[HN Gopher] The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams
___________________________________________________________________
The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams
Author : mad_ned
Score : 180 points
Date : 2021-11-24 14:02 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (madned.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (madned.substack.com)
| devenson wrote:
| Did you have an office in Longwood FL, near Sabal Point in the
| 80s?
|
| If so, I fondly remember dumpster diving into your trash dumpster
| w other neighborhood kids in search of games or whatever.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Hi!
|
| Yes I did! It was one of 3 in the greater orlando area. AI
| Computer Center.
|
| I have since heard from other new friends that were also kids
| back then dumpster diving at the store. Apparently a lof
| treasures found new homes in the local area. Very neat!
|
| Did you know a Brian, Jonathan, Rob or Kevin perhaps?
| devenson wrote:
| One of my partners in crime was named John Taylor.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Scott Adams wrote a simple interpreter which could be implemented
| in BASIC or Assembly Language for his games.
|
| https://6502disassembly.com/a2-scott-adams/interp.html
|
| This was like the Infocom interpreter (e.g. "Zork") but more
| specialized to writing games.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Yes that is correct! I had a lot of fun inventing it and was
| able to do some interesting things with it. Every adventiure
| game I wrote I tried to do something different that I hadn't
| done before.
| ianbicking wrote:
| Game design question:
|
| Text adventures as a category always struck me as kind of lonely.
| They often take place in environments where all the people have
| been removed, like miniature apocalypses.
|
| It seems technically fairly obvious why this happens: other
| people are too hard to model. People have goals and expectations
| and so someone traipsing around trying random things is not
| generally acceptable, and creating characters that are
| disinterested in their environment is its own challenge. (Writing
| this I realize grumpy and stubborn characters are fairly common,
| maybe for these same reasons!)
|
| In all these years of advancement in games the NPC still seems
| either lifeless or absent. I'm afraid I haven't actually played
| your games, so I don't know how you've tried to address it, but
| I'm sure you've thought about it. I'd be curious to hear any of
| those thoughts, but maybe specific questions:
|
| 1. Have you had any successes you could share in making a NPC
| seem "alive"?
|
| 2. Any ideas you were convinced were great but failed when
| implemented?
|
| 3. Do you think new technology can be applied to this? For
| instance it sounds like you are using more advanced NLP in Escape
| the Gloomer. (But understanding is only half, NPC motivation and
| goals seem equally hard.)
|
| 4. Does a strong NPC distract from the autonomy of the player?
| (Sometimes I wonder if people even want a strong NPC, or if
| players actually prefer NPCs to be background.)
|
| 5. And separately, have you tried AI Dungeon and if so what did
| you think?
| guyomes wrote:
| Versu story [0] was an engine for creating interactive stories
| that was specifically designed for including easily lively
| NPCs. I never tried it though, and unfortunately, the project
| was abandoned [1] although it sounded very promising.
|
| [0]: https://versu.com/
|
| [1]: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-end-of-versu-
| emil...
| [deleted]
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| Play Galatea. It's a famous, award winning parser game about a
| conversation with a sentient statue and has approx 70 endings.
| The game models your relationship along several axes as you go
| and the writing is superb
| andybak wrote:
| Oh god. I might have just installed the wrong Galatea.
| ianbicking wrote:
| The erotic literature collection for women? That was the
| first program I found with that name :)
| visualphoenix wrote:
| This one? http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/emrhyy7pp0c8
| bjkjeuhs-...
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| I'm trying it and it's _really_ hard to get any commands to
| work.
|
| Maybe I thought it would be more like Facade. Stuff like "Ask
| galatea her favorite color" and "tell galatea her dress is
| pretty" aren't working. It's moving really slow (minutes
| between attempts) as I try to guess what keywords I can use.
|
| I can't even "examine room" like I usually do for
| conversation. "You can't see any such thing".
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Did you try typing "help", which gives you the following
| rather verbose block of text:
|
| ----
|
| This is an exercise in NPC interactivity. There's no puzzle
| and no set solution, but a number of options with a number
| of different outcomes.
|
| HINTS: Ask or tell her about things that you can see, that
| she mentions, or that you think of yourself. Interact with
| her physically. Pause to see if she does anything herself.
| Repeat actions. The order in which you do things is
| critical: the character's mood and the prior state of the
| conversation will determine how she reacts.
|
| VERBS: Many standard verbs have been disabled. All the
| sensory ones (LOOK, LISTEN, SMELL, TOUCH, TASTE) remain, as
| do the NPC interaction verbs ASK, TELL, HELLO, GOODBYE, and
| SORRY; KISS, HUG, and ATTACK. You may also find useful
| THINK and its companion THINK ABOUT, which will remind you
| of the state of conversation on a given topic. The verb
| RECAP gives a summary list of topics that you've discussed
| so far; if she's told you that she's said all she knows on
| that topic, it appears in italics.
|
| SHORTCUT: 'Ask her about' and 'tell her about' may be
| abbreviated to A and T. So >A CHEESE is the same as >ASK
| GALATEA ABOUT CHEESE.
|
| There is an assortment of walkthroughs available at
| http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/cheats.htm, but I
| suggest not looking at them until you have already
| experimented somewhat.
| chongli wrote:
| AI Dungeon is amusing but it's not a game, it's a toy. Text
| adventures are actual games with rules and objectives and
| (usually) a final goal. AI Dungeon is more like lucid dreaming
| in that you can do anything you want, there are no
| consequences, and reality is essentially putty in your hands.
| For people who want to play a game and challenge themselves to
| solve puzzles figure out the plot I think they will be very
| disappointed with AI Dungeon.
| ilyagr wrote:
| In addition to Galatea, "Varicella" and "Alias Magpie" come to
| mind. In those, NPCs are not the primary focus, but there are
| some amusing ones and the world seemed alive to me.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| 1) yes this has always been an issue. My early Marvel games had
| to deal with this as there were numerous characters to interact
| with. In Escape the Gloomer I mostly avoided it as Gillig is
| trying to stay hidden so you just get to hear conversations. In
| Adventureland XL I brought by my old friend the pirate. And you
| do get have some interactions with him as well as Robin's Merry
| Men. Still not very deep or rich
|
| 2) That's harder to answer. I have done a lot of things that
| may not have panned out commericially but I enjoyed the
| technical challenge and was happy with the results. I never see
| failure, just an oppurtunity to improve something :)
|
| 3) I am sure it could be, just not an area I have been spending
| much time addressing!
|
| 4) Depends on the game of course. So many of my games are more
| puzzle based so having an strong NPC isn't really needed there.
| But I did have fun with both the Pirate and the Chimpanzee in
| Adventureland XL !
|
| 5) AI dungeon is an interesting idea. Each iteration gets more
| and more promising. But still has a ways to go yet.
| roomey wrote:
| Stupid question, how do I play these games? They sound great.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| I still remember enjoying the TRS-80 games Scott made - I
| probably played 5 or 6 of them. Is there a (reasonable) way to
| play these games today?
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Hi!
|
| Good question. My clasic games are available on a number of
| places on the web. You can find links to some of them on my
| personal web page at www.msadams.com
|
| If you want to have a really fun experience check out
| www.AdventurelandXL.com which is the full original game and
| then something really special :)
| cenazoic wrote:
| To piggyback on MPSimmons' question, have you played any of the
| interactive fiction from the 1995 revival on?
|
| I read in your interview that you consider your company Clopas as
| a 'company of Christians', rather than a 'Christian company', and
| that you make games "[which] God can use in His glory to uplift
| people.."
|
| Can you discuss more about what 'uplift' means to you, and how
| it's reflected in your games? What's an example of a non-
| uplifting game/mechanic?
|
| I'm not a Christian, but I find this idea a fascinating one. My
| mind first goes to something like RDR2, which while perhaps not
| uplifting in the traditional sense, reminded me of the awe of
| natural beauty (or God's creation, if you prefer). Or do you mean
| more like - the game somehow inspires the player to be a better
| person, for various definitions of 'better'?
|
| Thanks for taking the time today!
| ScottAdams wrote:
| You raise execellent questions. Thanks for asking!
|
| To me uplift means to leave the player in a better state than
| when they started.
|
| To bring them closer to God's Glory and plan for their life. To
| see the Universe and as an incredible place to be and to see
| Life as an incredible gift from our most awesome and loving
| Creator.
|
| I am looking forward to an eternity of exploration, discovery
| and insprired creation due to the agency of my savior and
| friend Jesus.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| I did miss your first part of your questions and appologize.
|
| In most cases I have not played most IF that is out there.
| Though Myst stands out as an incredible exception to that. But
| it of course was mostly non-verbal and delight to eyes.
|
| Part of the reason of not playing many is a reticence to
| accidentally steal a puzzle idea (via absortion as it were) and
| the other is simply I have way more fun writing, coding and
| designing :)
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Hi Scott, for the TI-99/4A versions of your games, did you handle
| the development of the ROM cartridge? What was that like? Did you
| have to split up any of your code to separate the game engine
| from the adventures themselves?
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Hi!
|
| I did the entire programming of obth of the TI cartrige games,
| the text adventure cartridge (read in the games from cassette)
| and the special made-for-TI graphical text adventure in a
| cartridge: Return to Pirates Island.
|
| My game language interpreter was already separate from games
| written in my adventure language. So putting the interpreter on
| the cartridge was not very difficult. See one of the other
| threads on this AMA for more information about that!
|
| I acutally have a TI/99 still today. It is the only classic
| machine I have. :)
| nsxwolf wrote:
| You were using good software engineering principles way back
| then!
|
| Now my obligitory fanboying: Those text adventures were an
| important part of my formative years. They inspired me to
| learn how to write more advanced programs, because I
| desperately wanted to create my own text adventures. My first
| one was a gigantic, unwieldy tree of if/then/else statements,
| and that painful experience led me to more learn advanced
| data structures and concepts.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| I am so glad my classic games were such a great inspiration
| for you!
| seanwilson wrote:
| Hi Scott! Do you have any thoughts on how hard it is to come up
| with original adventure game puzzles and what your process is
| here?
|
| When I was looking at this once, I noticed there's a lot of
| puzzles that are shared between recent adventure games that you
| can find in older adventure games too e.g. screwdriver + screws,
| rusty door + oil, distract an NPC so you can steal something.
| Instead of this being from lack of originality, I think instead
| there's some limits on how many puzzle like this exist because
| they have to be common sense + not completely obvious + involve
| physical object manipulation + use common objects. I think this
| is one of the reasons a lot of recent adventure games and escape
| room games devolve into doors with abstract logic problems to
| unlock them. Alternatively, they need to introduce new mechanics
| to widen the design space, like adding time travel or magic.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| My process has always been one of inspiration from a higher
| power.
|
| I would place a location, think of obvious items for the
| locations and then pretend I was there. What would I try to do
| and why? Then I would sit and think about it.
|
| I also enjoyed putting it in front of beta testers and seeing
| what new and unique things they might try that I would want to
| incorporate into the game.
|
| A big tip of the hat to Neil Novak one of my classic game
| testers from whom I got a lot of great inspiration!
|
| As far as new puzzles go I hope you try the new section I wrote
| for Adventureland XL. I have a large number of new puzzles and
| one that I am especially happy with that went in a direction I
| hadn't done before.
|
| To get into the XL section of Adventureland you do first need
| to complete the base game and it has changed a bit with a few
| new puzzles of its own. You can never loose so don't ever start
| over. Just keep playing and let me know what you think :)
| strenholme wrote:
| I actually figured out the format for Scott Adams adventures and
| created a Scott Adams port of the "Cloak of Darkness" mini
| adventure, as well as my own small adventure game, Desert
| adventure, which can be played online at
| https://samiam.org/software/parchment/desert.html
|
| Downloads follow.
|
| Cloak of Darkness: https://samiam.org/software/parchment/Cloak-
| Scott.zip
|
| Desert adventure: https://samiam.org/software/parchment/desert-
| scott.zip
| ScottAdams wrote:
| So cool you were able to do that! Big congratulations on taking
| it to the next level and making your own games! Love it!
| eps wrote:
| > desert.html
|
| Issuing two "go north" commands causes the page to go
| completely blank in mobile Safari.
| pamoroso wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your story Scott. Back when you wrote your
| early games, what were your toolchain and development process?
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Really good question!
|
| I was working on a TRS-80 Level II machine (this was a model 1
| before there wer models). It was my first home appliance
| computer, before that I had homebrews. It came with Microsoft
| Basic.
|
| I had only used tiny basic up until then and wanted to play
| with strings. It sounded neat to be able to manipulate language
| with them.
|
| I wrote a game language, a compiler for the language, and an
| interpreter for the language to play the game, all in BASIC.
|
| I also wrote Adventureland (my first game) at the same time.
| Adding features to the tools and the game as I was inspired.
|
| Much later I converted the BASIC interpreter into Z80 assembler
| to be able to give me more memory. The entire game with
| interpreter had to fit in 16K bytes!
| pamoroso wrote:
| Very interesting, thanks. I wonder whether you distributed
| those early commercial games as BASIC source on tape.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Adventureland and Pirate Adventure were both originally
| done in BASIC and the interpreter with the compiled
| language (it reduced it to numbers) was on the tape. I did
| have some extremely clever folks reverse engineer my
| language and then write games in it! Hat tip to Alvin Files
| and William Demas amongst others!
| pamoroso wrote:
| Got it, thanks again.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Pirate Adventure was the first game I had on my Atari
| 800. I really loved it. I still remember coming across
| the terms "pieces of eight" and "flotsam and jetsam" and
| having to ask my mom what they meant. I seem to recall it
| was my first encounter with the the word "flat" meaning
| apartment. My vocabulary was thus improved by your work.
| Thanks!
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Yes those were all terms I used in my game! I loved
| reading and had a good vocubulary that I liked to use
| when it seemed appropriate :)
|
| I am happy you have such good memories of my classic
| games! Have you tried any of my new ones?
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Scott, are there any "modern" games that you feel capture the
| same spirit of exploration and discovery that your games
| embraced?
| ScottAdams wrote:
| I do love exploration and discovery games. Especially with a
| good story line.
|
| Some of the games that I have greatly enjoyed are (in no
| particular order)
|
| Myst, Everquest (1 and 2), Dark Age of Camelot, Age of Empires,
| Fable, Guild Wars 2, Baldurs Gate, Half Life, Valheim
| (currently playing), Descent (played with two joysticks, one in
| each hand to give full 3D controls), Star Wars Galaxy, Sims,
| Call of Heroes, Ultima Online
| mad_ned wrote:
| I was really honored for a chance to talk with one of computer
| gaming's true pioneers, Scott Adams. His text adventure games
| launched an entire game genre and influenced and inspired a lot
| of other programmers and game developers.
|
| If you read the interview and come away thinking, "why didn't he
| ask him about X?", today's your lucky day, because Scott has
| graciously agreed to stop by here and answer a few questions.
| He's new to HN, so be sure and give him a warm welcome!
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Ned I really appreciate the interview you did! And this
| opportunity here, because of it, to connect with so many cool
| folks.
| anthk wrote:
| Those adventures had been converted to the Z-Machine long ago.
| Get them from IF archive and you can play them anywhere.
|
| https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/adamsinform.zip
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Very cool! Thanks for the link.
| jim_lawless wrote:
| Scott, I am curious about the genesis of your game language
| interpreter. Did you have a background in building interpreters /
| compilers before going in this direction?
| ScottAdams wrote:
| I always looked at a computer issue as a challenge. How can I
| best handle it.
|
| My brother built a 32 bit computer from bit slice chips, my
| other brother made a tv typewriter IO for it. I was the one who
| was going to program it. So I made a game.
|
| I had no compiler, not even an assembler or linker. I had to
| write it in psuedo assembler and then hand assemble and link
| the code.
|
| One issue I discovered early on was I made mistakes and it made
| lots of branch statements invalid if things moved. Not having a
| linker I devised a system where i put a jump table at the top
| of every module and then all other modules accesed that module
| via it's jump table. Just an example of approaching a problem.
|
| I had the first ever Sphere computer (look them up! Amazing
| machine) It was a text only screen and I wanted to write a
| graphic game for it. So I designed an built my own graphics
| card, designed and built tank controllers for 2 players and
| wrote a tank war game for 2 players.
|
| I never saw problems as a wall to walk away from, I saw them as
| an incredible chance to do something different to be able to
| scale it.
|
| So when it came to writing a text adventure on a machine with
| tiny memory I had to get creative. I had not done anything like
| this before and i was just insprired to do the game, the
| language, the compiler and the interpreter all at the same
| time. It just felt right :)
|
| I continue to push myself over walls and today I use Unity, C#
| and continue to do things that aren't supposed ot be possible.
|
| For example www.finalPilot.com has an underlying network
| communication package I derived because I couldnot find a
| current solution that would totally fit the problem domain. It
| had to work on both UDP and WebGL with the same code base. It
| was a lot of fun coming up with a working system. WE are in the
| process of soon starting a new game with some new challenges
| and its network system will be much different from what Final
| Pilot uses.
|
| Sorry if I rambled a bit and happy to fill in more details if
| needed.
| timbit42 wrote:
| I read or heard you talk about Mike Wise's Sphere before. I
| wish there was more information about it available online. I
| know there was a BASIC for it before Microsoft or Tiny BASIC
| came along. Did you have BASIC on the Sphere? How did it
| compare to other BASICs?
|
| Any other info about the Sphere would be appreciated. I know
| BYTE magazine called it the first true personal computer.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Yes I had a version of tiny Basic I loaded from cassette
| for Z80. The sphere was first advertised in back of Radio
| Electronics in a small box ad. I think it was around June
| in mid 70s.
|
| It cost if I remember correctly $850 or so. For that it
| would come with cassette IO, 512 bytes of ROM, a video
| monitor and case. The boards were on a backplane (inside)
| with room for expansion. There was also of course a power
| supply.
|
| This was a kit and not assembled.
|
| At the time Mike did NOT have any inventory and was winging
| it! I found out later I was his very first order. Also they
| did a "what do you use your Sphere for" annual contest
| which I won with my Tank War game and my design for a
| graphics card. I even sent them a super 8 video of the game
| play. Sadly lost as I sent my only copy.
|
| That price got you an unassmbled kit. Also at
| moolcool wrote:
| (Not the Dilbert one)
| Igelau wrote:
| I almost didn't even click. My gut reaction to the headline was
| "what train wreck did the Dilbert author create this time and
| do I feel like seeing the carnage?"
|
| Eventually I decided I did and was pleasantly surprised.
| dang wrote:
| Please keep flamebait tangents off HN, for the same reason
| that you don't toss lit matches in dry forests.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Igelau wrote:
| It's not a tangent. The headline is potentially misleading
| and appears to be about a flamebait topic.
|
| _Pay attention. Read. Comprehend._
| dang wrote:
| Not only was it a tangent, the analogy is as precise as
| one could get: the two topics are connected only at a
| single point (the coincidence of the name) and have
| literally nothing else to do with each other.
|
| Edit: you've unfortunately been posting a lot of
| unsubstantive comments lately. Would you please stop
| doing that? It's not what this site is for.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Which is a good point.
|
| Back when the internet was starting to bloom I got a nice email
| from Scott Adams of Dilbert.
|
| Seems he had gotten a number of fan mails meant for me and was
| trying to find who to send it to. I also had a number of fan
| mails meant for him! We exchanged the mails and had a nice chat
| about it!
| JshWright wrote:
| > Which is a good point.
|
| Especially as he seems to have kind of gone off the
| proverbial deep end with his political fanaticism in recent
| years...
| artificial wrote:
| If you examine the news he covers he's pretty balanced with
| slightly more left than right (both hover around 40%).
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents, and
| especially not generic flamewar tangents. They have a way
| of taking over and drowning out actually-interesting
| discussion with repetitive, nasty stuff. Therefore the site
| guidelines ask everyone to try to avoid them here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| JshWright wrote:
| Yeah, that's fair... Thanks for the feedback (and for all
| you do for the HN community)
| zalequin wrote:
| If you read his books, it's obvious he's doing that on
| purpose in order to get more attention (which eventually is
| converted to fatter bottom line for him).
|
| Essentially, the dude is a professional troll.
| weswpg wrote:
| His wife is extremely young and I can't look at them
| together without thinking something is really wrong
| there. He might be older than his father-in-law.
| Veen wrote:
| She is 33 and was 25 when they met. That is not
| "extremely young". She's a mature adult, and presumably
| she knows what she's doing.
| monocasa wrote:
| We're not saying it should be illegal, we're saying it's
| creepy.
|
| The general rule is you can go down to half your age plus
| seven years. That makes anyone over 36 creepy for dating
| a 25 year old.
| jp_sc wrote:
| Are you a teenager? Believing after college age that that
| "rule" is some kind of law is kind of ridiculous
| monocasa wrote:
| 60yos dating 25yos is creepy to nearly everyone.
| Veen wrote:
| That's what I'm struggling to understand. Who is being
| creepy? Who has behaved in a creepy way? Adams or his
| wife? What does creepy even mean in the context of two
| adults forming a relationship? Why is it anyone else's
| business?
|
| (To be clear, I'm no fan of Adams. I dislike his politics
| and never enjoyed his work particularly. But I find this
| focus on his marriage weird and, I suppose, creepy in
| itself).
| mikestew wrote:
| _The general rule is you can go down to half your age
| plus seven years._
|
| Where'd you dig that out of, a back issue of
| _Cosmopolitan_ , right next to the "partner
| compatibility" quiz? Two grown, consenting adults don't
| need your approval to hook up, no matter the age
| difference. Calling it "creepy" is simply arrogant and
| self-righteous, with a sprinkling of tone-deaf on top.
|
| There's plenty to not like about the other Scott Adams.
| His choice of partner is not one of them.
| monocasa wrote:
| There's peer reviewed studies that validate that range.
| One example:
| https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-01742-002
|
| I find it really amusing that the hate I'm getting on
| this seems to be coming from older men.
| Zababa wrote:
| > Results show that females preferred partners of their
| own age, regardless of their own age and regardless of
| the level of relationship involvement. In contrast,
| males, regardless of their own age, desired mates for
| short-term mating and for sexual fantasies who were in
| their reproductive years. However, for long-term mates,
| males preferred mates who, although younger than them,
| were sometimes above the age of maximum fertility.
|
| I'm not sure your study is validating that range. I feel
| like it's doing the opposite. I also remember statistics
| from dating websites where women always preferred someone
| their age, while men always preferred someone between
| 20-25, no matter their age.
| monocasa wrote:
| It says that guys get off to the idea of young women, but
| for long term commitments want someone closer to their
| age as well, even if that person is outside of fertility.
| That backs up what I'm saying.
| Zababa wrote:
| I don't think it validates what you're saying. You're
| saying it's creepy, while the study says it's natural if
| the goal is not a long term commitments. Or is your view
| that anything that's not a long term commitment is
| creepy?
| monocasa wrote:
| A) We're discussing a marriage
|
| B) If you read the study and not just the abstract, it
| puts the general lowest age for 60yo men at around 45 for
| purely sexual fantasy partners. A 25yo is wayyyyy outside
| that bounds.
| Zababa wrote:
| > If you read the study and not just the abstract
|
| I'd have to purchase the PDF for that.
|
| > it puts the general lowest age for 60yo men at around
| 45 for purely sexual fantasy partners
|
| I find it really really high and hard to believe. I'm not
| sure about the methodology employed, but if people can
| just lie, I wouldn't trust the results of that study.
| monocasa wrote:
| Sci hub still exists.
| stickfigure wrote:
| There's something odd about an abstract that says
| "...females preferred..." instead of "...the majority of
| females preferred...".
|
| By that same standard, humans are heterosexual,
| monogamous, and date within their own skin color. And
| apparently, anyone who deviates from that is "creepy".
| ModernMech wrote:
| He's an extremely wealthy divorce in his mid 60s. She's a
| 33 year old model... which is well past the top end of
| that career, with two children, who is now the VP of
| Adams' WhenHub. I think it's clear everyone in that
| relationship knows what they are doing. Doesn't make it
| any less the fact that he's old enough to be her father.
| Veen wrote:
| Is this a American cultural quirk I'm not understanding?
| Who cares that he's old enough to be her father? Why is
| it interesting or relevant? He married an attractive
| younger woman. She married a rich older man. It happens
| every day all over the world. Its not the first marriage
| for either of them and they both already have children.
| It says very little about either person involved except
| that one likes attractive women and the other likes rich
| men with a sense of humor (if we assume the most cynical
| motivations).
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > Is this a American cultural quirk I'm not
| understanding?
|
| As an American I would say: yes, it is.
|
| I suspect it has something to do with the rising neoteny
| of more recent generations coupled with America's
| persistent puritanical views on sex, but there has been
| an increasingly bizarre fixation on the age gap of
| couples. All teenagers have recently be re-defined as
| children, so much that it's common on places like reddit
| to view even attraction to say a 17 year old viewed as a
| form of pedophilia.
|
| For nearly all of human history men over 30 forming
| relationships with women in their late teens has been
| normal. This was even not too rare 30 or so years ago in
| the US. But there has been a rising moral panic about age
| and sex that leads to comments like the above.
| monocasa wrote:
| So wait, it's simultaneously a Puritanical hang up from
| the past, and also contrary to the way things have always
| been?
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| Maybe America's puritany is just conserved. As its ire
| shifts away from some thing as they become
| liberalised/destigmatised, it shifts onto others.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > Doesn't make it any less the fact that he's old enough
| to be her father.
|
| Honest question: So what? Why does that trouble you?
|
| I would understand if one side was indeed "extremely"
| young, but 60s/30s are unquestionably adults, and there
| don't seem to be any consent issues.
| ModernMech wrote:
| It doesn't trouble me personally, I stated the facts of
| the matter and that my interpretation of it is that
| everyone is getting what they want. Others here have
| stated it weirds them out and that's fine too. It's well
| known in our society that this kind of age gap can be
| problematic for some. We have little "rules" about it
| (https://xkcd.com/314/), which are just societal norms.
| Scott Adam falls out of this norm and it makes people
| uncomfortable, as norm-breaking tends to do. One question
| people might ask is, why don't you date someone your own
| age? There are a lot of reasons one could answer, but
| when one says something like "I don't talk about where we
| met. People make judgments", and they are already
| breaking norms, then I think it's fine some people have
| reservations. Not that those reservations mean anything
| to anyone, but it's not an unreasonable feeling to have
| when confronted with such an unconventional relationship.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Eh... He's always had... peculiar ideas. It's just that
| previously his detachment from reality was mostly in
| relatively harmless directions ("The Secret" type stuff,
| lack of belief in gravity, etc). I would buy that his
| current delusions might be genuine.
| Tade0 wrote:
| If this is true (I honestly don't know) then he's a
| master of the craft.
|
| And also unbelievably cynical, but looking at his work
| it's obvious that this is the case.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Totally agree, but it really felt like he had drunk his
| own kool-aid at times.
| smilespray wrote:
| First rule of drugs and propaganda: Don't get high on
| your own supply.
| delecti wrote:
| Are you implying that makes it better? Because I couldn't
| disagree more. It's one thing if someone just holds
| different political opinions, it's another to see
| problems in the world, acknowledge their cause, and fan
| the flames anyway. Things like posting that Republicans
| are likely to be hunted [1] if Biden wins are the sort of
| thing that led to a literal coup attempt.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/12783098354
| 5328435...
| [deleted]
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I think he'll probably recover. Satirists are among the
| best equipped of us to get out of these kinds of holes.
| dhosek wrote:
| In the completely random department, your picture was (I
| think) on the cover of some Apple magazine back in the 80s
| (maybe SoftTalk?) and my geometry class got a great deal of
| enjoyment out of the fact that you and our geometry teacher
| could have been twins.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Just a quick note that I am off to meet family flying in for
| Thanksgiving. I will continue to reply to this thread later this
| afternoon.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| I am back for a bit and trying to catch up with all the amazing
| comments on this thread. You folks are super!
| hitekker wrote:
| For new folks like myself, Scott Adams is a prolific game
| designer:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams_(game_designer)
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Thanks for putting up the link! Great to make a new friend btw!
|
| Happy Adventuring!
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Scott, what was the thinking behind publishing the source code to
| some of your early games in magazines (at a time when you could
| still sell them profitably)? It obviously worked out well, but it
| sounds like a bold step to take.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| I was approached by Byte Magazine to do a feature article for
| them. I included my game source code in it as I wanted to share
| the technology I had developed with others.
|
| Sadly there were a number of typos when they transcribed it
| into the magazine. Yet many people were able to press through
| and debug it to get it work which was pretty amazing.
|
| My thought was we are all standing on the shoulder's of those
| who went before us. By helping each other we build towards a
| better future.
|
| I have received a load of fan mail over the years from folks
| who have now gone from being fans to being friends. One of the
| major threads in most of the emails was how my games or gaming
| systems made a big impact on their life.
|
| There are literally a number of very well known gaming
| companies now, who's founders have written me about how my
| early games were an ispiration for them.
|
| I had no idea at the time, but God was using me through the
| gift He gave me to inpsire others. It is wonderful to be able
| to see that happen!
| s7r wrote:
| > _My thought was we are all standing on the shoulder 's of
| those who went before us. By helping each other we build
| towards a better future._
|
| Inspired by this comment, just wanted to share this with you:
|
| https://manyworlds.pages.dev/about
|
| Still in development (first time sharing the site!) -- in any
| case, thought it might resonate!
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Oh that is really cool! Thanks for sharing it. I signed up!
|
| Hey folks take a look!
| s7r wrote:
| Thank you so much, deeply appreciated! Feel free to pass
| on / use as you like!
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Hi all this is Scott Adams. I am open for an AMA (Ask Me
| Anything), awaiting your comments!
| mysterydip wrote:
| What's a question you've always wanted to be asked?
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Oh you are an excellent interviewer! No one has ever asked
| that one of me.
|
| Probably thing I love the share the most is how amazed I was
| to find out the Creator of the Universe and is real and that
| He actually cares about me.
|
| A subject I am now always williing to share but not many
| inquire about it.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! Were you able to put that into any of
| your games in one way or another? I am a hobbyist gamedev
| and am struggling to find a way that doesn't come off as
| "in your face".
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Hi Scott,
|
| You changed my life when at 12 years old I first saw a computer
| and the first things I saw running on it was Voodoo Castle and
| The Count.
|
| Back in 1979 it was literally like I had discovered magic was
| real because here in Australia computers were unknown to most
| ordinary people.
|
| It's hard to convey how much this blew my 12 year old mind. I
| don't think I stopped thinking about Scott Adams adventures for
| years after that.
|
| I LOVED all your games, so much atmosphere.
|
| Thanks for creating that magical part of my life.
|
| Favorites:
|
| Voodoo Castle
|
| The Count
|
| Mystery Fun House
|
| AdventureLand
|
| Savage Island (though it was too hard for me)_
| ScottAdams wrote:
| I am so excited that my games were such an inspiration to
| you!
|
| Have you tried any of my newer ones at all? www.Clopas.net
| see if anything strikes your fancy now?
| kbutler wrote:
| Wanted to say thanks for many hours of puzzling and enjoyment
| with my brothers growing up. I always appreciated that the
| puzzles you created had logical solutions, though I confess we
| also examined the strings embedded in the programs for clues!
|
| And I remember being stuck and playfully trying to jump into a
| certain ravine and realizing that instead I had just found out
| how to get across it (I guess it was a smaller ravine than I
| had imagined). Another poster mentioned learning "flotsam &
| jetsam" - I also learned calliope - though not how to pronounce
| it.
|
| But I think we never completed The Golden Voyage - I should see
| if I can convince my children raised with Minecraft and HD
| games to give your adventures a shot. This is good timing, as
| my family often plays older games over Thanksgiving.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| If you want to try something special see about playing
| www.EscapeTheGloomer.com or wwww.AdventurelandXL.com with
| them as a group. They are more forgiving than my classic
| games and designed with more modern audiences :)
| ggambetta wrote:
| Hi, Scott! Fun to see you here :)
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Great to see you as well. From the short handle I suspect you
| are one of my long term Italian friends! Am I correct? If so
| cool!
|
| If not, then I am happy to make a new friend!
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| Hi Scott. I started playing parser based IF less than a month
| ago. I find it so immersive that the only parallel I have for
| the experience is high quality VR. I love it so much that I
| wrote my own parser engine 2 weeks ago and I have some ideas
| for side projects to revive the genre.
|
| Thanks for helping to create these!
|
| Are you aware at the moment of any interesting developments in
| the "text games for people with vision problems" field?
| ScottAdams wrote:
| My Return To Pirate Island 2 (turn of the century), the
| Inheritance (2013) were blind compatable.
|
| I also released Escape The Gloomer on Alexa (fully audio
| only)
|
| Currently working on making AdventurelandXL
| (www.AdventurelandXL.com) Windows screen reader compatable as
| well.
| anthk wrote:
| You may like using Inform6 instead of writting your own
| parser. Most verbs and room behaviours are already
| implemented:
|
| https://www.inform-fiction.org/
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Very neat indeed but I am partial to my own engine as I
| know it so well and can tweak it to do exactly what I need
| :)
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| Part of the fun is making the engine and figuring out how
| the games work under the hood. The world model is
| surprisingly simple and flexible in these games. Learning
| about this style of world model gave me some ideas for
| other projects
| anthk wrote:
| You can make an v3 z-machine interpreter in weeks :).
| Jiro wrote:
| I can get many of your adventures from your old website. The
| readme file says that four of the later adventures are in SAGA+
| format and are not included because ScottFree can't play them.
| Since this was written 24 years ago, is there now anything that
| can play them and if so will you be releasing them? (I'd think
| that at least it should be possible to play through emulation.)
|
| Trying to google this is harder than it seems, and shows me
| graphical versions that are so different between systems that
| they look like they were written from scratch for each system
| rather than using the same data format with an engine.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| All my games used either my original engine or my later SAGA
| engine. I have since built on that engine and created CLO+#
| (pronounced Clopas Sharp)
|
| The reason the later games may not be available would also be
| due to licensing. The licenses for the Marvel games and
| Buckeroo Banzai have all expired and can't be legally used
| anymore.
|
| Keep searching on the internet though. There are users and
| user groups still playing them :)
| [deleted]
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Thank you for making such wonderful adventure games!
|
| Will your games ever be ported directly to app stores or game
| stores such as XBOX Live? I think you would get thousands of
| new fans.
|
| Any updates on your Lyme resources?
| ScottAdams wrote:
| HI! I don't have any plans of putting my classic (or new
| adventure games) on XBox as they don't really lend themselves
| to console play. You really need a keyboard to enjoy them.
| Though I do have one game on Alexa www.EscapeTheGloomer.com
|
| www.lyme-resource.com is still around but I haven't updated
| in some time. Most folks tend to be more focused on Covid
| than Lyme. Yet Lyme is still a deadly killer that is often
| misdiagnosed.
| Ishmaeli wrote:
| Wow, your stuff looks amazing and I can't believe I've never
| heard of you. I can't wait to dive in.
|
| I came of age in the Infocom era. Do you know any of those
| guys? (Brian Moriarty, Steve Meretzky...)
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Hi! Happy to make a new friend. My classic games were fun but
| tiny due to the 16k limits I had to work with. Be sure and
| check out some of my newer games as well www.clopas.net
|
| I don't think I have never had the pleasure to interact with
| Brian or Steve but I greatly respect their work!
| anthk wrote:
| Have you ever played a modern IF game made in Inform6/7? The
| modern ones from the IF Archive for the Z-Machine, I mean.
|
| https://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXzcode.html
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Sorry to say other than the original Zork etc I have not. In
| general I have stayed away from other text based adventures
| so as not to accidentally copy some one else's puzzle or idea
| in one of my own games.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| It's wonderful to see the GOOD Scott Adams here on Hacker News!
| I can still crisply remember the places and frames of mind I
| was in while walking around and solving puzzles in your worlds.
|
| How do you think Adventure games are like the Method of Loci,
| or Memory Palaces, in that they can help you remember and
| retrieve vast amounts of information geographically?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
|
| What do you think the world be like if an Adventure-like
| geographical Memory Palace oriented user interface had taken
| over the world instead of MS-DOS and Unix and Windows?
|
| Your adventure programs and others were monumental to my
| development as a programmer, and define how I think about code
| and programming and organizing information.
|
| By playing adventure games, I finally reverse engineered the
| "Adventure Algorithm" for keeping track of rooms and
| connections and objects and inventory.
|
| Then I wrote my own adventures and parsers and maps in BASIC
| and FORTH, and my first commercial program was a Logo
| implementation of Adventure for C64 Terrapin Logo.
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/logo-adventure-for-c64-terrapi...
|
| At first I played all of your adventures as well as Microsoft
| Adventure on my Apple ][, and mainframe Adventure on a terminal
| to my mom's work, and that led me to the ARPANET to play Zork
| at MIT, and even MUD at Essex University, then TinyMud at CMU,
| and MOOs, and LambdaMOO at PARC.
|
| I keep returning to that essential idea of a map of rooms
| connected by doors, and I kept reimplementing it on different
| platforms, each time a little different and a little better, as
| technology advanced.
|
| I developed a user interface technique called "pie menus",
| which are menus with their items arranged in a circle around
| the cursor, each in a different direction, so you can select
| them by moving in different directions, even gesturing quickly
| without looking at the screen.
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-design-and-implementation-...
|
| >The Design and Implementation of Pie Menus: They're Fast,
| Easy, and Self-Revealing. Don Hopkins. Originally published in
| Dr. Dobb's Journal, Dec. 1991.
|
| Eventually I realized that 4-item and 8-item pie menus are the
| essential elements of an Adventure map, as long as you think of
| "menus" as rooms in a map with two-way links that you can move
| back and forth through, instead of a hierarchal tree of menus
| with one-way exits!
|
| So I made series of graphical Adventure map editors that were
| also pie menu editors if you looked at them right, because
| rooms behaved just like pie menus: you can move back and forth
| between rooms with quick pie menu gestures: up, down, left,
| right, diagonal.
|
| And you can also edit the map of rooms by simply dragging the
| rooms around and bumping them up against each other to make and
| break connections.
|
| And an editable navigable map like that is essentially a
| "Memory Palace" that you can build and navigate in your
| imagination, to help you spatially remember anything.
|
| It's a computerized note taking application that still works
| when you're away from your computer and forgot your phone,
| since you can remember geographical relationships easily, and
| memorize facts and lists with the Method of Loci.
|
| >'the method of loci', an imaginal technique known to the
| ancient Greeks and Romans and described by Yates (1966) in her
| book The Art of Memory as well as by Luria (1969). In this
| technique the subject memorizes the layout of some building, or
| the arrangement of shops on a street, or any geographical
| entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. When
| desiring to remember a set of items the subject 'walks' through
| these loci in their imagination and commits an item to each one
| by forming an image between the item and any feature of that
| locus. Retrieval of items is achieved by 'walking' through the
| loci, allowing the latter to activate the desired items. The
| efficacy of this technique has been well established (Ross and
| Lawrence 1968, Crovitz 1969, 1971, Briggs, Hawkins and Crovitz
| 1970, Lea 1975), as is the minimal interference seen with its
| use.
|
| Here's the first iteration called "DreamScape", which I
| demonstrated in 1995 at WWDC:
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/1995-apple-world-wide-develope...
|
| >1995 Apple World Wide Developers Conference Kaleida Labs
| ScriptX DreamScape Demo. Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.
| Don Hopkins, Kaleida Labs.
|
| The second iteration was called "MediaGraph", for making and
| navigating maps of music, which I implemented in Unity3D:
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/mediagraph-demo-a7534add63e5
|
| >MediaGraph Demo. MediaGraph Music Navigation with Pie Menus. A
| prototype developed for Will Wright's Stupid Fun Club.
|
| The most recent iteration was called "iLoci", an iPhone app:
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/iphone-app-iloci-by-don-hopkin...
|
| >iPhone iLoci Memory Palace App, by Don Hopkins @ Mobile Dev
| Camp. A talk about iLoci, an iPhone app and server based on the
| Method of Loci for constructing a Memory Palace, by Don
| Hopkins, presented at Mobile Dev Camp in Amsterdam, on November
| 28, 2008.
|
| Your Adventure games inspired me, and I hope we can inspire
| others to build even better ways of creating and elaborating
| information maps, easily navigating and editing them with
| gestures, capturing and communicating ideas and information,
| writing and telling interactive stories, and generally
| augmenting human memory and intelligence.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Hi Don!
|
| Wow, I am still reading through your amazing accomplishments.
| I love it! Give me a few minutes to finish reading your post!
|
| OK, I am blown away at your creativity and ideas. I am aware
| of Memory Palaces and you certainly make an excellent tie-in
| with adventure game handling.
|
| Absolutely incredible. Thanks so much for sharing all that!
| It certainly helps spur my own creative juices!
|
| Happy Adventuring!
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I know Memory Palaces work for me because I can so vividly
| remember my times in the palaces and castles and fun houses
| that you built! Thanks!
|
| The Method of Loci (aka a "Memory Palace") is not just some
| woo hoo pseudo-science bullshit like "Neurolinguistic
| Programming" or "Dianetics" -- it's the real thing, a very
| old, well proven idea.
|
| It actually and measurably works, it used to be taught as a
| part of a classical education for thousands of years until
| it was banned by the Puritans in 1584 for evoking "bizarre
| and irrelevant" imagery, and it's still regularly and
| successfully used by many memory contest champions to
| recall faces, digits, and lists of words.
|
| Mnemonics was seen as dangerous and magical and heretical
| back in the Medieval world... And they were right,
| fortunately: Dangerous magic that works by evoking bizarre
| and irrelevant imagery can be quite useful as well as
| entertaining!
|
| https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/historically-method-of-
| loci-...
|
| HN discussions about it:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22088556
|
| >juliend2 on Jan 19, 2020 | parent | context | favorite |
| on: Nototo - Build a unified mental map of notes
|
| >It's called the Method of loci:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
|
| >Another term for that is the "memory palace".
|
| >BTW, I wonder if anyone here in HN used it to learn
| significant things using this method?
|
| >netsharc on Jan 19, 2020 | next [-]
|
| >I first learned about memory palaces in the book Hannibal,
| named after the character in Silence of the Lambs [0], but
| the description there is of a lavish imaginary palace
| inside your mind you can wander in. I did use this
| technique to try to remember some physics formulae for an
| exam once, in my memory palace there was a room with giant
| equations.
|
| >This website is a bit of a let-down for me since it's just
| a bird's eye view, it would be cool to create a palace
| using a 3d game engine, with signs that point to things
| like physics formulae, and then some Sims or Google-
| Sketchup-like tool to add objects that you want to
| remember.
|
| >[0] The relevant excerpt about Hannibal's memory palace:
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-
| chasers/hannib... , it describes a painting that he uses to
| remember the fictional address "3327 Tindal, Arlington VA
| 22308".
|
| >todd8 on Jan 19, 2020 | prev | next [-]
|
| >Hans-Lukas Teuber[1] was the head of the psychology
| department and my professor for the intro psychology class
| at MIT. He gave one two-hour evening lecture per week,
| which were delivered without notes. The lectures were
| riveting, they were given in MIT's largest lecture hall; it
| was standing room only to hear him speak--many students and
| faculty would attend even though not enrolled. I don't
| remember ever hearing a better live lecture than those that
| he gave (and I've heard many lectures--I spent more years
| at university than Belucci's character in Animal House). He
| used the memory palace method to remember his lecture's
| organization.
|
| >[1] http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-
| memoirs/m...
|
| >DonHopkins on Jan 19, 2020 | prev | next [-]
|
| >I visualize and remember code that way. For me, it's hard
| to forget somewhere I've been, even if I only imagined
| being there.
|
| >Each function is a little building like an office or a
| shop, which has a sign out front telling what services or
| products it sells, and contains everything inside you need
| to solve some kind of problem or produce some kind of
| product or service (where equipment in the room is like
| references to other objects and functions and imported
| libraries).
|
| >You're standing behind the front counter, just about to
| receive a customer though the front entrance door with the
| parameters you need for one particular instance of that
| problem.
|
| >You go into the back room, solve the problem, then deliver
| the results out the exit door at the back of the building
| (or through any of the other earlier emergency exits, if
| you had to exit prematurely or throw an error and run
| away).
|
| >The front/back flow is a metaphor for the top/bottom flow
| of control through a function.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassi%E2%80%93Shneiderman_dia
| g...
|
| >If you squint you can see the example Nassi-Shneiderman
| diagram in that article as a map of a building, with its
| front at the top, and exit at the bottom.
|
| >You can have internal hallways and rooms for branches and
| loops, like a Nassi-Shneiderman diagram. The "Sub to
| Determine Wiki-Article" room is like the front entrance
| lobby of a theater where buy your ticket. The "Select
| Favourite Genre" room is like the stage of The Price is
| Right, and you get to pick what's behind door #1 (History),
| #2 (Science), or # (Geography), or else choose Other. They
| each have one or two rooms behind them with your rewards,
| and then they all finally exit out to the same back stage
| loading dock, where you take your wonderful prize (or
| consolation donkey) home.
|
| >kruasan on Jan 19, 2020 | prev [-]
|
| >I once memorized 200 digits of pi when I had nothing more
| fun to do on a long boring lecture. Sherlock popped into my
| mind, so I imagined a journey through my house where I
| chunked numbers to make them represent certain things or
| people, and me interacting or talking with them, like in a
| story of some sort. But it feels like I never applied this
| method to anything significant, apart from memorizing a few
| things from my biochemistry course. Although now I remember
| credit card numbers, every single phone number of my
| friends and family (by associating numbers with particular
| facial features or character traits), and some other
| things. I would say before that day I never fully realized
| just how much I actually like to memorize stuff like words
| and numbers. Anyway, I think everyone should give it a try,
| this is fun.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Thank you for sharing that. It is always wonderful to
| know God used my gift to uplift others! Keep creating and
| achieving my friend!
| ghaff wrote:
| Teuber's lectures were absolutely compelling.
| Unfortunately they dated to an era when videos of
| lectures were extremely rare and they were pretty much
| never archived in any case.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| It does sound like he had an amazing gift. I am so glad
| you were able to hear him live!
| technothrasher wrote:
| Why did you cause me to have childhood nightmares about
| chiggers? I didn't even know what they were, growing up in New
| England, but they scared the heck out of me at six years old.
| Thanks for that! Actually, honestly, thanks for sparking my
| imagination enough to want to code my own text adventures,
| which began my life long love of programming.
| dekhn wrote:
| hahahha, same here- grew up in CT but my dad is from FL and
| he explained. It always just sounded like an epithet to me.
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Here lies Scott, bitten to death by chiggers :) LOL!
| ScottAdams wrote:
| I am so very sorry about the chiggers. I grew up with them in
| Florida and they were not a fun experience for me either.
|
| I am though delighted to hear that my classic games were
| helpful in you understanding your own gifts! I appreciate you
| sharing that with me!
| castwide wrote:
| I can't imagine how many future developers were originally
| inspired to learn programming by playing your games. A text
| adventure was the first thing I wanted to make when I
| learned BASIC on a VIC-20. Even now, I maintain an
| interactive fiction SDK for Ruby (https://gamefic.com).
| Thanks, Scott!
| zalequin wrote:
| To Mr. Adams - what sort of games would you make today if you
| were starting from scratch?
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Hi! Please feel free to call me Scott!
|
| Well I am still making games and some from scratch :)
|
| See www.FinalPilot.com it is something I did for another
| company who had a vision and I and my team have a had a great
| deal of fun creating it. Still a work in progress with a major
| update coming out shortly.
|
| In terms of adventure type games I am really fond of
| www.EscapeTheGloomer.com it tells a parallel story to book 2 of
| the Redwall series Mossflower. I did a lot of new things in
| this game. One of which is that the player is actually writing
| their own story as they play. The game reads as a novel as the
| player explores, discovers and creates.
|
| And lastly I am currently working on www.AdventurelandXL.com
| which stands for Roman numeral 40 for the 40th anniversary of
| Adventureland and also for Extra Large.
|
| It includes the entire base game along with an entire new
| section with saluates to some of the cultural myths and
| fantasys that I did not get to include in Advenutreland
| originally. It also includes what is now one of my favorite
| puzzle sequences (deals with the chimp in the jungle).
|
| It is currently in early access on Steam for Windows, everyone
| playing it is helping make the game better for eventual final
| release. It is like ET and phones home after each play sesssion
| with the player's trace file.
|
| The entire game is in there except for the very final scene.
|
| I love to hear get email from folks playing it too with their
| impressions.
| digger1970 wrote:
| Just wanted to say thanks for all the memory's. Took me weeks to
| get all the treasures in Return To Pirates Isle on my old TI
| 99/4A. Without any spoilers, finding the alarm clock took
| forever...
| ScottAdams wrote:
| Yes the alarm clock was basically but an annoying and hopefully
| rewarding puzzle. It was designed to remind you that something
| was still unknown and also to get a great moment of AHA when
| solved.
|
| Big congratulations on staying with it and solving that puzzle!
| By the way the alarm clock makes a return visit in my 2013 game
| The Inheritance.
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