The CRPG Addict

A note about Master of Doom:

There is a small part about the departure of ID Software guys from Softdisk that is inaccurate and has been corrected by John Remoro himself when he spoke to the blogger who writes the famous CRPG Addict series (btw, completely out of topic but this blog is EXCELLENT if you want a COMPLETE view of pretty much every RPG out there since the 70s). The correction (as the blogger wrote) was a correction about a mistake he made in writing one of his earlier post about Dark Design, but I think it also corrects the claim made in Master of Doom.

The link to Romero's correction is as following:
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/09/game-378-goodcodes-cavern-1982-and.html

You will need to scroll down to the second part, or just search "But since I was only able to get 1,200 words out of Goodcode's Cavern" on the page. To simplify things I'm pasting the paragraphs:

>I had consulted several sources to assemble that paragraph, including one that purported to have interviewed both Carmack and Romero in detail, and I was pretty confident in what I had. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when John Romero (who I didn't even know was aware of my blog) invited me to participate in a podcast interview of Stuart Smith. (We're recording in mid-September; I'll let you know when it's out.) I took the opportunity to run the paragraph by him and found out that almost everything I'd written was wrong. To wit:

- I was a year late; 1990 was the year most of this happened.…

our oldest (15) didnt get a phone until about 13. Middle (10) has an apple watch for the phone function, 7 year old doesnt have a phone. They all have macbooks, ipads, etc.

our internet goes on for them at 6am, turns off at 7am. They have to be dressed, ready for school, brushed teeth etc, before they start at 6am. I have never had to wake my kids up for school in their lives.

They get internet again at night from 7:30-8:30 once all their work is done (reading a chapter in a book, math one grade level higher, foreign language, music). They function as a team so they all need to be done before any of them can start doing electronics.

When I was a kid (12-17) I was addicted to one of the first online graphical role playing games in the country (80s PLATO system - avatar). My dad was a CS professor so I had easy access to the network terminals. He would never have one in our house as he had phd students drop out as a result of being addicted to the game. He constantly reminded me it was better to write the game than to be addicted to the games.

https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/11/game-124-avatar-1979.html

At some point I just outgrew them and I periodically try to play them, but they are so shallow compared to real life I cant get addicted again.

I think as long as kids have plenty of "real life" activities that they love, they will be able to enjoy the internet in moderation.

The kids that really struggle are the ones whose parents dont help them to cultivate real…

I feel like a lot of this comes from an "Ultima fan" perspective where Ultima VIII "ruined it" because it was too different. Conversely, I played it first, and enjoyed it; it did many things no game I'd played before had tried, although was not short of many flaws (which tbf the post-release patch resolves quite a few of). Playing other Ultimas later, they were in many ways good but also felt a bit trite in their morality.

I don't think it's trivially an awful game. I've heard a lot about how wonderful Ultima VII is, but more recently I get the impression (after reading articles like http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/08/ultima-vii-black-gate-summary-and-rating.html) that there's another side to it: also dramatically flawed in many ways, maybe less obviously so than Pagan but the writing may have already been on the wall. Assuming everything just went terribly at the end and blaming on "the bean counters" seems a bit lazy to me.

PLATO is notable for being the origin of the of the computer role playing game. The history of early CRPGs is murky, because PLATO was intended for educational use and games programmers had to work in secret to avoid the administrators deleting their work, but it's possible that the first ever CRPG was the Reginald Rutherford's 1975 game "The Dungeon" (a.k.a. "pedit5" after its inconspicuous lesson name). The Dungeon was probably earlier than the lost game "m199h" that was previously thought to be first. These early CRPGs are all influenced by Dungeons and Dragons, which was first published in 1974.

The Dungeon is still playable today. The CRPG Addict blog has details:

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2019/01/revisiting-dungeon-1975.html

And more information about lost games:

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2021/06/brief-everything-we-know-about-1970s.html

This is lovely.

First, I could only imagine playing ASCII like games (such as old Roguelikes, especially ones with outside worlds, such as OMEGA[0], with this as animating the fields, waters, etc - would be interesting.

However, I was really drawn to how this might be used on GIS pointclouds, topographical maps (for animating flows down topographic GIS data?)

[0] http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2011/05/game-55-omega-1988.html

The CRPG Addict also played _Wraith: The Devil's Demise_, his second game:

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.be/2015/04/game-184-wraith-devils-demise-1990.html

And _Dark Designs_, a more elaborate RPG, one of his first games for Softdisk:

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.be/2014/01/game-133-dark-designs-i-grelminars.html

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.be/2014/07/game-152-dark-designs-ii-closing-gate.html