Hello Gamers.

In our interview on Nov 25th, 2002, Stan Bobbitt asked
me some great questions and reported the best answers
I had at the time. Since that time, numerous features
and capabilities have been added to the Engine. At the
time of the interview, I had expressed certain limitations
for the Engine. After some hard work I have done away
with a lot of those limitations. To get the full scoop on
all the cool new things in the Engine, please see my site:
http://InspiredCode.net/Adventure.htm

Here are the main limitations that no longer apply:

+ Demo time is now 120 days for unregistered copies.

+ Powerful yet intuitive math added

I had said that the math would have to be simple.
Now, the math can be as elaborate as you like.
The Game Engine contains an extraordinarily talented
Expression Evaluator that likes to eat up the craziest
equations you may want to throw at it, and gives you
just the answer that you would naturally expect. It is
very intuitive and easy to use.

+ "Advanced" type Programming Tools,
yet still in plain English.

I had said that there was no advantage for the
advanced programmer. This is still true, but for a new
and exciting reason. The only thing that made those
really hard programming languages so great to use was
all the powerful features and capabilities. Now those
powerful abilities are available to you in plain English.

+ Background Sounds and random soundscapes

I had said that the best I could do for sounds was to
give the ability to loop a longer wave sound. Now you
can create audio sequences made of midi and layered
wave sounds, creating realistic, non repeating textures
of sounds.

+ Shareware Authors can powerfully protect their work

I had said that the best I could do was to provide a check
sum to verify authenticity. Now the engine can protect
your program code's secrecy. You can encrypt your game
files, and they will play just fine encrypted. Unregistered
users can play your game for five minutes at a time (or any
other time period you specify) to try them out, but to keep
playing for more than those minutes they have to register.
When they register they will send you their demo code
and you can send them their permanent code for the game.

If you want to keep your games open source, however, you
can still authenticate your work as well as letting people
learn from you.

+ NEW:  3D Navigation and collision detection
A powerful real time gaming mechanism has been added that
you can use to allow the players to navigate with (keys like)
a joystick, encounter wandering monsters, have access to
rooms if doors are open, bump into walls, fly over but not
into buildings (except perhaps through a window) and have
ariel dogfights like fighter jets.

That makes it possible to have an audio text adventure
mystery game with some intense action scenes along the way,
what I think is the best of both worlds.  (Of course, if
all you want to do is the action you can do that too.)

You will find most of that stuff at the end of the language
document, starting with "+++ Real Time RPG Motion".

+++ This is a partnership

This is not the first, nor will be the last time that a
professional (such as myself) has teemed up with a number
of volunteers (such as yourself) to accomplish something
otherwise impossible.

Since there are so many people deserving and qualified to
be in on the beta release, I have decided to release a
public beta that will transition smoothly into an official
release.  I will appreciate all the help I can get in testing
it under various conditions. 

Normally a program this size sells for thousands, but I
have set the registration price to thirty dollars. 
Therefore I am shamelessly enlisting your participation in
the success of this monstrous project. 

As the purpose of the Engine is to empower a new community
of game programers, each of you is just such an expert who
can make a big difference by your testing and feedback.

Why am I doing this in such an odd way?

When you compare my four available evenings per week to
whatever time each of you has multiplied by how many of you
are using the beta, you can see this is the only way to get
the Engine into your hands by any time this year!


And now, to bury my head in the coding again. Catch you
next time I come up for air...

Robison Bryan
InspiredCode.net