2019-07-21 10:00:29

Dear community,
when thinking of the adventure game industry, one name invariably comes to mind: Scott Adams, co-founder of Adventure International, author of such memorable titles as Pirate Adventure, Strange Odyssey and The Golden Voyage. Before there was Infocom, there was Scott Adams. Here's the good news: He's still around, and he's still making games.
His most recent release, produced by his new company Clopas LLC, is a Conversational Adventure™ game named Escape The Gloomer. The action takes place in the Redwall universe, and the Alexa version, currently only available in the US, is fully accessible for blind players.
Right now, the Clopas team is working on a remake of the classic Adventureland, which was the first commercial adventure game authored by Scott. Don't be fooled by the word "remake" however: While the locations and objects of Adventureland are serving as inspiration, the experience will be vastly different from, and technologically far superior to, the venerable original from the late seventies. No prior knowledge of the genre is required, yet oldschool adventurers will find enough nuggets of lore to rekindle their fondest memories.
In addition, Clopas is currently in the process of making their game engine blind-accessible on mobile and pc platforms, so we can fully enjoy the games even without Alexa. Having played the pc version in its current semi-accessible state, I can assure you it meets the expectations I'm setting here.
This is where we as a community come in, because without our support it's not going to happen. By supporting the project on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/Clopas we can become the change we'd like to see, and help remedy the lack of good games we've been complaining about. Let's make sure this works out!
Finally, I'd like to stress I am writing this purely out of respect and admiration for Scott and his work. I am receiving no personal benefit whatsoever except the piece of mind that comes with supporting one of the greatest loves of my life: Interactive fiction.
May adventures never cease,
Eternal Gamer aka Endarion

In the hands of a gamer, word becomes weapon, argument becomes shield, and life becomes a quest.

2019-07-21 14:50:40

Sweet! I have an app with a collection of his games on my phone. Good to hear he still around.

2019-07-21 15:56:16

Hi Kenshira,
I'm curious: would that be Frotz with some ports of his games, or is there something more Scott Adams specific out there which I don't know about?
Off topic, I think you've done an amazing job helping Keeweed with his Path Of Adventure!
Power to you,
EG

In the hands of a gamer, word becomes weapon, argument becomes shield, and life becomes a quest.

2019-07-21 16:53:33

No actually this is a dedicated app on android called adventure game interpreter, or adbint for short. He gave permission for his games of old to be put on this app.

2019-07-21 19:45:56

Quite a pity it's not available for iOS. One more good reason to be excited about the upcoming title!

In the hands of a gamer, word becomes weapon, argument becomes shield, and life becomes a quest.

2019-07-21 20:11:47

Oh cool. This sounds fantastic. I must say I am not a huge Scott Adams fan, because if we take out the enormous nostalgia factor, for which I'm to young, there is really not very much to like about the games, especially if you see infocom. Sadly when infocom made their games, Scott Adams never tried to go with time and his later games are still like
You are in the living room. You see a sword and a chair.
>take sword
ok
>examine sword
nothing special
>take chair
you died

But if Adventureland is made completely fresh and new, I'm excited to try it.

We are pleased, that you made it through the final challenge, where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lay on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Assume the party submission position or you will miss the party.

2019-07-21 21:19:46

Hi Targor,
nice nickname, sort of otherlandish.
I know exactly what you're talking about. It's the minimalism born out of severe memory constraints that became the hallmark of Scott's classic adventures.
His more contemporary titles, namely Return To Pirate's Island II and The Inheritance, do not suffer from these constraints, and the parser does rank up there with Infocom's although it takes a completely different approach, being based on liberal pattern matching rather than strict formal grammar rules. You just can't compare them directly, except maybe to mention that Scott's is more error-tolerant and slightly less predictable. I happen to like both approaches for different reasons.
The upcoming Adventureland XL will make good use of the more error-tolerant, conversational parser.
In case you haven't sampled Escape The Gloomer yet, here's the official teaser:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaYRHkXwxkI
All the best,
Eternal Gamer

In the hands of a gamer, word becomes weapon, argument becomes shield, and life becomes a quest.

2019-07-22 09:22:33

Thanks very much for the info. I think I have to try his games again. Yes, my nickname came from Otherland, one of my favourite book series. smile

We are pleased, that you made it through the final challenge, where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lay on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Assume the party submission position or you will miss the party.

2019-07-22 17:35:23

Me and Scott email each other from time to time. He is a nice guy.
His games are good as well. Although they are text adventure they have great sounds and music.

2019-07-22 18:18:16

@Targor, cool, I'm a huge fan of Otherland myself as well.

I confess having tried some early scott adams back when I was on my interactive fiction kick, my opinion was rather like Targor's, indeed as I've said before, I largely abandoned parser based If after getting stuck with too many "I don't know how to put" parser errors, or games whose solutions were so outlandish they just became annoying.

Still I was aware that Scott adams was still developing and would not be against trying one of his more modern games in hopes it doesn't run into the usual problems of open parser if, and certainly his stuff would need db pages as well.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-07-22 19:23:33

Wow, never knew he had games with sound or music. Would like to know which ones they are.

2019-07-23 07:50:13

Hi.
Sounds interesting for sure. Which games have sounds and music?

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2019-07-23 11:34:16

I just downloaded a package containing all his classics from the if archive. Wow, I remembered the short descriptions, but short is not even the right word here. This briefness can lead to funny outputs like:
vvisible: window
>go window
I'm on a ledge.
I fell.
This game has ended.
Still, it's fun to try stuff and then consult a walkthrough after a while, because as those old games go, making one false move and you've locked yourself out of victory.

We are pleased, that you made it through the final challenge, where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lay on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Assume the party submission position or you will miss the party.

2019-07-23 14:04:50

Hi!
The games with sound were Return To Pirate's Island II and The Inheritance. Unfortunately, neither of them is on sale right now.
Escape The Gloomer also has beautiful sound and music.
Cheers Perry