A Mind Forever Voyaging

A Mind Forever Voyaging (AMFV) is an interactive fiction game designed and implemented by Steve Meretzky and published by Infocom in 1985. The name is taken from book three of The Prelude by William Wordsworth:

The antechapel where the statue stood

Of Newton with his prism and silent face,

The marble index of a mind for ever

Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

AMFV was not a conventional Infocom adventure, having only a single puzzle near the end of the game. Unlike most other Infocom titles, particularly those written by Steve Meretzky, the game had a serious tone and a political theme; attributes which the company would revisit with the following year's Trinity. The game is among Infocom's most respected titles, although it was not a commercial success. It was also the first of the "Interactive Fiction Plus" line, meaning that AMFV had greater memory requirements, unlike earlier Infocom games that used a less advanced version of the company's Z-machine interpreter. It is Infocom's seventeenth game. The game was explicitly intended as a polemical critique of Ronald Reagan's political policies.

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Adventure Construction Set

Adventure Construction Set (ACS) is a program written by Stuart Smith that is used to construct tile-based graphical adventure games. ACS was originally published by Electronic Arts (EA) in 1984 on the Commodore 64, and was later ported to the Apple II, Amiga and MS-DOS platforms. It was one of EA's biggest hits of 1985, earning an SPA "Gold Disk" award.

The program concept was inspired by the 1983 release Pinball Construction Set, and was produced by Don Daglow in parallel with the development of Racing Destruction Set. It provided a graphical editor for the construction of maps, placement of creatures and items, and a simple menu-based scripting to control game logic. A constructed game was stored on its own disk which could be copied and shared with friends, however for some ports (such as Amiga) the ACS software was still needed to play user-constructed games.

Included with the system was a complete predesigned game called Rivers of Light, which was based on The Epic of Gilgamesh. It featured art by Smith and Connie Goldman and music by Dave Warhol (Goldman and Warhol also provided art and music respectively for Racing Destruction Set). The Amiga version of ACS featured art by Greg Johnson and Avril Harrison, and an additional pre-made adventure called "Galactic Agent" by Ken St Andre which was exclusive to that platform.

Titles influenced by ACS include The Elder Scrolls Construction Set. Project lead Todd Howard had stated, "When we started Morrowind, I was really excited about making a tool like 'Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set for the Apple 2'. I even used part of the name.

Game-Play

Game-play features of Adventure Construction Set include:

Turn-based system.

Up to four players may play.

A player character can be imported from another adventure. However the character might not retain the same graphic tile if the new adventure uses a different tile set.

Music and sound.

Random encounters.

Spells.

Range and melee combat.

Along with graphic tiles, text screens are also available for conveying information.

Creatures which behave as player-mimics, copying various traits and equipment of the player.

Shops.

Construction System

A room built with a custom tile set (Amiga version)

ACS was designed to make tile-based graphical adventure games similar to Smith's earlier games Return of Heracles and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It was reviewed in Computer Gaming World as an "easy-to-use, albeit time-consuming, means of creating a graphic adventure."

The framework of an adventure built within ACS is organized into the following main categories:

"World map": This is the top-level map from which characters begin their adventure. The world map differs from other playable areas of the game in that it has no fixed creature encounters, no stacked tiles, quicker movement, it is scrollable, and it optionally may wrap around (have no borders.) Random encounters may occur on the world map, however the game shall switch to a special view to handle the encounter, which plays similarly to that of a "room".

"Regions": A region is a collection of rooms. A region is a construction concept and does not present itself to the player, except by indirect means such as disk access when traveling between regions.

"Rooms": A room is a rectangular, tiled area of a size which must fit within the game's viewport. Tiles may be used to make a room look like shapes other than rectangular.

"Things": A thing is a background tile, obstacle, or collectible item.

"Creatures"

"Pictures": These are art assets used by the tiles. For some platforms, four colors are available for images. For the Amiga platform, 32 colors are available, each of which can be assigned to be any of 4096 available colors.

Tiles may be stacked. Only the top tile of a stack may be directly interacted with by the player, however special tiles allow for game-logic to be implemented via the stack. For example, a tile may be set to "Activate All Things at This Place".[3] Tiles may also allow or disallow interaction based on the contents of the player's inventory, or activate if a specific object is dropped on top of the stack..

Spell-effects may be attached to Things.

The game allows for somewhat varied monster AI behavior. A creature may be specified to behave solely as a "fighter" or "slinker", or adjust its temperament based on its condition. In addition, it may be specified as either an "enemy", "friend", "neutral", or "thief", with a total of 8 possible behavioral patterns expressed.

There are maximum quotas applied to most categories in the game (including the total number of unique things, text messages, pictures, regions, creatures per region, things per region, and rooms per region.) These limits restrict the size of adventures. For example, "Each adventure can contain up to 15 regions and each region can contain up to 16 rooms."[3]

ACS included a framework for fantasy adventures, as well as starter toolkits for fantasy, futurist, and "spy" game genres.

[edit]Auto-Construct Feature

Along with user-constructed adventures, the software can also auto-construct a random adventure. This feature can optionally be used to auto-complete a partially built adventure. The user may specify numerous parameters for auto-generation, including difficulty level.

Community

Electronic Arts contest

Shortly after Adventure Construction Set's release, announcements were included in the packaging for players to submit their adventures for a contest to be judged by Electronic Arts and their playtesters. Approximately 50 games were submitted and winners chosen for three categories:

Fantasy - Festival by R.C. Purrenhage written for the Commodore 64

Science Fiction - Cosmos by Albert Jerng written for the C-64

Contemporary - Panama by Will Bryant for the C-64 and Codename:Viper by Peter Schroeder for the Apple II

Adventure Construction Set Club

The supplementary manual included with the Amiga port mentions, "If you're an ACS fanatic you can join the Adventure Construction Set Club. Club members receive access to a library of adventures created with ACS"[4] The supplementary manual also mentions that the club is not affiliated with Electronic Arts.

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War of the Roses

War of the Roses

In War of the Roses, brutal medieval combat hits a grisly crescendo.

The Good

Combat is chaotic and fun   Tons of weapon customization options   Beautiful map designs.

The Bad

With only two modes, battles can grow repetitive.

After you lose too much blood and collapse to the ground, there's nothing as unsettling as watching helplessly while your foe towers over you and proceeds to stab a broadsword through your ribs to finish the job. Or hoists his shield over his head before bringing it down on your skull. Or uses a knife to gouge a bloody hole through your face. Or battle-axes you in twain. For the victims forced to become first-person spectators to their own murders up close, War of the Roses' grisly executions are downright horrifying. But blood feuds tend to be messy, and the ferocious vigor that you bring to the battlefield makes the hyper-violent, merciless 15th-century combat in this medieval multiplayer brawler often electrifying.

Pared down and brutal, War of the Roses lets up to 64 armored warriors clash in sprawling battles as the Lancaster and York factions work to slaughter one another en masse. Large-scale multiplayer matches are the main focus. Insane free-for-all brawls unfurl in each match as large mobs of swordsmen, armored footmen, mounted knights, and archers collide across the beautiful countryside. Whether you're plugging barbed arrows into enemies from distant rooftops or thrashing through an alleyway mob in close-quarters melee combat, a frenetic energy punctuates every chaotic encounter. The structure and flow of combat feel much like a shooter: you select a class loadout complete with unique weapons and perks, dive into the fray, hack up your adversaries, and respawn when you get clobbered. However, using ancient weaponry to slice up your enemies up close and personal puts a different, quite cool, spin on things.

The complex fighting system takes practice and skill to master, but it's easy to appreciate the depth it adds to battle when you get over the initially awkward training-wheels phase. Melee combat is a dizzying dance of angled attacks, blocks, dodges, and parries as opponents circle each other. Clicking and holding the left mouse button charges your attack, and moving the mouse in the direction and at the angle you want to swing lets you adjust your blow before letting it loose. Blocking with a shield or weapon is handled in much the same way. It's not always the smoothest process, since delivering attacks and executing blocks take precise timing--and that can be tricky to pull off when you're in the middle of a mob swinging swords, axes, spears, and halberds around like lunatics. That said, every successful blow or parry is gratifying, and the adrenaline really kicks in when you're going toe-to-toe with an opponent hell-bent on gutting you like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Archers and crossbowmen add another layer of chaos to the mix. They're different animals altogether and perhaps the most fun classes to play. Turning foes into pincushions from across the battlefield is ultra-satisfying, but you have to lead moving targets and take distance and arrow drop into account with every shot. Archers can hold a drawn bow for only a few seconds, which helps to keep them from being overpowered, and cranking a crossbow is a painstaking task. While long-range warriors are somewhat capable with a blade in a pinch, their weaker stature and limited weaponry mean they also can't hold up long against more heavily armored foes.

Regardless of your class, taking a moment to revive fallen comrades or finish off prone enemies introduces a risk-vs.-reward dynamic that earns you bonus coins and experience but leaves you vulnerable. Executions are particularly awesome, as is taking down an enemy who's about to execute a comrade and then reviving your pal so he can turn around and send his would-be murderer to his doom. It's almost comical how fast and frequently the tables turn, and the fluidity of matches keeps things exciting.

War of the Roses' authenticity even extends to the realistic interplay between different weapons and armor types. Some blades bounce off heavy armor leaving a mere scratch damage-wise, but putting an arrow through the thin visor in your foe's helmet or jabbing a weak spot between armor plates can be lethal. Prepare to experience utter panic the first time you face off against a tanked-up adversary you can barely injure with your weaker weapons. The starting arsenal and available loadouts are limited at first, though you unlock more options as you level up and earn coins for kills.

Once you open up several custom character slots, the ability to tweak your warriors for maximum killing effectiveness is a great time sink between battles. Applying perks that increase your fighting prowess in different ways is only the beginning too. You can even go as far as picking the actual materials for each weapon--right down to the wood and metal types--which subtly affects their effectiveness. The level of depth is commendable. It's also a potent lure to keep you diving back into matches to test out your new gear and earn coins to score better equipment.

As thrilling as the game's massive medieval bloodbaths can get, War of the Roses isn't without its flaws. A few bugs, ranging from minor visual glitches like indoor rain, to bigger problems like midair respawns that send you plummeting to your death, pop up from time to time. They're a minor nuisance. The sparse play modes or other ways to experience the combat are the bigger issue. This rivalry between warring houses is certainly worth exploring outside of the online battles, but nothing really touches on the historical aspect behind the conflict. And with only two modes--Team Deathmatch and Conquest--battles grow repetitive over time.

Limited though it may be, War of the Roses delivers a grisly, realistic take on third-person medieval combat that hits most of the right notes. More than just a refreshing change of pace for the genre, it captures the raw kinetic essence of the period's turbulent warfare in an exciting way. Fatshark's plans to roll out additional modes and updates will eventually beef up the content available for you to chew through, but even right now this is a satisfying multiplayer experience.

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Monster Island game

Monster Island

Description: Monster thugs are on the loose harassing the inhabitants of the colorful world of Monster Island. Now, it's up to you and your arsenal of mini-monster bombs to get rid of this plague of unwanted visitors. Can you stand against such mischievous foes?

Instructions: [LMB] Hold down, aim and release to shoot [SPACE] Cancel a thrown grenade.

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Kingdom Rush game

Kingdom Rush

Description: The kingdom is under attack! Defend your realm against hordes of orcs, trolls, evil wizards and other nasty fiends; armed with a mighty arsenal of warriors and mages of your own! Fight on forests, mountains, and wastelands. Upgrade your towers with special powers, rain fire upon your enemies, summon additional troops, recruit elven warriors and face legendary monsters. Earn up to 51 achievements and much more in this epic fantasy defense game by Ironhide Game Studio.

Instructions: Build towers to attack incoming enemies and stop them from getting past your defenses. Earn gold by defeating enemies and use it to build more towers. [1] - Select/Cancel Rain of Fire spell. [2] - Select/Cancel Reinforcements spell. [3] - Select/Cancel Lightning Bolt spell (Premium content only) [4] - Activate/Cancel Sunray Tower. [SPACE] - Cancel any selected spell/power/rally point. [P] - Pauses the game.

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