IF Creator !!!

People can congratulate me! I finally finished the subject!
For those who are not aware of this project, here is an article
from ZX-News 54.

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│ Presentation │
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"ZX-News" already supports three projects,
the first two are SOSG and COSG, the third is in front
of you.
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(C) 2000 by n-Discovery's Organizer

-= IF: New era of adventures =-

Introduction

To which Spectrum games will gamemakers and enlightened players? I think, thanks to the title
it is already clear what is meant. :) Of course,
the world, not even, the universe of adventure games
Spectrum.

In that golden era of Spectrum's heyday, when there was not such a crazy race
for soulless technologies that is happening now on modern computer
platforms and consoles, at a time when
every year completely new game-
games were born GENRES, the queen of the ball was adventure.

You know, just now an interesting thought occurred to me: the era of computer games began with the advent of adventure. While her honorable reign lasted, discoveries were made in gaming genres. But as soon as
the progenitor fell into oblivion, immediatelyVague days have come in terms of creativity.
It’s as if some life-giving
flow coming from adventure has stopped.
Or maybe the whole point lies
in this word?..

What is a text game? Yes, this is an interactive book! Do you find an analogy with the currently fashionable dreams of interactive cinema? However, how old is the book and
how old is the film? Over the course of several thousand years
it is not difficult to get used to literature and begin
to understand it. Against this background, some hundred years of mastering cinema looks, you must admit, rather pale. :)

In any case, today for interactive cinema there is not enough even the most powerful
computer equipment (there is not yet a program that, based on the initial frames, can
draw with photographic quality the rest
required, but to shoot everything with a camera - you don’t have enough time). But we are talking about the Spectrum, which today is a platform for creativity. And on it the interactive element can only be implemented in
adventure games, which the game developers of the eighties knew very well.

But! All these theories are good, but in
practice you stumble with such a pitfall as the Russian language. That is, it is possible to create
a text game on the great and mighty,
but communicating with it... is far from being as
as easy as with an adventure game onEnglish
language. But nevertheless, a solution was found - an interface adventure, the principle of which was first implemented by the Step group in the legendary "Star Legacy". It would seem that what prevents you from creating such games? A lot. Firstly, graphics - a monstrous amount of it is required. Secondly, we need a well-coordinated team, because one cannot overcome this. And the point is not that one person
cannot draw graphics, write codes and text - on the contrary, maybe even completely.
But there is a certain subtle thing here...

It lies in people, more precisely in their
types. In short, the one who is able to create a magnificent plot and text cannot or does not want to master programming. What can you take from a humanities student? :) And
here is someone for whom codes are a hobby, and he feels like a fish in water... when
trying to write a literary text, this
fish ends up on the shore.

So what prevents these two
types from uniting?! - someone will exclaim. Without a clue. Only Yuri Matveev was able to gather a team around himself. It can be assumed that only the spektrumist, who masterfully masters the codes, enjoys authority, and therefore the groups are led by coders who are interested only in the technical side of the matter.
Hence, apparently, all these countless
attempts to transfer toSpectrum of games like
"Doom"...

So, the scriptwriters, as it turned out, were always on the margins, remained loners. What did they have at their disposal? Only
adventure editors. But these programs were designed for the English language, therefore, attempts to create Russian-language games with their help were unsuccessful for the reasons mentioned earlier. Instead of playing, engage in guessing cases? No, no, no, said the adventure lovers and continued to look for Western games. There’s nothing to say about the rest of the players, although half of them like to read books, which means they are potential adventurers. It’s just that, unfortunately, not everyone speaks English, but it’s not their fault - such an idiotic foreign language course in our schools, designed to discourage people from being multilingual (this was in chauvinistic Soviet times). However, I got distracted again. :) But if you have reached this point, then I can congratulate you:
the most interesting part comes next!

Interactive Fiction

I’ll say right away: the solution has been found! Yes, and adventure pushed us to this idea - guess who? - the legendary Level 9
(maestro, touch!), which is called "Sec-
ret Diary Of Adrian Mole". There's noyou need to type letters! There is also no bulky menu in the "Zzzz" style. It couldn’t be simpler: just press one (!) key and a new game step is taken! Because the player is only asked to make a choice between three or four action options, which are numbered. This principle is widely used
nowadays in role-playing books (information about them
can be found in the "ZX-Review"). But the most important thing is that all this is perfect for the Russian language! Judge for yourself based on an
example:

“Before you stands a nasty goblin
who, as soon as he saw you, began to grin nastily
swinging an ominous club.

1. Hit this idiot with my recently
found self-pick sword.
2. Try to bribe him with the gold that I
exchanged from the old man dwarf on a crappy staff.
3. Run without looking back! "

Did you notice the amazing freedom for the
script? In which there is no need to rack your brains over what word the player might decide to introduce in order to, say,
bribe a goblin. In a regular adventure, this option will come down to Lenten “give gold to the goblin.” And here? Can you feel the taste of a
_fiction_ book?

Gentlemen, before you is that very interactive book, its genre is called Interactive Fiction, which is understood as“interactive fiction” (and not science fiction at all, as many people think). IF can also be called an interactive adventure, this is somehow more familiar for us, spektrumists, although
and not entirely logical, since each adventure is itself interactive (God, what a tautology!.. :) ).

Well, now that we have found a saving
genre, all that remains is small - a program for creating IF games.

IF Creator

Of course, so much text was written - but not for the sake of a pretentious statement: but we
made the first IF in Russian, which is in the "ZX-News" application! ;-)
Moreover, that game is just a demonstration of IF Creator's capabilities (the real games are yet to come!). This is the reason why the presentation article appeared.

We have developed a system with the help of which any spektrumist with good
style and imagination is able to create an adventurous masterpiece - it all depends only on the
scenario. The text itself with simple tags of locations and links is typed in your favorite editor - details will be in the January "ZX-News" when we complete work on the interface (everything else is almost ready) of IF Creator. The program will be included in the application, as well as the game “Where No One Has Gone Before”"

By the way, a few words about the game - in the end
ends, we need to paint our New Year's
gift. :) The script is an adaptation of
a story by the inimitable Robert Sheckley (I read his
works as a child), and is
designed for _one_ playthrough, since the locations are mostly duplicated. This is purely
due to the lack However, it's definitely worth a look! After all, the name of the writer is a guarantee of an excellent plot :) Let
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" be your excursion into the world of Interactive Fiction,
after which you will find out what it looks like
The era of Spectrum IF is coming!..

Afterword

If you are seriously interested. this
project, then be sure to contact us, because together we will achieve a lot! We will be
very happy with any opinions, ideas and suggestions and will be happy to answer everyone.

Contact addresses:

Internet: jed...@peterlink.ru
ZXNet: Artur Podtelkoff (500:812/08.99)
Fido: Artur Podtelkoff (2:5030/885.50)

Mail: 196066, St. Petersburg, Leninsky
Ave., 176, apt. 15, Kalinin Vyache-
Slava.

Or call: (812) 448-58-76, Slava.

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That's it for now, bye. All!

[CGE][ARTVIEW] [THE KNIGHT'S ARENA] [IF GAME] [IF CREATOR]
to be continued ...

NEWART/n-Discovery/SPb * Coder, gfx artist, AY music's fanat

In a chit of 01 Jan 01 Slavka Kalinin wrote to All:

SK> People can congratulate me! I finally finished the subject! For those who are not up to date with this project, here is an article from ZX-News 54.

Congratulations. I rewrote your IF-Adventure from ZX-News 54 under the new
engine of our magazine, as a demonstration of the interactivity of the latter. So
you can play “Where No Man Has Gone Before” in the fourth issue of
PowerAmiga (on the Amiga, of course). The fifth issue, which is currently being prepared, will include
IF-Adventure "BATH" based on the story of the same name by Alexei Tolstoy.

p.S. In general, the approach is not entirely correct. It's much smarter to write
limited HTML/AmigaGuide and write IF-Adventure using
HTML/AmigaGuide tags. This will allow IF-Adventure to be
cross-platform. So in our magazine (special thanks to
Levitator) all links, graphics and text styles are written using
HTML tags.

Cordially yours.

<<<... aGGreSSor/team PowerAmiga ...>>>
http://www.poweramiga.narod.ru e-mail:eugene_...@mail.spbnit.ru

Heh, this is also in our newspaper - in its web version for any computer. :)
By the way, is it difficult to put your Amiga Power on public display in HTML form?
;-)

YF, Artur/JEDI-L (n-Discovery's O.) e-mail: jed...@peterlink.ru
[Stonehenge][ZX-News][SOSG][COSG][IF Libre] URL: www.zx-news.da.ru

In a chit of 13 Jan 01 Artur Podtelkov wrote to me:

AP> Give me a “smart” example of “limited HTML”:
AP> (place for an example :)

Back

 ftp://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/emag/PowerAmiga4.lha">PowerAmiga with
Amiga
 

AP> And then take another look at that system that you saw when distilling
AP> our script into HTML.

I saw this system: Take IF-Adventure (for example “Where no man has gone before”), press Magic, the resulting files are transferred to
Amiga, where they are marked, followed by clicking on my loaf (AutoText) in
OPUS, which launches my script linking them together, giving
the result of AutoCode, which determines the encoding, transcodes into 1251 and
gives the result to CED, in which I mark and delete everything that remains from
the code, and add the necessary HTML tags to the remaining living text,
checking myself by feeding the text to the engine.

AP> I believe you will understand which option is more convenient and faster for a person
AP> withZX-Word.

A person with ZX-Word, takes IF-Adventure, presses Magic, launches
AC-Edit, takes magic files, one by one deletes everything in them except
text, edited merges them into one, then launches ZX-Word under
ours with Max PinkFloyd, adds HTML tags, checks what has been written
HTML reader for PinkFloyd. After which it sends the result to the Amiga/PC,
where it is edited again before uploading it to the internet.

13 Sep 01 11:26, Eugene Sobolev wrote to Artur Podtelkov:

ES> all of them except the text, edited, merges them into one, then
ES> launches ZX-Word under ours with Max PinkFloyd, adds
ES> HTML tags, checks what is written by the HTML reader under PinkFloyd. After

Pinkfloyd simply crashed for me when I tried to read any HTML.