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Retro: EAMON, one of the earliest CRPGs
Fri, 11 Jul 2008

The term CRPG refers to Computer-based Role Playing Games, such as the current Oblivion, but tracing back through Eye of the Beholder and back to Temple of Apshai and so on. The earliest examples were more text based due to their mainframe origins, and later the slow transmission rates of modems. Enter EAMON .. I've not done any history lookups here but its going back to the Apple 2 days, and I experienced it on the almighty Atari ST .. so back around 1987 or so I'd guess I fiddled with the system.

As fans of "Choose Your Own Adventure" style books (Steve Jackson ftw!), my brother was an aspiring adventure author at the time, putting together little adventure novellas on pads of paper. (You number each page, and at the end of a given page you have options that give you page numbers to turn to should you take that action. The pages are randomized to make it hard to guess where a given series of actoins may lead. Ultimately there are numerous plot endings, but usually more than a few times your character gets killed along the way, forcing you to re-start. Fun stuff.) I remember going through the Public Domain archives of local groups, and through BBS file listings all over the province (racking up huge bills all the time through long distnace charges), trying to find (well, to be honest, pirated games) some adventure authoring tools for him. There were a few systems, including EAMON, but they were just too complicated for us. Still, I remember playing a few EAMON games.

Well, t'other day I stumbled across EAMON Deluxe, a port of the EAMON system to DOS a decade back. The beauty of this is that you can still run it today on your modern PC (and hopefully someday he'll release the source so that it can be brought to Mac, Linux and so forth.) You could always fire up an emulator (Atari ST, Apple 2, C64 and so on) and play the games there but this makes things pretty easy.

Further, the lad has pulled all the many EAMON adventures together into a big archive, including user supplied reviews of the adventures. Now, I should note that EAMON was not a game.. it was a system, supplied with a few simple text adventure games. But the author supplied tools to make your own adventures and many did.. so there are literally hundreds of additional goofy little text adventures. (These are of different style than the pure "IF" Interactive Fiction games I've gone on about before; those are pure adventure games with no dice rolling, no skills per se and include such classics as Zork or Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. EAMON is one of the first CRPGs, in that you play a character who increases in powers and gold and gear and so on over playtime, and also is a less lofty academic pursuit; the EAMON gamelets are not novellas in adventure form, but early examples of kill-and-loot games.) Fun for short bursts, which hits a certain spot in my heart.

One facet of the system I admire is this .. you have a character and you pick an adventure to play through; the character persists between adventure gamelets.. so while you might be in a fantasy gamelet (the majority) one time, the next could be sci-fi. The EAMON system defines the system, and suggests certain damage levels.. so while a new player might have 20 hit points before dieing, a slight damage hit is 1 damage, while a heavier stroke is 2 or 3 points, say. So you take your character including gear game to game and grow him over the lifespan, regardless of the actual adventure the character is in.

That is pretty ahead of its time.

Anyway, if you want to try a quck text hack and slash game, that plays and feels like a light text adventure, and definately hardcore retro.. EAMON could be just the thing.

I may just have to look around for some source.. porting this to a handheld could rock my socks :)

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / retro ] [link] [Comments]

Resolutions: New Years 2008
Fri, 11 Jan 2008

I overheard someone talking about their resolutions and it reminded me that I'd forgotten to set some new ones this year. I rather liked what I overheard though.. things like: Gain more weight, watch more movies, make fun of the man. Awesome!

My goal for the year is really just one thing -- gain some balance. This last year was of course wonderous but challenging. I'd like to get more sleep even if sleeping in is gone for the next decade (you listening Little G?), catch some TV and movies and relax. More gaming (woot!). Less reading -- I've been surviving the long nights by reading ebooks.. at least 1-2 a week. I'd really like to lose a bit of weight but not through silly diets .. just shaving off a little here or there, and eating better. Eating different. I've already - yes, truth be told I'm shocked too -- managed to give up cola (and I miss it so!)

Ultimately I want to amuse my young daughter, be a big part of her life and raise and educate her as best as I can. But you can't do it 100% of the time can you?

[ Category: / day_by_day ] [link] [Comments]

Tech: Cellphone data plans and how they totally suck in Canada
Fri, 11 Jan 2008

I've often ranted about how incredibly terrible our data plans are in the Great White. I mean, not just bad, but actively terrible .. to the point it probably harms the market as a whole. We're often told that in the US one can score unlimited data for their PDA or smartphone for $30 or $50 a month, where in Toronto you cannot even get unlimited anymore .. and each MB is doled out pennies at a time. In my heart, I know it is simply because even geeks aren't aware how much data they consume in an average normal browsing day, and non-geeks have no idea how to even measure the information. ie: Data plans here are measured in how many Megabytes (MB) you get for $x -- a really big expensive plan might get you 25MB for the month .. and if you're browsing someones photos, you might be pulling down a single megabyte every few photos worth. So an hours browsing, or maybe just a couple youtube videos, and you're down a hundred bucks. _brutal_

Pretty much every Canadian whose looked into it is miffed. This one lad has written a pretty fine article about it, so take a peek:

Angry Oshawa Pilot

BTW, I just have to add -- why is it that writers so love the phrase "high seas" -- where are the "low seas?"

[ Category: / technology / mobile ] [link] [Comments]