Utility Software: THE GRAPHIC ADVENTURE CREATOR
Incentive Software Ltd, Released June 1986, R.R.P £22.95. This utility program was featured on a YS covertape (Jan 92). However, due to the speed-loader it refused to work on my +2. As luck would have it I discovered a boxed original copy in a London second-hand shop. It came in a very plush video sized gatefold case and a handsome twenty seven page manual. Suffice to say the YS instructions leave a lot to be desired.
You may gag at the then asking price of £23 for what was essentially a single cassette in a natty display case, but the GAC was launched as a commercial programming utility. Titles such as Winter Wonderland, Football Frenzy and Legend of Apache Gold were all written and released using it.
In the early to mid-eighties you had three choices if you wished to write and market Adventure games. There were two utility programs; The Quill and Dungeon Builder. The former lacked graphics capability (unless you also bought The Illustrator and The Patch - pushing the cost towards £30) and the latter (although cheap) required a great deal of brain-work to get it to do what you wanted it to. The third option was to program the game yourself from scratch. An ominous task for most.
Not being a great fan of Adventure games I soon found them more fun to program than actually play! I also gained a great sense of achievement having a stand alone game that computer illiterate me had written! Endless cross reference seems to be the key here with loads of separate lists containing all your verbs, nouns, objects, room descriptions and control codes. I'd recommend GAC to anyone starting out in Adventure writing. The graphics side is a little hard to get your head around at first but a little slice of application will go a long way. You are stuck with the Sinclair char set unless you get hold of The Finisher by Essential Myth.
Font Designer by Richard Roe
This utility came with the SU July 92 covertape and is certainly the best character set designer I've ever seen. You may find it in a PD library somewhere as I don't think it was ever released commercially. You can store your char-code anywhere in RAM and all POKE info is given. Ace! (DAVE)
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