Peter Gerrard is well known in the world of adventure, for his series of books: Exploring Adventures On The... (you name it).

Further Adventures takes the would-be adventure author on from the Basic approach of the earlier books, and looks at more advanced techniques, including a few machine code sub-routines. Both tape and disk based games are supported by the listings.

But perhaps the true value of the book comes from some very interesting and useful sections that are not specific to adventure programming, covering some of the components that will, or may be used, in the context of the program.

Graphics, memory conservation, sound, screen displays including split-screen, line-renumbering, parsers, and text compression are all subjects covered, with Basic and machine-code listings and examples. Thrown in for good measure, is a Basic compiler that can be used on the finished program, to speed it up.

Many of the listings look daunting, especially the compiler (which requires disk). Peter takes a practical approach to this, providing a checksum routine to reduce the possibility of typing errors. He also suggests typing in a small amount each day, over a fourteen day period! A more satisfactory solution would have been the offer of a tape containing all the programs, at a special price for bona-fide purchasers of the book. That way, you would be sure they worked, too.

There is also plenty of explanatory text, written in a friendly, easy-to-follow style.

The ideas expressed on arcade adventures should please the audience at which the book is aimed as much as it pleased me, and I completely agree with his view that arcade-adventures will never replace text adventures. Joysticks are not for true adventures!

Covering the history of adventure, though, Peter's knowledge shows itself to be none too sound. Zork was written on a mainframe before Adventureland, not afterwards, as implied in the book. Hobbit and Zork are held up as state-of-the-art adventures. Since Zork was available on micros as far back as 1980, it is hardly state-of-the-art in the fast-moving world of computers! And there is little doubt that The Pawn downgrades The Hobbit - graphics and parser - to the stone-age. When was this book first published? Yes, believe it or not, August 1986!

His discussion of the Well problem in Zork 2 is attributed to Zork 3, and is distorted almost beyond recognition before being criticised as illogical. I would have expected facts like this to have been checked out before being included, rather than ending with 'I think'.

If you want to write an adventure on your C64, and prefer to give it an additional look with the flexibility that only your own programming can offer, then here are some useful ideas and listings, worth much more than the cover price if you are prepared to face the gigantic task of typing them in.