I’d like to start today’s game by talking about something that doesn’t seem special at first but has a remarkable history behind it. Specifically, the REM statements at the start of Ship Adventure (shortened to be ‘ marks); in BASIC they don’t get interpreted as code but are used to make comments.
5 ‘COPYRIGHT(C) CLOAD 1982
30 ‘CREATED BY: JOHN R. OLSON
40 ‘ HOXIE, KANSAS 67740
Thus starts the first lines of Ship Adventure, as put in the December 1982 version of the tapemag called CLOAD (and diskmag after October ’82). This is John R. Olson from Kansas this time (see: Island Adventure) not John R. Olsen from Oregon (see: Frankenstein Adventure).
From the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.
The game is extremely clear on the name and location of the author, and this has been true on every single adventure from CLOAD we’ve seen. From Troll’s Treasure:
1 ‘COPYRIGHT (C) CLOAD 1981
2 ‘BY RICHARD MOFFIE
3 ‘ 20121 LEADWELL ST. #3
4 ‘ CANOGA PARK, CALIFORNIA 91306
From CIA Adventure:
10040 ‘COPYRIGHT (C) CLOAD 1980
HUGH LAMPERT
110 LINDNER PL.
MALVERNE, NY 11565
From Frankenstein Adventure:
by John R. Olsen Jr.
P.O. Box 181
Newberg, Or 97132
(503) 538-3031
Compare with the Adventures of the Month (like Menagerie that I wrote about last); only some of the adventures have clear identifiers, and we still don’t know who wrote Black Hole Adventure even though we have all three ports. Survival was published in Creative Computing in their January 1982 issue with no author identifier within the code, even though it must have been there because it got restored in the 1984 reprinting.
Now, the latter case is understandable: the author is mentioned in the print article, there’s a premium on space. However, this removal from source can still mean games get detached from their sources. The most spectacular case of this was Korenvliet, a Dutch game which was a translation of Stoneville Manor, but the connection was so non-obvious that many years later Korenvliet got translated back into English with no awareness the game was in English in the first place!
As far as why CLOAD was so careful to always print author and location, it has to do with fraud from their earlier days. This story backtracks all the way to 1978, when the publication was founded in February as the first computer tapemag, with Ralph McElroy as publisher and Dick Fuller as editor. (David Lagerquist took over in 1980.)
September 1978 included a version of Hamurabi…
160 REM MODIFIED BY JOHN OLSEN, BOX 181, NEWBERG, OR. 97132
…but this was derived completely from the same version of David Ahl’s 101 Computer Games. As explained by Ralph McElroy in the October 1978 issue of CLOAD, the file was clearly marked as a derivative of Ahl, but the source code only credits the author who modified the source (Oregon Olsen). Ahl saw the issue, and raised concerns, but:
After some preliminary running around, we got together and worked the situation out to everyone’s nominal satisfaction.
That was an accident, but the very same issue of CLOAD also included a copy of Othello.
As McElroy explains:
The original author (Mr. Donald L. Dilley, of Federal Way, Washington) had sent a copy to Radio Shack, to Kilobaud Magazine, and to his son in southern California. This last copy was evidently sold with his son’s computer system, thereby ending up in New York, from where it was submitted.
To summarize, someone bought a used computer with a piece of computer code that wasn’t theirs and decided to sell it.
Hence, a new policy at CLOAD was announced that “the author’s name and address” needed to be put into REM statements “in the first few lines of code”. This would “discourage” theft (or at least require thieves to have even more chutzpah), and they did not “want other people’s work, no matter how good or how cheap.” (The “first few lines of code” part of the policy must have changed, given CIA Adventure put its notice on the end of its code.)
Enough about TRS-80 REM comment drama —
— John R. Olson’s games have been mechanically simple and straightforward and this one is not an exception, although it is yet another case of shipboard directions (port, starboard, fore, aft) and I’m such a landlubber I had to double check I wasn’t mixing up port and starboard again.
The introduction asks you to find seven treasures, but I need to slow down and explain because both in a plot sense and a gameplay sense this is a slightly different Treasure Hunt than normal.
While I collected my treasures here (at the start) to keep my inventory free, they only count if you’re holding them.
In Crowther/Woods and descendants, the treasures typically serve as markers that you have solved particular puzzles. The treasures are often incidental proof you’ve reached particular rooms as well as a convenient way of making the game non-linear. Here, we are tasked with inspecting a ship that is smuggling treasure, and there is almost nothing gated off by a puzzle: rather, you need to figure out the hiding spots. It is more analogous to a collectathon from the N64 era than a standard adventure game. Sometimes the collectable items are in tricky places, but you don’t need to outwit a dragon first to get to where the Golden Foozle is buried.
This feels like a natural extension from the author who wrote Mansion Adventure; in that game, the play is almost solely in collecting clues to break open a particular lock with a few traps at the end. Here, most of the seven goal treasures are straightforward to find, with only the seventh behind a safe causing trouble. (It turned out to be a text-garbling issue likely having to do with the emulator, I’ll explain when I get there.)
The other thing the author emphasizes — and again this is a continuation of his previous work, although here it feels more systematic — is that there are plenty of objects that are there just because it is a ship and it’d be logical to have them there. There’s a rope on the deck that doesn’t get used, a lantern in a lifeboat that sees no action, a radio in a radio room that doesn’t get turned on. They don’t even feel like “red herrings” exactly; they’re things to prod at to check if there’s a treasure or a tool hiding, but don’t occupy much brain-space otherwise during gameplay.
Three above-deck rooms to demonstrate:
This is the one spot you can die, but at least there’s good forewarning. Notice the educational ship vocabulary tidbits!
There’s one chest with the word SAFE, which is solely there to hint there’s a hidden safe.
There’s a crowbar in one container that later will be useful…
…and one treasure hidden in the crow’s nest…
…but other than that it’s just atmosphere. I did find a “closed, locked hatchway” which is unopenable but it gets described as heavy steel, so I didn’t waste much time trying to open it.
There’s two floors below, let’s head to the bottom first since it is simpler.
This mainly serves to dispense a “screwdriver” in a work area, and a secret area with a diamond unlocked via a lever.
The remaining five treasures are on the middle floor.
A cargo hold contains a ruby, extractable via the crowbar.
The mate’s cabin has a bag with a flag in it that is folded. Open the flag, and out comes a sapphire.
A strongbox in a desk contained in the captain’s cabin has a jade.
Rather more trickily, the cabinet in the infirmary is described as being held by screws. Using the screwdriver from downstairs reveals yet another secret treasure.
This leaves the safe, and it was indeed helpful to have the word “SAFE” earlier since I had a notion what I was looking for. I tried MOVE on all the items I could touch until reaching the captain’s cabin again; the desk not only holds the jade but moves to show a safe.
As far as the combination for the safe goes, there’s an index card in one of the other cabins which is a straight self-contained puzzle.
Yes, the text is glitched here.
I tried 12/2/6 (thinking of the x marks as multiplication) and relatedly, 12/2/120 and 12/2/20. I eventually suspected the text was not displaying correctly and checked the source code.
1870 DATA”CAR”,”A small index Card”,”There is writing on it: 3x/4x+1/2x-1 where 3x + 2 = 20 ! ?”,0,1
Oho! So it’s just supposed to be an algebra problem (Olson was originally a college algebra teacher, remember). With 3x + 2 = 20, x has to be 6; then plug 6 in for x on the other three expressions to get 18, 25, and 11.
There was absolutely nothing sophisticated with the parser or world model, but the author kept to a mode of gameplay the parser could support and given this was supposed to be a short jaunt from a tape/diskmag, this ended up being enjoyable in the same manner as Eno. The author had a style that he ran to its conclusion (even including educational spots explaining what ship parts are) rather than trying to mimic Scott Adams entirely, making it a better game than his other two we’ve looked at so far.
Coming up: The Archive is in a good enough state I can make my second Missing Adventures post, and then we’ll finally wrap around back to the warm glow of the Apple II.
Renga in Blue 