Computer Game SORCERY!

I can remember when everything changed.

My computer game Eureka! Moment came in the form of an irritating little character called SIMON, an apprentice SORCERER. Suddenly a computer game had a STORY, with CHARACTERS and BACKGROUND SCENERY. This happened around 1993. Now gaming came with pretty pictures and sarcastic humour, even a jolly theme tune - although there was no sound in the actual game, only speech bubbles and script. To make Simon do anything at all you had to click on a written instruction. Still, it seemed like a huge leap forward and a whole lot more fun.

It was still a single-player game, although if you had another player in your house you could compare your experience, share tips, etc.

Manic Miner, On the Spectrum -affectionately known as 'speccy' -  this was the first game with in-game music, the playing of which required constant CPU attention and was thought impossible. It was achieved by constantly alternating CPU time between the music and the game. This results in the music's stuttery rhythm. The in-game music is In the Hall of the Mountain King from Edvard Grieg's music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt. The music that plays during the title screen is an arrangement of The Blue Danube. In each of the twenty caverns, each one screen in size, are several flashing objects, which the player must collect before Willy's oxygen supply runs out. Once the player has collected the objects in one cavern, they must then go to the now-flashing portal, which will take them to the next cavern. The player must avoid enemies, listed in the cassette inlay as "...Poisonous Pansies, Spiders, Slime, and worst of all, Manic Mining Robots...", which move along predefined paths at constant speeds. Willy can also be killed by falling too far, so players must time the precision of jumps and other movements to prevent such falls or collisions with the enemies.

Before long we had swapped our rudimentary Superboard for the superior Sinclair ZX Spectrum. This opened up a huge range of potential games, such as Chuckie Egg,

Hen-House Harry is our diminutive hero and his task is to run through each of the eight barns snaffling a dozen eggs from each. Along the way he must avoid deadly chickens that would be only too happy to peck his pixel eye out. This isn't surprising really when you consider that Harry can also deprive the poor creatures of their seed to gain time and points bonuses. He may be a wimp when it comes to cock fighting (yes, I know that technically these are Hens) but Triple-H does possess the bionic ability to withstand huge falls, which certainly helps as you rush between the ladders, lifts and platforms.

Check out my author interview here:
https://architectsofworldsafar.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/author-interview-viv-doyle/

The era of the computer hobbyist had dawned, and if you bought one of the PC games magazines, such as BYTE or PERSONAL COMPUTER, you could type in some new games programs which might even inspire you to invent some yourself. On our home computer, lines of code would appear in phosphorescent green on a black screen. I was never more than an end-user, and an occasional one at that because other family members usually got there first. I would stand and watch for a few moments, just in case anything new came to the screen, then wander off to plant my nose in a book. Later on I became a moderator for a kind of magazine program called COMPUSERVE, running the writers' forum.

Why were we so excited? Well aside from the fact that it was so cool to have your own computer before most people had even heard of them, you could play GAMES on them. In fact, as far as we were concerned, there was no other point to them.

DAWN PATROL This game was the computer equivalent of Battleships. You had to guess where mines had been planted on a grid then move a rudimentary ship-shape around trying to avoid getting blown up. A crude tennis-style game called PONG was also available, but didn’t grab me because I’d already played the TV version. HANGMAN was fun for a while, but not much different from playing it with pencil and paper. None of these were game-changers, but bear in mind that both the graphics and the strategic opportunities were minimal at this stage. The novelty value was restricted to manipulating a few dots and dashes on a screen, or typing in gobbledegook and seeing it magically produce some new dots and dashes.

When did my love of computer games begin? Way back in the early 1980s, when this big orange plastic box arrived in our house from Ohio Scientific Instruments, USA. It was called a SUPERBOARD II and was one of the world’s very first home computers. To use it, you had to have a power pack, a cassette player (game programs came on cassettes back then) and a clapped-out television, so you could hook it up to the screen. It came with a keyboard and a mind-blowing 4K of RAM. Its language was BASIC, in all senses. But my family loved it to bits.

 






1978: Ohio Instruments produced the world's first complete computer system on a board, with keyboard, audio cassette for programs, BASIC-in-ROM and 4 - 8K of RAM.

This experience got me interested in the whole business of online gaming. I read Jess Schell’s wonderful book, The Art of Game Design

This is the best book I have read in the past decade. The man is a genius. If you don’t believe me, see his Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life

I attended a couple of gaming events and saw with my own eyes how passionate players were about their favourite games.

Why did I write THE TREASON GAME?

The idea came to me after playing an online MMORPG in real time with a family member in another country, and seeing how passionate other players were and how involved with the gameplay and their fellow gamers.

I was fascinated by the way I could eavesdrop on their conversations and see the relationships they formed with other players. The fact that it was impossible to tell the gender, age or nationality of their fellow gamers (unless, like me, they were playing with people they already knew) meant that the game allowed people to overcome all social barriers from across the globe, which struck me as amazing.