[no subject]

"Is it possible to write a text adventure in under 2K of RAM? Some people 
 have tried, and some have succeeded."

I would like to officially announce the formation of The 1st Annual 1 to 
2K Classic Text Adventure Competition. I will be accepting BASIC, 
C/C++, Fortran, Assembly language, and TADS submissions for 1 to 2K 
text adventures written for the following computing platforms: 

Commodore 64/128/+4/Vic-20/PET
Texas Instruments 99/4A
IBM PC/PCJr
Atari 400/800
Apple II/IIe
Sinclair ZX80/ZX81/Spectrum/128/QL/+
TRS-80 I/II/III
Color Computer 1/2/3
Acorn
Tomy Tutor
Bally Astrocade
Atari 2600 VCS
DEC Rainbow
Compucolor I/II
Altair 8800
Amstrad CPC/464 
Commodore Amiga
Linux 
Macintosh (including Classic Mac)
Windows/DOS.

Please submit your 1 to 2K adventure games to me. The 2K size can be 
either the source code, or the EXE, BIN, OBJ, PRG, ELF or other self-
contained, self-running binary. So you can thus have, say, an 8K source 
code listing, so long as the binary format doesn't exceed 2.9KB of 
size. 

You may also crunch the binary down with a compressing program such as 
UPX or Winzip. The competition officially begins on June 28, 2004, and 
runs through September 29, 2004. I will post all submissions, regardless 
of when they were submitted, and then review them and post grades on my 
page on October 7th. Good luck! =)

==========================
The "Rules Are Guidelines"
==========================

Maximum binary file size should not exceed 2,999 bytes zipped or UPXed. 
Maximum source code file size should not exceed 2,560 bytes (give or take 
a few 100 bytes). Absolute maximum is 2,816 bytes for source. 

I will also be accepting user reviews of competition games, which will 
also be posted on this website.

==============================
Some general tips to help you get started
==============================

Dark Mage (4K) fit into the limited memory of the Atari 2600 VCS. There 
are also the 2K Adventures by Fredrik Ramsberg and Johan Berntsson, providing 
a good basis for how to fit a text adventure into under 2K of RAM. And if 
Bally Astrocade owners need inspiration, check out Cavern Quest by Bruce 
Jaeger. 

Certain programming languages, such as Bally BASIC and Spectravision 
Compumate (Atari 2600 BASIC) require special considerations for lack 
of string variables. Other integer-based BASICs, such as Palo Alto 
Tiny BASIC, require even more consideration when writing text adventures. 
It is possible, however, to write text adventures using integer-based 
BASICs with creative use of simple menus (and even joysticks, in the 
case of the Atari 2600's Dark Mage and Bally BASIC's Cavern Quest) to 
simulate traditional verb/noun user input. 

Another consideration when writing: Does your system use/need RAM 
expansion? If so, in the case of the Sinclair ZX80/ZX81 or Commodore 
Vic-20, what changes need to be made to the game's source code? Also 
ask the question of which language is best suited for the memory 
limitations of your machine? Will Assembly Language do a better 
job, in more efficient code? Or will C/C++, Fortran or BASIC do 
the job just as well?

Finally, when starting on a new adventure game, ask yourself what 2K can 
achieve, and what modifications need to be made for the proposed game to work 
under the aforementioned RAM. In the case of Bally BASIC, there are exactly 
1,760 bytes of RAM available. Is that enough to write your game? If not, 
should Z80 assembly language work better for your Bally adventure game? 
How about on the Apple? Do you choose integer BASIC, Applesoft BASIC, C/C++,
Fortran or assembly language? What will do the best job for the game 
you intend to author? These questions all should be asked before sitting 
down to write the first line of code for your adventure game.

=========
Story Ideas
=========

Need an idea for an adventure game? Look around your environment. Or 
choose from popular culture, especially movies, folk stories 
and books. Is the old "castle beyond the forest" still cool enough to 
build a game around? How about humorous stories, such as the 
search for the Golden Cat? Does the Golden Cat meow? Is it a prized 
artifact from a lost civilization? Only you can decide such a story!
A good, basic storyline need not be complicated, either. You might place 
the player in a spaceship or on Jupiter. How about sending the 
player out of the Solar System in search of the meaning of life? Or how 
about a game centered into the human brain, like a synapse moving about 
the neural pathways within the visual cortex?

Perhaps you could also write events in the past, such as the Alamo, 
Tombstone or Gettysburgh (to name a few). Another game scenerio 
could be the player entering a "tunnel of light" after eating too much at 
Denny's (sort of like a mysticism event, like an Out-of-Body-Experience). 
And then there are also the stories about ghosts moving through walls, 
animal spirits roaming a lone hillside (such as the Nordic Wolves) and 
other strange things such as The Mothman and Big Foot. The potential 
storylines are very interesting, to say the least! 

To help get you started, see my 8KB adventure game, in BASIC, called The 
Melarkian:

http://panks.freeshell.org/melark.zip

There is also "B-Venture", my own competition game submission, listed 
below:

http://panks.freeshell.org/bvent.zip

Sincerely,

Paul Allen Panks
dunric@gmail.com

-- 
panks@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org