Cult TV

About time I got this diary going again. I’m just back from Cult TV 2006, a convention I help crew. The format is a long-weekend convention with several parallel strands of activity: a main stage, a workshop venue, an entertainment venue, autograph signings, and two sets of 24-hour program screenings.

I ran the “fan strand”, the entertainment venue, which consisted of showing a number of HE-MAN cartoons, a number of “lost” episodes of Monkey, running a karaoke, and helping a few workshops such comedy writing and a sword-fighting (good job we didn’t get them confused). Highlights included a cabaret night of comedian Norman Lovett followed by a professional Blues Brothers tribute; and a unique screening of the pilot of Starhyke, a British sci-fi comedy.

IF only IF only IF only

Have you ever played an adventure game on a computer? You know, games where you type commands such as GO NORTH and EXAMINE LANTERN? Once known as text adventure games these days they’re called Interactive Fiction, or ‘IF’.

My first home-computer experience, at the tender age of 12, was playing a text-only adventure called “The Count” on friend’s Commodore Vic20. From that moment I was hooked – I’ve been into computers ever since. My first computer was the later-model Commodore 64, and trying to re-create my early experience I bought Melbourne House’s 1983 “Classic Adventure”. I didn’t know my game history so I was intrigued to read on the back of the box “based on Adventure, the first major computer game”. Any game that promised dungeons, dragons, a troll to bribe and a slice of computing history was always going to get a sale from me. It did. And it was fantastic.

Historically speaking their blub wasn’t far from the truth. The first ever electronic games were cathode-ray-tube games made by scientists and engineers in the late-40s and 1950s. The 1960s saw video games and computer games by various electronics whizzes and university students (universities considered the production of games good challenges to interest and test students ability to program) though all these were either arcade-orientated or puzzle-based games, such as pong or noughts & crosses (tic-tac-toe).

The first “near” adventure game came in 1972 when Gregory Yob wrote “Hunt the Wumpus”. This was an evolution of the grid-based logic games he found on his university’s mainframes (think of the classic “Battleships”). He made a version played from a text adventure perspective involving a randomly-moving creature and dynamic clues as to it’s location, though at-heart his was still a logic maze-game. Interestingly his “grid” was a dodecahedron, partly because he knew computers were more powerful than simple 10×10 grids others were using, and partly because it was the shape of his favourite kite he had as a kid.

The first “true” adventure game came in 1975 when Will Crowther, a programmer and avid caver, wrote “Adventure”, also known as “ADVENT” because at the time file-names could only have six characters. It was based on a massive set of real-life caves in America, the Colossal Cave Mountain Network and the Bedquilt Cave in particular. The game was later expanded by Don Woods (with Will’s permission) and became known as “Colossal Cave”. It was that game Melbourne House based their commercial variant on in the early 1980s.

An extra slice of computing history: a mathmatic device used to memorise cross-products of three dimentional vectors, “xyzzy” was used in Adventure as a “Magic Word”. As a tribute it has been put in many (perhaps most) Interactive Fiction titles subsequently made. It is so ubiquitious IF reviewers always test what “xyzzy” does. Uses have included as a test command for telecoms satellites and as a cheat for Windows Minesweeper (type it, followed by Enter and the right Shift key).

There is an interesting site dedicated to the term/phrase, xyzzy.com, and it’s the name of an Interactive Fiction news site, xyzzynews.com.

The first commercially-available adventure game came in 1978 when “Adventure International”, founded and run by Scott Adams, released “Adventureland”. You may have guessed this already: it was (loosely) based on the “Colossal Caves Adventure”. It was self-published it in small ads in computer magazines. Adventure International made several more games including “The Count”, the very game that got me into computing.

Adventure games hit retail on a much larger scale when a small team of M.I.T. bright-sparks started work in 1977 on yet-another incarnation of Adventure. One of the team, Dave Lebling, even played Dungeons & Dragons with Will Crowther’s D&D group, though Will had left by the time Dave arrived.

Their new company “Infocom” published the resulting Zork in 1979. Complex, ingenious, full of wit and humour, it became a world-wide smash-hit and brought text adventures as a viable medium to the attention of the public – and the stock-market. It spawned numerous sequels and prequels including some made quite recently. Over the next decade Infocom produced around 40 adventures, showcases of their trademark wit, imagination, and unparalleled writing (though to be fair a couple of ropey ones did sneak through). They made one licence, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. Unusually for a licence the author, Douglas Adams (obviously), was so impressed with the Infocom team he got personally involved with the project and tailored the game to the medium. He also wrote a game expressly for them, “Bureaucracy”.

Infocom titles are well worth playing today. They are considered the benchmark for all Interactive Fiction.

During the 1980s a good number of adventure-orientated companies were founded, “Magnetic Scrolls” and “Level 9 Computing” among the more famous. They produced some wonderful game and, unlike the text-only ethos of Infocom, produced some incredible artwork for their adventures. These companies were among the first to utilise the then-impressive 16 bit Amiga and Atari ST computers, creating high-colour high-resolution graphics, but in fairness their stories were innovative and original and still worth trying today.

All of these companies eventually folded in one form or another. No matter how good they were at their best, they found their positions impossible to maintain. Infocom collapsed when their ‘Cornerstone’ database bombed, other companies collapsed as sales moved from adventure games to incresingly amazing arcade games. With all the titans of the genre gone, but leaving such a rich legacy, the 1980s are now considedered the “Golden Age” of Interactive Fiction.

With arcade games dominant, fuelled by the technology spiral providing faster, more colourful and more complex graphics; and realising commerical IF production had ended, probably forever; nostalgic fans looked to preserve classic titles and produce their own games. In 1987 two Internet user groups (rec.arts.int-fiction, rec.games.int-fiction) were created for creating and playing IF. A hardcore set of amateur developers reverse-engineered the engine Infocom used to make their games and developed their own compiler. This permitted technically-advanced fans to make small IF games of their own, and a slightly larger audience gathered to play them. From this environment Michael J Roberts released TADS in 1987, a programming language designed to make IF; and in 1993 Graham Nelson released Inform, an excellent IF-writing language based on Infocom’s engine. With these tools any programmer, with enough time and patience, could create and release a work of Interactive Fiction. And so production of new titles moved to the Internet community.

These languages have two main elements, the adventures themselves (“data files” or “game files”) and the programs that run them (“interpreters”). You download an interpreter suitable for your machine (PC, Mac, Palm, etc.) and then you download as many games suitable for your interpreter as you wish.

In addition to the TADs and Inform interpreters “Adrift”, “Alan”, “Hugo”, “Quest”, and “Glulxe”, among others, have been made. Each features different sets of advantages and disadvantages. IF titles are currently are made in any number of other programming languages, including Java, Basic, and Internet HTML.

And so the nineties saw the birth of the still-living “Second Golden Age” (amateur text adventurer creators are if nothing if not grandiose) where new, free, IF titles are released each month, discussed, critiqued, and improved. A number of the games are as-good as anything made by Infocom (or anyone else), and a few are notably superior. This is partly due to a large, divergent, helpful community assisting authors with their work; it’s partly from learning from the classics and standing on the shoulders of giants; and it can be partly attributed to technological advancement.

Computers during the 8-bit era typically had between 32kb and 64kb of memory available, and even the late-stage “huge” 16-bit games by Magnetic Scrolls, which included graphics, were around 400kb. The majority of modern IF games are in the 200-500kb range, though some are notably outside this range. The smallest entry to the 2006 IF Competition (more on that in a minute) is just 2kb, the largest is just over 1500kb.

What began as a reaction against the extinction of commerical IF has led to a thriving, innovative, community of freeware fiction-makers. Over the years hundreds of titles have been released, of varying quality. With many titles clamouring for attention a number of fan sites and Internet magazines sprang up to review and rate titles, promoting some and warning you of others. The success of the Internet-based community is clearly demonstrated by veteran campaign group SPAG. Formed as the Society for the Preservation of Adventure Games, they changed their name to reflect the confidence in the medium, becomming the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games.

One of the mechanisms authors and players use to promote and locate new works are competitions. The main award “body” is the IF Competition, running for a good number of years now. Having a competitive system that promotes and rates batches of new work motivates authors, with the possibility of praise and glory (not to say donated prizes) to finish their work; and gives players a good opportunity to get a collection of finished games.

And so the time of the Twelfth Annual IF Competition is here. You can download and play the entries, and should you wish you can judge. You require no special qualifications to judge, the only rules are you play five-or-more of the entries (there are 43) and you rate entries after exactly 2 hours play. You can play longer if you desire, few games are finished in two hours, but you must stop and rate after exactly two hours play. And if you want to get involved in another way they’re always open for people to donate prizes.

A visit to the IF competition site will give you all the files and advice you need to get the game running. They will work on all manner of computers, including most PDAs.

http://www.ifcomp.org/comp06

I’ve played though some already, and tasted others. I won’t comment as the competition is in progress, but there are some interesting mix of genres: satirical, comedic, contemporary (including one where you’re a computer-game producer), fantasy, horror, historic, spiritual, science fiction, pulp fiction, and one to bring us back to where these games first started: a modern day version of Hunt the Wumpus.

In a future entry I will comment on and rate some of the classic titles (from each of the Golden Ages), and provide links to them as copyright permits. For the moment the IF Competition 06 should get you started nicely.

Note XYZZY News (XYZZYNews.com) run a seperate competition, earlier in the year, their 2006 winners have already been announced.

Adventure, Colossal Cave, Adventure International, Magnetic Scrolls, Level 9, and some other companies, have a memorial site where you can find out about and download the games.

http://www.if-legends.org

The Hichhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game can be found at this archive site:

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The same site provides many other deleted IF titles, including individual Infocom ones:

Abandoned PC Adventures

Infocom was bought by publishing monolith Activision. All titles except Hitchhiker’s Guide, where the copyright remained with Douglas Adams, were collected and released in 1996 as the “Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom”, and as such Activision has asserted “their” “right” to prevent free distribution. Even so their collection is deleted product line, and has been for some considerable time now, and is ever-more difficult product to acquire. Your best bet is to scan eBay.

However, to publicise the release of “Zork Grand Inquisitor” Activision made most of the Zork series feely available:

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire
Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz
Zork III: The Dungeon Master
Zork 0: The Revenge of Megaboz
Beyond Zork

You can get them here. http://www.if-legends.org/~adventure/Infocom.html

Vader Invader

I’ve been playing a game that easily ranks “best of breed” in a number of areas, not least “Mostest Cutest” and “Best 2-Player Co-Op”. That game is Lego Star Wars II. It’s a work of genius and is an utter joy to play. The second player can jump in or out mid-game, and there are lashings of in-game humour at the expense of lego and/or Star Wars. I’d give you some of the jokes but I don’t want to spoil the surprise. The first of the Lego Star Wars games spanned Episodes I through III, unfortunately, but it was an excellent training environment for making this game, set as it is in Episodes IV through VI.

Anyway, since I have a couple of cute Star Wars pictures on my PC this is the perfect (*cough*) opportunity to publish them.

Vader Wins!

Lady Vader…

21st Century i-Boy

I am at long last the proud owner borrower of an i-Pod. I give unto you the peak of music technology, the 512mb i-Pod Shuffle. Now before you kill yourself laughing with my lack of terabytes, screen, and selection features, I assert the i-Shuffle is more zen than newer i-Devices. For a starters it’s robust, with disk-based players suffering failure rates of up to 15%, and Apple representatives themselves stating their devices are good for about four years.

In the short space of time I’ve been using the shuffle I found the slim design perfection incarnate. I detest lugging large technological devices in my pocket. For example I make certain whatever features my mobile phone might lack it must be tiny. Similarly I take my svelte “Game Boy Advance” over the wide-boy “Nintendo DS” to play Pinball of the Dead at work (during my break, natch). For this reason alone the wafer-thin i-Shuffle beats a more modern, boxy, player. Beyond that, being forced to play songs randomly without selection means I get songs I might not have picked otherwise. Among my list of surprised moments is the theme to “Stingray” playing as I wandered past Australian-themed pub “Walkabout”, and nothing could have given me greater pleasure than the theme to the TV series “Mission Impossible” starting just as I walked to the college gate.

Small, and perfectly formulated.