TADA background information - Parts I and II

Perhaps putting the cart before the horse, but that's okay. This is a series of blog posts re-hashing an old web page I had discussing some design notes.

You are on a lonely, narrow, dark path. Treasures, perils, and mysteries await the adventuresome...

1. History
2. Some Features
3. Menu Evolution
4. Mysteries Abound
5. Design Notes
6. To-Do List
7. Tools I Use

I'll be covering the first two installments today, since everything all at once is too much, and subsequent sections need major editing.

Well, let's see. Where shall I begin?

I. History

Okay, maybe here: TADA—short for Totally Awesome Dungeon Adventure—aims to be a Commodore 64 re-implementation and improvement of a game I played on a local Apple // bulletin board system (BBS) in Tacoma, Washington (state), USA. It ran GBBS Pro software, modified to reflect the theme of an ancient Roman/Syrian city called Dura-Europos. The system operator was named after a Roman emperor of that era, Trajan.

The game which garnered my attention was called The Land of Spur. The in-game atmosphere was great, despite most room descriptions being only a few lines long. I remember logging lots of text from it, but I was never able to get far in it without dying. This frustrated me; I wanted to know more about the inner workings of the game.

From this a half-formed seed of an idea began... I would re-create it on my own.

Update: Several years ago, Trajan found my web page detailing this project whilst Googling for "Dura Europos" and got in contact with me on my BBS! That was really cool. He's set up his system again since then, working from backup disks. Maybe some day we'll actually get to visit.

And so TADA began its life as a pile of notes in 8th grade (in 1989) —many of which I still have, written in faded pencil on the back of class notes, envelopes, you name it. Unhappily, no cocktail napkins. Hey, I was too young to drink at the time. My handle "Pinacolada" refers to the yogurt, which I still love dearly.

So I started programming little bits and pieces of it, working mainly from the logs I had accumulated. Along the way, I thought it would be interesting to add a few features, such as the capability for the player to add things to the game: rooms, items, and monsters. This would effectively turn it into a one-player Multi-User Dungeon (SUD? Single-User Dungeon?).

A few years later I was able to purchase a copy of GBBS Pro at an ungodly price, along with the Holy Grail (er, programmer's reference guide) and a magical disk which contained the original version of The Land Of Spur.

Unfortunately, GBBS Pro did not boot. It was missing the ACOS.OBJ file—sort of a key element since that is the interpreter for the script language the BBS and The Land of Spur were written in, called Advanced Communications Operating System. Trajan kindly has supplied this file to me, and another friend from IRC (geneb) provided working disk images of GBBS Pro.

Back then though, I was stuck. But my mind's eye could reconstruct what the game could have looked like in its native habitat from reading the source code. (You'll have to imagine the pick and shovel, little brushes, and pith helmet of an archaeologist; I've heard many tools of the trade are rather rough on vintage hardware. Mmm. Vintage. It doesn't get older, it gets better. Would you care to sniff the power cord? No... stop... don't lick it! Ack! Well, that's okay; it wasn't plugged in anyway.)

I've made a hard copy of all the source code and have it backed up in multiple places now. You shoulda seen the one that got away...

Also, I have PDFs of the BBS manual courtesy of geneb, since my project to HTMLize it are still in limbo.

II. Some Features

The Land of Spur has a very team-oriented, cooperative world view, even though it was just a single-player game (ie, one player would log on, make their moves, log off, wait for the next player to log on, etc.) as "was the style at the time" [picture hanging an onion on your belt ala an episode of The Simpsons].

You could also have up to three allies, which could improve your chances of winning a battle. I'm not sure whether the allies could also carry things (the version I have doesn't appear to have that capability) but I've already added it (well, at least the inventory part so far) in TADA. These could be found whilst adventuring, if your statistics were "good enough" (I'm still not 100% clear on what merited this) and you had the option of them joining your party. On the enhanced Dura-Europos version, you could also re-order the allies' positions (front, flank and rear guard) to gain tactical advantage.

You could also charm monsters and have them join your party! Rawr.

There was also a well-done (optional) guild system, in which people banded together to beat up opposing guilds. Or you could be a civilian, and have no affiliation with guilds. Or you could be a rogue, and against everyone! Muhahaha.

You could also have a horse, which would speed up (quoted from the user documentation) "your journey over the land parts of the Land." It could also improve your chances of winning a battle (you could CHARGE into battle on the first attack and gain a bonus, especially if you were carrying a lance or pole weapon). The horse can also carry things, if you find some saddlebags for it. And it has to be fed and watered, of course.

I'm not sure whether this was done purely by choice of Trajan, but there were Storm Weapons in the game: intelligent, able to cast spells. Pretty neat concept. I'm not quite sure how to implement them yet.

One of the neatest things about the game was that it involved what I saw as time travel. You could be on the bridge of the Enterprise with a two-handed sword, or wander around a dungeon level with a Star Trek-type phaser. (Of course this was just the ability to carry items anywhere in the game, but I like my explanation better!)

The goal of the game was configurable by the sysop, which usually involved getting out with:

a) a certain amount of money

b) a magical item

c) both a) and b), or

d) defeating the god Spur, who was a pretty hard dude to kill, I would imagine. I never did get that far.

Some other interesting features of The Land of Spur were the fact that—going back to the guilds concept—every room in the game had a "guild alignment," and you could gain bonuses by having other members of your guild in the room with you at the time you decided to duel another character. To gain an easy bonus, you could even pick up sleeping guild members from other rooms (if the character let you). The FL command let you turn that on or off, if you found it annoying that you woke up in a different room that you bedded down for the night.

There was also a statistic called "Bad Hombre Rating" (abbreviated as "BHR") which summarized what that character's fighting ability was.

If you belong to a guild, there are guild headquarters located at various spots on the map, which you can enter if you've paid your initial Guild dues at the beginning of each month (a wrinkle I will add at some future date). The payoff is there's usually a stockpile of gold, weapons, ammunition, and other things for people down on their luck. It's expected that you leave something in return, and I may enforce this rule via the software, or at least keep a log of whom takes what, viewable by anyone in the guild, and leave it up to vigilante justice to rain down upon the leech from within the ranks when they become greedy (while watching that player's Honor rating plummet for attacking members of their own guild :). Both ideas are equally appealing. The latter is certainly more entertaining, though.

Speaking of gold: as everyone knows, rivers are some of the richest places in the world, right? They've got banks on both sides (dodges the tomatoes).

While we're on the subject... there can be a problem when that hollow knot in the old oak tree just isn't big enough to store all your gains, ill-gotten or no. Plus, carrying them all around just entices the Dwarf who wanders around in search of wealthy victims. The Merchant's Annex on Level One is pleased to announce they now have a Guild-owned, FDIC-insured (Flathead, Dimwit, Idiot and Clodhopper) lending facility available to the general public. If you're an evil thief, you may just want to moonlight as a bank robber. [Inside tip:Let's just say the guards aren't paid very well. But if some high-powered mage finds you've been skimming gold off his account... *shrug* -- don't say I didn't warn you. You may look cute with a horse's head.]

If you're not part of a Guild and can stand some higher-than-average interest rates, visit Vinney at the Wall Bar & Grill. He's just your typical underworld mob boss, good (enough) to people who respect him, not so good to those who don't. Can't pay back a loan on time? No hard feelings. He'll just send an Invisible Stalker after you, one of the nastiest creatures in the dungeons, the likes of which most high-level wizards have trouble with.

Vinney also has other connections, some of which he'll tell you about if you merit a certain level of trust. Such as his totally legitimate, above-board package delivery business.

(Hmm, I just made the package delivery business up to be funny, but now that people see it in print they'll expect it in the game... that would never do. Just not sure how to implement it. I already thought of Vinney being available for children's parties to be amusing. After all, the guy no doubt needs some levity in his life, ordering all these hits and stuff has gotta bring a guy down eventually. I heard him say he does balloon animals and magic tricks.)