Denial

I read about this forum on the web and thought I would drop by.

I would be delighted to answer any questions, to the best of my recollection, that folks have about my commodore years.

Wow! I'm a big fan of your work. It's great to have you here at Denial. Welcome

Excellent to have somebody that wrote so many great titles here on Denial. Thanks for joining.

Did you ever move on to other systems, for example the C64?

akator wrote:Wow! I'm a big fan of your work. It's great to have you here at Denial. Welcome

Thanks for the kind words. It is always a pleasure to meet folks who enjoyed my classic games

16KVIC20 wrote:Excellent to have somebody that wrote so many great titles here on Denial. Thanks for joining.

Did you ever move on to other systems, for example the C64?

Yes I converted my games to C64 including the Marvel Questprobe series.

I licensed that series to Commodore for publication. that turned out to be a big mistake and one of the things that led to Adventure International closing.

I recall first playing your adventures on a TRS-80 Model I, then a Model III, Apple II, and VIC-20.

Was the demise of Adventure International because of Commodore's cutthroat business practices? That appears to have been fairly common, at least if the books and personal recollections I've read are accurate.

akator wrote:I recall first playing your adventures on a TRS-80 Model I, then a Model III, Apple II, and VIC-20.

Was the demise of Adventure International because of Commodore's cutthroat business practices? That appears to have been fairly common, at least if the books and personal recollections I've read are accurate.

I have nothing but good things to say about all the folks at Commodore that I met. I never met Jack Tramiel in person, but his dealings with AI (an Marvel) were indeed very much cutthroat and underhanded. What built commodore was his drive and determination, it is probably what sunk it as well.

Scott, which of your VIC 20 title would you consider to be a favourite or your finest work?

Welcome Scott

Really honored to have you here on Denial, I have spend trillions of hours on my Vic solving your adventures. Remember getting restriction using my friendly computer after a home-school meeting, I was simply sleeping in school after a no sleep night

At lunch-break we ran home to one of my friends to play, suddenly we were late (again) caught in a game. We had to come up with all kind of lies to tell out teacher, such as "we had to help an old lady cross the road..." I think our teacher looked through the lies but never let us know.

Time to dust of Pirate's Cove.

16KVIC20 wrote:Scott, which of your VIC 20 title would you consider to be a favourite or your finest work?

I always thought my latest effort was my best. I tried to do something different in each one I had not done in any of the preceeding ones. So of the 5 on the Vic-20 it would have been Adventure #5 The Count.

Questions galore

Are you interested in other gaming genres?
What are your favorite games, both then and now (if any)?
Did you play many non-AI adventure titles?
What was/is your preferred system for development? For personal use?
How do you feel about the evolution of gaming and its modern incarnations?
Is there anything happening now that you find particularly interesting and exciting?

joshuadenmark wrote:Welcome Scott

Really honored to have you here on Denial, I have spend trillions of hours on my Vic solving your adventures. Remember getting restriction using my friendly computer after a home-school meeting, I was simply sleeping in school after a no sleep night

At lunch-break we ran home to one of my friends to play, suddenly we were late (again) caught in a game. We had to come up with all kind of lies to tell out teacher, such as "we had to help an old lady cross the road..." I think our teacher looked through the lies but never let us know.

Time to dust of Pirate's Cove.

ROFL! I TOTALLY understand that mindset.

I was fortunate that back in 1969 our high school was an experiment for the state of Florida and they put a compute terminal in the math lab. (IBM Selectric typewriter with an APL type head and a modem) It was connected to the mainframe at the university of Miami. When I discovered this machine I spent most evenings and weekends on it. I was actually given permission to be locked into the school at night (one way door let me out) and to be allowed in early in the mornings by the janitor before school opened.

I remember my first major program. I wrote a tic-tac-toe program for one player against the computer. The language was APL/360. This is a mathematical language that is primarily for matrix arithemetic etc.. It was blast and cemented my love for all things computer!

Scott, did you actually use a real VIC 20 to write your games, or were they written on something else and ported across?
I'm no programmer but I seem to recall that sometimes games were written on development machines.

akator wrote:Questions galore

1 Are you interested in other gaming genres?
2 What are your favorite games, both then and now (if any)?
3 Did you play many non-AI adventure titles?
4 What was/is your preferred system for development? For personal use?
5 How do you feel about the evolution of gaming and its modern incarnations?
6 Is there anything happening now that you find particularly interesting and exciting?

1) Yes I love RPGS (turn based) and MMORPGS and FPS and others.
2) Currently I am playing a lot of Guild Wars 2.
3) Back then I think the game that I remember the best was Wizardry. I avoided most adventure games as I didn't want them to pollute the games I was creating.
4) TRS-80 model 1 (for the z80 based) and Atari-800 (for the 6502 based). I did most of my games databases on the TRS-80 and then did the game engine on each of the host machines.
5) Having fun
6) Amazing the horse power in modern machines and the graphical capabilities. Totally undreamed of back in 1978 when I started my games. I really love the MMORPG genre. I played Everquest and Everquest 2 and ran a large guild for many years. I switched over to Guild Wars 2 when it came out. In GW2 you can friend me as adams.2403

16KVIC20 wrote:Scott, did you actually use a real VIC 20 to write your games, or were they written on something else and ported across?
I'm no programmer but I seem to recall that sometimes games were written on development machines.

The database and original engine was done on a TRS-80 model 1. The engine for the Vic-20 was first done on an Atari 800 then modified to work on the Vic-20. I did all the TRS-80 and Atari work. Commodore lent me the services of Andy Finkel and together we worked on getting the game into Vic. Literally ended up with bytes to spare at the end. That is why you have to use the SYS command. We had to dump the autoloader code!