Four New (or Newly Available) Eamon Adventures!

Between Keith Dechant's last blog post and its subsequent comments, there was a suggestion of an incoming tidal wave of good news for Eamon in 2020. Well, that wave has made landfall, leading to the announcement of four new (or heretofore unannounced) Eamon adventures across three platforms.

All of the adventures represent the best of what Eamon can be: Each includes fantastic writing and storytelling; several are wide in scope and leverage lots of special modifications to the basic Eamon routine.


Malleus Maleficarum: The first original adventure written for the Eamon Remastered system, Keith Dechant's Malleus Maleficarum sees the adventurer's friend Maya draw the player to the far-away land of Virrat. From Dechant's description, the adventurer travels

to a nearby land that has outlawed magic and is conducting a witch hunt against all magic users. Your quest is to rescue a friend's grandmother and investigate a militant anti-magic organization called the Cobalt Front... The Cobalt Front is a very lawful organization, at least when it comes to magic and magic weapons, and you can easily find yourself getting into trouble with the law if you're not careful.

There are other things happening in the land of Virrat, too, and you'll find yourself battling some bizarre creatures as you learn what's really going on.

Malleus Maleficarum relies heavily on interaction with non-player characters, as well, which helps develops the storyline. For playing the adventure and getting more information about it, the reader can consult the following links:

• Malleus Maleficarum can be played at Eamon Remastered.
• The Malleus Maleficarum page at the Eamon Wiki will undoubtedly be updated with further information on the adventure.

Land of the Mountain King: Several years ago, Kenneth Pedersen released Land of the Mountain King as an ADRIFT adventure and has now ported it to Michael Penner's Eamon CS system.

While the adventure's scope is more constrained than the others described in this post, its writing and story are solid. From its introduction:

You are walking in the woods looking for prey when you are suddenly shrouded in a cloud of white smoke. The smoke is too dense to see through, but eventually, the smoke clears and you find yourself on a barren plain.

As you turn around, you see an old witch stand before you. "Listen carefully!" the witch whispers with a hoarse voice.

"I have summoned you here to help me clear this land from the evil mountain king, who lives in his castle up north. The mountain king terrorizes this land and must die so that peace can be restored around here. If you succeed you will be significantly rewarded.

Land of the Mountain King is the first original adventure for Penner's Eamon CS, and the reader can use the following links for more information:

• Land of the Mountain King can be downloaded and played by installing Eamon CS.
• The Land of the Mountain King page at the Eamon Wiki includes discussion, a detailed walkthrough, and maps for the adventure.

The Treachery of Zorag: Derek Jeter's follow-up to the excellent Stronghold of Kahr-Dur for Eamon Deluxe, The Treachery of Zorag was nearing completion just as Frank Black was shelving development of the platform. Consequently, Zorag failed to receive a formal release or widespread acknowledgement (I hadn't even realized that it had been completed until last month). Undaunted, Jeter has made some modifications to the adventure and is hosting an online, playable Zorag.

Like Malleus Maleficarum, interaction with non-player characters plays an equal role to combat, making for an engrossing adventure. From the introduction:

A knight from the nearby city of Behlos arrives at the Main Hall to announce that the king is assembling a party of the land's greatest heroes to investigate the possible return of Zorag, an evil wizard imprisoned for many years and now feared to be free. The knight asks for the Guild's greatest warrior to join the party, and when your comrades all point to you, you accept the errand. The knight orders you to appear at the King's Hall in Behlos at sunrise on the second day to begin the mission.

Long ago, I was blown away by an incomplete version of Zorag and it's fantastic that the full adventure can finally reach a broader audience. More can be found at the following links:

• Derek Jeter's playable online version of The Treachery of Zorag is at http://www.dcsoftsys.com/eamon/toz/.
• The Treachery of Zorag page at the Eamon Wiki includes background, walkthroughs, and a map for the adventure.

Assault on the Clone Master Remake: Forty years after its release, Donald Brown's Assault on the Clone Master has been reborn with a superbly-written, steampunk-infused remake courtesy of Keith Dechant. While nominally a remake, the adventure has been so deeply reworked as to warrant its being described as an all-new adventure.

By way of illustration, check out the introductory text of the original Clone Master, and compare with the introduction of the remake:

You were traveling in the far-away land of Knieriem, a land with technology far beyond your own. You marveled at the towering cities and majestic arches and goggled at the wondrous metal vehicles and flying machines powered by the most exquisite clockwork.

But, all was not well in Knieriem. A day before you were to leave for home on a massive, steam-powered ship, word came that the harbor was being blockaded by the dreaded fire fleets of the infamous Clone Master!

The Clone Master was known all over Knieriem and the surrounding kingdoms, feared for his vast armies made up of human clones!

Dechant's Assault on the Clone Master is worth checking out; more information can be found at the following links: 

• Dechant's remake of Assault on the Clone Master can be played at Eamon Remastered.
• The remake's page at the Eamon Wiki includes background information and a detailed walkthrough.

Eamon is turning 40!

We don't know the exact date the first version of the Main Hall and Beginner's Cave were created. This is largely thanks to the fact that Apple II's DOS 3.3 didn't keep timestamps on files, and authors didn't always record the dates in their file comments. Some knowledgeable people have done some research, and estimated that development on the first Eamon adventures must have begun in 1979. The first specific date we know for sure is January 30, 1980, the publication date of Adventure #3, Cave of the Mind, which is now 40 years ago!

In honor of the occasion, I thought I would take a look back at the history and how things have changed over the years.

The Apple II Era

1979-80: The first DOS 3.3 version of Eamon is released for the Apple II Plus. It supports 40-column text, all uppercase, and is designed to work on machines with 48k of RAM.

1984-1989: Eamon sees widespread distribution and over 150 adventures are published during this time.

1985: The Graphics Main Hall is released, providing a richer experience and several additional shops.

1985: Thror's Ring is the first adventure released with support for 80-column text.

1988: Tom Zuchowski releases v7.0 of the Main Program. This includes a small compiled program that drastically sped up monster and artifact search routines. It also introduces group monsters and revised combat logic that emphasizes Agility as a primary combat stat.

1990: Zuchowski begins converting several adventures to Prodos, intending to make them easier to play on the Apple //gs.

Mid-1990s: Authors continue submitting new adventures, even though the Apple II as a platform is in decline. Zuchowski also manages to locate a number of older adventures that had either languished on floppies since the 1980s, or had been started and never finished.

1999-2013 - Eamon Deluxe

This is a port of Eamon to MS-DOS by adventure author Frank Black. It has gone through several revisions over the years, and about 200 adventures have been ported. Frank upgraded most of the adventures, fixing bugs and broken room connections, as well as updating the command parser and some of the combat logic.

Frank also wrote some new content for several adventures, intending to make them a more unified storyline. Several NPCs could now appear in multiple adventures, if they survived the adventure where you first met them.

2017-present - Eamon Remastered

I had always dreamed of making an updated version of Eamon that could run in a web browser. In the 21st century, this seemed to be a good way to bring new players to Eamon and to keep alive all the hard work done by dozens of adventure authors.

The original Eamon was written in Applesoft BASIC, being a common, low-barrier-to-entry programming language in its time. So, it only made sense to use today's common, widely known language, JavaScript, for the rewrite. Data and file storage have also come a long way since the 1980s, and Eamon adventure data seemed a good fit for a relational database.

So, in December 2015, I started planning the rewrite of the game engine. This meant a major update in game features for some of the older adventures, which now all have the updated commands and combat logic that the newer Apple-based adventures and Eamon Deluxe had.

Since the official release of Eamon Remastered in February 2017, 34 adventures have been ported to Eamon Remastered. There is still a long way to go; there are currently about 275 total adventures, of which about 180 are actually playable on the original systems (a prerequisite to porting them) and are of good enough quality to be interesting.

The Future

There are still many things in store for 2020. I am currently working on a brand-new adventure titled Malleus Maleficarum. In this one, the adventurer joins a friend from the Guild to save her homeland from fanatics who are persecuting magic users.

Even more new content will be coming soon as well. The next project will be a port of Derek Jeter's unpublished adventure, The Treachery of Zorag, which Derek developed for Eamon Deluxe but which was never included in any of the Eamon Deluxe 5.0 releases. This is a large, complex adventure with lots of special effects and puzzles. It will be a great addition to the catalog.

Until next time, happy adventuring!

Eamon Mystery - William Trent and the "Search for the Key"

It's Groundhog Day! To celebrate, let's look back at a letter that Dr. William Trent wrote to the EAG way back in March of 1991:

Dear Tom,

One of my favorite games is a short game (only 20 rooms) called "Search for the Key" (#80) by Donald Brown.  For the casual player this game probably doesn't do much for them.  You cannot enter this game with a powerful character but as a beginner.  I note that it is rated as a 2.  My rating for it since it is such a challenge would be about 7.  I have played it at least 200 times and have lost only about 5 times in the last 150 times.  I would say that I know more about this little game than the author.  Usually I lost because of broken weapons so that I had no way to eliminate the black panther.  I usually finish up with $80,000 to $100,000 and four of the best weapons that money can buy.  I don't know anyone who ever was able to get more than two weapons.  At one time I was running it as the Eamon Challenge on our BBS offering anyone who could come out of the game with $40,000 a $25 prize.  No one solved the mystery so I have not revealed it.  I doubt if the author even realized the quirk in the game which allowed me to win this way.  I wonder if you or any of the other adventurers can 
figure out how I do it.   -  Wm. Trent

Wow. How do you do it, Bill?   - Tom 

Well, I've looked at the program myself and couldn't find out what he was talking about either. So, back in 2003, I wrote him a letter to ask for the solution. He responded in December 2003 as follows:

In 1983 I had an Apple computer which had very few capabilities but it did have Eamon games which I played a lot.  After a couple of years the Apple changed to Macintosh and upgraded to a format which was not compatible to the Apple.  As a result I became disgusted with them and switched to an IBM computer and did not play Eamon games any longer.

 At that time you had to write almost any program yourself as there were very few except Appleworks typing programs.  I wrote one Eamon game myself "A Trip to Fort Scott" which was my home town in Kansas before I joined the navy.  (I'm a Pearl Harbor Survivor)

 That has been too long ago for me to remember anything about my early computer years.  I am sorry but at age 84 I can't remember anything about the Eamon games.  In fact one of the things that happens to you when you get old is your memory goes.

 I can go to a movie and a year later my wife will say, "We saw that movie".

 I will say, "I never saw that movie."

 I am on the computer quite a bit but have to keep reviewing to be able to remember the programs I use most of the time.  I "bookmark"  anything which I wish to find on line with the computer and keep most of the program icons on my desktop so they are easy to find.

 I keep a very descriptive index of all the files I have on the hard disk.

 I am very sorry but I do not remember anything about any of the Eamon Games.

 Dr. William H. Trent, DDS (retired for 18 years)

So, my question for the Eamon community is, what was he talking about? The data file doesn't indicate that it's possible to have that many weapons or to earn that much money. The MAIN PGM is likewise rather mundane. Was it possible that he got some customized version from a non-EAG source?

Eamon Remastered

Keith Dechant has done a great job porting Eamon to run on a web based platform with no need for emulators or other softwares. He has already ported 15 adventures from the EDX platform.

Check it out at https://eamon-remastered.com/

Eamon database

Derek C. Jeter scoured the Eamon database and came up with this handy way to examine all of the Eamon Deluxe adventures. You can inspect each adventure's rooms, artifacts, monsters and effects. If you get stuck in an adventure, this is great place to find all the hidden doors and embedded artifacts.

Check it out at http://dcsoftsys.com/eab/

Two Eamon-Related AGT Adventures

Recently, Michael Detlefsen, one of two individuals who ported Eamon to the Atari ST, has posted two Eamon-related items for the PC to the Internet Archive. Each is an AGT (Adventure Game Toolkit)-authored adventure game, playable on MS-DOS and hence (presumably) Windows. Detlefsen shepherded his Atari port by hosting it on GEnie, writing the single Eamon newsletter, and manually translating several adventures to the platform. However, Detlefsen at some point abandoned Eamon development and embraced the AGT platform.

The first is an expanded version of Evan Hodson's Quest for the Holy Grail, a riff of the Monty Python film. Holy Grail was one of the Eamons Detlefsen ported to the Atari ST; after adopting the AGT platform, he made additional enhancements to the game by adding puzzles, rewriting descriptions, and making further changes. The Misadventure of the Holy Grail, the enhanced version of Quest for the Holy Grail, can be downloaded here.

The second is a port of Detlefsen's aborted Eamon adventure The Star Portal. Detlefsen made a report on his progress in the Atari Eamon newsletter, mentioning that he has "blocked out" sixty rooms for the map, but never completed the Eamon version. After abandoning Eamon and adopting AGT, Detlefsen resumed work on Star Portal, winning an honorable mention in the Second AGT Game Contest. A review can be found here and the game itself can be downloaded here.

Eamon Mapper at HackFest

KansasFest, the venerable Apple II gathering running for a quarter of a century, hosts a recurring contest called "HackFest." The winner this year was none other than Margaret Anderson, the author of four Eamons (Peg's Place, The Beginner's Forest, Treasure Island, and The Pirate's Cave), who submitted an "Eamon mapper" as her entry. While the site is not presently hosting a disk image of her winning entry, it appears that disk images of entries are posted from time to time at http://www.kansasfest.org/hackfest/. 

Margaret Anderson also wrote an article "Mapping the Unknown: An Adventure in Eamon" about her entry in the September 2013 issue of Juiced.GS. I don't have a subscription to Juiced.GS, so I'm unable to describe the contents of the article. But I'd love to hear a synopsis in the comments (or see a disk image of Ms. Anderson's entry!).