Adventure Game - Practical Computing August 1980

I mentioned previously that I used to love reading computer magazines back in the 70s and 80s.

My all-time favourite article appeared in Practical Computing in August 1980. It was written by Ken Reed and was entitled:

Adventure II - an epic game for non-disc systems

There were a number of things I liked about the article:

• It explained how text adventure games worked (objects, locations, verbs, timers, etc.)
• It was full of intriguing example commands like "RUB LAMP" and "UNLOCK GRATE"
• It presented the program code in a "pseudo-code" based on Assembler
• It explained how the required data would be stored, separate from the code

I liked the magazine cover too, with its winged horse, witch, castle, wolf and intrepid adventurer. You can see it below.

One of the things I disliked about the article was that it did not include the data that would be required for a proper game. Instead, it provided an "engine" that could power a number of games, given the right data.

You might expect that subsequent articles would produce the data that would be needed for real games. But I never saw any. Of course the flaw in this thinking is that many of the surprises of the game would be ruined if you were required to enter strings such as "Someone has leapt out of the shadows and bitten my neck!!!!"

You will find links to the text of the article here. Enjoy!