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Classic Adventure Game Creation Book Online

Posted by simoniker on from the creating-colossal-caves dept.

The classic computer site Atariarchives.org has managed to secure permission from the copyright holder to publish the text of Tim Hartnell's 1983-published Creating Adventure Games On Your Computer on their site. The system requirements for the actual programming may be a little harsh for many of you, though - you'll need a computer with Basic and at least 24K of RAM.

5 of 13 comments (clear)

  1. 24k of ram? by Sevn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wow. If I had a neat little toolkit to make
    adventure games for my nokia, palm, etc. that
    would be pretty neat. Someone with more motivation
    than me could probably set up an interface with
    java, perl, etc. on a website where you could
    fill in the blanks and generate these things in
    the proper file format for small handheld devices.
    I miss some of the classic adventure games.

    --
    For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
  2. Interactive Fiction Authoring Tools by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    A bit OT, but Roger Firth's Cloak of Darkness contains a comparition of modern interactive fiction development tools.

  3. Damn. by ColaMan · · Score: 2, Funny

    "you'll need a computer with Basic and at least 24K of RAM."
    Ok, Let's see here....

    24K of RAM - Check, I have 256MB... should be enough (for anyone!).
    BASIC, hmmm..... (clicks XP start menu) er, ah crap.

    Come back, Extended Color BASIC, all is forgiven! I miss my old COCO 2 sometimes :-(

    --

    You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
    There is a lot of hype here.
    1. Re:Damn. by david+duncan+scott · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Yeah, that was one of the first things I noticed about Windows, way back when. CP/M shipped with an assembler, but DOS gave you BASIC instead (although they continued to give you the linker), then with Windows they dropped even that. Think maybe they'd prefer you to buy apps instead of throwing them together yourself?

      Anyway, there's always SmallBASIC. You can gosub to line numbers and everything, just like the old days. :)

      --

      This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander

  4. Another introductory guide by NaveNosnave · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I could have sworn this is a dupe of a story about Tim Hartnell's book, but a cursory search isn't turning up anything. Maybe it was on ArsTechnica...

    Anyway, if someone gets a hankering to write an adventure game in a (somewhat) more contemporary language, there's always Inform, the reverse-engineneered language that compiles down to the same z-code files that Infocom's games came in. The Inform Beginner's Guide, 2nd ed. is a great and free start, and the Inform Designer's Manual will answer any questions that are more advanced.