Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

With what keeps being said about the TRS-80 Model 100 more than four decades after its introduction, there are moments I imagine being accused of insufficient appreciation of that pioneering portable. One of those computers has been in my family for more or less forty years now. In recent years, though, when I’ve switched it on that was as much to see that it could still be switched on as anything.
( Software via hardware )

Putting together a post about some small accomplishment in a hobby-like pastime can seem to coincide with my specific interest in it wrapping up as I drift along to something else (even if I sometimes drift back after a while). Getting a second opinion of sorts on one of the very first word processors wasn’t quite the end of my use of the emulator of an equally antique computer I’d just got running, though. While the version of Electric Pencil for the SOL-20 to be found with the emulator could only save to virtual tape files, I knew that emulator could also be configured to use virtual disks and the early operating system CP/M. With that, though, came the flickering thought that just maybe I might also be able to get a sense of a slightly more advanced word processor from the past.
( Certain technical details )

Reporting on having managed to get an older compiler for text-based adventure games working with a special library promised to make adventures much older computers wouldn’t choke on provided one more post for this journal. I finished that post, though, aware of an obvious next step but not quite certain if I could manage it before flitting along to some other hobby of the moment. All I’d done was compile a sample Inform 6 source code file (adapting “Cloak of Darkness,” a sort of “minimal adventure to try out different text adventure systems”) provided with the PunyInform library. As for cobbling together even simpler experiments of my own, I thought back to when I’d dabbled with Inform 6’s successor. Inform 7, however, operates on altogether different principles, and I was also thinking of how I’d found some guides and introductions to Inform 6 years before but never got around to writing my own games.
( A step not taken before )

Via The Digital Antiquarian, I picked up a while ago on another weblog looking at old computer games, but with a wider scope encompassing arcades and video game consoles as well and in even more detail. Even if I’ve never owned a game console and became familiar with arcade games through limited-palette knockoffs for our family home computer, the thought of knowing a bit more did interest me. Just as the narrative at “They Create Worlds” was approaching “Pong,” though, the updates there ceased. Then, one day the RSS reader I hadn’t stopped tracking the weblog with through a “just in case” laziness reported a new entry, explaining its author Alexander Smith had converted his work into a genuine book covering far past where he’d left off online. The wrinkle was that he’d gone through an academic publisher (CRC Press, who had brought out a book about the Radio Shack Color Computer some years ago), and the volume was pretty pricy.
( Created worlds )

Along the endless road of fiddling around with old computer games and programs via emulation, my thoughts began bending back to a destination I'd touched on before. It wouldn't be long until The Digital Antiquarian got to 1993; he might cover the CD-ROM game Myst, and that coverage might even be positive. While I don't often "play along" with the games that site visits, I could imagine making an exception in this particular case. The only problem was that as I contemplated doing that, I knew I could almost manage playing "the game as first released."
( One challenge after another )

I often suppose one part of what motivates me to seek out information about the computers of the 1980s, one particular subject among a good many others, is the sense I was around at the time but not quite aware of a lot of things outside the amiable corner of the Radio Shack Color Computer. That sense can be carried too far, though. My related interest in the text adventure games dignified with the name interactive fiction does have something to do with my family having been given a copy of the Infocom adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which first made me aware of adventure games that could accept more than two words at a time and then suggested in a catalog there was a whole line of other games like it. The only problem was that the regular hints offered for the game in the Color Computer magazine The Rainbow never quite explained how to solve its last and most elaborate puzzle. When I did manage to make out the faded hints in a high school acquaintance's old hint book, the sense of it being too late to play any other Infocom game was right to the extent of the re-release collections having less elaborate packaging and being for more elaborate computers.
( Advantages to the passing of time )

I've been keeping my "other" online presence running, although I haven't had to say much about it here to keep up the pretence of regular updates. Part of keeping my Tumblr topped up is to use its queue, although this does sort of detach me from what hypothetical other eyes might see. However, when I happened to see the "recently updated" section on the front page of Wikipedia had something to say about the "Dog Star Adventure," I realised I had just managed to say a bit about that very same adventure. The synchronicity reminds me I could get around to playing it.

Continuing to follow the Planet IF aggregator, I noticed a very interesting piece of news being passed along. The documentary "Get Lamp" had featured images of design documents for some of Infocom's interactive fiction, and I'd eventually sorted out they had come from the files of Steve Meretzky, who the Digital Antiquarian consistently describes as a prolific, well-adjusted, and good-humoured game designer. Now, scans of the files the documents were selected from (slightly redacted to remove names of game testers and the like) are available on the Internet Archive. I've only been able to look at some of them so far, and while they're more high-level design and correspondance than source code printouts that's quite interesting in itself. Some of the output from what I presume was Infocom's line printer is a little hard to read, but I've also noticed some "made on a Macintosh" documents from the early adopter Douglas Adams and a tester talking about how they'd received their new computer right around when they also got their test copy of "A Mind Forever Voyaging."

I was playing some of the simple adventure games included in computer magazines pretty early on, and I suppose the thought of "making one myself" did come to me as I tried now and again to get started on the BASIC tutorials that came with my family's computers. It was easier to do things with "IF-THEN" statements than with parsing text strings, though, which made the very first "adventure game" I tried to peck into one of our Radio Shack Color Computers "just" a "Choose Your Own Adventure." I remember it had something to do with surviving on the moon, but I do have to admit I didn't get much further than a decision or two into it before I either got bored with the whole thing or just lost track of the "combinatorial explosion" and gave up without actually saving to cassette what I'd done.
( I did accomplish more than that, eventually )

While I've long supposed the "Planet IF" aggregator to concentrate on "interactive fiction" games, specifically typing in commands to move around the game's described-in-text world, handle objects, and solve puzzles, in the past few months I've noticed enough references to start really catching my attention to "choose your own adventure"-type games, where you're presented with a list of choices every so often, trading fine control for the potential of greater scope. If my early years spent playing adventure games amounted in some part to never quite figuring out the puzzles, the Choose Your Own Adventure books in my school library just seemed to intimidate me; I guess I took the whole "'you' could die at any turn" possibility too seriously. Now, though, I was getting a little more curious about the current computerized variety; having recently played a few "visual novels," more illustrated variants of this kind of game, may have played a role there. Remembering that one phrase being used to describe them was "choice-based games," I tried searching for that phrase. The results at the top of the page weren't general discussion, though, but links to a single game company. I followed one of them all the same, though, and it just so happened their latest game, visible on the front page, caught my attention in a specific way.

Even if the title "Mecha Ace" did make me think in part that the company must have run through a good many other genres already, the game did exist; I went ahead and bought it for my iPad. Starting it up, I was intrigued to see a good part of its first choices seemed to be shaping your own character, picking strengths and weaknesses (although you don't get to name yourself until later on, most of the offered choices instantly recognizable for someone familiar with the specific genre); the rest of the game seemed as much "playing to those strengths" as "guessing at the obscure best choice early on." That on my very first try I got to a conclusion that didn't involve personal death or complete failure was at once encouraging and somehow suggestive the game had one major storyline built in instead of several diverging off in different directions; however, the accomplishments that showed up in Game Center did make me think there'd be chances to replay it and try out different strategies. (I'd played things "cautiously but honourably" to start with.)

Beyond the mechanics of the game, I was interested in its own take on the genre. The world described in the game's text did seem definitely inspired by Gundam, although "interstellar" in scope instead of Gundam's "we won't casually invoke interstellar travel and have you suspend that bit of disbelief straight off." There did seem a few nods to Battletech, too, and in general I did have the impression the game was trying to avoid the familiar "youthful, inexperienced pilots" of mecha anime without making too big a deal of how it was avoiding it. In any case, it didn't seem to be proclaiming "mental control" to be an indistinct yet essential add-on to the control sticks. While there may be a bit of "so how can the next game top this?" to my thoughts, I suppose I can always take another look at the catalogue.