THROUGHOUT THE EIGHTIES, ADVENTURE GAMES OFFERED FREEDOM, EVOCATIVE DESCRIPTIONS AND ADVENTURES BEYOND OUR WILDEST DREAMS. WHEN THE LATE CODER SEAN ELLIS PROPOSED A SIMPLE-TO-USE UTILITY THAT COMBINED TEXT WITH GRAPHICS, INCENTIVE SOFTWARE JUMPED AT THE CHANCE OF A HIGH-TICKET PRODUCT. WHAT NOW, BRAVE ADVENTURER?
They say everyone has a novel in them – in the mid-Eighties, Hampshire-based Incentive Software believed the same was true of adventure games.
In 1985, it launched The Graphic Adventure Creator (GAC), a utility that combined the text creation facility of Gilsoft’s popular The Quill and its companion add-on, The Illustrator. Now, fans of the genre could, without any programming experience, create bespoke worlds and adventures, with only their imaginations and artistic skills to limit them.
The Graphic Adventure Creator was the brainchild of Amstrad CPC owner Sean Ellis. Sean’s inspiration came from a ZX81 text adventure called City Of Alzan, one of several programs in Trevor Toms’ The ZX81 Pocket Book. Trevor’s system introduced Sean to data-driven programming via counters, markers and its base role as an interpreter for a set of command strings. The young programmer soon began working on GAC’s predecessor, ADVAL, ADVenture Algorithmic Language, during his first term at university in the autumn of 1984. Unaware of the fast-rising success of The Quill, Sean shortly moved on to developing what would eventually transmogrify into The Graphic Adventure Creator.
ADVAL, was a pain even by its author’s admission, coming as three separate programs: an editor, compiler and runner. The process required loading each program in turn, saving your data every time before loading up and playing the adventure. If there was a bug – and there usually was – you had to repeat the whole routine, iron out the bug and try again. Then, the fateful meeting. In December 1984, Sean Ellis met Incentive’s Ian Andrew at a Reading University Computer Club event. As the owner of a local software company, Ian gave students an overview of the software business, showing off Incentive’s games and, no doubt, keeping half an eye open for potential employees. As Sean described his adventure creation utility to Ian, his commercially tuned brain lit up: this could be one of those high-ticket items he was looking for (Incentive would come to specialise in such pieces of software). Sean spent the Christmas holidays in 1984 cleaning up ADVAL, ready to demonstrate to Incentive in the new year.
