Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Adventureland Creator Interviewed

Posted by Zonk on from the father-of-the-if-nation dept.

MMOG blog Aggro Me has an in-depth interview with Adventureland creator Scott Adams. From the article: "I learned to program on mainframe computers back in the 1960s. Later I worked at a radar station downrange for Space Defense Command and at night I had access to the mainframe machine and the radar consoles. I programmed in a game of Star trek that used the radar displays as the output. You have to realize back in those days most input mainframes were done in batch mode or over teletype machines. Having a real time game running on one was a bit far out. This was long before Pong too, to give you some idea of the time frame."

17 comments

  1. Adventureland by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Growing up on Long Island, I never really got that excited about Adventureland. Even as a little kid it just seemed like a mediocre carnival that was always there. Six Flags Great Adventure was always way better.

  2. ... but this isn't about that. by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 2, Informative

    It would be great to hear more about his involvement in game development back in the early days, but this article is about Everquest II... and *only* about Everquest II. The quote from the summary just provides a bit of background, the rest is all EQII all the time. Kind of disappointing.

    --
    Comment of the year
    1. Re:... but this isn't about that. by Ayaress · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not only was it all about Everquest, the guy strikes me as a bit hypocritical about the matter.

      First, he goes into great detail of how he uses multiple accounts and multiple characters simultaneously because he didn't want to deal with finding a party or having to try to do things in a party that wasn't perfectly rounded.

      Then, he talks about his guild, and how he doesn't want selfish "me-first" people, but instead wants people who will give and help others.

      I don't know. Making multiple accounts to avoid the typical troubles of a party strikes me as pretty selfish.

      Maybe I'm spoiled from years of playing MMOGs with deeper gameplay, where it takes a good chunk of one person's attention and both hands on the keyboard to handle just one character, let alone your own private army of SIX.

      Sorta puts things in perspective when the most selfish thing I've ever had to deal with was a warlock who wouldn't ease up on the shadowbolts for a minute or so to let the warriors maintain agro.

    2. Re:... but this isn't about that. by iocat · · Score: 1
      I disagree. It was cool to see what a pioneer finds interesting today. Anyone with Google can find a ton of interviews w/ SA about the old days, so for me, even though I don't play MMORPG (too addictive) it was still an interesting read.

      --

      Dude, I think I can see my house from here.

    3. Re:... but this isn't about that. by Scott+Adams · · Score: 1

      Hi,

      Actually I do love the mutiple player aspect of EQ2. I frequently group up with guild mates and others in my hydra and also enjoy raiding with them. My hydra is basically done because, well I want to be challenged, and trust me running 4 characters at once is about as challenging as it gets!

    4. Re:... but this isn't about that. by Scott+Adams · · Score: 1

      Ask away, I will try and answer. Keep in mind this interview was on an EQ2 fan site so the question were heavily biased towards that game.

  3. Somebody stop him!!!! by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Later I worked at a radar station downrange for Space Defense Command and at night I had access to the mainframe machine and the radar consoles.

    Ladies and gentlemen. This is the man with the finger on the button. God help us all. :)

    --
    94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
  4. oh. by ComputerSherpa · · Score: 1

    Took me a while to realize the article was talking about a different Scott Adams.

    --
    Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
    1. Re:oh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The other one would have called his game "Dogbert's world of wedgies"

  5. Play 'em now by triso · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You can play all of the Scott Adams adventures by installing the scottfree interpreter at http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/scottfree.html (for linux.) Clients are also available for Windows, OSX and DOS.

  6. Questprobe Spiderman by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 1

    I remember playing his Questprobe:Spiderman adventure game. I couldn't figure it out because most of the solutions to the puzzles didn't revolve around beating the crap out of the villians. Poor Mysterio. I tried to kick the life out of him though.

    --
    READY.
    PRINT ""+-0
  7. The Count by Flyboy+Connor · · Score: 1

    Scott Adams produced loads of small adventures, but most of them sucked, even for the time they were created. Some of them, however, were absolutely shining. If am mainly thinking here of "The Count", an adventure that takes place in only about 10 rooms, with just a few objects, but has quite an intriguing story. The interesting thing is that things HAPPEN to the player in the story. It is obvious that there is a second person at work in the world, but you don't really get to meet him until the very end. This is, of course, pretty common in adventures nowadays (although about five years ago still many adventures were about the player as the only creature in an otherwise empty world), but at the time The Count was an innovation. Pretty creepy it was too. You knew things were going to happen when you fell asleep, and when the adventure informed you that you were getting more and more tired, it was quite spooky.

  8. say yoho by hakoMike · · Score: 1

    Nothing meaningful, I just needed to 'say yoho' in honor of Mr. Adams. I played the conversions of many of his games for the TI-99/4A home computer. Thank you, Scott Adams!

  9. 5 characters!?!?!? by dannycim · · Score: 1

    The only MMORPG I've ever played is FFXI and I can't for the life of me imagine playing 5 characters at a time. Playing just one in the higher levels in a group requires my utmost and constant attention. Heck, even solo as Beastmaster (lv 75, /bow) I have to be on my toes a lot.

    Is EQII so simple as that?

    1. Re:5 characters!?!?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've seen people in FFXI who can play an entire party at once, a lot of it involves the macros and the fact that the majority of classes are very repetative (one key press to heal, start ranged attackers on auto fireing, turn on autoattack/futofollow on the melees)

      They are playing the classes at like 75% potential and aren't as flexible as a normal player but given that they have complete control they do know exactly what they can do. This isn't all that uncommon either. Games Like WoW have such a robust scripting engine built in that it is trivial to make it so that classes are completely automatic.