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	Title: DESIGNER'S PROFILE: Dave Anderson (author of Hollywood Hi-Jinx)
	Author: Johny Wilson
	Subtitle: "B"io of a "B" Movie Fan
	Source: Computer Gaming World, v7(4)
	Date: May 1987
	Transcription by Steve Derby
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What do Johnny Carson, Sonny Tufts, Morgan Fairchild, Xavier Cugat, and Roger Corman (the
king of "B" movie moguls) have in common? What do "Plan 9 From Outer Space," "2,000 Maniacs," and
"Make Them Die Slowly" have to do with Infocom's new *Hollywood Hi-Jinx*? The former are all
celebrity names which are dropped in the course of playing the game (though the author denies that the
black cat heading in the direction of Johnny Carson's house is Joan Rivers' familiar) and the latter
are the classic "B" movies which spawned the satirical spoof on tinseltown.

Dave Anderson, the author of *Hollywood Hi-Jinx*, blames the conception of the game on television.
Where else could he have seen movies so bad that he wondered why producers would bother? He
perceives the program as a tribute to "B" movies.

You may be wondering how a relatively normal journalism major from California State University
at Fullerton could end up as author of a major software program. It all began with a biology class
where class members were given a limited password to the school's mainframe. The simple idea was for
each student to analyze his/her diet using a diet program. Unfortunately for the lovely young co-ed
in the cubicle next to him, Anderson stole her password and began to explore the system. Spending
in excess of five hours of her computer time, he left the lab with a severe headache, a desire to
learn more, and nothing accomplished. Later, a friend purchased an Atari 800 and they attempted
to learn basic from books checked out of the school library. They didn't get anywhere until they found
*Atari BASIC for Kids*.

<figure class="float-right">
<img src="/public/img/articles/cgw-designers-profile-dave-anderson/joke-portraits.png" alt="Joke portratis that are definitely not Dave Anderson">
<figcaption>In lieu of the photo of "Hollywood" Dave Anderson NOT
received at press time, our cracked staff researchers
have dug up these hitherto unpublished (?) photos of
Dave, showing him as a young, naive college journalism
student (on the left), and as a successfully published
Infocom author (on the right).</figcaption>
</figure>

That was his beginning, but his present opportunities came about as a result of his securing a position
in the testing department of Infocom in 1983. He soon became the department head in testing and
began to receive attention from the creative staff due to some humorous material he was writing in
*Infodope*, the in-house newsletter at Infocom (and I thought it was the in-house name for people like
me who rarely play text-adventures). In 1985, he was invited to become a writer. Liz Cyr-Jones
presented him with an idea for a "haunted house" mystery. Haunted houses, however, are old hat, so
the idea evolved via one-page synopsis into the present idea. As it evolved, Aunt Hildegarde was
originally supposed to be a supermarket tabloid seeress and the Malibu beach house something like
a cut-rate Winchester Mystery House. Anderson decided, however, that he didn't know enough
about the occult (even the "pop" versions thereof), but he did know about "B" movies. It seems that he
and Brian Moriarty have devoted a major portion of their lives to seeking out the worst of celluloid
history. The "B" movies angle allowed the introduction of movie properties into the storyline and facilitated
the present shape of the game. This also gave him a chance to indulge in another avocation.
As a high school student, Anderson had reveled in writing reviews of non-existent movies with outrageous
titles. If Uncle Buddy was a "B" movie producer, he could run rampant with phony movie titles.

When asked about his inspiration for certain ideas in the plot line, Anderson was fascinatingly
candid. Uncle Buddy's picture was a serendipitous discovery. Dave and his producer couldn't agree on
how Uncle Buddy should look. One wanted early sleaze and the other wanted contemporary
schmooze. They went to a local stock photo house in Boston and searched the files for the "perfect"
Uncle Buddy. The search was futile, but on the way home, they discovered that the manager of the
photo place was an excellent compromise of their respective images. They asked the manager if he'd
serve as the model, a deal was struck, and Uncle Buddy had a visual incarnation. Another important
character came to life in the stock photo shop, as well. The shop had a file of mailman photographs.
While thumbing through the file, the bizarre imagery of Buck Palace, fighting mailman, took
shape.

<img class="float-right" src="/public/img/articles/cgw-designers-profile-dave-anderson/buck-palace.png" alt="Buck Palace, fighting mailman">

For those interested in the nuts and bolts of the game's design, the Infocom process works something
like this. After approval of the one page synopsis, the author begins to write on the company's
DEC 20 mainframe. Infocom has its own programming language which is used on the mainframe and
converts readily into the languages used by different machines on the market. It is corporate policy
for the new games to be developed off of the most recent parser. This means that *Hollywood Hijinx*
was built off of the *Wishbringer* parser. Since Moriarty, like his fiendish fictional namesake, had put
in some personalized programming touches which diabolically appeared at the most inopportune times
during the creation of *Hollywood Hijinx*, Anderson had to spend a great deal of time removing *Wishbringer*
references from the program. Fortunately for Anderson, Dave Liebling (author of *Maze Wars*
on the Macintosh) was around to solve some of the programming problems.

In addition to some of the more mundane programming problems, Liebling was responsible for
the complex Hedge Maze found in Aunt Hildy's garden. The maze consists of 828 possible locations,
but only 260 of them actually unique. Liebling crunched the entire maze into a table so that the
memory required is equivalent to one room description. Steve Meretzky was also a help in the
program design. Meretzky is really more of a catalyst than designer. Nevertheless, those of you who
have suffered over the elevator puzzle have Steve to thank for it.

Asked if his journalism background (including the time spent as Production Manager for the California
State University at Los Angeles' school paper) was of any value in the world of game design,
Anderson replied with an unequivocal yes. He believes that the ability to summarize a lot of facts in
a short amount of space is indispensable when writing adventure games. After all, the less space
used in non-essential description allows for the inclusion of more germane data. Asked if the puzzles
in *Hollywood Hijinx* weren't less deadly than the average Infocom adventure, he also replied in the
affirmative. After all, the player is a favorite nephew of Uncle Buddy and Aunt Hildegarde and
they wouldn't want to kill him, just test him. Asked if he resented people trying strange things in
his games, Anderson claimed that he did not. However, he does point out that most of the cannon
balls are welded together as ornaments and the cannon too heavy for one person to move so that
players wouldn't be firing anywhere and at will. We resent being called a "geek," however, simply because
we tried to open the front door with Buck Palace's bazooka. It *could* have been real.