<!--
	Title: Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words?
	Author: Selby Bateman, Features Editor
	Source: COMPUTE!, v6(10)
	Date: October 1984
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<blockquote class="larger" style="font-style: italic; padding: 0.25em;">
A debate is raging between proponents of traditional text-based computer
adventure games and the new graphics adventure games. Welcome to the
ultimate adventure: A titanic struggle is underway for your attention and
your money. At stake, the fate of major software companies and the
careers of computer programmers. What will you choose: Text or Graphics?
</blockquote>

<hr>

A killer stalks Hampstead Manor. You are confronted in
the Troll Room; your sword glows with a strange light. The
people of Sosaria look to you to save them once again. The half-light
of a dank dungeon corridor stretches before you. King
Edward of Daventry lies dying; you are the last hope in all the
land.

What adventurer worth his steel could turn away from such
challenges? Thousands of computer owners have already answered
the call in scenarios like the ones above. And if you
haven't yet ventured forth on any of these quests, the chances
are good that you will sometime in the future.

The scenes described represent a wide range of popular
adventure games: *Ripper* (Microcomputer Games, division of
Avalon Hill), an all-text adventure in which you track the
infamous Jack the Ripper; *ZORK I: The Great Underground Empire*
(Infocom), the first installment in an immensely popular all-text
series; *Exodus: Ultima III* (Origin Systems), a highly successful
role-playing, graphics-and-text adventure series; *Wizardry:
Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord* (Sir-Tech), one of the most
complex and popular text-and-minimal-graphics, fantasy
role-playing games ever made; and *King's Quest* (Sierra), a
breakthrough in graphics-oriented adventure games.

<figure class="float-right-half">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/compute-is-a-picture-worth-a-thousand-words/wizardry-screen-shot.png" alt="Wizardry screen shot">
	<figcaption><em>In Sir-Tech's Wizardry, a three-dimensional maze outline appears onscreen
		alongside status and command text information.</em></figcaption>
</figure>

These are but a few examples of what has become a
major genre in computer games. Other companies with adventure
game products include Adventure International, Black
Knight Industries, Electronic Arts, Epyx, FTL Games, Harper
and Row, Muse, Pryority Software, Screenplay, Strategic
Simulations, Inc., and Sunrise Software.

## New Worlds, New Identities

Although these games are usually lumped together as
computer adventure games, the differences often outweigh the
similarities. Such programs attempt to engage the player in
solving puzzles, exploring new worlds, and trying on new
identities.

While arcade-style action games reward a sense of quick-reflex
timing, superior hand-eye coordination, and visual perception,
adventure games usually require patience, intelligence,
curiosity, imagination, and the capacity to immerse yourself
temporarily in another world —- a willing suspension of disbelief.

Beyond these characteristics there are differences which attract
some players. Does the adventure game have only text,
omitting colorful graphics completely? Is there a balance between
text and graphics? Or, finally, do graphic images actually
carry the game itself, leaving text in a subservient role or
completely absent?

## The Graphics-Text Tradeoff

What do these differences mean
to adventure game players?

"The fact of the matter is that whenever you put graphics
into a program, you've got to take something out because
you've only got a limited amount of space on the
diskette," says Robert Woodhead, coauthor of Sir-Tech's
*Wizardry*, one of the all-time best-selling games for
Apple II computers.

"The Infocom people have said, 'We won't have any graphics
at all so we can concentrate on the content of the adventure,
the substance of it. We'll let people think up their own
scenes," says Woodhead. "The hi-res adventure people —- and
we've done one [*Crypt of Medea* for Apple computers] —- have
said, 'We think the graphics are important, so we're going to
have lots of nice graphics. Our adventure won't be as complex,
but we think the graphics will make up for that.'

"And individual consumers have to decide. Generally, they
like both," he adds. "In a program like *Wizardry*, we decided
that we wanted a lot of content, but that we could put in a little
graphics. And the graphics are of a special form —- maze plotting.
Because the [memory] resources required to do that are
not incredibly huge, it works out very well. It conveys the
desired information and it's sufficiently sparse so that people
embellish it in their own minds. It reaches a little bit of a happy
medium."

## 200,000 Wizards

The "happy medium" Woodhead and coauthor Andrew
Greenberg sought with *Wizardry* obviously worked. To
date, they have shipped over 200,000 copies of the complex
fantasy role-playing game. And out of the thousands of letters
they've received from players, Woodhead says that only a
half-dozen have been negative.

From one to six players may take part, and a total of 50
different magical spells can be cast. The game takes a minimum
of 70 hours to complete as you and your compatriots wander
through a ten-level, 3-D mazelike dungeon fighting monsters,
finding treasure, and seeking clues to the game's puzzles.
As with almost all adventures, games can be saved to disk
since time requirements for each program are lengthy.

So complex and rich an imaginary world is *Wizardry* that
it has been used for everything from a catalyst in reading
development to a therapeutic tool in the treatment of a suicidal
youngster.

## On To Qyntarr

Sir-Tech Software's next game, says Woodhead, will be an all-text
adventure called *The Mines of Qyntarr*, in the tradition of
the original *ZORK* created by Infocom.

"It's an extremely complex and involved adventure game.
And the major effort we're making right now is to make it a lot
more user-friendly in terms of its command parser. [See ["The
Parser's Tale"](/library/compute-a-parsers-tale) in this issue.] I hope to get a command parser
running that understands more complex grammar than *ZORK*,'
adds Woodhead.

In speaking with programmers and designers of adventure
games, the name Infocom almost invariably comes into the
conversation. It's widely acknowledged that the Cambridge,
Massachusetts, based company is the uncontested
leader in the production of sophisticated, all-text adventure
games.

<figure class="float-right">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/compute-is-a-picture-worth-a-thousand-words/enchanter-screen-shot.png" alt="Enchanter screen shot">
	<figcaption><em>Infocom's adventures are considered
		the standard for quality in all-text formats. Here, on the Macintosh, a
		pull-down menu can be seen in the upper left corner.</em></figcaption>
</figure>

## *ZORK* Forever!

*ZORK*, for example, has a command parser vocabulary in excess
of 600 words, allowing significant variety in the kinds
of sentences that the game can understand. Infocom's new
release, *Sorcerer*, a sequel to an other Infocom game, *Enchanter*,
has a vocabulary in excess of a thousand words.

Infocom has spent its time and efforts developing the plot,
the writing, the puzzles, and the parsing rather than on sound
and graphics —- the latter two of which Infocom vice president
and master programmer Marc Blank calls "bells and whistles."

And the results have demonstrated the popularity of well-done
all-text games. The *ZORK* series, which Blank co-authored,
has already well surpassed the quarter million mark in number
of disks sold. A now-defunct *ZORK* User Group (ZUG)
boasted more than 20,000 members nationwide. *ZORK* T-shirts,
bumper stickers, posters, and special clue books have all
flourished. Infocom's games are available in versions for most
personal computers.

When game historians give credit for the development and
the legitimization of the term *interactive fiction* as applied to a
certain type of computer adventure game, it will be Infocom
which will get the laurels.

## Seeing The Movie Vs. Reading The Book

But what about the future of all-text adventure games as
computers become powerful enough to have sophisticated parsers
and colorful graphics all at the same time?

"For the next year or so there'll still be a market for the
incredibly well-done text adventures," says Richard Garriott,
co-author of Origin Systems' Ultima series of fantasy roleplaying
games, available for Apple, Atari, and Commodore
machines. "Anybody other than the Infocom style cannot succeed
at this point. Infocom has put together a very, very sophisticated
parser, and the non-player characters within the
game actually have some intelligence to their movements.

<figure class="float-right">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/compute-is-a-picture-worth-a-thousand-words/ultima-iii-screen-shot.png" alt="Ultima III screen shot">
	<figcaption><em>Origin Systems'</em> Exodus: Ultima III <em>offers graphic
		images of the game at left while game information is displayed
		at right.</em></figcaption>
</figure>

"I really think that as we develop better computer systems
that surely this same kind of technique —- if not the quality
that Infocom is putting into their games —- can also then have
the added feature of the real-time graphics and animation
put on top as well," he says. "The standard argument is
that the game with graphics is like going to see the movie and
the game with text is like reading the book," adds Garriott.
"Some people will still have some preference between the
two. But the vast majority of the marketed products will almost
have to turn to graphics because of the demand of the public."

## "You Can Do Anything You Want"

Garriott, 23, has been writing computer fantasy-adventure
games since his sophomore year in high school. He completed 28
fantasy games while still in high school, learning more about the
genre with each attempt.

Origin Systems' *Ultima* fantasy
role-playing series is a testament to the strength of
Garriott's game-designing talents. "The key to the *Ultima*
series is really just the way the role-playing gives the player a
great deal of freedom with what his options are at any point in
the game," says Garriott. "It's basically a game in which
you're living out your life. And you can do anything you want."

## Are You Man Or Fuzzy?

In *Exodus*, the third game in the *Ultima* series, evil again walks
the land of Sosaria. Will you confront this evil as Human, Elf,
Dwarf, Bobbit, or Fuzzy? Now determine your strength, dexterity,
intelligence, and wisdom. Choose your profession from
among about a dozen possible types ranging from Cleric to
Thief. Then, with a band of cohorts, go forth. But be quick
about it: *Ultima IV* is already well along in development.

Quite a different approach has been taken —- and very
successfully —- by Sierra in its graphic adventure game, *King's
Quest*, for the IBM PC and PCjr.

Requiring 128K of memory and the use of a color monitor,
the adventure game actually lets you control the movements of
an on-screen knight, Sir Grahame, as he moves about the
colorful kingdom of Daventry.

<figure class="float-right-half">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/compute-is-a-picture-worth-a-thousand-words/kings-quest-screen-shot.png" alt="King's Quest screen shot">
	<figcaption><em>Sierra's</em> King's Quest<em>, for the PC and PCjr with 128K, offers the best quality
		graphics in an adventure thus far.</em></figcaption>
</figure>

The movement is smooth, the screens are redrawn rapidly,
and Sir Grahame is seen walking in front of, behind, and even
between objects. He climbs, jumps, ducks, swims, and can
be warned of impending danger by sound effects. The command
parser for such a game is necessarily much smaller than that
used in an Infocom game, but the play requirements are not
based on having a huge volume of words.

There, are helpful fairies, elves, condors, and a godmother.
But there are also unfriendly sorcerers, dwarfs, ogres,
wolves, and an airborne witch.

Roberta Williams, who designed
*King's Quest* for Sierra, admits that the game represents
a big change from what has been done with computer adventure
games in the past. "There's nothing like it," she
says. "It's innovative."

The interaction between the text and the onscreen graphics is
clearly the way many future adventure games will be constructed.
One element complements the other.

## Bowing And Doffing

For example, as Sir Grahame stands before King Edward, type
in the words BOW TO THE KING. As you hit the RETURN
key, Sir Grahame can be seen bowing and doffing his cap.

And, Williams adds, subtle clues can be built visually into
the game that an all-text adventure couldn't have. When Sir
Grahame stumbles upon the house of a poor woodcutter and
his wife, the screen shows an old and pitifully thin couple in a
rundown house. The room is bare of food, a subtle clue to the
player that an offering of some thing to eat might be very much
appreciated by this mysterious couple.

While King's Quest uses text to supplement its high-quality
graphics in the adventure, such action-adventure games as
Electronic Arts' *Seven Cities of Gold*, Epyx's *Temple of Apshai*, and
Muse's *Castle Wolfenstein* offer a range of adventure and strategy
combinations primarily without text. The gradations in type of
game play —- as well as quality of play —- being offered to computer
owners today are already staggering in number. There is, it
seems, something for just about anyone.

The tradeoff which programmers and game designers
now must make because of computer memory limitations
will not always be a problem, notes Dave Albert, executive
vice president of Penguin Software.

Penguin has released such adventures and fantasy role-playing
games as *Transylvania* (Apple II, Macintosh, Atari,
Commodore 64), *The Coveted Mirror* (Apple II family), and
*Expedition Amazon* (Commodore 64).

## "The Consumer Wants Pictures"

<figure class="float-right-half">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/compute-is-a-picture-worth-a-thousand-words/penguin-games-screen-shots.png" alt="Penguin games screen shots">
	<figcaption><em>Penguin Software's</em> Transylvania <em>(at left) offers graphics
		alongside the text, here on the Macintosh version.</em> Xyphus
		<em>(at right), also from Penguin, is a graphics-based fantasy
		role-playing game for the Apple II computers.</em></figcaption>
</figure>

"In order to have the graphic images, you have to cut back on
the amount of text. But that's becoming less of a reality, both
through text compaction methods and because all of a sudden
128K seems to be starting to be come a standard. And pretty
soon, 512K will become a standard, and then it will become
irrelevant," says Albert.

Penguin's newest fantasy role-playing game is *Xyphus* for
the Apple II. Players may create characters who continue
through different scenarios. The game also offers four-player
independent movement, a variety of magical spells, and a mixture
of graphics with text that reveals information about the status
of the game.

Agreeing with Albert is Mike Cullum, new product director
for Avalon Hill's Microcomputer Games division: "We've
just released an all-text adventure game, *Ripper*, for the
Commodore 64. Personally, I like the text games," he says.
"But we have found that the averate consumer wants the
pictures."

## No Excuses

"As machines grow with more and more memory and sophistication,
there won't be any excuse [not to have graphics]," he
says.

One very popular game for Avalon Hill has been its all-text
adventure *Empire of the OverMind*, for Apple II and
Atari computers, which is still selling well, notes Jack Dodd,
Avalon Hill's director of marketing. But with another of their
releases, Jupiter Mission 1999, for Atari and Commodore 64
computers, the company mixed graphics and text in a very
complex adventure.

"Of course, it took us four disks to do it," Dodd says with
a laugh. "But it has all the meat of a text-type adventure."

## Trillium For Apple, Commodore

One of the most recent trends in the computer adventure genre is
the use of well-known writers and the conversion of popular
books into computer-game formats. No one is so far doing this
more aggressively than Spinnaker Software's Trillium line of
adventure games.

<figure class="float-right-half">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/compute-is-a-picture-worth-a-thousand-words/trillium-games-screen-shots.png" alt="Trillium games screen shots">
	<figcaption><em>Spinnaker's Trillium adventure-game series offers graphics
		and text as shown from two of its titles,</em> Dragonworld <em>(at
		left) and</em> Rendezvous With Rama <em>(at right).</em></figcaption>
</figure>

"We're trying to make a game that is based on plot and
characterization —- the way a book is —- not puzzles," says
Seth Godin, Trillium product manager. The Trillium series,
which uses graphics and text, seeks to minimize the frustration
factor, which has turned many would-be adventurers
away from some computer games, adds Godin. To help
achieve this, each of the games focuses on plot and characterization
more than puzzles, and also includes a hint book
and a list of the words that the game understands.

"If you read *Fahrenheit 451*, you don't get stuck on page 50.
And if you play the game, you don't get stuck on frame 50,
because the whole idea is that you're interested in the game
because of the characters and the plot and what's happening,"
he says.

In addition to Ray Bradbury's *Fahrenheit 451*, the
Trillium line will initially consist of adventure games based on
such popular books as Arthur C. Clarke's *Rendezvous With Rama*,
Michael Crichton's *Amazon*, Byron Preiss and Michael
Reeves's *Dragonworld*, and Robert A. Heinlein's *Starman Jones*.

One of the games, *Shadowkeep*, actually preceded
the book, which was later written by Alan Dean Foster, author
of *Alien* and the Spellsinger series. The games are expected to
be in stores by the end of September or the first of October
for the Commodore 64 and the Apple II line. Later conversions
will follow.

## Enthusiasm Is The Key

Although some adventure-game companies privately complain
that signing a big-name author doesn't necessarily mean a first-rate
game, Godin believes Spinnaker has found a good combination
of talent and procedure.

"In every case, we worked with the authors to create the
world [of the book] again," he says. "In the case of *Dragonworld*
and *Amazon*, Byron Preiss and Michael Crichton wrote ev
ery word of the game. In the case of *Fahrenheit* 451 and
*Rendezvous With Rama*, we worked with the authors on the editings
and the way it worked. We didn't just buy their names."

All of the games use graphics with text, and allow interaction
between the two. For example, as Amazon opens, a research
station somewhere along the Amazon River has obviously
been attacked. Suddenly, as your mock video transmission
fades, you briefly glimpse an intruder. To find out what's
happened and who the intruder is, you must travel to the Amazon
and explore.

As microcomputers continue to grow more powerful, a
generation of avid adventure-game designers and programmers
is growing more sophisticated. And, while the debate
over text versus graphics will surely continue, there is a
fundamental enthusiasm shared by all the best adventure-game
producers.

This enthusiasm is the key, they all admit, to the continuing
improvement of computer-based adventures. As Robert
Woodhead says of his *Wizardry* game: "It's a good game that
was a labor of love, and we didn't write it for anyone else
but ourselves. People appreciate that."

*Microcomputer Games, Inc.<br>
Avalon Hill Game Company<br>
4517 Harford Road<br>
Baltimore, MD 21214*

*Infocom, Inc.<br>
55 Wheeler St.<br>
Cambridge, MA 02138*

*Origin Systems, Inc.<br>
P.O. Box 58009<br>
Houston, TX 77258*

*Penguin Software<br>
830 4th Avenue<br>
P.O. Box 311<br>
Geneva, II 60134*

*Sierra, Inc.<br>
P.O. Box 485<br>
Coarsegold, CA 93614*

*Sir-Tech Software, Inc.<br>
6 Main St.<br>
Ogdensburg, NY 13669*

*Trillium Corp.<br>
Spinnaker Software<br>
1 Kendall Square<br>
Cambridge, MA 02139*