IF Info
2016-05-21 16:56:35 UTC
DBT is the host of the “Classic Text Adventures” podcast. He discusses
modern Interactive Fiction. This post contains quotations from the podcast.
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1. DBT on the "IF community"
[The following quotations are taken from episode "-3" of the podcast,
available on the "Classic Text Adventures" Facebook page.]
... some of the criticisms I've faced as a text adventure programmer ...
A lot of people like calling it Interactive Fiction (IF). That's like
the Hollywood studio system of the 50s: "The cinema is an art form to
broaden the horizons of the everyday working man."
I'm more like the Ed Wood of the text adventure.
I like writing BASIC text adventures. I like writing them quick, I like
writing them short. But a lot of people in the IF community can't stand
that. I honestly don't know why. I've been called the Paul Allen
Panks... who I was a huge fan of, up until his death.
He wrote in spaghetti code, which a lot of people hate these days. I
honestly don't know why. Spaghetti code for me is just a thrill to write.
I've made Not Another Night, In The Shadows Of The Maze, Into A Mind Of
Darkness, A Christmas Adventure Or How Hitler Tried To Steal Christmas,
which is on the IF Comp... I don't even remember signing up! I don't
know -- maybe somebody just wanted to see me fail. I honestly don't care.
I write short games. I've been extremely criticized for it in the IF
community, which I find to be extremely odd. You'd think, like, somebody
new comes onto the scene, they'd be like, "Oh, this guy wants to do text
adventures. So be it." But that's not the way it works, apparently.
Apparently they're up in their crystal castles, drinking champagne and
eating caviar and filet mignon, and I'm eating a Pizza Hut pizza and
smoking light cigarettes, drinking my beer out of a bottle, like some
sort of rabid animal during an apocalypse of some sort. I don't really care.
Now you got Inform and TADS and all that fun little stuff that I will
never learn to use because, honestly, why would I ever wanna use it? I
find programming video games in QBasic has a lot of that nostalgia feel,
that old retro feel.
I've been called Ed Wood, Paul Allen Panks... I've been called a
dime-store text adventu-- sorry, *interactive fiction* author. It comes
to the point where the IF community doesn't really even acknowledge my
existence. They still allow me to upload games on their websites, so
it's not truly segregated from a guy like me.
That's kinda like my place in the text adventure world. I'm on the
bottom of the barrel. You know, when they wanted the worst they got the
best. That's DBT.
I honestly don't care if the IF community thinks I'm garbage. They're a
very snooty bunch. They're like the First Class on the Titanic, and I'm
the Third Class.
Don't forget to spread the word about Classic Text Adventures. We're the
little engine that could, going up a hill against those who think
they're better than us, right?
Man, I got a lotta *hate* for those guys! I don't mean to have a lotta
hate for the snobby, upper-class -- you know -- Infocom-style game
programmers...
---------------
2. DBT on ticking off the "IF community"
[The following quotations are taken from episode 1 of the podcast.]
I got into a little argument with the IF community. A lotta people were
saying that, uh, my games are crap. A lotta people were saying that I
should just stop. And so I made just a kinda BASIC text simulator, just
to kinda tick them off. Because that's what I like to do.
I write from my soul, from my gut, when I write a text adventure game.
You guys might not like the text adventure games I write. I honestly
don't care. It's what I do. It's how I kinda cleanse myself of all the
negativity around me.
But to me, these games are art. It's not *good* art, but it's art
nonetheless.
Text adventure games to me are a sort of self-soothing, in a way.
I don't write epics. I don't write massive blockbusters. I make games
like Ed Wood made movies. I take that as a compliment. I recall on
Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB), somebody said I was the Ed Wood of
interactive fiction. I didn't know how to handle that. I knew who Ed
Wood was, actually. I'm a huge fan of his work. I love being known as
the Ed Wood of text adventure games.
Somebody else called me the Paul Allen Panks of text adventure games --
that, I don't really know. I am familiar with him from 2007, 2008. I
played a lot of his little text adventure games. I am familiar that he
wrote a lot of crappy, crappy text adventures, but they were also
written in spaghetti code, and a lot of people hated him for it. I don't
understand why a lot of people hated the fact that he wrote in such a
way that it was mind-numbingly impossible to try to fix. You know, it's
such a cluttered mess!
And then when people are saying to me, like, "Hey, you write spaghetti
code!", I'm looking at the source code that I'm writing, that I have,
and this is an engine that took me years to perfect. Took me a long time
to perfect it because I am *horrible* at writing source code. I'll be
the first to admit it: I am *godawful* at coding games.
All of the comments and all that hate-mail that I get, I always seem to
write a sarcastic remark to it, and I never get a response back, so
pffft! Fuck those guys, right?
So, let's see, I talked about my, uh, my hate-- I don't really like
talking hate about the interactive fiction community. I don't wanna be
known as that guy. If they ever make a documentary on text adventures, I
don't wanna be that guy that everyone's, "Oh, hey, that's DBT! You know,
he wrote The Pond and Christmas Adventure With Hitler, and, you know,
whoa, back off, this guy's nuts! Don't even try to play Coffee Simulator
-- you can win it in two turns: MAKE COFFEE, DRINK COFFEE. There you
go." I don't wanna be known as that guy.
I do like text adventure games, but I can't stand, for the life of me,
the new ones because a lot of the time they try to emulate the Infocom
way of making a game. Like, they always be big and outlandish. To be
honest with you guys, I don't like big and outlandish. And then you kind
of add that feel of, "Hey, it's an Infocom game," you know. "It'll only
take you, like, twenty hours of your life to play. And you can save it
though, so, you know, that is the highlight of it."
I like playing the games like Madness And The Minotaur, where it's balls
to the wall.
Now, there's gonna be a lot of crude language in this podcast. I like to
speak my mind, and I just like to have fun, so if you're expecting a
podcast where I review modern interactive fiction, then you're on the
wrong podcast.
I'm going through a long list of text adventures written in the BASIC
programming language. That's the language I frequently use all the time.
I will *never* stop using QBasic. Why? Because that's the first
programming language I've ever learned, and that's gonna be the last
programming language I ever use until the day of my death.
---------------
3. DBT on Get Lamp, Infocom, Inform, TADS, and the "IF community"
[The following quotations are taken from episode 3 of the podcast.]
And if you watch that Get Lamp... Don't get me wrong -- like, the guy
who made it, he did a great job on it, hands down. His previous
documentary was about BBSs. I fucking loved that documentary.
But talking about Get Lamp, I saw it. It was alright. Honestly, I'm on
the fence about it because it's not bad -- it's a great documentary for
what it's based on -- but what bothered me the most was that it never
talked about the little guy, the small mom-and-pop text adventure
companies that opened up in people's basements. They don't talk about
those guys. It's, like, nothing but a history of Infocom: "We don't call
them text adventures. We call them Interactive Fiction, 'cause, you
know, it's a next-- it's a higher level of gaming. Rather than with
graphics."
And, to be honest with you, that whole documentary -- minus the Scott
Adams, minus the little notes here and there, the little interviews with
people that actually talk about, you know, "Yeah, I used to write a text
adventure, you know, and blah-blah-blah..." -- it had this arrogance,
this air of arrogance, where it's like they think they're better than
you. And they talk to all these high people who still write text
adventures to this day, like the independent guys, and they're like,
"You know, I wrote a paper in university about interactive fiction, and
I got a degree in it," or some shit, and "Oh, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah."
If I'm a Joe Blow, who works in a mine or a coal plant, or fucking, you
know, a coal energy plant, or a metal factory, you know, a metal
refinery, or a metal shop, and I'm sort of interested in text
adventures, and I watch this documentary, am I gonna want to play any of
these text adventures? No, 'cause they make it sound like you have to be
so smart to play a text adventure, you have to be a certain intellect to
play a text adventure. That doesn't fly well with me. That always
irritates the fuck out of me when people do that because it's just so
mind-boggling why you just kind of, like, alienate everybody else, but
you make yourself feel like, you know, you're these gods of Olympus
almost, in a way, and that's the thing that I can't honestly stand. And
that's why his documentary intrigued me but also kind of pissed me off.
So that's the thing that really upset me about that documentary. They
kinda make themselves look really big. I would like to know about the
guy who wrote Hotel California, or Cruise, or I would love to have them
spend an hour with fucking Scott Adams talking about Strange Odyssey, or
what was the deal with the Marvel series -- you know, the Marvel series
was a great series of games, and I would love to hear the talk about how
they decided to work with Scott Adams and make graphic text adventure
games in the style of a comic book. That would entertain me a lot more
than hearing the guy who started Infocom saying, like, "You know, I'd
never invest in a text adventure company. I've done it before, and I've
seen what happened, and I'll *never* do it again. I've lost so much
money!" And, you know, why do I wanna hear that? Like, honestly, come on!
I'd rather have the whole documentary based on Scott Adams, you know,
'cause Scott Adams was the fucking man! (You know, Infocom's great --
don't get me wrong -- they have a few good games. I liked the Zork
series. I like -- what is it? -- Leather Goddess of Pheebs, or Phobes,
or however the hell you wanna pronounce it.) To me, Scott Adams is
always the shit. I'd rather hear Scott Adams talking about how he came
up with programming Adventureland on his TRS-80, and then his wife
getting so pissed off at him 'cause he spent so much time with text
adventure games, and writing one, that she put all his diskettes in the
oven. I wanna hear that fucking story.
I don't wanna hear about a bunch of guys who made millions of dollars
off the sale of Infocom to Activision! I don't wanna hear that. You
know, I don't wanna hear about some guy saying, like, "We *lost*
something. We lost something, we have to get it back." What the fuck
does that mean?! If you miss it so much, keep playing them. Like, what
are you trying to do? It's mind-boggling.
I know a lot of people in the text adventure comm-- oh, I'm sorry,
*interactive fiction community*, they get upset when I talk about, like,
you know... I guess that movie's like the holy grail or some shit. You
know, they get really angry when you criticize it.
And, to be frank with you, the movie's sub-par. (The BBS one's way
better.) You know, I saw it online for free, I downloaded it for free. I
was not gonna spend money on it 'cause I saw the trailer and it was
nothing but, like, Infocom guys, you know, and those guys were the guys,
you know... Uh, to be honest with you, Infocom's a great company, they
made a lot of good games, but why base your whole documentary on it?
You know, he never talked about Level 9. He never talked about the
little mom-and-pop games for ZX Spectrum. You know, I wanna hear about
the guy who made Father Of Darkness, or I wanna hear about the boardroom
meeting between Scott Adams and Marvel to make interactive comic books
for kids. I wanna hear about those stories. I don't wanna hear about
these guys who made a game and, you know, started a company that pissed
it all away because they wanted to make a fucking office program! That
shit doesn't interest me. But, I don't know, I guess I'm a "rogue", you
know. I write spaghetti code, so, huh..!
I always wind up smoking a lot whenever I talk about that fucking
documentary!
You know, and he gives out coins and shit like that. Now, you know, if
that's your thing, if that *is* your thing, uh, so be it. This is just
my opinion. This is me talking about a documentary. It's just my
opinion. I know a lot of people herald that documentary, and whatnot...
Man, I've been almost talking for an hour, talking to you fine folks
about text adventures, my hatred of fucking that Get Lamp documentary.
If you like that documentary, I honestly don't care. This is just my
opinion. I hope some of you guys understand that. I think a lot of you
guys-- I think *all* of you guys on the Facebook group are fucking
smart. 'Cause I've talked shit about Infocom and, uh, a lot of stuff in
the interactive fiction community that, you know, you guys would
actually... Ah, fuck it. You know, I don't need to explain myself. You
guys know what I mean.
I always wanted to make a documentary on text adventures. Not like Get
Lamp at all. I wanted to do it on the whole indie text adventure scene.
You know, people who still write text adventure games for Commodore 64,
or Windows or DOS, or who still use BASIC -- I wanna, you know -- still
make games in Chipmunk BASIC, BASIC for the ZX Spectrum.
If I ever had a million dollars, that's what I would totally do. I would
put half of it away, trying to make this fucking movie on guys who still
program in QBasic. You know -- kind of show the underground side of it.
I guess you can call it the rebel side of text adventures, you know,
'cause we don't use Inform or TADS. We use software from fucking 1978.
---------------
4. DBT on paying for IF, Get Lamp again, and podcasting unprofessionally
[The following quotations are taken from episode 4 of the podcast.]
And I always dreamt of fucking making a documentary on that. Maybe like
a small documentary with me just talking about different games and
different companies and their history, and try to scrounge up some
people who did that stuff. And, you know, it'd be like Get Lamp, but
through the eyes of people... who aren't... full of themselves.
This is such an unprofessional podcast!
... It's entitled Save Princeton by Jacob Weinstein and Karine Schaefer,
and I just love this fucking game. This game has that feeling that these
people were like, you know, sitting around, probably smoking pot, or
drinking, or even during a fuckin' forty-minute fuck-session --
afterwards said, "Hey, how about we make a text adventure?!" And, you
know, they're like, "That's fucking great! You know, I love that idea!"
Here's a review-- (Uh, "forty-minute fuck-session"?! Jesus Christ! We've
all had those, and we've all called it that before, so anybody who it
bothers or it offends, come on now, you're an adult. Jesus!)
... "Choice Of The Vampire: The Fall Of Memphis is the sequel to 2010's
hit Choice Of The Vampire. You can play the first four chapters of the
game for free. Purchase the rest of the game below." Well, fuck me in
the ass and call me Charlie. I don't believe in buying IF games. That's
just me. I believe in them doing for free, like I said before. Because,
in all honesty, I don't think there's a market for selling IF games, or
text adventures. You know, you write a text adventure, good luck even
making a thousand dollars off it. (You know, people want Candy Crush or
-- what was it? What was I hearing? They're making a Nicki Minaj
cellphone app game!) But I do have to give 'em credit though, but I do
think charging it is kind of a ridiculous amount, especially after a
five-year break in between part one and two. I dunno. Maybe there's a
fanbase for it, maybe there isn't. I don't fucking know. Jesus! It does
have 6.7 thousand likes on Facebook, but I dunno. That's just me.
[Yawns.] So yeah, so I've always wanted to do a, uh, documentary on the
small mom-and-pop shop things. I would love to get the people who wrote
Saving Princeton. The game was written twenty-four years ago, which is
quite a while away, you know. That's quite back there. Like, all the
other ones were written in the late 70s, all the way up till, well, I
like to think that the old home-grown IF, as it were, before it became
-- before the resurgence -- was till '95, '96. And a game written
twenty-six years ago, it's phenomenal. I would love to interview those
people. I would love to track those guys down and sit down with them and
just talk with them and ask them why they did it, did they do anything
else, did they say anyth-- you know, it's just one of those things I,
I've always been fascinated with. You know, Saving Princeton. Christ!
... Man, I can't find *any*thing on the game. Uh, "Welcome to Fairview
High School..."?! Uh... [Types distractedly.] ... "take place in
school": there you go, let's see that ... I'm actually contemplating--
oh, I wanna make a school adventure game, where you had to go through--
I've, I'm not focusing on this podcast at all, you guys, and I do, do
wanna say I'm sorry for it, but I am working on two games-- I gotta, I
gotta really stop, you know, fucking around when I'm talking to you
guys. Uh, looks like I can only do one thing at once.
---------------
5. DBT on editing -- and Scott Adams vs. Infocom
[The following quotations are taken from episodes 6 and 7 of the podcast.]
[Intro. Electronic Gothic music plays. A female computer-generated voice
speaks with an English accent.] Welcome to the last stop on the Web. You
enter a darkened room and find yourself drawn to a computer that hasn't
been in production for some time. You've just entered the Classic Text
Adventures p'dcast. Motherfucking text adventures. [Intro ends.]
Hello, everybody, and I hope you enjoyed that new intro. Uh, this is the
new shitty podcast that I do. I've, uh, oh, I've even added music. You
know, we got music and stuff like this, 'cause people were saying, like,
[puts on a strangulated pedant's voice] "Oh, how come you don't have
intro music, David? How come you don't have outro music? Where's all
this editing, and stuff like that?"
Well, to be frank with you, the way I talk, the way I do this podcast,
the breaks in between, like the two-second breaks in between, why am I
gonna edit that out? 'Cause then it's gonna be like me going, like,
"Um-- pancakes," you know. Something like that. So we added the music,
and stuff like that, but I just wanted to get that out there. So there's
new-- there's intro music, outro music, and we got a sexy British, uh,
sexpot slave named Rachel. She's doing the voice.
... "Adventureland, the graphical text adventure, you know, is very
innovative." Yeah, that's true. And, you know, I don't wanna hate on
Scott Adams, 'cause I think the guy's a fucking genius. I think the guy
is one of the most underrated mainstream text adventure programmers that
ever lived. You know, you watch documentaries like Get Lamp, all that
other stuff -- everybody talks about Infocom, you know. [Starts
chewing.] Scott Adams, though, he really, he really set the bar.
[Chews.] 'Cause, yes, all his games are just the run-of-the-mill
treasure-hunt games. They're, like, point A to point B, collect all
these treasures along the way: you collect them all, you get the highest
score. And I find them to be the underdog of the text adventures because
you get Infocom games, and you get, like, eight pages of text. It's like
a novella, just popping out at you, and it's just like, "Ugh! I don't
wanna have to read all this stuff. I just wanna get into the game,"
right? So then you press space-bar, you know, to get ridda all the text
on the Infocom game. Then you're wondering to yourself, "What the hell
am I doing?" Right?
At least with a Scott Adams game there's, like, a wall of text, and then
you press Enter or Space, and then all of a sudden, boom, you're in the
game. The graphics versions are just horrible. All these games, the
graphical counterparts are just *ruined*, you know? And it's such a
shame, too, because Scott Adams has -- what was it? -- he had, like,
over three hundred projects going; there's fifty people, like, working
for his company; everybody was working on it, you know, on other
projects; and they're really going places. And, I honestly think, with
Infocom moving up and up and up, people were, like, saying, "Hey, how
come you guys aren't doing stuff like this? And how come every game
you've made, with the exc-- well, with the select few -- all went under?"
And I'm not bashing Scott Adams, and I'm not bashing the legacy of
Adventure International, which I think got a raw deal. I think honestly
somebody should make a documentary on Scott Adams over, you know, that
*other* company that I will not name for sake of losing my sanity.
Because, you know, Infocom never did -- (I just said the name!) -- never
did a collaboration with Marvel. You know, Infocom never... never tried
to turn comic books into graphical text adventures. They never made a
game about being in Saigon. They never made a game about pirates on an
island, or trying to kill Count Dracula, or trying to save somebody
from, from a curse, you know? Or plundering a pyramid from Ancient
Egypt. It's always these, it's like, you have such great, like,
imagination...
Everybody, like, says, "Oh, you know, Zork's the one that started it
all." I think Zork's the one that set the bar, pretty high, and, you
know, Scott Adams is the guy who brought it to home computers. And it
just seems so unfair because, like, nobody wants to talk about
Adventureland. Everybody wants to talk about Zork.
Gah! It's like he never moved on, is what I'm trying to say. Uh, you
know, you have to collect treasures, it's like the same formula for
Colossal Cave Adventure. He's still going off that, when Zork was coming
out and it was number one, and all this other shit was coming out from
Infocom, like The Lurking Horror, and all this stuff, and Leather
Goddess Of Pheebs [sic], and, you know, Sex Adventure, which became
Leisure Suit Larry. It's like he stayed in the past, and you know, you
gotta give the guy credit: when everything's moving forward but you
stick to your true and tried methods and formulas, and, you know, it's
the end of you.
I respect that because it's easy to change. It's easy to try some-- you
know, try to change and, you know, stay hip and cool, with the crowds
and, you know, throw it all away, right? But, you know what? He at least
tried, and I gotta give him credit for that.
---------------
6. DBT responds to criticism
[The following quotations are taken from episode 10 of the podcast.]
So, in this, uh -- I guess it's been six days, and you guys know I like
to write text adventures, and I believe I uploaded this game entitled
The Cabin, and I just wanna talk about it 'cause it just, it just made
me laugh. I laughed so, so hard. And I even wrote a snarky response. So,
if you guys are familiar with me, I write text adventure games, uh, in
the language of QBasic, so they're pretty much written in BASIC. I don't
know, I'm kinda nuts when it comes to coding these games. I wrote
thirty-nine so far. I'm actually working on the fortieth right now.
And this is the title he wrote: "Generic plot, terrible interface, and"
-- dot, dot, dot, dot -- "QBASIC?" (question mark). And if you wanna
read this review for yourself, you can go to the ifdb.tads.org page, or
the IFDB page: just type in "The Cabin". It's by DBT. And this is a
pretty long one, but I could not, could not, *could* not stop laughing
at it. [Belches.] Okay [puts on mocking pedant's voice]:
"This review will be written to the author, as I'm going to try and be
as constructive as possible. Okay. Great that you're getting into
writing IF."
Pfft! If you guys don't know what IF is, it's Interactive Fiction. I
don't call it interactive fiction; I call it "text adventures" because,
you know, I'm not full of myself.
"It's such an awesome genre. I'm going to start by saying that I had to
install the QB64 compiler to get this game to run."
Now, the games that I do make do come with the source code, and they
also come in a .EXE format, so I don't know why you just can't-- If
you're paranoid about .EXE files on a [sic] Interactive Fiction Database
website, why not just scan it with an antivirus? I dunno, that's just me.
"The majority of people playing your game don't know what QBasic is, and
linking them to the QBasic64 forum isn't a good starting point."
Well, the reason why I do that is because it takes about a week for it
to go through the ifarchive.org site, and then the download link comes
up in about a week or so. So I post the QB64 link there because it's
written in QBasic, and I have it up there so in case you didn't wanna
wait a week to download a file, the exact same file that comes with a
.EXE program and the source code. That's, that's just me, though, you
know! Oh, man! Okay, so:
"If people don't know what to do to get your game working, they won't
play it. Compile your game and upload it to a server."
Well, that's what I do, okay? I, I compile it into a .EXE file, and then
I upload it onto ifarchive.org, wait a week, and it gets put right on
there. It's the exact same shit. Um, what'd it see? Uh:
"Compile your game and upload it to a server, and link it with the
'download link' button on IFDB."
Well, it does it all automatically for ya, so why would I wanna go
ahead, wait a week, and then have it do it mys-- Have it do, you know--
It's the same fuckin' thing!
"Also, consider that a lot of people, especially in the IF community,
aren't running Windows. Try and compile to a neutral format, or offer
binaries for multiple operating systems."
Now, here's the thing though. I don't give a shit if you're running
Linux. I don't give a shit if you're running Solaris, or Apple. To be
frank with you, that's not my problem. I do this because it's easier for
me to do it in Windows. Nine t-- (No, not nine tenths!) I wanna say six
outta ten people -- six tenths of the planet -- run Windows. Just what
it is. You go to the computer store, you buy a computer, it has Windows
on it. Uh, I don't know how many people are listening to this podcast --
I don't know how many of you guys use Linux? Ahuh, to be, to be frank, I
would actually like to know how many people are using Linux.
"Try and compile to a neutral--" Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Okay. Uh,
let's see...
"I had to compile QBasic64 to be able to compile your game to get it to
run on my machine (Linux)."
I-- pff! Yeah, right there! Can anybody say they're full of themselves..?!
"I'd recommend you have a look at FreeBASIC as a multi-platform
alternative, with more features. It is based on QBasic. QBasic, or at
least the engine you have written/used, is not really appropriate as a
parser. It would be better to either use a proper interactive fiction
parser language (e.g. TADS or Inform), or write the game in more of a
choose-your-own-adventure style."
Well, the reason why I write it in BASIC is because I like that
nitty-gritty old 1982 look. Uh, TADS and Inform are too polished. Inform
on its own looks like a book, and the one thing I hate is when you're
playing a game and it looks like a book. Now, I don't wanna put off
people who read books -- I read books all the time. And, to be honest
with you guys, I like the look and the feel [of QBasic]. It brings a
nice nostalgia look to it. It has that amazing feel to it, where it
feels like you just found a shareware game from a BBS on a
five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy diskette. That's what I'm going for, for
lookwise. Uh:
"The plot was pretty clichéd, but could be expanded on to make it more
interesting. Don't spoonfeed them the story -- let them come to the
conclusions you want them to come to. The writing was poor, with
spelling mistakes and bad grammar everywhere. Proofread your work!"
Now, I will admit, grammar is not my strong, my strong suit. Uh, does it
stop me? No. Would you stop a doctor, 'cause he has an accent, from
becoming a doctor? Would you stop a computer technician who lists his
favorite computer as an Amstrad? No. You know, I could do whatever I
want, so that's the problem with living in a free country. Now I know
this guy has every right to write his own opinion, *but* I will say this
though: this doesn't come from a guy who writes his own text
adventures-- oh, I'm sorry, *interactive fiction*. This comes from
somebody who created an account months ago and only reviewed four games.
So this guy doesn't create his own interactive fiction or text
adventures. This guy just goes around, playing games, and reviews them.
Like a "critic" of sorts, you know?
"The room descriptions were completely static. I would make things like
the headache and reminiscing about the scent of nature events which
happen when you enter the room for the first time, and use the room
descriptions to 'paint a picture' in the viewer's mind. I want to feel
like I'm in the cabin. What do the walls look like? What colors are the
curtains? What furniture is there? Show, don't tell. One (and probably
the only) place you did this well was the hardwood floor."
Now, the reason why I don't go out and say, like, "Hey, you know,
there's a couch here. There's a lamp. There's everything like this
there," is because I try to write these games as small as possible. And,
to be frank with you, if you wanna write a small game -- most of my
games that I write are 1.4, uh, 1.14 megabytes, and the reason why
they're like that is 'cause if they're small, you know, they, they don't
take up a lotta memory. Now, I know what you're saying: "Dave, they
don't take up a lot of memory?!" Well, these games aren't made for
length. You're not gonna find Shakespeare, you're not gonna find -- uh,
you know -- you're not gonna find Rod Serling's work in my text
adventure games. My text adventure games are written to be played quick,
to be played on the go. You got ten minutes to spare? Sit down and play
The Grizzly, or Hunt For The Ape. You know, if, if you want, if you want
a game like Zork, go play Zork. And I love the fact that he's, you know,
that, that, it's just these, all these, like, nitpicking critiques.
There, there's nothing, like-- Yeah, he did make one good point about
the bad grammar, and whatever, but it's just like, you know, "Why isn't
there more descriptions?" 'Cause these games aren't made to... Pfft!
These games aren't made to waste time. That's why every one of these
little games that I write is a ten-minute time limit. It's to build,
it's to build excitement. It's to build fear. It's to build, uh, a
nervous atmosphere around it, but... Here, I'll continue reading:
"The directions should be given verbally. The map didn't make a lot of
sense until I guessed a direction to go in."
Wh-- I don't understand that. It's, it's coded to be having this little
compass thing, and if you're able to go north, it'll say, "go north".
It'll give you the available directions that you can go in -- north,
south, east, west, whatever. And, uh, I actually find that quite funny
that, that he doesn't know how to read source code. And, uh:
"The countdown mechanic was interesting but far too long."
Uh, ten minutes? For a game that you've never played before? Wh-- What
do you want? Do you want me to put it down to *three* minutes? You know,
then how're you gonna read all the bad spelling and grammar?!
"The game lacks detail -- the cabin was nowhere near big enough, or at
least there wasn't enough to do/see in it."
Again, it's a ten-minute short game. It's a game for you to explore
quickly, while the timer goes down. It's-- My games are "point A to
point B". They're not "point A, to point B, to point C, you could veer
off to point D, part-- uh, point E's optional, but you'll need to go to
part-- uh, point F to be able to unlock the door in point H." It just
doesn't... you know. Uh:
"The 'good ending' is completely counterintuitive. The 'bad ending'
didn't make a lot of sense either. What motivation would the player have
to do that?"
Well, that's the thing -- it's called an ending. You win the game, you
win the game. You lose the game, you lose the game. I like to take
twists in my game endings, you know. A lotta the times, a few of the
games that I wrote, the games -- tuh! -- the good endings are when you
let the timer run out. The good ending's like, "Ah, you got away, but,
you know, but some of this stuff happened and, you know, continues to
haunt you to this day." The bad ending's usually you die. Or you get
lost in the woods. Or you find yourself... lost, and that's the end of
you. Uh:
"You've got the start of something potentially interesting here. What
you need to do is proofread, refine, and spend much more time in
designing your world -- and use a better language to put it together.
Good luck with your future games!"
Uh, I will say thank you for the "Good luck on your future games", uh,
but I like writing *my* text adventures, in a language that is so, uh,
so aged, so aged poorly, and so old. That's where I have fun. Are you
gonna tell that to the guy who writes an Intellivision game using
Intellivision BASIC? Are you gonna go up to the guy who's still writing
games for the Apple II, who writes them in Apple BASIC? Are you gonna go
up to them and be, like, "Listen, man -- you really need to change your
programming language"? You know, how about the guy who works in
assembly? You know. That's just me though.
So, there's a, there's a comment that my friend Walt wrote. It's
actually pretty good. It made me blush. And, ahuh, my, uh, my comment
is, uh, "Thanks for the input. Now, I could care less what you think,
and the opinions that you expressed made me chuckle with laughter.
Ha-ha-*ha*-ha-ha-ha-ha. You must be one of those people that obviously
loved Get Lamp. Now I'll be writing even more games in BASIC. Maybe I'll
move over to something else... *Maybe*. But for the mean time I'll be
sitting here at my computer, pumping out a new game every few days until
the end of time. So which games have you wrote? Just curious." Which was
kind of a dick move for me, but that's kinda like the "Unh! Nailed right
in betwe--" you know. The nail in the coffin!
And so, this guy only wrote four comments, uh, four reviews, and he's
never written a text adventure. I find that to be actually quite funny.
And, uh, so, yeah, that made my day. Yesterday I was laughing. I was
laughing at that comment just because the amount of time and effort and
obvious-- It's obvious that he's played the game maybe for five minutes.
Maybe he didn't know what was going on. I don't know. But he obviously
really didn't play the game or really understood the basic-- the basic
level of my text adventure, and I just thought that was hilarious. So.
That cheered me up. Now I can truly say I am the Ed Wood of text adventures.
... made my day when I went over because I found IFDB had a lot of my
games on there, like physical games that you could download, and so I
was like, "Okay, cool!" So I went over to the IF Archive, and I tried to
find my name on them -- couldn't find it anywhere. Found out they made
a, that my -- eurrgh! They made, made a section dedicated just for my
work. So if you go to ifarchay-- uh, ifarchive.org, uh, you go to
"games", you select "PC", and then, boom, you'll see it. It's "if
slash," uh, "dash archive slash games slash PC slash DB sl--" uh, "dash
taylor". And it's actually quite cool to see that I've got thirty-nine
games written on here. Now, I'm working on my fortieth game, which is
actually based on a true story from me growing up...
---------------
7. DBT on people who use Inform
[The following quotations are taken from episode 11 of the podcast.]
We're gonna be talking about Anchorhead. It's in the genre of
Lovecraftian. It was written in 1998 by Michael Gentry. Now, this game
-- I'm not joking when I say this -- this game literally gave me
goosebumps. So a game that's almost twenty years old gave me goosebumps.
Uh, the writing is phe*nom*enal.
Features a female protagonist, two small mazes, one optional. Now, for
the mazes, one is optional, but if you're like me and you love a good
old-fashioned maze back in the heyday of text adventures, I'd say do
both mazes. Uh, I always find that doing mazes in a game, uh, always
seems to... It, It's like doing a... sudoku, in a way, but, you know,
I'm a nerd, so mazes are my kinda... crossword.
Oh, I needa drinka this soda! [Swigs.]
Now, Transylvania is one of those games that you sit down and enjoy.
It's very cheesy. It's very dated. But it has heart. The parser's very
simple 'cause this is before it became, uh, "interactive fiction". Uh,
to me text adventures are a two-word parser, a maze, an objective. So,
point A to point B. That's it. Fight a monster, make a cuppa coffee,
uh... Fumble with yer keys 'cause there's a horde of zombies coming up
behind you. That, to me, is a text adventure game. Uh, to me, all
interactive fiction is text adventures. It's just not trying to sound
fancy, right?
But text adventures always had a two-word parser, or maybe even a
*three*-word parser if you were lucky. I know a lotta the games that *I*
write have-- are two-to-three words. And, to be honest with you, the
only reason why I do that though is because it's easier for the player
to guess what it is, rather than having like a whole line of la-- like,
words. You know. But that's just me. So.
This podcast, and this Facebook page, and, you know, the text adventure
community is something that I'm proud of.
I, I recently got a few messages. Uh, one was, well, a few messages from
the same person. He wrote a message asking me if there was a Save
function on, uh, War Of The Worlds, and I told him no. I felt bad
because, honestly, I should have put one in. But, to me, I love those
games where you can't save, and you gotta sit down, and if you gotta
take a pee, you gotta take a pee. Or if you wanna get something to eat
or drink, you gotta get up and do it. I think the cruelness of it is
that I actually put a timer in there for two hours. I don't think
anybody's ever beat it. But he said that he liked the show and the games
and, uh, that meant a lot to me.
... and, honestly, if you guys have ever played Vampire Bunny, that's a
text adventure from at least twenty years ago. I mean, that was, that's
one of the games that got me into, uh, programming my own games. So. I
played games like Zork and Lurking Horror and Scott Adams's
Adventureland and The Count and all that fun stuff, but to get me into
programming, like, I would look over old source code, right? Lotta the
times it'd be source code in assembly. Or, you know, BASIC. You know,
Apple BASIC... Chipmunk BASIC, I guess. And I found QBasic, right,
'cause I took a computer programming class in high school ...
... Hello, everybody, and welcome to Classic Text Adventures, the
podcast where I sit down, smoke a cigarette, and talk about the joys
that are text adventure games. I am your host, Dave. It is October 23rd,
2015. And what can really be said about text adventures that I haven't
already said in the previous ten episodes?
No more bad reviews! Which kind of upset me 'cause I was actually kinda
hoping to play, uh, Sexy Narrating Voice Guy, so I could actually sit
back and read you guys some crappy reviews that people have written
about me, written about my games, just, just in general, right? Uh, I
don't know, actually. I, I don't think anybody's wridden-- *written*
anything, uh, which is actually... which is actually quite-- quite sad,
'cause I would *love* to read more of this stuff. So.
... SPAG is the only one that's actually still operational, and this is
sad because back in the day there was a handful of text adventure -- you
know -- review sites and magazines and stuff like that. But alas, text
adventures died out with the resurgence of Inform 7 and all those
drooling mongoloids who, who seem to think they're better than all of us
who actually just sit down and play text adventures.
---------------
[END]
modern Interactive Fiction. This post contains quotations from the podcast.
---------------
1. DBT on the "IF community"
[The following quotations are taken from episode "-3" of the podcast,
available on the "Classic Text Adventures" Facebook page.]
... some of the criticisms I've faced as a text adventure programmer ...
A lot of people like calling it Interactive Fiction (IF). That's like
the Hollywood studio system of the 50s: "The cinema is an art form to
broaden the horizons of the everyday working man."
I'm more like the Ed Wood of the text adventure.
I like writing BASIC text adventures. I like writing them quick, I like
writing them short. But a lot of people in the IF community can't stand
that. I honestly don't know why. I've been called the Paul Allen
Panks... who I was a huge fan of, up until his death.
He wrote in spaghetti code, which a lot of people hate these days. I
honestly don't know why. Spaghetti code for me is just a thrill to write.
I've made Not Another Night, In The Shadows Of The Maze, Into A Mind Of
Darkness, A Christmas Adventure Or How Hitler Tried To Steal Christmas,
which is on the IF Comp... I don't even remember signing up! I don't
know -- maybe somebody just wanted to see me fail. I honestly don't care.
I write short games. I've been extremely criticized for it in the IF
community, which I find to be extremely odd. You'd think, like, somebody
new comes onto the scene, they'd be like, "Oh, this guy wants to do text
adventures. So be it." But that's not the way it works, apparently.
Apparently they're up in their crystal castles, drinking champagne and
eating caviar and filet mignon, and I'm eating a Pizza Hut pizza and
smoking light cigarettes, drinking my beer out of a bottle, like some
sort of rabid animal during an apocalypse of some sort. I don't really care.
Now you got Inform and TADS and all that fun little stuff that I will
never learn to use because, honestly, why would I ever wanna use it? I
find programming video games in QBasic has a lot of that nostalgia feel,
that old retro feel.
I've been called Ed Wood, Paul Allen Panks... I've been called a
dime-store text adventu-- sorry, *interactive fiction* author. It comes
to the point where the IF community doesn't really even acknowledge my
existence. They still allow me to upload games on their websites, so
it's not truly segregated from a guy like me.
That's kinda like my place in the text adventure world. I'm on the
bottom of the barrel. You know, when they wanted the worst they got the
best. That's DBT.
I honestly don't care if the IF community thinks I'm garbage. They're a
very snooty bunch. They're like the First Class on the Titanic, and I'm
the Third Class.
Don't forget to spread the word about Classic Text Adventures. We're the
little engine that could, going up a hill against those who think
they're better than us, right?
Man, I got a lotta *hate* for those guys! I don't mean to have a lotta
hate for the snobby, upper-class -- you know -- Infocom-style game
programmers...
---------------
2. DBT on ticking off the "IF community"
[The following quotations are taken from episode 1 of the podcast.]
I got into a little argument with the IF community. A lotta people were
saying that, uh, my games are crap. A lotta people were saying that I
should just stop. And so I made just a kinda BASIC text simulator, just
to kinda tick them off. Because that's what I like to do.
I write from my soul, from my gut, when I write a text adventure game.
You guys might not like the text adventure games I write. I honestly
don't care. It's what I do. It's how I kinda cleanse myself of all the
negativity around me.
But to me, these games are art. It's not *good* art, but it's art
nonetheless.
Text adventure games to me are a sort of self-soothing, in a way.
I don't write epics. I don't write massive blockbusters. I make games
like Ed Wood made movies. I take that as a compliment. I recall on
Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB), somebody said I was the Ed Wood of
interactive fiction. I didn't know how to handle that. I knew who Ed
Wood was, actually. I'm a huge fan of his work. I love being known as
the Ed Wood of text adventure games.
Somebody else called me the Paul Allen Panks of text adventure games --
that, I don't really know. I am familiar with him from 2007, 2008. I
played a lot of his little text adventure games. I am familiar that he
wrote a lot of crappy, crappy text adventures, but they were also
written in spaghetti code, and a lot of people hated him for it. I don't
understand why a lot of people hated the fact that he wrote in such a
way that it was mind-numbingly impossible to try to fix. You know, it's
such a cluttered mess!
And then when people are saying to me, like, "Hey, you write spaghetti
code!", I'm looking at the source code that I'm writing, that I have,
and this is an engine that took me years to perfect. Took me a long time
to perfect it because I am *horrible* at writing source code. I'll be
the first to admit it: I am *godawful* at coding games.
All of the comments and all that hate-mail that I get, I always seem to
write a sarcastic remark to it, and I never get a response back, so
pffft! Fuck those guys, right?
So, let's see, I talked about my, uh, my hate-- I don't really like
talking hate about the interactive fiction community. I don't wanna be
known as that guy. If they ever make a documentary on text adventures, I
don't wanna be that guy that everyone's, "Oh, hey, that's DBT! You know,
he wrote The Pond and Christmas Adventure With Hitler, and, you know,
whoa, back off, this guy's nuts! Don't even try to play Coffee Simulator
-- you can win it in two turns: MAKE COFFEE, DRINK COFFEE. There you
go." I don't wanna be known as that guy.
I do like text adventure games, but I can't stand, for the life of me,
the new ones because a lot of the time they try to emulate the Infocom
way of making a game. Like, they always be big and outlandish. To be
honest with you guys, I don't like big and outlandish. And then you kind
of add that feel of, "Hey, it's an Infocom game," you know. "It'll only
take you, like, twenty hours of your life to play. And you can save it
though, so, you know, that is the highlight of it."
I like playing the games like Madness And The Minotaur, where it's balls
to the wall.
Now, there's gonna be a lot of crude language in this podcast. I like to
speak my mind, and I just like to have fun, so if you're expecting a
podcast where I review modern interactive fiction, then you're on the
wrong podcast.
I'm going through a long list of text adventures written in the BASIC
programming language. That's the language I frequently use all the time.
I will *never* stop using QBasic. Why? Because that's the first
programming language I've ever learned, and that's gonna be the last
programming language I ever use until the day of my death.
---------------
3. DBT on Get Lamp, Infocom, Inform, TADS, and the "IF community"
[The following quotations are taken from episode 3 of the podcast.]
And if you watch that Get Lamp... Don't get me wrong -- like, the guy
who made it, he did a great job on it, hands down. His previous
documentary was about BBSs. I fucking loved that documentary.
But talking about Get Lamp, I saw it. It was alright. Honestly, I'm on
the fence about it because it's not bad -- it's a great documentary for
what it's based on -- but what bothered me the most was that it never
talked about the little guy, the small mom-and-pop text adventure
companies that opened up in people's basements. They don't talk about
those guys. It's, like, nothing but a history of Infocom: "We don't call
them text adventures. We call them Interactive Fiction, 'cause, you
know, it's a next-- it's a higher level of gaming. Rather than with
graphics."
And, to be honest with you, that whole documentary -- minus the Scott
Adams, minus the little notes here and there, the little interviews with
people that actually talk about, you know, "Yeah, I used to write a text
adventure, you know, and blah-blah-blah..." -- it had this arrogance,
this air of arrogance, where it's like they think they're better than
you. And they talk to all these high people who still write text
adventures to this day, like the independent guys, and they're like,
"You know, I wrote a paper in university about interactive fiction, and
I got a degree in it," or some shit, and "Oh, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah."
If I'm a Joe Blow, who works in a mine or a coal plant, or fucking, you
know, a coal energy plant, or a metal factory, you know, a metal
refinery, or a metal shop, and I'm sort of interested in text
adventures, and I watch this documentary, am I gonna want to play any of
these text adventures? No, 'cause they make it sound like you have to be
so smart to play a text adventure, you have to be a certain intellect to
play a text adventure. That doesn't fly well with me. That always
irritates the fuck out of me when people do that because it's just so
mind-boggling why you just kind of, like, alienate everybody else, but
you make yourself feel like, you know, you're these gods of Olympus
almost, in a way, and that's the thing that I can't honestly stand. And
that's why his documentary intrigued me but also kind of pissed me off.
So that's the thing that really upset me about that documentary. They
kinda make themselves look really big. I would like to know about the
guy who wrote Hotel California, or Cruise, or I would love to have them
spend an hour with fucking Scott Adams talking about Strange Odyssey, or
what was the deal with the Marvel series -- you know, the Marvel series
was a great series of games, and I would love to hear the talk about how
they decided to work with Scott Adams and make graphic text adventure
games in the style of a comic book. That would entertain me a lot more
than hearing the guy who started Infocom saying, like, "You know, I'd
never invest in a text adventure company. I've done it before, and I've
seen what happened, and I'll *never* do it again. I've lost so much
money!" And, you know, why do I wanna hear that? Like, honestly, come on!
I'd rather have the whole documentary based on Scott Adams, you know,
'cause Scott Adams was the fucking man! (You know, Infocom's great --
don't get me wrong -- they have a few good games. I liked the Zork
series. I like -- what is it? -- Leather Goddess of Pheebs, or Phobes,
or however the hell you wanna pronounce it.) To me, Scott Adams is
always the shit. I'd rather hear Scott Adams talking about how he came
up with programming Adventureland on his TRS-80, and then his wife
getting so pissed off at him 'cause he spent so much time with text
adventure games, and writing one, that she put all his diskettes in the
oven. I wanna hear that fucking story.
I don't wanna hear about a bunch of guys who made millions of dollars
off the sale of Infocom to Activision! I don't wanna hear that. You
know, I don't wanna hear about some guy saying, like, "We *lost*
something. We lost something, we have to get it back." What the fuck
does that mean?! If you miss it so much, keep playing them. Like, what
are you trying to do? It's mind-boggling.
I know a lot of people in the text adventure comm-- oh, I'm sorry,
*interactive fiction community*, they get upset when I talk about, like,
you know... I guess that movie's like the holy grail or some shit. You
know, they get really angry when you criticize it.
And, to be frank with you, the movie's sub-par. (The BBS one's way
better.) You know, I saw it online for free, I downloaded it for free. I
was not gonna spend money on it 'cause I saw the trailer and it was
nothing but, like, Infocom guys, you know, and those guys were the guys,
you know... Uh, to be honest with you, Infocom's a great company, they
made a lot of good games, but why base your whole documentary on it?
You know, he never talked about Level 9. He never talked about the
little mom-and-pop games for ZX Spectrum. You know, I wanna hear about
the guy who made Father Of Darkness, or I wanna hear about the boardroom
meeting between Scott Adams and Marvel to make interactive comic books
for kids. I wanna hear about those stories. I don't wanna hear about
these guys who made a game and, you know, started a company that pissed
it all away because they wanted to make a fucking office program! That
shit doesn't interest me. But, I don't know, I guess I'm a "rogue", you
know. I write spaghetti code, so, huh..!
I always wind up smoking a lot whenever I talk about that fucking
documentary!
You know, and he gives out coins and shit like that. Now, you know, if
that's your thing, if that *is* your thing, uh, so be it. This is just
my opinion. This is me talking about a documentary. It's just my
opinion. I know a lot of people herald that documentary, and whatnot...
Man, I've been almost talking for an hour, talking to you fine folks
about text adventures, my hatred of fucking that Get Lamp documentary.
If you like that documentary, I honestly don't care. This is just my
opinion. I hope some of you guys understand that. I think a lot of you
guys-- I think *all* of you guys on the Facebook group are fucking
smart. 'Cause I've talked shit about Infocom and, uh, a lot of stuff in
the interactive fiction community that, you know, you guys would
actually... Ah, fuck it. You know, I don't need to explain myself. You
guys know what I mean.
I always wanted to make a documentary on text adventures. Not like Get
Lamp at all. I wanted to do it on the whole indie text adventure scene.
You know, people who still write text adventure games for Commodore 64,
or Windows or DOS, or who still use BASIC -- I wanna, you know -- still
make games in Chipmunk BASIC, BASIC for the ZX Spectrum.
If I ever had a million dollars, that's what I would totally do. I would
put half of it away, trying to make this fucking movie on guys who still
program in QBasic. You know -- kind of show the underground side of it.
I guess you can call it the rebel side of text adventures, you know,
'cause we don't use Inform or TADS. We use software from fucking 1978.
---------------
4. DBT on paying for IF, Get Lamp again, and podcasting unprofessionally
[The following quotations are taken from episode 4 of the podcast.]
And I always dreamt of fucking making a documentary on that. Maybe like
a small documentary with me just talking about different games and
different companies and their history, and try to scrounge up some
people who did that stuff. And, you know, it'd be like Get Lamp, but
through the eyes of people... who aren't... full of themselves.
This is such an unprofessional podcast!
... It's entitled Save Princeton by Jacob Weinstein and Karine Schaefer,
and I just love this fucking game. This game has that feeling that these
people were like, you know, sitting around, probably smoking pot, or
drinking, or even during a fuckin' forty-minute fuck-session --
afterwards said, "Hey, how about we make a text adventure?!" And, you
know, they're like, "That's fucking great! You know, I love that idea!"
Here's a review-- (Uh, "forty-minute fuck-session"?! Jesus Christ! We've
all had those, and we've all called it that before, so anybody who it
bothers or it offends, come on now, you're an adult. Jesus!)
... "Choice Of The Vampire: The Fall Of Memphis is the sequel to 2010's
hit Choice Of The Vampire. You can play the first four chapters of the
game for free. Purchase the rest of the game below." Well, fuck me in
the ass and call me Charlie. I don't believe in buying IF games. That's
just me. I believe in them doing for free, like I said before. Because,
in all honesty, I don't think there's a market for selling IF games, or
text adventures. You know, you write a text adventure, good luck even
making a thousand dollars off it. (You know, people want Candy Crush or
-- what was it? What was I hearing? They're making a Nicki Minaj
cellphone app game!) But I do have to give 'em credit though, but I do
think charging it is kind of a ridiculous amount, especially after a
five-year break in between part one and two. I dunno. Maybe there's a
fanbase for it, maybe there isn't. I don't fucking know. Jesus! It does
have 6.7 thousand likes on Facebook, but I dunno. That's just me.
[Yawns.] So yeah, so I've always wanted to do a, uh, documentary on the
small mom-and-pop shop things. I would love to get the people who wrote
Saving Princeton. The game was written twenty-four years ago, which is
quite a while away, you know. That's quite back there. Like, all the
other ones were written in the late 70s, all the way up till, well, I
like to think that the old home-grown IF, as it were, before it became
-- before the resurgence -- was till '95, '96. And a game written
twenty-six years ago, it's phenomenal. I would love to interview those
people. I would love to track those guys down and sit down with them and
just talk with them and ask them why they did it, did they do anything
else, did they say anyth-- you know, it's just one of those things I,
I've always been fascinated with. You know, Saving Princeton. Christ!
... Man, I can't find *any*thing on the game. Uh, "Welcome to Fairview
High School..."?! Uh... [Types distractedly.] ... "take place in
school": there you go, let's see that ... I'm actually contemplating--
oh, I wanna make a school adventure game, where you had to go through--
I've, I'm not focusing on this podcast at all, you guys, and I do, do
wanna say I'm sorry for it, but I am working on two games-- I gotta, I
gotta really stop, you know, fucking around when I'm talking to you
guys. Uh, looks like I can only do one thing at once.
---------------
5. DBT on editing -- and Scott Adams vs. Infocom
[The following quotations are taken from episodes 6 and 7 of the podcast.]
[Intro. Electronic Gothic music plays. A female computer-generated voice
speaks with an English accent.] Welcome to the last stop on the Web. You
enter a darkened room and find yourself drawn to a computer that hasn't
been in production for some time. You've just entered the Classic Text
Adventures p'dcast. Motherfucking text adventures. [Intro ends.]
Hello, everybody, and I hope you enjoyed that new intro. Uh, this is the
new shitty podcast that I do. I've, uh, oh, I've even added music. You
know, we got music and stuff like this, 'cause people were saying, like,
[puts on a strangulated pedant's voice] "Oh, how come you don't have
intro music, David? How come you don't have outro music? Where's all
this editing, and stuff like that?"
Well, to be frank with you, the way I talk, the way I do this podcast,
the breaks in between, like the two-second breaks in between, why am I
gonna edit that out? 'Cause then it's gonna be like me going, like,
"Um-- pancakes," you know. Something like that. So we added the music,
and stuff like that, but I just wanted to get that out there. So there's
new-- there's intro music, outro music, and we got a sexy British, uh,
sexpot slave named Rachel. She's doing the voice.
... "Adventureland, the graphical text adventure, you know, is very
innovative." Yeah, that's true. And, you know, I don't wanna hate on
Scott Adams, 'cause I think the guy's a fucking genius. I think the guy
is one of the most underrated mainstream text adventure programmers that
ever lived. You know, you watch documentaries like Get Lamp, all that
other stuff -- everybody talks about Infocom, you know. [Starts
chewing.] Scott Adams, though, he really, he really set the bar.
[Chews.] 'Cause, yes, all his games are just the run-of-the-mill
treasure-hunt games. They're, like, point A to point B, collect all
these treasures along the way: you collect them all, you get the highest
score. And I find them to be the underdog of the text adventures because
you get Infocom games, and you get, like, eight pages of text. It's like
a novella, just popping out at you, and it's just like, "Ugh! I don't
wanna have to read all this stuff. I just wanna get into the game,"
right? So then you press space-bar, you know, to get ridda all the text
on the Infocom game. Then you're wondering to yourself, "What the hell
am I doing?" Right?
At least with a Scott Adams game there's, like, a wall of text, and then
you press Enter or Space, and then all of a sudden, boom, you're in the
game. The graphics versions are just horrible. All these games, the
graphical counterparts are just *ruined*, you know? And it's such a
shame, too, because Scott Adams has -- what was it? -- he had, like,
over three hundred projects going; there's fifty people, like, working
for his company; everybody was working on it, you know, on other
projects; and they're really going places. And, I honestly think, with
Infocom moving up and up and up, people were, like, saying, "Hey, how
come you guys aren't doing stuff like this? And how come every game
you've made, with the exc-- well, with the select few -- all went under?"
And I'm not bashing Scott Adams, and I'm not bashing the legacy of
Adventure International, which I think got a raw deal. I think honestly
somebody should make a documentary on Scott Adams over, you know, that
*other* company that I will not name for sake of losing my sanity.
Because, you know, Infocom never did -- (I just said the name!) -- never
did a collaboration with Marvel. You know, Infocom never... never tried
to turn comic books into graphical text adventures. They never made a
game about being in Saigon. They never made a game about pirates on an
island, or trying to kill Count Dracula, or trying to save somebody
from, from a curse, you know? Or plundering a pyramid from Ancient
Egypt. It's always these, it's like, you have such great, like,
imagination...
Everybody, like, says, "Oh, you know, Zork's the one that started it
all." I think Zork's the one that set the bar, pretty high, and, you
know, Scott Adams is the guy who brought it to home computers. And it
just seems so unfair because, like, nobody wants to talk about
Adventureland. Everybody wants to talk about Zork.
Gah! It's like he never moved on, is what I'm trying to say. Uh, you
know, you have to collect treasures, it's like the same formula for
Colossal Cave Adventure. He's still going off that, when Zork was coming
out and it was number one, and all this other shit was coming out from
Infocom, like The Lurking Horror, and all this stuff, and Leather
Goddess Of Pheebs [sic], and, you know, Sex Adventure, which became
Leisure Suit Larry. It's like he stayed in the past, and you know, you
gotta give the guy credit: when everything's moving forward but you
stick to your true and tried methods and formulas, and, you know, it's
the end of you.
I respect that because it's easy to change. It's easy to try some-- you
know, try to change and, you know, stay hip and cool, with the crowds
and, you know, throw it all away, right? But, you know what? He at least
tried, and I gotta give him credit for that.
---------------
6. DBT responds to criticism
[The following quotations are taken from episode 10 of the podcast.]
So, in this, uh -- I guess it's been six days, and you guys know I like
to write text adventures, and I believe I uploaded this game entitled
The Cabin, and I just wanna talk about it 'cause it just, it just made
me laugh. I laughed so, so hard. And I even wrote a snarky response. So,
if you guys are familiar with me, I write text adventure games, uh, in
the language of QBasic, so they're pretty much written in BASIC. I don't
know, I'm kinda nuts when it comes to coding these games. I wrote
thirty-nine so far. I'm actually working on the fortieth right now.
And this is the title he wrote: "Generic plot, terrible interface, and"
-- dot, dot, dot, dot -- "QBASIC?" (question mark). And if you wanna
read this review for yourself, you can go to the ifdb.tads.org page, or
the IFDB page: just type in "The Cabin". It's by DBT. And this is a
pretty long one, but I could not, could not, *could* not stop laughing
at it. [Belches.] Okay [puts on mocking pedant's voice]:
"This review will be written to the author, as I'm going to try and be
as constructive as possible. Okay. Great that you're getting into
writing IF."
Pfft! If you guys don't know what IF is, it's Interactive Fiction. I
don't call it interactive fiction; I call it "text adventures" because,
you know, I'm not full of myself.
"It's such an awesome genre. I'm going to start by saying that I had to
install the QB64 compiler to get this game to run."
Now, the games that I do make do come with the source code, and they
also come in a .EXE format, so I don't know why you just can't-- If
you're paranoid about .EXE files on a [sic] Interactive Fiction Database
website, why not just scan it with an antivirus? I dunno, that's just me.
"The majority of people playing your game don't know what QBasic is, and
linking them to the QBasic64 forum isn't a good starting point."
Well, the reason why I do that is because it takes about a week for it
to go through the ifarchive.org site, and then the download link comes
up in about a week or so. So I post the QB64 link there because it's
written in QBasic, and I have it up there so in case you didn't wanna
wait a week to download a file, the exact same file that comes with a
.EXE program and the source code. That's, that's just me, though, you
know! Oh, man! Okay, so:
"If people don't know what to do to get your game working, they won't
play it. Compile your game and upload it to a server."
Well, that's what I do, okay? I, I compile it into a .EXE file, and then
I upload it onto ifarchive.org, wait a week, and it gets put right on
there. It's the exact same shit. Um, what'd it see? Uh:
"Compile your game and upload it to a server, and link it with the
'download link' button on IFDB."
Well, it does it all automatically for ya, so why would I wanna go
ahead, wait a week, and then have it do it mys-- Have it do, you know--
It's the same fuckin' thing!
"Also, consider that a lot of people, especially in the IF community,
aren't running Windows. Try and compile to a neutral format, or offer
binaries for multiple operating systems."
Now, here's the thing though. I don't give a shit if you're running
Linux. I don't give a shit if you're running Solaris, or Apple. To be
frank with you, that's not my problem. I do this because it's easier for
me to do it in Windows. Nine t-- (No, not nine tenths!) I wanna say six
outta ten people -- six tenths of the planet -- run Windows. Just what
it is. You go to the computer store, you buy a computer, it has Windows
on it. Uh, I don't know how many people are listening to this podcast --
I don't know how many of you guys use Linux? Ahuh, to be, to be frank, I
would actually like to know how many people are using Linux.
"Try and compile to a neutral--" Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Okay. Uh,
let's see...
"I had to compile QBasic64 to be able to compile your game to get it to
run on my machine (Linux)."
I-- pff! Yeah, right there! Can anybody say they're full of themselves..?!
"I'd recommend you have a look at FreeBASIC as a multi-platform
alternative, with more features. It is based on QBasic. QBasic, or at
least the engine you have written/used, is not really appropriate as a
parser. It would be better to either use a proper interactive fiction
parser language (e.g. TADS or Inform), or write the game in more of a
choose-your-own-adventure style."
Well, the reason why I write it in BASIC is because I like that
nitty-gritty old 1982 look. Uh, TADS and Inform are too polished. Inform
on its own looks like a book, and the one thing I hate is when you're
playing a game and it looks like a book. Now, I don't wanna put off
people who read books -- I read books all the time. And, to be honest
with you guys, I like the look and the feel [of QBasic]. It brings a
nice nostalgia look to it. It has that amazing feel to it, where it
feels like you just found a shareware game from a BBS on a
five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy diskette. That's what I'm going for, for
lookwise. Uh:
"The plot was pretty clichéd, but could be expanded on to make it more
interesting. Don't spoonfeed them the story -- let them come to the
conclusions you want them to come to. The writing was poor, with
spelling mistakes and bad grammar everywhere. Proofread your work!"
Now, I will admit, grammar is not my strong, my strong suit. Uh, does it
stop me? No. Would you stop a doctor, 'cause he has an accent, from
becoming a doctor? Would you stop a computer technician who lists his
favorite computer as an Amstrad? No. You know, I could do whatever I
want, so that's the problem with living in a free country. Now I know
this guy has every right to write his own opinion, *but* I will say this
though: this doesn't come from a guy who writes his own text
adventures-- oh, I'm sorry, *interactive fiction*. This comes from
somebody who created an account months ago and only reviewed four games.
So this guy doesn't create his own interactive fiction or text
adventures. This guy just goes around, playing games, and reviews them.
Like a "critic" of sorts, you know?
"The room descriptions were completely static. I would make things like
the headache and reminiscing about the scent of nature events which
happen when you enter the room for the first time, and use the room
descriptions to 'paint a picture' in the viewer's mind. I want to feel
like I'm in the cabin. What do the walls look like? What colors are the
curtains? What furniture is there? Show, don't tell. One (and probably
the only) place you did this well was the hardwood floor."
Now, the reason why I don't go out and say, like, "Hey, you know,
there's a couch here. There's a lamp. There's everything like this
there," is because I try to write these games as small as possible. And,
to be frank with you, if you wanna write a small game -- most of my
games that I write are 1.4, uh, 1.14 megabytes, and the reason why
they're like that is 'cause if they're small, you know, they, they don't
take up a lotta memory. Now, I know what you're saying: "Dave, they
don't take up a lot of memory?!" Well, these games aren't made for
length. You're not gonna find Shakespeare, you're not gonna find -- uh,
you know -- you're not gonna find Rod Serling's work in my text
adventure games. My text adventure games are written to be played quick,
to be played on the go. You got ten minutes to spare? Sit down and play
The Grizzly, or Hunt For The Ape. You know, if, if you want, if you want
a game like Zork, go play Zork. And I love the fact that he's, you know,
that, that, it's just these, all these, like, nitpicking critiques.
There, there's nothing, like-- Yeah, he did make one good point about
the bad grammar, and whatever, but it's just like, you know, "Why isn't
there more descriptions?" 'Cause these games aren't made to... Pfft!
These games aren't made to waste time. That's why every one of these
little games that I write is a ten-minute time limit. It's to build,
it's to build excitement. It's to build fear. It's to build, uh, a
nervous atmosphere around it, but... Here, I'll continue reading:
"The directions should be given verbally. The map didn't make a lot of
sense until I guessed a direction to go in."
Wh-- I don't understand that. It's, it's coded to be having this little
compass thing, and if you're able to go north, it'll say, "go north".
It'll give you the available directions that you can go in -- north,
south, east, west, whatever. And, uh, I actually find that quite funny
that, that he doesn't know how to read source code. And, uh:
"The countdown mechanic was interesting but far too long."
Uh, ten minutes? For a game that you've never played before? Wh-- What
do you want? Do you want me to put it down to *three* minutes? You know,
then how're you gonna read all the bad spelling and grammar?!
"The game lacks detail -- the cabin was nowhere near big enough, or at
least there wasn't enough to do/see in it."
Again, it's a ten-minute short game. It's a game for you to explore
quickly, while the timer goes down. It's-- My games are "point A to
point B". They're not "point A, to point B, to point C, you could veer
off to point D, part-- uh, point E's optional, but you'll need to go to
part-- uh, point F to be able to unlock the door in point H." It just
doesn't... you know. Uh:
"The 'good ending' is completely counterintuitive. The 'bad ending'
didn't make a lot of sense either. What motivation would the player have
to do that?"
Well, that's the thing -- it's called an ending. You win the game, you
win the game. You lose the game, you lose the game. I like to take
twists in my game endings, you know. A lotta the times, a few of the
games that I wrote, the games -- tuh! -- the good endings are when you
let the timer run out. The good ending's like, "Ah, you got away, but,
you know, but some of this stuff happened and, you know, continues to
haunt you to this day." The bad ending's usually you die. Or you get
lost in the woods. Or you find yourself... lost, and that's the end of
you. Uh:
"You've got the start of something potentially interesting here. What
you need to do is proofread, refine, and spend much more time in
designing your world -- and use a better language to put it together.
Good luck with your future games!"
Uh, I will say thank you for the "Good luck on your future games", uh,
but I like writing *my* text adventures, in a language that is so, uh,
so aged, so aged poorly, and so old. That's where I have fun. Are you
gonna tell that to the guy who writes an Intellivision game using
Intellivision BASIC? Are you gonna go up to the guy who's still writing
games for the Apple II, who writes them in Apple BASIC? Are you gonna go
up to them and be, like, "Listen, man -- you really need to change your
programming language"? You know, how about the guy who works in
assembly? You know. That's just me though.
So, there's a, there's a comment that my friend Walt wrote. It's
actually pretty good. It made me blush. And, ahuh, my, uh, my comment
is, uh, "Thanks for the input. Now, I could care less what you think,
and the opinions that you expressed made me chuckle with laughter.
Ha-ha-*ha*-ha-ha-ha-ha. You must be one of those people that obviously
loved Get Lamp. Now I'll be writing even more games in BASIC. Maybe I'll
move over to something else... *Maybe*. But for the mean time I'll be
sitting here at my computer, pumping out a new game every few days until
the end of time. So which games have you wrote? Just curious." Which was
kind of a dick move for me, but that's kinda like the "Unh! Nailed right
in betwe--" you know. The nail in the coffin!
And so, this guy only wrote four comments, uh, four reviews, and he's
never written a text adventure. I find that to be actually quite funny.
And, uh, so, yeah, that made my day. Yesterday I was laughing. I was
laughing at that comment just because the amount of time and effort and
obvious-- It's obvious that he's played the game maybe for five minutes.
Maybe he didn't know what was going on. I don't know. But he obviously
really didn't play the game or really understood the basic-- the basic
level of my text adventure, and I just thought that was hilarious. So.
That cheered me up. Now I can truly say I am the Ed Wood of text adventures.
... made my day when I went over because I found IFDB had a lot of my
games on there, like physical games that you could download, and so I
was like, "Okay, cool!" So I went over to the IF Archive, and I tried to
find my name on them -- couldn't find it anywhere. Found out they made
a, that my -- eurrgh! They made, made a section dedicated just for my
work. So if you go to ifarchay-- uh, ifarchive.org, uh, you go to
"games", you select "PC", and then, boom, you'll see it. It's "if
slash," uh, "dash archive slash games slash PC slash DB sl--" uh, "dash
taylor". And it's actually quite cool to see that I've got thirty-nine
games written on here. Now, I'm working on my fortieth game, which is
actually based on a true story from me growing up...
---------------
7. DBT on people who use Inform
[The following quotations are taken from episode 11 of the podcast.]
We're gonna be talking about Anchorhead. It's in the genre of
Lovecraftian. It was written in 1998 by Michael Gentry. Now, this game
-- I'm not joking when I say this -- this game literally gave me
goosebumps. So a game that's almost twenty years old gave me goosebumps.
Uh, the writing is phe*nom*enal.
Features a female protagonist, two small mazes, one optional. Now, for
the mazes, one is optional, but if you're like me and you love a good
old-fashioned maze back in the heyday of text adventures, I'd say do
both mazes. Uh, I always find that doing mazes in a game, uh, always
seems to... It, It's like doing a... sudoku, in a way, but, you know,
I'm a nerd, so mazes are my kinda... crossword.
Oh, I needa drinka this soda! [Swigs.]
Now, Transylvania is one of those games that you sit down and enjoy.
It's very cheesy. It's very dated. But it has heart. The parser's very
simple 'cause this is before it became, uh, "interactive fiction". Uh,
to me text adventures are a two-word parser, a maze, an objective. So,
point A to point B. That's it. Fight a monster, make a cuppa coffee,
uh... Fumble with yer keys 'cause there's a horde of zombies coming up
behind you. That, to me, is a text adventure game. Uh, to me, all
interactive fiction is text adventures. It's just not trying to sound
fancy, right?
But text adventures always had a two-word parser, or maybe even a
*three*-word parser if you were lucky. I know a lotta the games that *I*
write have-- are two-to-three words. And, to be honest with you, the
only reason why I do that though is because it's easier for the player
to guess what it is, rather than having like a whole line of la-- like,
words. You know. But that's just me. So.
This podcast, and this Facebook page, and, you know, the text adventure
community is something that I'm proud of.
I, I recently got a few messages. Uh, one was, well, a few messages from
the same person. He wrote a message asking me if there was a Save
function on, uh, War Of The Worlds, and I told him no. I felt bad
because, honestly, I should have put one in. But, to me, I love those
games where you can't save, and you gotta sit down, and if you gotta
take a pee, you gotta take a pee. Or if you wanna get something to eat
or drink, you gotta get up and do it. I think the cruelness of it is
that I actually put a timer in there for two hours. I don't think
anybody's ever beat it. But he said that he liked the show and the games
and, uh, that meant a lot to me.
... and, honestly, if you guys have ever played Vampire Bunny, that's a
text adventure from at least twenty years ago. I mean, that was, that's
one of the games that got me into, uh, programming my own games. So. I
played games like Zork and Lurking Horror and Scott Adams's
Adventureland and The Count and all that fun stuff, but to get me into
programming, like, I would look over old source code, right? Lotta the
times it'd be source code in assembly. Or, you know, BASIC. You know,
Apple BASIC... Chipmunk BASIC, I guess. And I found QBasic, right,
'cause I took a computer programming class in high school ...
... Hello, everybody, and welcome to Classic Text Adventures, the
podcast where I sit down, smoke a cigarette, and talk about the joys
that are text adventure games. I am your host, Dave. It is October 23rd,
2015. And what can really be said about text adventures that I haven't
already said in the previous ten episodes?
No more bad reviews! Which kind of upset me 'cause I was actually kinda
hoping to play, uh, Sexy Narrating Voice Guy, so I could actually sit
back and read you guys some crappy reviews that people have written
about me, written about my games, just, just in general, right? Uh, I
don't know, actually. I, I don't think anybody's wridden-- *written*
anything, uh, which is actually... which is actually quite-- quite sad,
'cause I would *love* to read more of this stuff. So.
... SPAG is the only one that's actually still operational, and this is
sad because back in the day there was a handful of text adventure -- you
know -- review sites and magazines and stuff like that. But alas, text
adventures died out with the resurgence of Inform 7 and all those
drooling mongoloids who, who seem to think they're better than all of us
who actually just sit down and play text adventures.
---------------
[END]