Eamon Revolutions, Database Editor for Windows, and Contest Reminder

So Huw Williams isn't the only one making sweeping contributions to the Wonderful World of Eamon. Derek Jeter, author of the exceedingly well-crafted Stronghold of Kahr-Dur, has recently released (in alpha in one case) some great Eamon-related software.

First off is the very promising Eamon Revolutions, a web-based update of Eamon. A number of enhancements have been made by Jeter, details of which can be found at the Wonderful Wiki of Eamon entry. It is presently in alpha and The Beginner's Cave is the only adventure thus far ported but it looks to be a lot of fun, as well as a good way to introduce folks to the joy of Eamon from any web browser.

But there's more... Jeter has also put together a Windows-based GUI dedicated to editing Eamon Deluxe databases, the EDX Adventure Database Editor. For aspiring Eamon authors with a Windows machine, this software appears to make the editing of an Eamon Deluxe adventure a smoother process.

With that being said, I'll remind readers of the blog that the deadline for the Eamon Micro-Adventure Contest is fast approaching. With the EDX Adventurer Editor, there's really no excuse not to secure for yourself the eternal glory and esteem that comes with writing an Eamon adventure. So put together a few rooms and send them to us by June 1st at tfeamon[at]gmail.com or eamondeluxe[at]gmail.com.

Announcing the Wonderful Wiki of Eamon

Over the past year, the intrepid Huw Williams has worked tirelessly--though quietly--to lay the foundations for an extraordinarily comprehensive, online Eamon encyclopedia. Recently, this work has become open to the public.

The Wonderful Wiki of Eamon, which can be found at www.eamononline.com, is a wiki edited and curated by members of the extended Eamon community. Anyone can log in and begin lending a hand, whether it's by creating a page for an missing topic or by adding material on an existing one. Every area of the Eamon universe is touched on and what Huw has put together is nothing short of phenomenal.

As a great example of the potential of Huw's project, check out the page for The Lair of the Minotaur. Included are summaries of the plot, reviews, and a section detailing how its characters and geography relate to the larger Eamon universe. Even the original MAINPGM in BASIC has been included. While not all Eamon adventures have received this exhaustive a treatment, you're invited to pick your favorite Eamon adventure and assist in giving it the same treatment.

So head over to the Wonderful Wiki of Eamon, whether it's to check out the content or to contribute to the project.

Eamon Adventure Nominated for Interactive Fiction Award (and other news).

Our very own Thomas Ferguson has had his debut Eamon adventure, A Runcible Cargo, nominated for the XYZZY IF Games award(s). If you haven't played Runcible, you should. And if you have a spare moment, you can show your support by voting for it at the XYZZY Awards page. Voting ends on April 15th.

A Runcible Cargo is included with the Eamon Deluxe 5.0 package and also available in a stand alone format for Windows users.


In other Eamon news...

Work is nearly finished on an old French Eamon that was unearthed (as a very damaged Apple II disk image) last fall. Originally a version 6 Eamon, "Le H.L.M. Maudit" (or "Tenement of the Damned") has been translated into English, converted to Eamon Deluxe, and is now being backported (as a version 7 style Eamon) to a new Apple II disk image. The salvaged adventure is a short, but well executed (and rather humorous), hack'n'slash romp that was recently reviewed in the March 2013 Eamon Deluxe Newsletter. Both the Eamon Deluxe version and the Apple II disk image backport will offer the option of being played in either English or French.

A new adventure is currently being tested and debugged: Eamon Deluxe #25 - The Treachery of Zorag by Derek C. Jeter includes active monsters that players can talk to, ask questions of, and otherwise interact with on a much more advanced level than that found in standard adventures. Among other special features, it also has a very large map which includes over three hundred rooms that cover multiple different settings and types of terrain. Derek is the very skilled Eamon author who's debut adventure, "Stronghold of Kahr-Dur", was released to favorable reviews last fall and "The Treachery of Zorag" is going to be one that Eamon fans will not want to miss. Its predicted public release date is late April or early May of 2013.

It has come to my attention that the "plain text" editions of the Eamon Deluxe Newsletter are not easily readable on non-Windows computers, nor can they be displayed without plugin workarounds on any web browser except Internet Explorer. With the release of Eamon Deluxe 5.0, a primary focus of modern Eamon development is accessibility. This means that new material should designed for cross platform flexibility and 100% compatible with the screen reading software used by vision impaired fans. The plain text newsletter editions, which are currently available as Rich Text Format documents, are soon going to be replaced with simple HTML versions.

Likewise, this blog itself has been reported to have compatibility issues with screen readers and, among other problems, doesn't allow vision impaired readers to post comments. Currently I'm considering the option of re-posting all blogs on a more compatible mirror site, but if anyone has an easier solution or any suggestions as to possible workarounds for this problem please contact me. In the meantime, vision impaired users can email their comments to either Matt Clark (eamonag [at] gmail.com), Thomas Ferguson (tfeamon [at] gmail.com), or myself (eamondeluxe [at] gmail.com) for posting.

Two previously unavailable newsletters have been added to the Guild archive page. Both originally published in 1987, the new additions to the archive include a newsletter by Kent Sullivan regarding the C64 Eamon cousin, Imagery! and a loosely written publication describing an Atari ST port of the original Eamon system.

There is quite a bit more Eamon-related material currently in development or awaiting final polish. Among the copious collection lingering about the Guild workspace like a mimic in the Beginners Cave: a set of working, fully playable Apple II disk images containing the short lived "Eamon Pro" system; updates to the Guild's classic Eamon disk image library which will once again be bootable (via emulator) and patched with fixes from the EAG's list of known bugs/issues; new additions to the Eamon Deluxe adventure pack, "The Lost Treasures of Eamon", which include "Beneath Mount Imagery" (converted from the C64 Imagery! system) and "Crypt Crashers-- The Tomb of Horrors" (from an excellent Atari ST Eamon port); additional Eamon Deluxe adventure packs updated and made available for the new 5.0 system, including "The Donald Brown Adventures", "The Roger Pender Adventures", "The Robert Parker Adventures" and "Classic Eamon Adventures Volume One"; and... many more items of interest to Eamon fans.

A Trifecta of Eamon News

Three things which will surely interest readers of the blog:

1. Bill Martens' website www.callapple.org put up a post yesterday detailing a completely painless way to play Apple II Eamon online---no emulators, no hassle. Frank Black's Eamon hard drive has been adapted at the Virtual Apple ][ and it runs a host of ProDos Eamons flawlessly. To try it out, go to www.virtualapple.org/eamonfkdisk.html.
2. Chester Bolingbroke has written a piece detailing Eamon in his awesome blog, The CRPG Addict. The blog is fascinating and well-written and features a very lively (and equally fascinating) comments section. The relevant post can be read at www.crpgaddict.blogspot.com.
3. The March 2013 issue of the Eamon Deluxe Newsletter has been posted, filled with all sorts of reviews and articles. The .rtf version has been produced and will be posted alongside the .pdf version soon. 

The Eamon Deluxe Newsletter, by the way, isn't necessarily devoted to merely Eamon Deluxe. All platforms, past and present, of Eamon are dealt with and represented. (Indeed, in the present issue, we feature reviews of adventures and systems for the Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari ST, and Eamon Deluxe!) We also welcome any contributions you may have, whether they be letters, comments, reviews, articles, or otherwise.

Catching up

Finally tackling some of my Eamon to-do list...

I've added two reviews to the website that Thomas Ferguson sent me way back in January of 2011... Yes, over two years later, although in my defense, I was just starting my MBA back then. Anyway, mosey on over to http://www.eamonag.org/columns/Reviews251-300.htm to read his reviews of Eamon #253 The Prism of Shadows by Wade Clarke and James Anderson and Eamon #254 Dawn of the Warlock by Wade Clarke.

Uploaded a fixed version of #144 Gartin Manor that Wade Clarke sent me back in December of 2011.

Posted the review from Dark@xgam.org, only two years later.

Sigh. 

Review from a new Eamon fan

Bad Matthew. Dark@xgam.org sent me this post for the blog in January of 2012 and I meant to publish it much earlier. I'm only now sorting through my old emails and found it. Sorry for the delay! 

A new Eamon fan.
For many people, Eamon will be a matter of nostalgia, something they played 20 years ago.

For myself however, my acquaintance with Eamon actually began in 2008.
Indeed, while I found some great if titles (Worlds apart, Pytho's mask and Babel to name a few), it seemed that four out of five games I tried I'd find myself running around getting frustrated as I’m told something like "I don't know how to put" or "you can't use that."

Right from the age of about three, I've been interested in computer games, however  being visually impaired game access is, of course, an issue. Using screen reading software, most standard text in windows will be quite readable. Thus games like interactive fiction, muds and browser based mmorps are quite playable or can be made so with a little adaptation.(Audio only computer games that output exclusively in sound also exist, for more information please visit www.audiogames.net).

What has always been of interest to me most in games is exploration, being able to wander around an unknown area, become truly immersed in the setting, become part of an epic story, or at the very least get to explore a new environment different from everyday life. So when I first got to university in about 2002 and found games that used text that I could play on my PC, I went on something of a spree, trying out everything I could.

The problem was that I quickly found each type of game had it's limitations.

Browser based mmorps tended to work very much on a competitive basis, focused almost exclusively on bettering your characters stats in order to compete with other players, ---- indeed many were heavily focused upon player vs player combat. This wouldn't be so bad in itself, accept that in the vast majority of games it seemed that little or no effort had been spent on the setting or the description, and most of the game actions would boil down to hitting the explore button until you found a monster (often just defined as a single name), then hitting attack until the monster's hp got to zero.

Even those few games such as legend of the green dragon that employed some questing often worked on a hit a button until you get a result sort of basis, with little actual exploring to be done and often very repetitive game play.

Then there was interactive fiction, which certainly had lots of wandering around and reading descriptions, not to mention plot and objectives. However since most if games used puzzles as their primary method of moving the game along, and since most had a very large parser (subject to program limitations), guessing the solutions to puzzles, or indeed guessing how the game wanted you to write solutions could be quite frustrating.

Also, combat in interactive fiction games was at a minimum, and it was always a little disappointing to realize that you couldn't actually pull out a sword and have at it with the evil troll or reduce the robots into scrap, since while certainly not all problems can be solved with violence, it does make for a good dramatic confrontation, or a way to give you a nice high tension break in the middle of mapping a maze or thinking out a riddle.

So, it seemed text rpgs fell between too stools. Either it was if, had ridiculous puzzles and zero combat, or it was a browser based mmorp, with repetitive grinding and little or no description or exploration. The Eamon system however offers a really nice compromise. Enough combat mechanics to allow confrontation, and enough of a parser to allow puzzles though not so broad as to be ridiculous.

I'd heard about Eamon on various if sites along with some of the few other text rpgs (usually old dos ones), available like Fallthru or Westfront, but since a screen reader can't interact with emulated text due to lack of the windows graphic toolkit, I'd given up hope of trying it. That was until in 2008 I ran across Eamon deluxe, which obviously ran in a dos style environment and thus had readable text.

Yes, in some ways the system was slightly archaic, for instance I couldn't use x for examine as in most if games, and some of the behavior of the parser was a little clunky, and I sometimes missed being able to get further information by examining monsters or items. Yet despite these problems, despite being twenty years old the thing still worked! The mimic was still a surprise, treasures were still fun to get, it was fun to use spells and it was great to gather allies and see them fight on my side.

As I tried several of the earlier adventures in Eamon Deluxe, I also realized something else about Eamon which probably makes more difference today than it did back in the 80's and 90's.

Eamon does not take itself seriously!

Even adventures with a serious theme where you are saving the world, rescuing some doomed individual or confronting diabolical evil have a rather easy going attitude. Demons are clobberable, treasures can be sold for cash and good will pretty much always win.

Though pretty obvious in the time it was created, today, with every hero being a gruff  angst ridden scumbag, and every villain having some sort of tragic past, the old fashioned values of heroes who slaughter their way confidently through hoards of nasties, and evil overlords simply reeking of the essence of badness is just down right refreshing!

Even the mild sexism in the form of the many rescued damsels doesn't come across as over the top (particularly because quite often in the Eamon system, the damsels can grab up a weapon once rescued and start smacking away).

The only problem of course was that the initial Eamon Deluxe was not perfect. It took some wangling to run successfully, indeed some visually impaired people wouldn't try it for this reason, had one or two bugs and didn't contain all of the adventures (I was sorry that Sam Ruby's were missing since from the reviews those sounded awesome).

However now Frank and Eamon deluxe are back many of these problems are being fixed, and more Eamons will be playable, which is good news all around, Perhaps even some new adventures will be written just for Eamon deluxe.
Despite those in the IF community that criticize, I am certain Eamon very much has it's place today, since it fits a role that few other games do, that of an exploration rpg which can manage combat or puzzles, plus many of the classic games have quite a different take on fantasy than we see in fashion currently.

For these reasons, I very much hope Eamon deluxe will help bring in some new players to Eamon just as it did with me, since in a lot of ways it is unique, and the fact that it persisted for so long and so many games shows that even if not the most modern system, it still has a lot to offer. 

Eamon Micro-Adventure Contest

The March 2013 Newsletter has been completed and will be posted soon. In the meantime, enjoy another preview of its contents: an Eamon micro-adventure writing contest!

If you've read through the old NEUC and EAG newsletters, you've undoubtedly run across one of the contests held years ago. (This is why there are about a billion Eamons mentioning a "Life Orb.") They tended to produce some pretty solid adventures. Of course, actually sitting down to write an Eamon is a pretty daunting task. While it's certainly a lot of fun, to write an entire adventure requires some investment of time. So here's the compromise:

Consider a large Eamon dungeon in the shape of a tower. The challenge is to write in approximately ten rooms a miniature dungeon making up one floor of the tower using either Apple II Eamon or Eamon Deluxe. You can add monsters, treasures, secret doors, and weapons... whatever your mind can generate, so be it. Frank and I will string them together into a (dis)continuous whole and judge on the basis of pure awesomeness.

The winner will receive a plaque on the glorious Wall of Fame (in Frank Black's Waiting Room micro-adventure) to be memorialized for all eternity. (We'll throw in a free subscription to the newsletter as well.)

You, reader, are afforded the opportunity to make your mark on the Wonderful World of Eamon without taking three months of spare time to do so. Grab a few beers and a pencil, fire up the Adventure Designer, and in an evening you too can be part of Eamon history.

Here are the rules:

1. The target is around ten rooms. If you want to dip your toes in, we'll accept fewer. If you're an old hat, we'll accept more.
2. Dungeons must include a staircase leading up and a staircase leading down at some point in the dungeon so that we can weave the entries together.
3. No special programming. Frank has equipped Eamon Deluxe with enough built-in functionality that you can produce a number of effects without hassle.
4. If you want to go all House of Ill Repute on us... well, please don't. A few salty allusions are one thing but bear in mind that there may be children writing entries. For some reason, I'd feel awkward leaving Sesame Street and climbing the stairs to Return to the Cat House. 
5. Submissions must be written in either Eamon 7.x or 8.x for the Apple II or Eamon Deluxe 5.0 for other platforms.
6. As a special feature, entering a value of 1 in the User #1 value of a monster will ensure both that the monster's friendliness doesn't change and that the monster is invincible.

And that's all. If you want to keep in a medieval motif, feel free. If you want to go all high-tech, feel free. If you want to recreate your local Starbucks Coffee, replete with that cute barista who hooks you up with free mochachinos, go ahead (just bear Rule 4 in mind).

If you would like to participate but want assistance, you can write me at tfeamon [at] gmail.com or Frank at eamondeluxe [at] gmail.com. We'll be glad to help.

Submissions may be sent as disk images (for Apple II entries) or compressed folders (for EDX entries) to the above addresses by June 1st, 2013 to be considered.