Source:GEnieLamp A2, October 1992
| This page is a verbatim reproduction of original source material and should not be edited except for maintenance. | |
| Description |
"Hidden Treasure", a column excerpted from the October 1992 issue of GEnieLamp A2. |
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| Source |
No source specified. Please edit this description and provide a source. |
| Date |
October 1992 |
| Author | |
| License |
It is believed that the use of this copyrighted item in Eamon Wiki qualifies as fair use under the copyright law of the United States. |
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Games People Play
Apple II Games
By Darrel Raines [D.Raines]
Hidden Treasure
The Public Domain Eamon Adventure Game Series
Introduction
"Fade in to a dimly lit tunnel that has moss hanging on the walls. The source of light is a few torches hung every 10 feet along the sides of the tunnel. On the floor of the tunnel you can see a pile of diamonds that would buy you a kingdom and ensure a happy future for the king into the foreseeable future. Now, there is only one little problem with your plans for a glorious retirement.
You swing your trusty sword, Trollsfire, at the giant orc and hit. The giant orc is at death's door, knocking loudly!
The giant orc swings his heavy axe and hits. Your armor absorbs the blow. The lesser orc shoots an arrow at you and misses.
The orc guard stabs at you with his sword and hits. You are badly injured!
The question of the moment is whether you should flee now and return to fight another day. You have the giant orc on the floor, if you can just finish him off before you are finished yourself. Unfortunately, for the giant orc, that pile of diamonds sure does look like your destiny.
You thrust Trollsfire back at the giant orc and...
...as you look around the tunnel that is now littered with the bodies of fallen orcs, you find that you have no more enemies at hand. With a sigh of relief, you put Trollsfire back into your belt until the next battle. Your body feels like you just tried out a new carriage by letting the horses drag it over you. With a coarse whisper you utter the words of healing. Immediately you can feel the wash of energy through your body. You are now in good shape.
With a confident stride you walk over to the pile of diamonds. This was a rough dungeon to conquer, but it looks like the reward will make it worth the effort. As you bend down to scoop the diamonds, you meet an unexpected resistance. Something is wrong here. The diamonds don't seem to be laying loose in a pile like you first thought. Instead, they seem to be embedded in a tough hide! As you draw your head back to look for the edge of the seemingly endless stretch of hide, you see a large pair of gleaming eyes inspecting you from the dark shadows of a tunnel recess. You have managed to irritate a very large dragon.
As you draw out Trollsfire, you think to yourself that you should have stayed back in that warm, cozy tavern with the sweet tasting ale. Fade out to the sounds of metal biting into bone and the roar of fire blazing out in a hot blast."
History
The section of history related in the previous section could have easily come from one of the many adventures awaiting the daring game player within the varied worlds of Eamon. Eamon is a public domain, adventure gaming system for the Apple II computer that has been around for many years. As best I can tell, it was created about 1980–1981.
The original idea was brought to life by Donald Brown. I was first introduced to Eamon in 1983–1984. Even at that time, no mention was ever made of Donald Brown still being around to support his creation. But the wonderful thing about Eamon is that the software was written to be an expandable, changeable, unrestricted environment for people to create their own adventure games. Eamon provides a shell that can be adapted by the programmer to make an adventure of any variety. Indeed, many different styles of adventures already exist within the Eamon gaming system: Tolkien-type adventures, science fiction, fantasy, Dungeon and Dragons, and many more.
Eamon adventures are written in Applesoft Basic and run under the standard 40 or 80 column screen mode. Don't let this fact fool you. There are many Infocom text adventures that outshine the graphic adventures produced since then. Eamon adventures are as good or bad as the creators of the individual games themselves. Some are outstanding. Others are at best only fair. When you get tired of playing a game, you can sit down and create a game. The possibilities are endless.
Even if you do not want to write your own adventures, you can still enjoy the more than two hundred games that have already been written. All of them can be run under ProDOS and many of them make use of 80 column text screen to provide magnificent descriptions of the adventure creatures and surroundings.
It wouldn't be fair to describe the history of Eamon and not say anything about the best thing to happen to Eamon since its creation: Tom Zuchowski. Tom has been keeping Eamon alive and well now for some time. He has written a number of games himself. But more importantly, he has spear-headed many of the efforts to keep Eamon working on modern Apples with modern operating systems. Eamon was first written on 5-1/4" disks under DOS 3.3. After you play a few Eamon adventures, see if you don't think that Tom's efforts have been worthwhile.
Next Time
Eamon is too big and too exciting to do justice with a single article. Therefore, I must ask you to look back in on this column in the November issue of GEnieLamp. We will then do some critical analysis of the gaming system.
Next month I will describe how to play a typical game of Eamon. I will go through the process of setting up the game on your hard drive or 3.5-inch floppies. I will give you a rating for the Eamon system itself and a few of the better adventures. Finally I will have a few parting words about this wonderful freeware system. Some of you will be itching to try out Eamon before next month. Therefore, I have listed below some good starter files that are available on GEnie right now for your gaming pleasure. Until next time, happy exploring!
| No. | File Name | Type | Address | YYMMDD | Bytes | Access | Lib |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16728 | BEST.EAMONS.BXY Desc: An incredible role-play experience! |
X | T.ZUCHOWSKI | 910929 | 348544 | 100 | 36 |
| 16750 | STARTER.KIT.BXY Desc: Very Best role playing system! |
X | A2.DEAN | 911002 | 331008 | 160 | 36 |
Author
Darrel Raines (D.Raines) welcomes any feedback or comments via electronic mail to the listed user name.
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