Deadline (computer game)
| Deadline | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Infocom |
| Publisher | Infocom |
| Senior Developer | Marc Blank |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1982 |
| platform | Apple II , Atari 8-Bit , Atari ST , Commodore 64 , Commodore Amiga , DOS , Mac OS , Schneider CPC |
| Game engine | Z-machine |
| genre | Text adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | keyboard |
| medium | diskette |
| language | English |
| copy protection | Enclosure referencing ("Feelies") |
Deadline is a text adventure from the US company Infocom from 1982.
action
The action in the style of a classic crime story takes place in Connecticut. The wealthy businessman Marshall Robner is dead. He is found in his library, the door is locked from the inside, and circumstances suggest suicide. The player takes on the role of a private detective who was hired by Robner's lawyer to clear up rumors about a possible outside influence. The player has twelve hours for this. With the help of the police officer Sergeant Duffy, he exposes the death as a murder and investigates six suspects who are on Robner's property.
Game principle and technology
Deadline is controlled via the keyboard. Commands to the computer are entered as sentences in imperative form and processed by a parser . Technically, the game was realized with the Z-machine . The player observes the six suspects, questions them and collects evidence. Deadline must be resolved within a time limit. Deadline has no graphics and no sound. The package insert contains police interrogation protocols of the suspects, a photo of the crime scene and other items that are necessary to solve the case and therefore represent copy protection.
Production notes
The genre of the game was called Interactive Fiction by the manufacturer . Programmed deadline , as well as the previous Infocom games in the system-independent programming language ZIL that the entries of the programmer in data for the game engine Z-machine converted. ZIL and Z-machine were Infocom's own developments. Deadline is the first Infocom game that is not set in a fantasy world. With the crime genre, the company broke new ground, as almost all text adventures published to date had an exploratory character and an at least largely static game world. The working title of the game was Was It Murder? ( Was it murder? ) - the final title was suggested by the Boston advertising agency Giardini / Russell, a process that was not uncommon for Infocom at the time, which did the marketing for Infocom, but also the packaging design and other work.
In 2019, the source code of the game was published on the software development repository GitHub .
reception
In the 1980s, a review in the literary section of the New York Times emphasized the narrative character of the text adventure ("Deadline, in fact, is more like a genre of fiction than a game."). A match report in a German computer magazine highlighted the independent actions of the six suspects and the varied course of action.
A 2006 study of computer game history and theory recognized the adventures' ambitious approach. The realistic story from the crime genre marks a clear break with the fantasy acts that previously predominated in the field of text adventures. For the first time, more emphasis is placed on dialogues with vivid non-player characters than on solving puzzles.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Jimmy Maher: Let's Tell a Story Together. A History of Interactive Fiction . Senior Honor's Thesis, University of Texas, Dallas 2006 (Chapter 5 The Infocom Canon - The Early Mysteries: Deadline, The Witness, and Suspect ) .
- ^ The Digital Antiquarian (blog): Deadline. Retrieved October 7, 2019 .
- ↑ GitHub.com: Deadline by Marc Blank (Infocom). Retrieved April 18, 2019 .
- ^ Edward Rothstein: Reading and Writing: Participatory Novels . In: The New York Times Book Review, May 8, 1983.
- ↑ M. Kohl / Heinrich Lenhardt : Witness / Suspect / Deadline . In: Happy Computer special edition 3/1985.