THE BALROG
The Balrog, memory man extraordinaire, shows you this month how to get the most
out of GAC as well as giving some hints and tips on writing a good adventure
plus all the usual reviews, hints, amusing responses and the infamous Lords
& Ladies of Adventure.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Contacting the Balg
To get in contact with the Balg, write to him at Amstrad Action, Future
Publishing Ltd, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, AVON BA1 2AP or e-mail
at cazsjw@uk.ac.leeds.dcs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Review
The Chaos Maze
£2.50 Tape, £4.50 disc.
Len Townsend, 61 Lowergate Road, Huncoat, Accrington, Lancashire BB5 6LN.
Reviewed by the Hobbit.
Well, after your heroics in Tulgey Woods (reviewed way back in AA54 - Balg), the light introduction to the eight-part saga
of 'Superstition - the Covenant', you stroll boldly on to face the second
challenge. This time you must seek out and destroy Gremold the stone wizard to
free the land of Zar. Ahead lies many tough obstacles and puzzles so don't
expect 'The Chaos Maze' to be easy because it's not!'Chaos Maze' is a HUGE
GACed game from Len Townsend (Author of Tulgey Woods, Twelve Lost Souls and
Labyrinth Hall, all of which are now available from Adventure PD). It contains
roughly 660 locations, with a picture for every room! It's amazing really how
Len has managed to cram it all in! The plot, although slightly unoriginal, is
imaginative and easy to follow. The puzzles in the game are quite hard and some
are a tough illogical.Although 'Chaos Maze' is a very well-produced game, there
are a few certain quirks lying around in there. If you are a die-hard text-only
fan, then turning off the graphics will probably be your first command...
Unfortunately though, the graphics are very important in some places, as
certain locations have special markings scattered around in the graphic, and
so, switching them off would effectively mean that it's impossible to
complete.Once you have been playing the game for some time, it begins to get
too repetitive and confusing to persevere with. Also, while I praise the clever
method of cramming in the graphics, from what I have seen, there are only
around eight or nine different pictures used. Each one used over again in
separate rooms. Though I understand that it wouldn't have been possible to have
a unique picture for each location it would have been nice to have more
variety!Even if you do begin to enjoy the game and get quite far, there seems
to be a bug later on which prevents you from proceeding any further! This is a
shame as it has meant I have not been able to complete the game and may mean
that the game is uncompleatable.Overall, a good game potentially, especially
with the use of graphics. But unfortunately the puzzles are slightly illogical
and the programming is quite scrappy. A commendable effort by Len, but it's let
down by lack of real content.
Atmosphere 68%
Interaction 54%
Challenge 51%
Overall 57%
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Clue-sniffing with the Balrog
This months scintillating collection of clues are from Jon Pengelly (Cheshire),
Robert Melody (Surrey), Phil Johnson (Northenden), Alistair Crook (Leeds), Paul
& Timothy Stitt (Belfast), Yasir Gilani (London), Benjamin Lomax (Bury),
Amir Mansour (London), Dave Adams (St Helens), Laurence Boyce (Leeds),
Katharyne Allen (Guernsey), Thomas Christie (Grangemouth) and John Critchley
(Grange over Sands).Special thanks to Thomas Christie for his map of 'The Trial
of Arnold Blackwood'.
Big Sleaze
At the end, climb up the Empire State building, making sure you have the model
plane and the battery from the torch. When you meet King Kong put the battery
in the plane.
Some of the places you can drive to: Joes Diner, Brooklyn Heights, Home, Police
Station, Astoria Boulevarde, Central Park, Battery Park, Central Manhatten...
Case of the Mixed-Up Shymer
Baa-Baa White Sheep is a bit off colour. To help him you might want the tin of
paint hidden in the hay in the barn.
Corruption
Get the certificate from the cabinet and flush it down the loo (Now you won't
get arrested at noon!)
Go to the BMW and start the car - leave then engine running, even if you leave
the car (so it doesn't get tampered with later on). Open the glove compartment
and get the screwdriver.
Break the window of the volvo with the screwdriver and take and read the paper
in folder.
When you go to your dinner appointment with your wife at 2 o'clock, ask loads
of questions, because you can get some good info from her.
Jewels of Babylon
Give the red herring to the lion.
Jinxter
To get into the dumb waiter at the castle of Jannedor, you must tie the rope to
the manacles, then light a candle with a match and put this candle in the hat
which you then put under the rope. Now get into the waiter and wait.At the
station: You must post the saddle to the station with the two ferg coin and
when you arrive at the station pick it up from the door marked private.To buy a
ticket cast doofer on shoes and drop hat.
Put the ferg coin in the hat and play the harmonica.
Follow the ticket and when you catch up with it run after the train twice so it
does not run away from you.
Knight Orc
Cut Rapunzels hair.Lords of TimeTo get the tear drop, cut down the weeping
willow.
Lost Phirious - Part 3
Spray can at stove
Hit battery with boulder
Attach balloon to seat and inflate it
Tie rope around sturdy branch to get back across chasm.
Magnetic Moon
Wait twice to escape from the control room.Search tools and wear the headshield
so that Midshipman Grue won't recognise you.
Get the forcer, flashlight, rope and laser cutter from equipment store 4.
Tie rope to grapnel.
Search the sickbay to find an oxygen bottle.
Press your hand on the panel and then say Erlin into the microphone.
Mindfighter
Give snowstorm to Daryl.When the boat comes at 3pm on Wednesday go amongst
crates - then INHALE, HOLD, EXHALE and METAMORPHOSE INTO EAGLE.
Mordons Quest
To kill the pigmy you must get the thorns, berries and the bamboo and then type
"MAKE BLOWPIPE", then when you get to the pigmy type "BLOW
PIPE" and you will kill him.To get into the forest you must climb up the
drainpipe, then go to the door until you see Mordon, search the house for the
torch and turn it on and then you are free to enter the forest.
Planetfall
Throw laser in void to kill microbe.
Price of Magik
Wave mirror at Moonbeast.
Say "FEAR" to the gargoyle.
Cast IBM at the ants.
Cast BOM at the cherub.
Knock on door of building.
Try not to kill the monsters as they come back as ghosts.
XAM tells you if an object is magical or not.
Spytrek
At the airport, give the man as many coins as he needs.
Ask the girl in the chapel to light the candle.
TRD
Dance with the trees to get the starling.
Wet the dehyrdated bridge to cross the chasm.
--------
MAP OF TRIAL OF ARNOLD BLACKWOOD by THOMAS CHRISTIE
--------
Use your loaf
Talk to the butchers assistant to get the sandwich.The pub juke-box will give
you a clue to get the windmill to turn.
Wiz Biz
Your spirits name is TROOL.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Lords & Ladies of Adventure
More valiant and brave adventurers offer their services to us mere mortals.
Remember to phone during sociable hours and to enclose an SSAE when writing for
a reply.
Big Sleaze, Gremlins, Megabucks & Seabase Delta.Darren Sharp, 10 Alfred
Road, Greatstone, Kent TN28 8SH.Questprobe 3.Rich Thomas, 85A St. Johns Road,
Cannock, Staffs, WS11 3AL. Tel: (0543) 503045, Mon-Fri, 5-10pm.Colour of Magic,
Forest at World's End, Gnome Ranger, Heroes of Karn, Rebel Planet, Questprobe,
Seabase Delta & Subsunk.The Dragon Master, 12 Gretton Crescent, Aldridge,
Walsall, West Midlands, WS9 ODY.Knightmare & Rebel Planet.Ross Younger, 3
Cammo Parkway, Edinburgh, EH4 8EP.Bard's Tale, Hitchhiker's Guide, Hobbit, Lord
of the Rings, Pawn & Shadows of Mordor.David Nicholas, 23 Houghton Lane,
Sancton, East Yorkshire Y04 3QU.
Adult II, Can I Cheat Death?, Doomlords, Firestone, Jason and the Argonauts,
Roog, Spacey & Tizpan.Adam Maxwell, 9 Peth Green, Hetton-le-Hole, Tyne
& Wear DH5 OEY.Base, Hollywood Hijinx, Infidel, Island, Spiro Legacy, Test,
Wishbringer & help for PAW programmers.Ken Bond, 17 Adel Park Gardens,
Adel, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS16 8BN. Tel: (0532) 672278.Adventure Quest,
Dungeon Adventure, Gnome Ranger, Imagination, Knight Orc, Kobyashi Naru, Jewels
of Babylon, Lancelot, Lords of Time, Mystery of Indus Valley, Price of Magik,
Redmoon, Return to Eden, Shadows of Mordor, Snowball, Souls of Darkon &
Venom.
Wendy Watters, 82 Booth Road, Stacksteads, Bacup, Lancashire OL13 OSF. Tel:
(0706) 877518
Classic Adventure, Fantasia Diamond, Hobbit, Hollywood Hijinx, Inca Curse,
Mountains of Ket, Planet of Death & Sorceror.Dave 'Flossie' Havard, 21
Belvoir Close, Fareham, Hants PO16 OPJ.Forest at World's End, Jewels of Babylon
& Seabase Delta.James Mackle, 45 Kenure Park, Rush, Co Dublin,
Ireland.Bards Tale, Big Sleaze, Boggit, Caves '90, Dragontorc, Forest at
World's End, Hitchhiker's Guide, Hobbit, Jackle & Wide, Jewels of Babylon,
Kobyashi Naru, Laser Squad, Lord of the Rings, Lords of Chaos, Lords of Time,
Lost Phirious (parts 1 & 2), Lurking Horror, Mindfighter, Mystery of the
Indus Valley, Never Ending Story, Price of Magic, Quest for the Golden Egg-cup,
Quill (+Illustrator), Red Moon, Rigel's Revenge, Scapeghost, Seabase Delta,
Shadows of Mordor, Souls of Darkon, Venom & Very Big Cave Adventure.
Simon "Aragorn" Netherwood, 36 Toothill Bank, Rastrick, Brighouse,
West Yorkshire HD6 3EZ. Tel: (0484) 719326 5-9pm weekdays, 12-11pm weekends.
Andy Capp & Price of Magic.The Kenderian, 475 Westhorne Ave, Eltham, London
SE9 5LR.Jewels of Babylon.Chris "The Barbarian" Gore, 22 St. Anthony's
Pk., Mallow, Co. Cork, Ireland.Aftershock, Colossal Adventure, Escape from
Khosima, Gnome Ranger, Gremlins, Guild of Thieves, Haunted House, Hitchhiker's
Guide, Ingrid's Back, Kingdom of Hamil, Leather Goddesses, Mindshadow, Mordon's
Quest, Pawn, Price of Magic, Return to Eden, Rigel's Revenge, Scapeghost,
Seabase Delta, Snowball, Sorceror, & Village of Lost Souls.
Robin Harley, 3 Shropshire Place, Eastgate, Peterborough, Cambs PE1 5BX.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Help!
Thomas Christie is stuck in two WoW games - in Yarkon Blues he wants to know
how to cross the bridge and in Smirking Horror he wants to know where the
flashlight is located.Babooshka from Scarborough has recently bought an old
Amsoft game, Qabbalah, and has absolutely no idea what to do - any tips?Richard
Jamieson is stuck in Martech's Slaine - he wants to know how to avoid getting
stranded at the island when visiting the observatory. Can anyone help?Jon
Penngelly is stuck in Jewels of Babylon - he wants to know how to get to the
dark corridor.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Just for Laughs
This months collection of humorous responses comes to you from Dave Adams (St
Helens), Robert Melody (Surrey), Lee Hatton (Northern Ireland) and Katharyne
Allen (Guernsey).
Labyrinthe
Try swearing.
Ingrid's Back
Go into the changing rooms whilst Jasper is in them.Swear.Look at Ingrid.
Simply Magic
Try kissing everyone you come to.Try punching people but punch the witch before punching the elf!
Quest for the Golden Egg-cup
Swear and then play around in the room (by trying to open door, digging etc). Swear again and you'll get a letter from God!
Jinxter
Ask the guardian things.Play with dragon from wash basin.Dial phone numbers until they are not engaged.
Corruption
Kiss anyone (male or female!)Snort the powder.Phone Margaret from Theresa's
office.Search people or throw things at them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
GAC Programming with the Balrog
This month is my final GAC tutorial - next month I'll start answering all your
GAC problems in the Programming Clinic, this month I'll tie together the some
loose bits and try to give some clues on writing a good adventure game and how
to get the most out of GAC.
--
Memory management
One of the major problems with GAC is memory - you only have approximately 25K
to write your adventure in and this free memory disappears very quickly
(especially if you draw a lot of complex graphics). So how do you make the most
of that limited memory? Read below...Graphics...Drawing pictures in GAC really
eats up the old memory - each graphic command (rectangle, ellipse, fill etc)
uses up bytes and often programmers waste extra memory by drawing graphics
inefficiently - for example, drawing a chessboard with lines (which would seem
the obvious method) and then filling in the squares uses up 199 bytes whereas
drawing the chessboard using rectangles only uses up 154 bytes - this might not
seem like a big difference but six chessboards drawn with lines would waste 1K
of memory! Programmers often fill their pictures in at the wrong time as well -
if you wanted to have the chessboard black on white with a blue background you
should draw just the outsides of the board, fill it in with black, draw the
other lines (using rectangles) and then just fill in the white squares with
white (this is 33 fill operations), rather than drawing the board and filling
in the various squares (which is 64 fill operations!) - if all this seems a bit
complicated don't worry - you don't need it to write a good adventure it just
means you'll have more memory to play around with!Using templates...Another way
to save memory in your pictures is to use templates or merge pictures together.
For more details see the box 'Editing pictures' on page 39 of AA78.
Many GAC writers like to have their pictures surrounded by pretty borders or
with a common graphic and using templates are the ideal way to do it.Global
object declarations...Instead of having individual code for each object (ie GET
KEY, GET RAT, GET MONEY etc) you can use global object declarations by using
the NO1 command:-IF ( NO1 = 0 AND VERB 7 ) MESS 19 WAIT END If you typed 'GET'
by itself or with an unrecognised word, print message 19 "I'm sorry, but I
don't know what one of those is..."IF ( NO1 = 0 AND VERB 8 ) MESS 19 WAIT
END And similarly for "DROP"IF ( NO1 = 0 AND VERB 16 ) MESS 18 WAIT
END And again for "EXAMINE" except message 18 is "You find
nothing much"IF ( NO1 < 5 AND VERB 7 ) GET NO1 OKAY END If you typed
"GET" and a noun with a number less than 5, then get the object with
that noun's number. This only works because the object and nouns which refer to
them have the same number.IF ( NO1 < 5 AND VERB 8 ) DROP NO1 OKAY END If you
typed "DROP" and a noun whose number is less than 5, then drop the
object with that noun number.IF ( NO1 < 5 AND VERB 16 AND AVAI NO1 ) MESS
NO1 WAIT END If you typed "EXAMINE" and a noun whose number is less
than 5, then print out the message with that noun number, it being the more
detailed description of that object, then wait for a new command.Thus, if you
write your adventure with say, the first 20 messages, nouns and objects being
allocated to objects then you can use this to save memory.Multi
part...Penultimately, if you find yourself running out of memory, you could
make your game load in multiple parts with each part being separate from the
previous one. For example you could have the end of part one of your adventure
as crash landing on the moon and then have part 2 taking place on the moon
itself. Of course you can't allow the player to return to a previous part but
if your adventure can be split up into sections than this is one of the best
ways to get the most out of GAC.Final tip...One last comment about saving
memory in GAC - it's been shown that whilst writing an adventure, memory is
allocated to messages (such as locations, objects, messages etc) as they are
created, even if they are later deleted or changed - thus if you write twenty
messages and then decide to scrap them at a later date, GAC will unfortunately
not free the memory from the deleted messages. So, if you're really stuck for
memory, you could always print out the whole adventure and then re-type it into
a 'fresh', 'unused' GAC. This obviously is a pain but if you're desperate for
that memory it's one of the ways to do it.
--
How to write a good adventure
It's difficult to give any hard and fast rules as to what constitutes a good
game and I'm not going to do that! Instead I'll just cover a briefly mention a
few hints and tips in making a good adventure:-
No instant death situations It can be intensely frustrating to get killed without warning in a game. These 'instant death situations' can easily be avoided by giving a hint to the player that something could be dangerous (ie a sign saying "Quicksand to the east") or by asking a player if they're sure they really want to do something. (ie "Are you sure you want to light the dynamite?").
Try and make puzzles as logical as possible Some games have very illogical puzzles which make them near impossible to solve and very annoying to play. Having a door open by opening a can of coke is silly but opening a door by turning a key is not.
Spelling Try and not make any spelling mistakes as it can
make your game look sloppy and unprofessional.
Bugs Bugs in a game can really be frustrating and can be
mostly destroyed by good playtesting so get some people help you out in testing
the game.
Graphics Make a conscious decision about whether to have
graphics in your adventure - graphics can use up a lot of memory and if you
can't draw can look awful but good pictures can add to a game. If you can't
draw try and get a friend who can do it for you.
Text Try and make your text as verbose and atmospheric as
possible, if you think of an adventure as 'interactive fiction' then you'll
understand how important the text in your adventure is - if your game has no
atmosphere then it won't grab player attention and make them want to play more.
Parser Try and think of different words a player might use
in different situations. For example in a good game, if you have a locked door,
then there should be lots of different word combinations to open the door such
as OPEN DOOR WITH KEY, TURN KEY IN DOOR, UNLOCK DOOR, UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY etc.
--------------------------------
GAC Programming Clinic
If you have any questions on the use of GAC, specific GAC related problems and
queries or hints and tips of your own then jot them down and send them to the
Balg's GAC Programming Clinic at the usual AA address.
--------------------------------
Competition Time!
Yep! You guessed it - we're running a competition for the best GAC game written
with this covertape. To stop people cheating and sending in games they wrote
three years ago (not that we don't trust you or anything) we've decided to
write a little storyline:-
'You are intrepid editor Rod Lawton, saviour of the innocents and all round Mr.
Nice Guy, who has been magically transported to the Balrogs lair - quite what
will happen next is unknown but you must rescue a damsel in distress, Princess
Cathy, who the Balg has captured for his dinner...'
That's it - all you have to do is use your newfound GAC skills to write an
adventure based around the above storyline. The prize? The winners game will
appear on a covertape, which will probably lead to more fame than Michael
Jackson and oodles of money (err... well probably not but you can dream!)The
closing date is not till 1st November 1992 so you have lots of time to write in
to the GAC clinic with questions as well as reading the programming tutorials.
The only other stipulation is that games must be sent in with a full solution
and map as well as any other items that you think might be helpful (ú5 notes
appreciated!) - if you're game has a really clever routine, or a really
hilarious response then tell me when you write in - else I might not see it! Remember
there is no rush to send your game in so wait a while to read the next few
issues tutorial...
**********************************
Booklet
This article is the tip of the proverbial iceberg in explaining the use of GAC
- if you're serious about using GAC then write to GAC Booklets, c/o AA
enclosing a cheque/postal order for £3 and we'll send you the instruction book!
However you don't necessarily need the book to use GAC but it certainly helps!
**********************************