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A chat with Dorothy Millard, Australian adventure author

If you've ever played a homegrown adventure game on the C64, chances are that you've come across the games of Dorothy Millard. She's the author of a number of excellent text adventures for the C64 (which, by the way, can be downloaded right here). On a sunny day in August '99, I decided to ask her a few questions. Read on and enjoy!

Well, for starters, thanks for taking your time doing this!

You're welcome.

Please tell us a bit about yourself first. Only the bits you feel we need to know about :o)

My background is in office work, hence all the typed solutions I have done over the years. I grew up in England but have lived in Australia for many years. Currently I work in a school office. I am married and have three children, two boys and a girl, who are now grown up. My interest in computers started when as a family we purchased a Commodore 64, which at that time was in its heyday.

Have you had other machines than the C64?

Yes. I first purchased a Commodore 64 when they were selling the Vic 20 machine off cheap, but I decided the "new" Commodore 64 was a better buy. Later I acquired a Spectrum but never used it much due to lack of a tape-input device. I was using one of those funny little micro drives but I didn't have much in the way of software for it, only silly little "pong" type games. Later I purchased an Amiga 500 and hard drive for an exorbitant sum [yes, folks, those were the days where you had to pay around $1,000 for a 52 MB hard drive! Ed]. When the time came to upgrade from the Amiga, Commodore was looking shaky so I decided a PC was the way to go, and I purchased a DX2-66 which was top of the range at that time.

You've written around 15 adventure games, is that right?

Yes, in fact 16 in all, plus a couple which I "fixed up." My earliest games were St. Jives, Lost in the Amazon and Harboro. They are playable but lack the quality of later games like The Westbury Mystery, Land of the Purple Sea and Yellow Peril.

How did you get into adventuring in the first place? Was is through the good old Scott Adams-routine, or did you start somewhere else entirely?

The first text adventure game I came across on the Commodore 64 was The Secret of Bastow Manor and it was years before I eventually managed to work out how to open the safe [you're not alone, Ed]. Other early adventures included the Mountain Valley/Softgold series, including King Solomon's Minesand Mystery Island, followed by Scott Adams and many of the public domain games, including Tunnelmaze by Steven Darnold and Haunted Mansion by John O'Hare, both of which left me with fond memories. I found a lot of the public domain games (and some commercial games too) contained "bugs." This was often, in the case of the public domain games, because they had been typed from magazines but not checked. I spent a lot of time fixing these and also typing in games from magazines, and then debugging them, in the early days.

Your latest game made available for emulation is from 1994. What happened after that - did you give up on writing or did you switch to some greener pasture (ie. a newer machine)?

Quite simply I re-entered the workforce and simply didn't get around to learning a new program when I switched to the Amiga. I did plan to continue the Aussie Adventure series using the Amiga, but never got around to it and now that machine isn't working anyway. I still hope to come to grips with something like Tads or Inform on the PC.

How did you manage to get your games distributed (this has always been a major problem for adventure writers) I can see that one your games was released by something called Base 7 - was that your own company?

Only one game was released by Base 7 Software. The rest were released through the "Home Grown" market in England and the US, and by myself in Australia. They are now available to anyone who wants them in emulated format from the Internet.

Let's talk a bit about the technical side. Your first games appear to be written in BASIC. I've tried writing BASIC adventures myself. It's absolutely horrible!

Actually my first games were written with The Quill and I only wrote using BASIC to prove I could. Let me explain, I had already written eight or so games with The Quill and I was looking for a challenge. There are things I could do in BASIC that I couldn't do with The Quill, for example including sound (I know you can use sound in The Quill but I never mastered writing it). Shadows in the Night was written entirely around using sound effects. I had to include an aviary because I had this wonderful sound effect of birds singing. Convention Blues was the first game I wrote in BASIC as a programming exercise. However, it still turned out to be a very playable game. Misty Island was the third game I wrote in BASIC and I was able to put a lot more timed events in because of this. It also changes colour according to the time of day, which is very important throughout the game. I found when designing the layout it was more flexible using BASIC, for example in Shadows in the Night the location descriptions change according to actions taken. This isn't possible when programming with The Quill. The main problem with BASIC was speed, but I solved this by compiling the games.-

On the other hand, your later titles were written in The Quill. How did that system's limitations influence your work?

The main limitation with my writing wasn't so much with The Quill, but with the limited memory available in the Commodore 64. My games always took up all the available memory. I stopped writing puzzles when I ran out of memory. It was always a compromise between long descriptive passages and puzzles. I nearly always took the puzzles option, as they are what I like most about text adventure games. The limitations taught me to write very tight code and to get as much as possible into the available memory. A good example of this is Yellow Peril which contains heaps of puzzles. Back to The Quill, the main limitation would have to be the two-word parser, but with a little thought this can be got around.

What bothered me the most about the Quill was that for some odd reason, most of the system messages always seemed the same. Things like "You can't do that", "I don't understand" and the "Quit" messages didn't have a great deal of variation. Was that due to the system itself, or were the writers just too lazy to change them? :o)

Yes, I know what you mean. What bugged me most was the blue on blue colour scheme. I always found that if the author hadn't bothered to change these then the game wasn't going to be brilliant. In a nutshell the above problems are caused by inexperienced or lazy authors. It is quite simple to go into the System Messages and change them. In later games, when I had gained some experience, I always gave at least three or four alternative "You can't do that" type messages which would appear randomly. Also as far as memory restrictions would allow I would ensure that as many different messages as possible were given in response to input.

Did you ever try other possibilities, like GAC? I always found it to be more advanced than The Quill, but the games it produced were so awfully slow that you couldn't be bothered playing them!

GAC had its advantages, like an improved parser, but I always felt that its lack of speed outweighed the advantages and with clever programming The Quill was the best available for the C64.

What's your favourite (adventure) game?

Lurking Horror by Infocom.

What do you think about the newer adventure games?

A lot of the PC games available via the Internet, especially the competition games, lack puzzles which is what I like most. They can also be too verbose. I just want to get in and play them. I enjoy mapping and many of these have only a few locations, or even only one, and in many regards are just too "clever." Give me the good old-fashioned treasure hunt any day. However, some of the commercial games are fun, including Lighthouse by Sierra, Zork: Grand Inquisitor and Zork Nemesis, but I do tend to get "lost," especially in Zork Nemesis, where after getting in quite successfully I later just couldn't find my way in again, and had to ask a friend for help. [you have my full sympathy regarding ZN, which in places is awfully difficult! For the rest of you, Zork: Grand Inquisitor actually captures a lot of the atmosphere of the Infocom classics and therefor comes warmly recommended, Ed]

Well, once again thanks to Dorothy for taking the time to answer my questions. I hope this has given you all a small idea of what it's like to be a genuine adventure author! Stay tuned and hopefully more interviews will come your way.

Jacob Gunness, August 1999