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!