Commodore Free 38/Commodore_Free_Issue_38_2010_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/iv gunther

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 11KB | 391 lines

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  INTERVIEW WITH "GUNTHER SCHMIDL"
    Infocom Documentation Website
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 http://infodoc.plover.net/index.html

Q. Please introduce yourself to our
readers

My name's Gunther, I live and work
in Austria - unsurprisingly, in
programming. I'm a big fan of
adventure games, both text and
graphical, and I've written a few
text games myself. These days, free
time doesn't really permit
authorship, so I'm playing and
occasionally reviewing adventures
instead, though I'd like to dabble
in some authoring again. I'm also
interested in the history of
Interactive Fiction, and have
managed, with the invaluable help of
people like Stephen Granade and
Graham Nelson, to unearth several
obscure games and bring them to a
greater public.

Q. Are you an Infocom fan in general
or do you have a bias to a
particular machine, I know we are
Commodore users but we wont be mad
if you preferred another system

I'm an Infocom fan in general. I
actually grew up on PCs - our first
computer was an insanely expensive
IBM laptop with two 3.5" floppy
drives and no hard drive - and the
first two games I played were Space
Invaders and Space Quest 2. Friends
of mine had a C64, an Atari and an
Amiga, so all the "big" home
computers were available to
everyone. Naturally, I still have an
affinity for the PC, but I know my
way around the other machines as
well.

Q. Do you own any Commodore systems?

Only in emulation, I'm afraid. Like
I said, I know a bit about both
AmigaOS and C64 BASIC, so I can get
stuff running, but I rarely do it
these days.

Q. Did you ever finish any of the
Infocom games yourself, and if you
did; did you need to use hints?

I finished most of them, with the
notable exception of Journey, but
few without hints. I managed to
finish SUSPENDED, and got a horribly
bad result, but it was the first I
actually finished by myself.

Q. What's your favourite Infocom
puzzle?

Hard to say. One of the most
well-executed puzzles is the
Babelfish puzzle in The
Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
but I can't actually call it a
favourite. I think the time travel
puzzle in Sorcerer was pretty good,
if extremely hard. LGOP's T-Remover
is also fun.

Q. Do you think text-only games are
better at stimulating the
imagination?

I think both text and graphic
adventures have their merits. Text
can, of course, do things that
non-text can never convey (the
famous "voice of honey and ashes"),
and are more precise ("what is that
four-pixel object on the screen
supposed to be" was a common
question in parser-driven graphical
adventures until pure
point-and-click games took their
place -- where after pixel hunting
became the new guess-the-word).
Graphics are easier to convey
exactly what the author wants to
show, but you couldn't pull off
things like surprise the player with
a character's gender/race/... as
easily.

It's easier to have mimesis-breaking
puzzles in graphic adventures, I
would think -- to implement a
Fifteen puzzle or Towers of Hanoi in
text would be more work than it's
worth (though the 15 puzzle has
actually been done). Text adventures
had hunger and sleep daemons, turn
limits, and mazes. Graphic
adventures have
arrange-these-items-in-the-correct-or
der puzzles, timed sequences, and
mazes. The medium dictates what you
can do to annoy the player :-)

Q. Were the games all text based or
did some graphics scenes exist?

Most of the Infocom games were
all-text, but they did produce a few
games with graphics: Beyond Zork had
a graphical mode where it would
display a map of your surroundings,
and a special rune font. Zork Zero,
Arthur, Shogun and Journey had
illustrations and graphical puzzles
(Towers of Hanoi, Nim, etc)

Later a few mostly graphical games
(including two adventures, "Return
to Zork" and "Leather Goddesses of
Phobos 2") were released under the
Infocom label, but that was after
their acquisition by Activision.

Q. Do you think Graphics from
adventure games detracted from the
gameplay?

Graphics pretty much started out as
illustrations of the scenes, as in
Sierra's "Mystery House", the first
graphic adventure. What they did do
was dumb down the parser, so you'd
have to guess from the line drawings
what object, exactly, you were
seeing on the screen, and then issue
two-word commands and hope the
parser would understand you. Thus,
yes, the games interrupted play,
pulling the players out of the
game world, by throwing "I don't
know what you mean" messages at
them. This problem was mitigated by
going point-and-click, however.

Douglas Adams later made Starship
Titanic, a full graphic adventure
which was advertised as having an
intelligent parser to let you
communicate with the denizens of the
ship. Let's say it wasn't very
intelligent after all and leave it
at that.

Q. Do you still own any boxed
Infocom games, with their "feelies"
can you explain about the "feelies"?

Feelies were (and are, sometimes!) a
way of getting people to buy,
instead of pirate, the games.

One, you'd get a nifty box with, for
example, a glow-in-the-dark stone, a
rubber centipede, some "gemstones",
booklets, or "hieroglyph rubbings",
etc.

Two, in later games, material from
the game box would actually be
needed to pass copy protection in
the game. A game might ask you to
type in a word from the manual, or
set a code wheel to some specific
position and type in a number from
it, or answer a question to be
learned from the feelies, etc.

I've managed to come into possession
of several games with their feelies
-- it's just nifty to have something
tangible along with the game itself.
Shows the extra effort the company
spent to immerse the player in the
world. Plus, hey, piracy protection.
Which worked about as well back then
as it does now.

Q. I presume these games are highly
collectable, what are the top 10
most valued games?

Top ten is hard to say, but by far
the most collectable items are the
original Starcross "Saucer"
packaging and the original Suspended
"Mask" packaging. They often go for
several hundreds of dollars on eBay.
Everything else is way more
commonplace, except the oddball
games like "Fooblitzky" or
"Quarterstaff" (a Mac-only RPG), and
the
product that caused the downfall of
Infocom: their database system
"Cornerstone".

Q. Ok there must be at least one
duffer what is the worst Infocom
game you played and why was it so
bad?

My two least favourite Infocom games
are "Beyond Zork" and "Journey". The
former is an adventure-RPG hybrid
which does neither part very well;
the latter is a glorified
choose-your-own-adventure-style game
which has endless possibilities of
getting you stuck at the very last
puzzle because you run out of
something you need much earlier.
Like I said, I never completed it
myself despite multiple attempts.

Q. Recently, memos and e-mails about
a possible Hitch-hiker's sequel were
made public. Do you think it could
have been a success, and do you
think the company information should
have been revealed?

With the built-in audience for
Hitch-Hiker's, I'm pretty sure the
game would have been at least a
moderate success. I don't know if
there were plans to add graphics to
it, but probably yes - I think that
the kind of graphics available then
would have worked against the HHGG
world. There's a reason why the
books and radio series were vastly
more successful than the TV series
and the later movie.

As for the infamous "Infocom Drive",
it is sad that the information was
revealed the way it happened. I'm
sure nobody wants to see their dirty
laundry aired in public, and I'm
also sure that because this
happened, it will be much harder to
get actually interesting stuff out
in the public - you don't antagonize
the people you depend on for
goodwill.

Q. Are there many documents/manuals
that you are still looking for? And
Can you give or readers a plug about
the website?

We have a full set of the available
Infocom documentation.
Unfortunately, Infodoc has not been
updated in a long time due to time
constraints by Roger J. Long, who
did the majority of the work, and
myself, and thus it has been
surpassed in some ways by other
websites, most notably:

 http://infocom.elsewhere.org/gallery

We do still, however, offer fully
OCR'd (and a few 100%
screen-reader-friendly) versions of
the manuals, with all the important
information, as well as a number of
neat things not readily available
elsewhere, such as a full set of the
company newsletter sent out to
customers, information on the
Japanese version of Zork 1, and a
few other surprises.

Q. How was all the information
collected to the site?

The manuals were readily available
in PDF format from the Masterpieces
of Infocom collection. Other
material was scanned or photographed
and OCR'd (or just typed in). We
cleared the rights with Activision,
who gave permission readily. We
didn't hear back from the rights
holders of HHGG and Shogun, which is
why those manuals are not available.

Q. If our reader can help out or
wants to help what do you need or
want?

If anyone wants to take up the
transcription of the manuals into
screen-reader friendly format, they
are welcome to do so; I don't think,
however, that much is going to
happen with the site in the future.
It mostly stands as it is, and is
hopefully useful to people.

Q. How many Infocom games were
released in total?

http://infodoc.plover.net/goodies/
files/gamelist.html

has a full (but now out of date, due
to the discovery of the Drive) list
of all released games by Infocom.
Infocom released a total of 36 text
adventures.

Q. Was there a fan base with
newsletters for the games?

There was the official company
newsletter, The New Zork Times
(later renamed to The Status Line
after the New York Times
complained). There were also
unofficial fan clubs, and these days
there are, of course, multiple fan
websites.

As an example of the dedication of
Infocom gamers, consider this
hand-drawn map of Dungeon, the
predecessor to Zork 1-3:

 http://almy.us/image/dungeon.jpg

Q. Were there phone lines providing
hints and tips?

Involuntarily - people called the
Infocom office for help and hints.
The Zork User's Group (ZUG) was
created to handle these calls on a
pay-per-hint basis. This eventually
led to the creation of Invisiclues,
the hint booklets in invisible ink,
to take some load off the poor
employees.

Q. Do you know the shortest time it
took to complete on of the games ?

Unfortunately not.

Q. Is there anything else you would
like to add?

Thanks for the questions, and thanks
for your patience.
Gunther

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