dwl10@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Dave Lowrey) (07/06/88)
This is being posted for a "netless" friend. Comments, questions, & flames
to him, not me.
----------------
Subject: Lengthy Game Review: Adventure Construction Set
Title: Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set
Description: Graphics adventure game, construction set, and generator
Publisher: Electronic Arts
System: Commodore 64 disk (C-128 in C-64 mode), joystick & blank disk required
Price: $10 discount
Overall Grade: A-
Summary: An impressive program for playing and generating graphical
adventures (both manually and automatically). The only major shortcoming
is that the graphics themselves are barely acceptable by C-64 standards.
Comes with one complete "hand-crafted" adventure to play. Dozens of
additional hand-crafted adventures written by ACS users are available by
mail from the ACS Club for $5 each.
[Note to the reader -- this is my most long-winded review to date, and I
apologize but there just seems to be an awful lot to say about this game.
If you're only interested in playing adventures, not in writing them
yourself, you'll only have to read about half of this -- I'll let you know
when you can go on to the next message.]
The Adventure Construction Set (ACS) deals with a graphical type of adventure
where you control everything with a joystick instead of by typing commands.
All actions which don't result from moving your character are selected from
a menu. Whereas a text adventure often leaves one uncertain as to what words
he can type in, the ACS type of adventure often leaves one uncertain as to
what the various pictures are supposed to be, and after you've identified an
object you might be uncertain as to its significance. At least with ACS, you
can always cheat by using the Adventure Editor to see what's going on...
ACS comes with:
1) a complete adventure to play, "Rivers of Light";
2) an adventure creating/editing program;
3) predefined "parts kit" for Fantasy/Sword&Sorcery adventures;
4) predefined "parts kit" for Spy/Mystery adventures;
5) predefined "parts kit" for Science Fiction/Space/Futuristic adventures;
6) a mini-adventure serving as a tutorial on how to play an adventure;
7) 6 mini-adventures serving as a tutorial on how special effects work;
8) a fully automatic adventure generation/completion program.
It is this last part that is the most fascinating. ACS can actually build
an entire adventure all by itself, starting with nothing more than a parts
kit. Alternatively, you can specify whatever amount of detail that you wish,
and then let ACS go from there. It's pretty incredible; the programming for
ACS's adventure-completer appears to be quite extensive -- it's not just "put
some random objects in some random rooms". I imagine that after you've
played a half dozen or so computer-generated adventures from one parts kit,
they'll start to look the same, but you can try a different parts kit or
create your own. Besides, how many adventures do you expect for $10? :-)
It takes about 20 minutes of disk swapping to load up a parts kit onto a
diskette. Then it takes from 15 minutes to an hour for ACS to generate the
adventure, depending on the size of the game. ACS tells you how many minutes
it will take, and it's quite accurate. No disk swaps are needed, so you can
just go away and come back at the designated time.
Once you've got a parts kit onto a diskette, you don't need to keep copying
it over when you want to generate a new adventure onto that diskette. Just
select "Erase World Map and Regions" to wipe out the old adventure and leave
you with the parts kit, ready to have ACS build a new adventure on it.
A bit more about the structure of an ACS adventure:
There can be up to 4 characters exploring an adventure at once. Obviously,
these might all be controlled by one person, or each might be controlled by
a different player. Characters can be brought over from an ACS adventure
you played before.
The top level is a "World Map", which is a 40x40 area which you explore,
searching for the entrances to "regions" -- the regions are where the action
is. Exploring this area is a bit slow; with each move the screen has to
scroll (you see only a 15X10 area at a time) and the scrolling action is
surprisingly sluggish. Along the way, you might have chance encounters with
various creatures which live in the World Map. Crossing a bridge, for
instance, you might encounter a troll.
An ACS adventure can have up to 15 "regions", each containing up to 16
"rooms". A "room" is how much you can see at one time on the screen; you can
actually break it up into smaller rooms by putting in some interior walls.
Each "room" is rectangular in shape but the dimensions are variable.
Normally, rooms are connected by two-way doors into adjacent rooms.
Other comments about ACS:
The graphics in ACS are its biggest disappointment. They don't really take
full advantage of the Commodore's graphics capabilities. All pictures are
done in multi-color bit map, 8 double-pixels wide by 16 pixels high (that's
two text characters wide by two high). All are drawn with the same four
colors, and you select those colors from Commodore's "basic 8" (black, white,
red, cyan, magenta, green, blue, and yellow).
Given the graphics layout, it would have been trivial to let each picture
have its very own selection of three colors (plus a shared background color).
There also seems to be no reason to have restricted the color choices to 8
instead of the full 16 colors; the loss of the gray-scale "colors" is a
significant loss.
As it is, the visual impact of ACS is one of almost devastating sameness, a
sameness which is emphasized by the parts kits and the supplied adventures in
which the predefined pictures are drawn mostly in one color with the other
two colors used only sparingly. Furthermore, all three parts kits and both
supplied adventures are drawn with the *same* two main colors, dark blue
against a black background. The real shame is that this relentlessly dreary
look was just so *unnecessary*.
The sound effects and music are excellent, which is particularly surprising
since this game was originally written four years ago. It's a good thing;
the music and sound effects are about the only thing in ACS that you can't
change.
The manual covers only: 1) step-by-step instructions of how to get started
playing the included adventures; 2) step-by-step instructions of how to
get ACS to automatically generate new adventures; and 3) for those who are
designing their own adventures, notes which cover details which might not
be obvious. The manual is intended as a starting point and as a supplement,
not as a complete description of the program.
It is pointed out in a number of places, including the outside of the
packaging, that a formatted blank disk is required. Don't ignore that; you
can't do a *thing* until you've copied either an adventure or a parts kit
onto a blank disk (and it had better be blank, ACS uses whatever blocks it
wants without regard to the BAM on the disk). An inexplicable oversight: ACS
has no "format disk" facility; you *must* format all of the data disks you'll
need *before* you load ACS.
In fact, I would recommend that you buy and pre-format an entire box of blank
disks for use with ACS. Since ACS updates the adventure disk as you play an
adventure, you need both an original master disk and your working disk for
each adventure unless you really don't want to keep the original master.
Another thing that uses up disks is that it's a whole lot easier having
separate diskettes for the three adventure themes/parts kits.
One problem with the C-64 version of ACS is unavoidable -- ACS obviously uses
the disk a *lot*, and the slo-o-o-o-w 1541 is a nuisance. But ACS is well
organized and most disk accesses occur only when necessary. The only time I
object is when a 3-line message (describing some special effect that is
occurring) has to be displayed and the screen goes blank while the disk spins
for a few seconds. That *is* disruptive to the smooth flow of the game.
For those who would like a selection of hand-crafted adventures in addition
to the computer-generated ones, there is an ACS club (coincidentally head-
quartered here in the Phoenix area). Dues are $5 per year, and this provides
access to many user-written adventures all priced at $5 each. The latest
list (February 26) shows 24 C-64 adventures (from 18 different authors) rated
3-stars or better, and 47 more at the 2-star "average, good enough but
uninspired" level (yes, there are some at the 1-star level).
About 2/3rds of the available adventures are Fantasy category, and most of
the rest are Science Fiction. Although the Contemporary/Spy/Mystery/War
category accounts for only 10% of the overall selection, that category boasts
4 of the 3-star-or-better games.
Unfortunately, the club's adventure list tells little about each game. Just
the category, title, author, and rating. Every now and again the club
publishes a "directory" which provides a few-line description of each game,
but the club is a bit too much of a hobby-type operation and they haven't
kept the master copies of their publications. When the directories are gone,
they can't make any more. And the C-64 directories have been gone for some
time now (sigh). Oh well, the category, title, and rating are some
indication at least, and the club newsletter contains a few game descriptions
and reviews. From those descriptions and reviews, the 3- and 4-star games
sound *very* impressive.
The bottom line on ACS is indeed "the bottom line". At a price of $10 for
the basic program, automatic adventure generator, and one full-length hand-
crafted adventure, plus $5/year for ACS Club membership and $5 each for
additional adventures, ACS is one of the best software bargains around.
[Note: Everything from here on is about designing hand-crafted adventures.
If you're not interested, hit the 'n' key and go read something else :-)]
Before embarking on a large scale effort to design "the ultimate adventure",
you should consider the fact that your final product can only be played by
other people who have C-64 ACS. So, your primary outlet probably will be the
ACS Club. For each original adventure submitted to the ACS Club library, you
get your pick of two adventures "of equal or lesser value" for free (except
that you have to supply one blank diskette). Thereafter, if anyone buys your
adventure from the library, you get a $1 royalty from the $5 fee. Royalty
applies only to purchases; if your game is provided to someone in trade for
submitting their own game, you get no royalty from that transaction.
You are up against some *serious* competition within the ACS Club. Not only
have all of the obvious themes, goals, puzzles, etc. been beaten to death by
earlier efforts, the highly-rated games are 100% original: no predefined
graphics, objects, or creatures are used. A 4-star rating does *not* come
easily...
Here's an outline of the major entities that ACS gives you to work with:
World Map
Terrain types (World Map only), with or without special actions
Regions
Rooms, with choice of graphics pictures for walls and floor
Locations within a room:
Spaces, with or without special actions, can be stacked up in one spot
Custom spaces -- different special action in different places
Obstacles, with or without special actions
Custom obstacles -- different special action in different places
2-way doors between adjacent rooms, with or without special actions
1-way portals to anywhere, with or without special actions
Stores -- square opens up into special room where you can buy and sell
Things you can carry:
Money (default currency is Gold)
Missile Weapons (guns, crossbows, etc.), normal or magic
Melee Weapons (knives, swords, etc.), normal or magic
Armor
Magic Spells
Treasures (miscellaneous objects without magic powers)
Magic Items (miscellaneous objects with magic powers)
Characters (your adventurer, joystick controlled)
Creatures (computer controlled) (can inhabit World Map or Rooms)
Friends
Enemies
Neutrals
Thieves
Graphics set
Sound:
Sound Effects
Musical Fanfares
Continuously Playing Music
Before you can start to design anything, you will find that you absolutely
*must* play all of the tutorial mini-adventures, explore the construction
set, and browse through the parts kits (with an occasional glance at the
manual for details on some obscure points). This will take many hours -- you
cannot just sit down with the manual and start designing an adventure. But I
imagine that an adventure designer also likes playing adventures and enjoys
exploration, so this probably isn't much of a limitation. The tutorial,
construction set, and parts kits are very well organized and easy to follow.
The tutorial mini-adventures are particularly instructive, as they really
drive home the point that "it's not the facilities you have available, it's
the imagination that counts." For example, the one-way-door-to-anywhere type
of square can certainly be used as a one-way door. But they show it also
being used as stairs, a subway car (takes you to the next station), a ferry
boat (takes you across a body of water), a Federation Starship transporter,
and many other things including one (which I won't give away) that really
boggled my mind.
Another example of imagination: it's not in the mini-adventures, but the Spy
parts kit includes an enemy character "Playboy" who has an unusual spell-
casting ability. In hand-to-hand combat, he'll sometimes give you a martini,
which dulls your abilities for a while :-)
Speaking of magic spells, these are the most difficult thing to understand
about ACS. Mostly, it's because they used the same name, "magic spells", to
mean a couple of different things. There are actions which are called magic
spells (such as changing the level of one's attributes), and there can be
objects which are magic spells (which perform a magic spell action when
taken/used/dropped). And it's not complicated enough that a magic spell
object performs a magic spell action; one of the possible magic spell
actions is to give an object (which might be a magic spell object) to you.
Furthermore, some of the magic spell actions aren't "magic" in the usual
sense; the list includes "display a full screen message", "play music/sound
effect", and "do nothing" -- the latter is useful because a magic spell
action is usually accompanied by displaying three lines of text; the
do-nothing is useful for just displaying some text.
I would have called the magic spell actions "special effects" and the magic
spell objects "magic powers". I think that would have been a lot clearer,
especially since you use what I would call a Magic Power by selecting the
menu entry "Use Power".
The serious adventure designer will find that ACS isn't *quite* as flexible
as it first appears -- there are a few unexpected, arbitrary and unchangeable
subdivisions. For example, not only are you limited to 110 different
graphics pictures, but 46 of those can *only* be used for creatures and
characters, leaving only 64 for general use.
Another potential limitation occurs with the Master Thing List. Once a Thing
has been created, you can't delete it. You can (of course) ignore it, but
the problem is that you can have only 127 Things on the Master Things List.
Although you can edit the Thing to change it into something else, there are
two critical attributes that you cannot change: the category of Thing and,
if carryable, whether you can carry one or three at a time (except for money,
all carryable Things are limited to either one or three). You can easily
paint yourself into a corner on an ambitious project. You *could* rebuild
the entire Master Thing List from scratch, but then you also have to rebuild
the entire Master Creature List from scratch too. Chances are you'd choose
to work with what you had.
Those limitations might seem remote, but it is said that the 4-star rated
adventures in the ACS Club collection typically ran up against most of ACS's
limits before they were even half completed.
You're also limited in your ability to merge work from multiple adventures.
What you can do is:
a) Copy an entire adventure or standard parts kit
b) Erase the World Map and Regions, leaving the 3 Master Lists
c) Erase the Master Creature List
d) Erase all but the Master Graphics List
e) Copy Master Graphics List from another adventure or standard parts kit.
The bottom line for the potential adventure author: ACS provides a good,
powerful set of tools for creating your own adventure. But the competition
is strong, and creating a *popular* adventure will require considerable
creativity and more than a little hacker-type ingenuity.
--
Doug Pardee {ames,hplabs,sun,amdahl,allegra}!oliveb!edge!doug
Edge Computer Corp., Scottsdale, AZ uunet!ism780c!edge!dougczei@accelerator.eng.ohio-state.edu (Michael S. Czeiszperger) (07/06/88)
In article <94MSd30cYn1010x4zlg@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> dwl10@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Dave Lowrey) writes: > Summary: An impressive program for playing and generating graphical > adventures (both manually and automatically). The only major shortcoming > is that the graphics themselves are barely acceptable by C-64 standards. > Comes with one complete "hand-crafted" adventure to play. Dozens of > additional hand-crafted adventures written by ACS users are available by > mail from the ACS Club for $5 each. > I purchased this a couple of years ago for $35, and managed only to solve most of "Rivers of Light", and complete only the very beginnings of an original adventure. The problems I encountered centered around the general slowness of the machine, coupled with the fact that my drive is a Blue Chip. The copy protection is such that that game editor would hang every time, although where exactly it would hang is not known. Even if it worked perfectly, it would still take months of work to complete the most simple adventure. The problem is not that the game is not well designed, but rather the limitations of the machine make any user interface very clumsy to use. I simply don't have the patience to invest that kind of time in a game, when the same concept put into another machine would obviously cut the task in half. Don't get me wrong- ACS is an amazing piece of programming, and uses every bit of the capabilities of the C64. It was impressive enough for a poor self-sufficient college student to plunk down $35! The general problem with these type of games is that I'm enamored with the capabilities of the machines because of the inventivness of the programmers, but not because their results stand by themselves. It is amazing to see ACS construct adventures on it's own given a rule set, but the resulting game is not usually worth playing. One thing I thought would work well for the random generator, would be to create the creature and object set from Rogue, and then have ACS randomly construct the dungeon so that the nastier monsters were in the lower levels. It did not work well because the random generator insisted on creating extra friendly monsters that would run around dropping potions all over the place. Because the actual game play is quite clumsy, the player would get stuck in hallways unable to pass because of random monsters dropping stuff all over blocking the exits. Sigh, -- Michael S. Czeiszperger | "The only good composer is a dead composer" Systems Analyst | Snail: 2015 Neil Avenue (614) The Ohio State University | Columbus, OH 43210 292- ARPA:czei@accelerator.eng.ohio-state.edu PAN:CZEI 0161