What are text adventures?
Text adventures (a.k.a. interactive fiction) are computer games whose playing interface is entirely based in the use of words.
Unlike graphic adventures, first-person shooters, puzzles, arcades or any other computer entertainment software designed around the use of graphics, text adventures only provide interaction with the player by using words.
Instead of using hi-res, detailed graphics to display a game location, text adventures provide a text description of what a place is, what is seen around, who and/or what is present and what is happening.
Instead of using rendered graphics for characters and objects, text adventures provide a text description of who each character is, how does he look like, what he is doing at a given moment and how he interacts with the environment, with objects and with other characters.
Instead of using a mouse or a joystick to play the game, the player types commands using natural language words.
Events and happenings are reported to the player in due course using text messages.
By using words, the player (YOU) guides the main character throughout the game world, helping him (or her) overcome obstacles, solve problems, work out what is going on in the story, interact with other characters, discover new places and tasks to carry out and finally reach the end of the story whichever it may be.
While playing, the game engine will constantly update the text on the screen. The player is, in a way, reading a story that constructs (according to the behaviours designed by the programmer) and unfolds at runtime.
Why do people like text adventures?
Text adventures were invented at a time when computers scarcely featured graphic capabilities. Using language was more of a circumstance rather than a choice. But the truth remains that, when used properly to stimulate a reader’s mind by conveying meanings, pictures, situations or feelings by means of words, language is a most powerful emotional booster that captivates the reader. This fact is connected with the functions of the right brain hemisphere but, to cut a long story short, let’s say that ‘s people enjoy text adventuring as much as they enjoy reading conventional books. Text adventures provide, on top of the pleasure of reading, the added value of interactivity, recreation, fantasy and participation.
And what does all this stuff got to do with mortals like me? I am not any entrepeneur and I don’t publish text adventures commercially…
That’s why you should take a break and turn to the History tab of the menu, read what happened when the commercial market for text adventures started to fade away and the influence of both The Quill and The PAW on the creation of the worldwide text adventuring scene along with Inform and then return to this page.
Zzzzzzzz…
You’re back? Ok. Then, read on.
The Infocom software (or its direct heir, Inform) did not use a sequential programming metaphor as The Quill (or The PAW later did). Instead, it used an object-oriented approach similar to that of C++ and many other conventional programming languages. The grammar of Inform is, in fact, hard to learn and to implement because a writer must understand first the abstraction of how a programming language works and then embed his adventure game in there. Too many (), [], {}, #, |, if, endif, else…
Simulate the creation of the world or, simply, write an interactive text adventure? or about database vs. object-oriented driven parsers
The original The Quill and The PAW (and similar contemporary authoring tools like Level 9 ACODE, The Biro, The GAC, ScottAdams…) were tiny applications designed to be used with home computers. They were comprised in only some 7k and 12k respectively. Given the little share of RAM memory available with the computers of the 80′s, writers tried their best to produce quality games using text compression routines and to a pretty good effect, but games were necessarily synthetic and relied too much on the reader’s/player’s abstraction capacity. Writers had to be able to imply much by writing just little. These adventure writing applications were designed to handle the adventure data as databases that could be managed by an ad-hoc, user-friendly language with a short and easy-to-learn grammar. Good games were produced nonetheless, as writers learned how to draw the best possible results by combining 500 text messages, 256 objects, 256 variables and not much more. The games produced efficiently relied on the concept of subtext and presuppositions to spare as much computer memory as possible.
The nature of the Inform (and the like TADS, Hugo, etc) authoring tool is so open-ended (you can have as many locations, objects, messages, attributes, things as you want; namely, an unlimited bunch of game elements) that certain immediate consequences have taken place over the years as to text adventures and interactive fiction:
- the overwhelming catalog of functionalities provided by the object-oriented systems has misled writers into a paranoia of being able to simulate the world up to the farthest corner, putting aside the fact that, from a writer’s perspective, a text adventure or interactive fiction game is not a life simulator but just a bunch text lines printed on the screen in a certain order according to a specific text-mathematics rules.
- instead of motivating writers to produce games, several communities (the spanish CAAD among them) have entered a spiral of paranoically devoting their energy to the production of game authoring tools and libraries, plug-ins and tools, more complex each time and packed with features that will hardly be ever used, paying little attention to authors and game writers in the meantime.
- as a result, only few text games are being released since most of the capable programmers and creative writers are putting their time into something which is not writing games.
- a writing adventure software not used to produce games is worth, exactly, nothing at all.
As limited or simple or restricted as the PAW and its replicants may be, the fact remains that writers still use them and release games today, even in the ZX Spectrum format. You can google or world-of-spectrum Josep Coletes Caubet and read about his Van Halen series, whose last installment has been recently released (in 2009).
It is your choice to use a database-driven authoring software like PAW or an object-oriented application like Inform. We acknowledge the beauty and the excellence of the Inform system, but just remember that you’re more bound to be able to finish and publish a game if the authoring tool you use builds some fences to delimitate your choices as writer. With Inform, you can define 6.900 locations or 3.000 objects for your game with 842 attributes (transparent, liquid, wooden, etc) each. But you would need years to assign values to all of them and still some more additional years to write the routines that should be able to handle them authomatically. After that, you should still start writing your game… With the original PAW or any of its replicants, you can write, programme and edit a full-length text adventure in as little as three or four months.
In a few months from now, we expect to release the PAW Monster Edition, a reincarnation of the original PAW with expanded, but not unlimited, capabilities. If you choose to use it as a writer, you will be able to write large, nice and wonderful text adventures within reasonable technical limits. Your won’t be able to simulate the world, but you need not to. For further information, you can visit the Projects page of this site.
Less resources available means more creativity to devise solutions.
Who am I?
I was born in 1968. The Quill, in 1984. And The PAW, in turn, in 1986.
What is The PAW Reservoir?
We who still like playing and writing text adventures or interactive fiction (games) don’t really care much about proper programming or last generation engines. Well, in fact, we do just care a bit but no that much so as to waste too much time discussing how good a certain engine or a certain programming language is. That’s why the current IF communities are mostly divided into hi-tech parsing supporters (INFORM, TADS, HUGO and the like) and the rest. Still a few, like me, had a crush back in the 80′s on The Professional Adventure Writing System, a.k.a. PAW or PAWs.
The PAW keeps on being remembered, replicated, reengineered and programmed upon and his language model upgraded and maintained decades after. No matter what the others may say; many of us still believe that the PAW language is a prodigy of design and insist on starting new projects using PAW even upon platforms that no longer exist (such as the ZX Spectrum) but under emulation. Far beyond other “quality” factors, the limits of the PAW can also be considered strengths nowadays: a shortage of resources will undoubtedly force more creative solutions, providing better results and, most importantly: MORE FUN.
In 2009, new games are still being released, buddies (e.g. Los extraordinarios casos del Dr Van Halen in spanish?). Yes, as homebrewed and unpaid products. But who cares. The PAW is still alive. Portable devices, such as the Nintendo DS, allows for a revival of old consoles and systems. In my forties, I’ve got a ZX Spectrum back in my hands again.
This reservoir intends to compile, maintain and preserve software, information, literature, images, programming tips, source codes, routines and links on the PAW software, on the PAW language and on its kindred tools. As much of it as possible. To the limits of my reach. For the sake of memory and for the sake of completeness.
Feel free to participate, collaborate, provide or investigate along. I will be open to publishing your contributions.
