Salutations. This is a couple of etudes I've created in the smashingly snazzy adventure
creating language, ALAN. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it as your best choice for
creating text adventures on the Amiga, and as fully competitive with TADS on the MS-DOS
and UNIX platforms.

The files in this archive are:

shell.alan -- a couple of standard verbs and things used by function.alan and reactor.alan.

reactor.alan -- how to make a room that changes its description. This is the Improbability
                Drive room from Hitchhiker's. Pretty trivial.

function.alan -- An example of how to create a "function" in ALAN. I'm rather proud of
                 myself for figuring it out. This implements a calculating function which
                 adds together three numbers and returns a result. I should have taken
                 the effort to turn it into a four-function calculator, but I'm too lazy.
                 Maybe in the next version.

floyd.alan -- I threw this together on a lark. It's a fully functional Floyd, of Planetfall
              fame. This is a good demonstration of fairly sophisticated use of actors.

I'd be keen to hear comments or questions on these. Also, you dabblers out there -- write
some adventures already! Yes, I'm working on one of my own, but if I was too sluggish to
finish creating a simple four-function calculator...

Mark Sachs
mbs110@psuvm.psu.edu

October 14, 1993

