Future Development

Table of Contents

Example Adventure

H REFERENCES

• [Ada80] Scott Adams : Pirate's Adventure ; BYTE December 1980, pp 192-212
  An article describing the history behind the Scott Adam's adventures, particularly the Pirate's Adventure . Also includes BASIC source for the adventure, consisting mostly of DATA-statements.
• [Bla80] Marc S. Blank, S. W. Galley : How to Fit a Large Program Into a Small Machine ; Creative Computing July 1980, pp 80-87
  A good article on the internals of the Z-interpreter, the pseudo-machine created by Infocom for creating and running adventures. As always from the hands of the Infocom men, also very good reading.
• [Bet87] David Betz : An Adventure Authoring System ; BYTE May 1987, pp 125-135
  A description of a system similar to Alan, AdvSys , consisting of a special purpose language, a compiler and an interpreter for it. At last the term authoring is used instead of programming . The system is available through various PD-sources such as Fred Fish, BIX etc.
• [Bra84] A. J. Bradbury : Adventure Games for the Commodore 64 ; Granada Publishing 1984, ISBN 0-246-12412-1
  A good book, especially on the topic of adventure writing methodology. Carries the concept of storyboarding a bit further than [Gra83]. Also contains interspersed utilities and modules (in C64 BASIC) and a small adventure, "The Case of the Lost Adventure".
• [Bri84] Tony Bridge, Richard Williams : Sinclair QL Adventures ; Sunshine Books 1984, ISBN 0-946408-66-1
  Contains a few good chapters on adventures and reviews of some games of the classical text-type, but then goes on to present the listing of a fairly uninteresting "adventure generator" for a menu-driven Dungeon And Dragons inspired (much fighting, strength scoring and banes and such) kind of adventures games.
• [Buc87] Mary Ann Buckles : Interactive Fiction as Literature ; BYTE May 1987, pp 135-142
  A very interesting article discussing the literary heritage of adventure games and their future in that perspective.
• [Fic86] Erik Fichtelius : Nu kommer det svenska äventyrsspelet! ; Upp&Ner, nr 2 1986
  A swedish article describing the famous swedish "Stuga" game, created around 1980, which at that time was available for the PC.
• [Gra83] Mike Grace : Commodore 64 Adventures ; Sunshine Books 1983, ISBN 0-946408-11-4
  A fairly good book on playing and writing adventure games, written by an beginner programmer. Strictly BASIC programming but contains many good ideas to borrow. Includes some short sections on methods and mentions the concept of storyboarding. Contains a type-in adventure ("Nightmare Planet") for the C64.
• [Geu85] A.F. de Geus, J.H. Jongejan, A.M. Koelmans : Adventure Description Language ; Sigma Press 1985, ISBN 1-85058-011-1
  Describes an assembler-like Adventure Language for the BBC Micro, and uses its design as a vehicle for briefly describing a few basic computer science techniques (e.g. grammars, hashing, huffman coding and graph theory). Source (in ADL!) for "Red Button" and "Long Forgotten Arabia" adventures plus complete source for the "scanner", "interpreter" and "editor" for ADL. Note: this is not the better known ADL by Ross Cunniff.
• [Goe93] Phil Goetz : Interactive Fiction ; Dept. of Computer Science, SUNY, Buffalo NY 14260, USA
  Interesting paper setting out to define the term interactive fiction. Also discusses history and future of IF, and various media it may use.
• [Gra87] David Graves : Second Generation Adventure Games ; Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 1, number 2 (August 1987), pp 4-7
  An article describing many of the more fundamental concepts (conceptual and implementational) of interactive fiction of today, such as object orientation, natural language, text generation and goal orientation.
• [Gra88] David Graves : Bringing Characters to Life ; Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 2, number 2 (December 1988), pp 10-11
  Describes the role and implementation of artificial personalities in interactive fiction. This feature is seldom implemented in main stream interactive fiction but would probably give greater depth to the non-player characters in the story.
• [Gra91] David Graves : Plot Automation ; Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 5, number 1 (October 1991), pp 10-12
  The interesting idea of automatically creating a plot from the personalities and goals of the actors in the story is presented and discussed.
• [Het84] Tony Hetherington : Adventure Games ; Personal Computer World, January 1984 (October 1991), pp 17-26
  Introductory discussion on what makes a good adventure, text vs. graphic, then some reviews on current games, e.g. The Hobbit and Snowball.
• [Has80] Greg Hassett : How to write An Adventure ; Creative Computing July 1980, pp 88-90
  A short superficial article containing nothing that can't be found elsewhere.
• [Leb79] P. David Lebling, Mark S. Blank, Timothy A. Andersson : ZORK - A Computerized Fantasy Simulation Game ; IEEE Computer, April 1979
  An interesting article describing the inner workings and motivations behind ZORK by the men who (almost) started it all .
• [Leb80] P. David Lebling : ZORK and the Future of Computerized Fantasy Simulations ; BYTE December 1980, pp 172-182
  Lebling again describes the Zork world and machine. This article adds discussions on various implications of continuing to development, such as intelligent actors and communication with them, how far to take the parsing of natural language and how careful you must be before adding another feature in the games universe.
• [Lid80] Bob Liddil : On the Road to Adventure ; BYTE December 1980, pp 158-170
  Some tips for playing and reviews of number of not so famous adventures (by Adams, Hassett, Programmer's Guild and Mad Hatter).
• [Mit86] David Mitchell : An adventure in programming techniques ; Addison-Wesley 1986, ISBN 0-201-15030-1
  An excellent book covering almost every aspect of adventure playing and writing. As the title suggests adventure writing is taken as the goal for presenting various programming techniques, but still with the problems of writing and designing adventures as the primary issue. A bible for adventurers.
• [McG84] Gary McGath : COMPUTE!'s Guide To Adventure Games ; COMPUTE! Books 1984, ISBN 0-942386-67-1
  An excellent book, its primary merit is the reviews of most of the Infocom adventures, all Scott Adam's and a bunch of various other adventure games available and popular in 1984. Also contains a field guide for adventurers and a short discussion on how to program your own games. Includes source (in various dialects of BASIC!) for "Tower Of Mystery". The concluding chapter on the future of adventure games is most intriguing and may serve as a source for inspiration when trying to push its limits.
• [Owe83] Peter Owens : Adventures in Learning ; Popular Computing, December 1983, pp. 147-150
  An article discussing how computer games, adventures in particular, can be used in education and their potential effect of learning people to think.
• [Sca81] Peter D. Scargill : Adven-80, An Advanced Adventure Development System ; Dr. Dobb's Journal, Number 61 (November 1981)
  An interesting predecessor, assembler like in structure with a lot of "magic numbers", but was probably a good system at the time.