WIP: Edgar Allan Poe "Tales of Mystery and Imagination&

[Ghislain]

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I worked on the font that will be used in my Edgar Allan Poe graphical text adventure game called "Nevermore".

There are many artistic works inspired by Poe that are now in the public domain, of which I will make use of.

The Poe stories which will make their inspiration from are:

-Berenice
-The Black Cat
-The Cask of Amontillado
-The Fall of the House of Usher
-The Pit and the Pendulum
-Murders in the Rue Morgue
-The Premature Burial
-The Raven
-The Tell-Tale Heart
-William Wilson
-Dream Within a Dream
-The Gold Bug

I've read the entire works of Poe and I look forward to reading these again in order to create a fun text/graphical adventure game from them.

I will also draw inspiration from the most excellent Roger Corman/Vincent Price Poe films and Alan Parsons' use of Debussy in the music album 'Tales of Mystery and Imagination'.

Requirements will be 16 kilobytes of RAM plus disk drive.

Once this game is completed, I will probably compile a collection of games I created since 2010 and call it GAMES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION.

[Kweepa]

Beautiful font!
I look forward to the game!
I've only read a few of the well-known Poe stories - and enjoyed them - so this will be a treat!

[GreyGhost]

That sounds very cool, and I like the font also. the only Poe I have read was Tell Tale Heart. I guess to be any good at the game, one will have to be versed in all of his works. Can't wait to see more.

[Ghislain]

Thank you for your kind comments regarding the font so far. This will take quite some time to do -- ultimately, I'll have to design a graphical interactive fiction game around Poe's writings.

One plot point will be "A Dream Within a Dream" so that the player can traverse from one story to another.

Portions of Poe's texts will also be used to describe the rooms within the adventure. "Rue Morgue" and "Gold Bug" could quite easily be converted into text adventures as they involve problem solving. But the major appeal of Poe is the Gothic horror aspect, so that might not be so straightforward to convert to a game.

[English Invader]

I'm certainly looking forward to this one. I hope "The Masque of the Red Death" gets in there somewhere.

"And darkness and decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

[orion70]

Wow! I can't wait!

[DanSolo]

I'm certainly looking forward to this one. I hope "The Masque of the Red Death" gets in there somewhere.

Great movie that too!
I'd prefer more HP Lovecraft games myself. Much creepier that EAP in my eyes.

[RobertBe]

The Poe stories which will make their inspiration from are:

-Berenice
-The Black Cat
-The Cask of Amontillado
-The Fall of the House of Usher
-The Pit and the Pendulum
-Murders in the Rue Morgue
-The Premature Burial
-The Raven
-The Tell-Tale Heart
-William Wilson
-Dream Within a Dream
-The Gold Bug

As an Edgar Allan Poe fan, I approve of your list.

...in order to create a fun text/graphical adventure game from them.

Would it be horror or would it be horror/comedic?

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[Ghislain]

Nice responses so far I don't have much spare time lately, I'm in the process of moving into a new house for the next few months, so I have to make that a priority.

I am currently working on "The Tell-Tale Heart" to make it into an interactive text adventure. And I think I will use every single word and sentence that was written into the original short story. And when the player veers off from the script of the story, then I'll try to use the same words and phrases that Poe used in his other stories or letters, or as a last resort, I will try to create new text myself in the same style of writing that Poe used.

I'm not sure if I'll use this method for the other Poe stories that I will convert into interactive adventures. This might use up so much disk space that I might only be able to do a small handful of stories if I want to use every single word and sentence that Poe used in those stories.

[RobertBe]

...I think I will use every single word and sentence that was written into the original short story.

That is quite an undertaking!

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[Ghislain]

I recently got back into working on this project again.

It's actually going to be a graphical interactive fiction game for the VIC-20. I just finished the splash screen:



It's 160x176 pixels, uncompressed. It barely fits on an unexpanded VIC! (I used Mike's PGM IMPORT tools to convert .pgm images to VIC-20 byte code).

AT major key parts of the game, a graphical screen will appear--the ones that appear during game play will be in multicolor. The one above is in single color hi-res because I wanted to put the title of the game on the screen and I wanted to include at least ONE drawing of Harry Clarke's who created many famous illustrations inspired by Poe. They're far too detailed to appear in multicolor mode.

I still plan on using the font posted above. Though I don't think I'll include ALL of the text from Poe stories. The adventure will contain elements from several of the stories and key passages instead.

[Ghislain]

I might have an easier time to make this with memory expansion, but since it will reside on a games collection on a disk (that don't need extra memory), then much of what is read and displayed would be read from disk.

I'm designing the game world based on multiple stories--most notably House of Usher and the Tell-Tale Heart. So it will be a single adventure. It's not going to be a hardcore IF game with difficult puzzles, it will just use a verb-noun parser.

The most fun aspect will be the atmosphere--the font, and the cut-away screenshots at key points will be what make this a fun game to play.

Most of the game's variables will be stored in memory locations, so the game data won't be gone when it loads another module. It's written mostly in BASIC with some ML routines.

[Kweepa]

Still looking forward to this!

[Ghislain]

Still looking forward to this!

Oh I have a lot to live up to!

I was thinking of trying to fit everything on 160 blocks of disk space, so that it fits with the other 7 games I've made since 2010 as a part of a collection. But maybe I shouldn't limit myself.

I'm flip-flopping on deciding whether to make it run without memory expansion, or make it a 16K game.

With the former, I get bragging rights. But then, the amount of disk access would be excessive. Any amount of text to be displayed would have to be read from disk. The anniversary edition of Realms II comes to mind--with the constant loading between the travel and combat modules.

With the latter, I'd set a high expectation for myself to make an even bigger game. I'd also likely to dedicate a whole disk side, and I would have to fill it up with more graphics and text.

What to do?

[Jeff-20]

This is odd coming from me, but I would encourage you to use extra memory and no limit on blocks. This is the type of game that's going to be impressive no matter what. May as well take it to the highest level.