MacVenture
| MacVenture
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| Basic data
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| developer | ICOM simulations |
| Publishing year | 1985 |
| operating system | Mac OS |
| category | Computer game development system |
| License | proprietary |
MacVenture is the name of a computer game engine that was programmed in 1985 by the American developer ICOM Simulations for the Apple Macintosh and used to develop adventure games.
features
The engine enabled a new type of interface for the time, with the help of which a game could be controlled with the mouse alone and without any text input. In addition, it was possible for the first time to interact with the game graphics, such as picking up and using objects, opening doors and moving the character to the various rooms in the game, at the click of a mouse.
The first game Déjà Vu: A Nightmare Comes True developed with this engine for point-and-click control is considered a milestone and the second representative of the computer game genre of point-and-click adventure games. Between 1985 and 1988 ICOM Simulations developed a total of four games with this engine, each of which is referred to as “MacVenture Adventures” and collectively as the “MacVenture Series”.
- Déjà Vu: A Nightmare Comes True (1985)
- Uninvited (1986)
- Shadowgate (1987)
- Déjà Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas (1988)
MacVenture was displayed as in-game text or logo on loading screens and in some information boxes . After porting the title to numerous other platforms, the name changed accordingly as Atari-Venture, Amiga-Venture, C-Venture, PC-Venture etc.
The core development team for the four games consisted of Tod Zipnick (main owner and founder of ICOM Simulations), Darin Adler (developer), Steve Hays, Waldemar Horwat, David Marsh (graphics), Terry Schulenburg, Todd Squires and Jay Zipnick.
The MacVenture games became the model for numerous other engines for mouse control of games, such as the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion (SCUMM) by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick for the development of Maniac Mansion at Lucasfilm Games . After its success, other point-and-click adventures soon appeared. Even Sierra On-Line , which at first successfully relied on control through text input and interpretation by a parser , finally switched technology and contributed to the success of the genre, especially in the 1990s.
In August 2014, the company Zojoi, which was founded in 2012 by former ICOM employees, first published a renewed and expanded version of Shadowgate via the Steam platform . In January 2015, all four MacVenture games followed in the original version, but they can run on modern hardware and the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems .
Web links
- WebVenture , MacVenture replica in JavaScript for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome (including source code and documentation of the MacVenture file formats )
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b ICOM MacVentures. In: Hardcore Gaming 101. May 5, 2010, accessed June 15, 2014 .
- ↑ MacVenture series at MobyGames (English, accessed June 15, 2014)
- ↑ Darin Adler: Darin Adler (curriculum vitae). In: bentspoon.com. February 10, 2002, accessed June 17, 2014 .
- ↑ Guinness world records 2009: Gamer's edition . Guinness World Records Ltd, 2009, ISBN 978-1-904994-47-3 , pp. 214 ( limited preview in Google Book search).