BE ADVENTUROUS WITH YOUR ELECTRON
Are you fed up with shooting aliens, jumping barrels or hopping over rivers? You are? Then try an adventure
AN adventure is a fantasy world which you, the hero, have to explore, usually with the object of finding treasure or rescuing princesses, and generally being a hero.
Kids stuff? Not at all.
The crafty programmer who's written the game doesn't want you to win too easily. So he makes it as hard as possible, which is often very hard indeed.
Believe me, when you've spent an hour trying to find a key to open a mysterious locked door only to find that the door is locked from the other side, you'll be ready to strangle that programmer.
An adventure is like a detective novel, full of clues, puzzles and red herrings. Your job is to sift the clues, solve the puzzles and, hopefully, recognise the red herrings.
What's more, because you're in a fantasy world, with its own natural laws, you can also have goblins, magic or even aliens to cope with.
Not quite that easy after all, is it?
So where do these adventure games come from? They owe their origins to the Dungeons and Dragons craze that swept America in the mid-1970s.
Two mainframe programmers, Crowther and Woods, wrote a program called Colossal Cave, which simulated a D&D game, but had more emphasis on problem solving and less on fighting monsters.
This quickly achieved cult status among other programmers, and might have remained on mainframes but for an enterprising man called Scott Adams.
He adapted one of these massive programs to a 16k TRS-80, published it, and the first adventure for a home micro, Adventureland, was released.
Since then many adventures have been written. They can be split into two basic types - graphic and text.
Graphic adventures get their name more from the graphic action in them than the pictures on the screen, though they generally do have graphics of some kind.
They tend to simulate a D&D game very closely, in that you choose the type of role you wish to play, such as warrior, cleric, barbarian, wizard and so on.
On the basis of your choice you're assigned strengths and weaknesses which you exploit to achieve the objectives set in the adventure, like collecting treasure.
Since this treasure is almost invariably in the possession of some monster or other you spend most of your time fighting them. The result is that your progress often seems to depend more on luck than skill.
Text adventures earn their name because they originally consisted of text only, and were based on the same type of format as the original Crowther and Woods game.
Obviously there are now adventures with both text and graphics, so we can say that a strong sword arm is necessary for a graphics game and a lot of thought for a text game.
In this article I shall only be dealing with text adventures.
If they have their own history and are considered to be so good how come you haven't heard of them?
We all know about arcade games, and there are some brilliant versions available for the Electron.
But there are no adventure games in the arcades, so you either come across them by chance or somebody recommends them to you.
You either love them or hate them, and it's very hard to drag away the adventure fanatic from his machine long enough to talk about them.
You must have seen one of these adventure freaks. They're the ones who come to the computer club bleary-eyed from playing their latest game until three in the morning.
Yes, I know you thought he was an insomniac, but now you know.
What's so special about these adventure games?
I gave you an idea earlier of the object of them, so let's you an example from that Scott Adams game.
The aim is to collect and store 13 treasures. To get one of them you have to wake a sleeping dragon with some bees.
The bees have to be caught in an empty bottle - after you have first covered yourself in mud to stop them stinging you.
The bottle is full at first has to be emptied over some lava to get another treasure.
However once you get to the location where you empty the bottle you need a rug and a magic word to get out. To get the rug you need to rub the lamp in another location.
Not only that, you have to climb down a hole to get the means to light the lamp, which you find by chopping down a tree, after you've first climbed it to get the key which opens the door …
Phew! Bit involved isn't it?
But that's where the attraction lies, in solving the puzzles, progressing through the locations and getting that final message on the screen: "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE A MASTER ADVENTURER!"
I know it must seem very complicated, but adventures are totally logical. Admittedly that logic is sometimes very obscure but all the puzzles can be solved.
And there is no greater feeling than to solve a problem that has been stumping you for hours.
Now I've got you interested in them and you're all going to rush out and buy up the shop, let me give you the bad news: ALL adventures are very hard for ALL beginners.
The good news is that they are just like everything else. The more you do them, the better you get. I well remember my first game, and I can assure you it was not a very auspicious beginning.
However there are certain things common to most adventures. I will explain how to cope with them so that your first game won't be quite as traumatic as mine.
Most, if not all, adventures have a maze in them somewhere. Often these mazes are logical, so if you go North and then South you end up in the location you started from.
Others are not so logical, but the answer for both is the same - make a map.
If you cannot recognise your location from the objects present, room description or the direction of the exits, then drop some of your own objects and make a map based on them.
Some adventures have more than 200 locations, so it is a good idea to make a map of your travels anyway.
Another thing common to most adventures is ending up in the dark, often underground or in unlit rooms. Obviously you need to get a lamp or torch or at least some matches.
Should you come across one in your travels always check to see if you can light it first. Do you need matches or batteries - or oil if it's an oil lamp?
If you do end up in PITCH DARKNESS, try and reverse the move you have just made. If that proves fatal, try and find the lamp and the means of lighting it before you re-visit that location.
If you've got the lamp, try LIGHT LAMP or ON or anything else you can think of before moving.
A few other things that might help you which should be obvious are to do with shovels, scenery and ropes.
If you find a shovel it's a good bet that you will have to DIG somewhere, either to find a treasure or to get an object that will help you somewhere else in the adventure.
Examine your surroundings. If you are in a forest, can you climb a tree? Or if you've got an axe, can you chop that tree down? Can you climb a wall, or a statue?
If you find a rope it's likely to be needed somewhere, either to climb something or perhaps to pull something.
An object that is too heavy to lift might be pulled if you TIE ROPE and PULL the object.
There are some general tips that are applicable to all adventures.
If the program allows you to save the game - that is, allows you to return to the location you have reached should something you do prove fatal then use it before you enter any suspicious places, or before trying something dangerous.
If something doesn't work, such as taking a bucket stuck in the mud by keying in TAKE BUCKET, then try doing it a couple of times.
These programmers are a crafty bunch, and sometimes make you do a thing a few times before you succeed.
Always read the room descriptions very carefully, sometimes clues are hidden here. Always EXAMINE everything.
I hope you now have an idea of what adventuring is all about. You never know, maybe we'll be seeing you staggering into the computer club with bleary eyes sometime.
Happy adventuring!
This article appeared in the April 1984 edition of the "Electron User", published by Database Publications.
Scanned in by dllm@usa.net
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