilsoft's utility, The Quill, has been a bestseller. It allows users to create, and even market, their own text adventures. The only limit is imagination, the program being very easy to use.

Now, Gilson has released The Illustrator, a supplementary program which allows you to include the one thing The Quill lacks - graphics - in your adventure. The two programs work well together. First, the text illustrator is developed as usual with The Quill. Then, The Illustrator is loaded. It loads in the first few bytes of the saved text, and works out how many blank graphic locations need to be set up.

The program is again mainly menu driven and very user friendly. It comes complete with a comprehensive manual which gives a step-by-step introduction and detailed description for later reference. The manual uses the text adventure enclosed with The Quill as an example to show the user what to do. Five of the locations are ready drawn, and the manual describes how to make the sixth.

Selecting Graphics from the main menu will present you with a blank screen and two cursors at the bottom. To draw, you move one cursor in any of eight directions, then press L for line, which links the two cursors. Both cursors can be brought to a totally unlinked area of the screen with the MOVE or PLOT commands.

You have full control over colour: rectangles can be filled instantly, and other shapes more slowly, but efficiently. Areas can also be shaded in one of 255 patterns.

If you want to use a certain graphic more than once, for example a tree, there is a Subroutine command. This allows you to draw a standard picture, then place it in any location, as often as you want, in one of 12 scales. Although this can make all the pictures look similar, if used properly it can be an extremely helpful function.

The graphics are stored in long strings, which are saved and interpreted by your Quilled adventures. Obviously adding graphics reduces the memory available for text, but wisely used, The illustrator should not reduce prose too much.

The pictures themselves can be extremely attractive, if a trifle slow to build up. The examples given are very good, but strangely not very colourful. However, some people may not like the fact that they take up the whole screen, then disappear once a command is typed in, rather than remaining constantly on screen as in The Hobbit.

It should be fairly easy for anyone to draw using The Illustrator.

There is only one real drawback to this otherwise excellent piece - the price. At £15, it is very costly considering it is an additional program. For a new user to buy a complete adventure system would cost DO - although this might be justifiable considering you could write a chart topper with it!

P.S.