So cool you were able to do that! Big congratulations on taking it to the next level and making your own games! Love it!
430 karma · joined November 18, 2021
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?
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
Happy Adventuring!
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.
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 :)
Hey folks take a look!
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 :)
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.
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!
If not, then I am happy to make a new friend!
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. :)
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!
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 :)
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.
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.
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!
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
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!
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!