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The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

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Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#51

Post by ScottAdams »

s7r wrote: post #47
ScottAdams wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was approached by Byte Magazine to do a feature article for them. I included my game source code in it as I wanted to share the technology I had developed with others. Sadly there were a number of typos when they transcribed it into the magazine. Yet many people were able to press through and debug it to get it work which was pretty amazing. My thought was we are all standing on the shoulder's of those who went bef…

> My thought was we are all standing on the shoulder's of those who went before us. By helping each other we build towards a better future. Inspired by this comment, just wanted to share this with you: https://manyworlds.pages.dev/about Still in development (first time sharing the site!) — in any case, thought it might resonate!

Oh that is really cool! Thanks for sharing it. I signed up!

Hey folks take a look!

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#52

Post by ScottAdams »

baggy_trough wrote: post #49

I still remember enjoying the TRS-80 games Scott made - I probably played 5 or 6 of them. Is there a (reasonable) way to play these games today?

Hi!

Good question. My clasic games are available on a number of places on the web. You can find links to some of them on my personal web page at www.msadams.com

If you want to have a really fun experience check out www.AdventurelandXL.com which is the full original game and then something really special :)

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#56

Post by monocasa »

Veen wrote: post #27
weswpg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His wife is extremely young and I can't look at them together without thinking something is really wrong there. He might be older than his father-in-law.

She is 33 and was 25 when they met. That is not "extremely young". She's a mature adult, and presumably she knows what she's doing.

We're not saying it should be illegal, we're saying it's creepy.

The general rule is you can go down to half your age plus seven years. That makes anyone over 36 creepy for dating a 25 year old.

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#57

Post by rsynnott »

zalequin wrote: post #11
JshWright wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is a good point. Especially as he seems to have kind of gone off the proverbial deep end with his political fanaticism in recent years...

If you read his books, it’s obvious he’s doing that on purpose in order to get more attention (which eventually is converted to fatter bottom line for him). Essentially, the dude is a professional troll.

Eh... He's always had... peculiar ideas. It's just that previously his detachment from reality was mostly in relatively harmless directions ("The Secret" type stuff, lack of belief in gravity, etc). I would buy that his current delusions might be genuine.

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#58

Post by Veen »

monocasa wrote: post #56
Veen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She is 33 and was 25 when they met. That is not "extremely young". She's a mature adult, and presumably she knows what she's doing.

We're not saying it should be illegal, we're saying it's creepy. The general rule is you can go down to half your age plus seven years. That makes anyone over 36 creepy for dating a 25 year old.

That's what I'm struggling to understand. Who is being creepy? Who has behaved in a creepy way? Adams or his wife? What does creepy even mean in the context of two adults forming a relationship? Why is it anyone else's business?

(To be clear, I'm no fan of Adams. I dislike his politics and never enjoyed his work particularly. But I find this focus on his marriage weird and, I suppose, creepy in itself).

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#59

Post by mypalmike »

ScottAdams wrote: post #44
pamoroso wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting, thanks. I wonder whether you distributed those early commercial games as BASIC source on tape.

Adventureland and Pirate Adventure were both originally done in BASIC and the interpreter with the compiled language (it reduced it to numbers) was on the tape. I did have some extremely clever folks reverse engineer my language and then write games in it! Hat tip to Alvin Files and William Demas amongst others!

Pirate Adventure was the first game I had on my Atari 800. I really loved it. I still remember coming across the terms "pieces of eight" and "flotsam and jetsam" and having to ask my mom what they meant. I seem to recall it was my first encounter with the the word "flat" meaning apartment. My vocabulary was thus improved by your work. Thanks!

Re: The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams

#60

Post by ianbicking »

Game design question:

Text adventures as a category always struck me as kind of lonely. They often take place in environments where all the people have been removed, like miniature apocalypses.

It seems technically fairly obvious why this happens: other people are too hard to model. People have goals and expectations and so someone traipsing around trying random things is not generally acceptable, and creating characters that are disinterested in their environment is its own challenge. (Writing this I realize grumpy and stubborn characters are fairly common, maybe for these same reasons!)

In all these years of advancement in games the NPC still seems either lifeless or absent. I'm afraid I haven't actually played your games, so I don't know how you've tried to address it, but I'm sure you've thought about it. I'd be curious to hear any of those thoughts, but maybe specific questions:

1. Have you had any successes you could share in making a NPC seem "alive"?

2. Any ideas you were convinced were great but failed when implemented?

3. Do you think new technology can be applied to this? For instance it sounds like you are using more advanced NLP in Escape the Gloomer. (But understanding is only half, NPC motivation and goals seem equally hard.)

4. Does a strong NPC distract from the autonomy of the player? (Sometimes I wonder if people even want a strong NPC, or if players actually prefer NPCs to be background.)

5. And separately, have you tried AI Dungeon and if so what did you think?

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