After
having the degree, unfortunately, my conditions of life altogether
basically changed. Completely up till there and then – through
many years – I still had got enough to earn my living from that
incomings out of the modest combination of my college money scholarship
and my periodic game development jobs and works (obviously it
was still contributed by the fact that I hadn’t got an own flat
yet, and I either hadn’t got to manage some sort of full household
by myself); from then on this all had already ceased. What is
more, I had got to start my regular military service 
soon
(it was still an obligation about those times in Hungary, and
could only be postponed before because of my studies for a while),
even whether it was absolutely useless… So, during the next year,
I could hardly think of the programming. Yet I didn’t stop, but
even continued it, however, it became very slow and hard for me
to do so, and proceed. Afterwards I had to seek for some ordinary,
main, and daily job to earn a living on, at all, which I could
not really keep consistent (or conform) with my original aims
and dreams. Either beside my „job” I continued my (other) „job”
in the sparetime (what comical), or, by turns: sometimes sacrifising
them for each other (and sometimes vice-versa, conversely). In
the beginning I thought that among such conditions it would only
mean to last longer; to need more time. Yet I had to recognize,
more and more bitterly, that it didn’t work: namely, the creation
in itself requires a whole man; such one who concentrates by one’s
entire being onto that, and does so continually. That meant that
I should have got to live upon and get along my game development
activity further on – however I didn’t find any kind of practical
way to that at all.
This
entire writhing endured for several years, which – if it had not
been enough – I even rendered more difficult for myself with my
exaggeratedly high-soaring, unreal intentions: I resolutely strived
for
making a „perfect” program code, that would have been an utmost
ultimately optimized and polished system with a minimal hardware
requirements etc. (This was partly of the innervation of the 8-bit
era, and partly of my own limitless ambitiousness, too.) Doing
this all in a manner that I never documented anything, and always
solved or planned everything only in my head. Let’s now for example
imagine a several ten thousand lined, bulk and solid, lanky Assembly
code, without any single comment or remark inserted within. While
I was continuously occupied in doing it, all of this might remain
alive in my mind, but when things worked out in such a way I could
not look at it or had to (also) care for other things, then –
increasingly frightened – I faced that I could scarcely get my
bearings, harder and harder, having lost my handholds and my references
each in turn… And started to lose my way in my own labyrinth.
(Two or three years later I was still at there, just endlessly
and permanently refining the very bases of the system, and piffling
and pottering about particularities.)
Sooner
or later, or, much rather, slowly but surely, it led to the actual
stage when the measure was quite full, and upset I left the whole
alone. (That „accidentally” happened after my repeatedly changing
my residence, and at the same time some other aims and ideals
had started to interest – drum-making, building etc.)
By
my original plans, that monumental final game of mine to be called
as The Tales of the Blood (originated from a poem by
Lucian Blaga) would have been ready simultaneously both in Hungarian
and in English language (uniting the two in an only single version
altogether, still remaining capable being translated to further
ones some time later, too), within an enormous (consisting of
several thousands of places built up detailed), worked out, differentiated,
artificial universe, living and real far more than any former,
playable even by a lot of users at the same time (a bit of MUD-like
in a network), as far as also with a more intelligent and natural
and many-sided parser/interpreter algorhythm than any former,
plus an intuitive graphical control interface (optionally, that
you need have not to use unless you wanted to in real, but which
would have really eased to play the game), and with tons of literary
text and mythological background, perplexed, complex mental labour
causing situations, and the plot and playtime stretching into
infinity… etc. All this merely on an average, common 486 machine
(I did develop on that); world’s biggest and best text adventure
game. That did not become true, just because I still would have
needed a few more years for it – and accordingly somebody to support
this by any modest financial background for that time. (However,
maybe still no one would have finally played this even if it had
ever been finished…)
Perhaps,
in another – more modern and differently programmed – kind of
environment, by another kind of approach and attitude, with another
philosophy, this whole so-called „adventure” would even be repeatable
and/or renewable, who knows, once… (Well, just in a sort of L’Art
pour L’Art way of course…)
Robert
Olessak (2010)
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The
Tales of the Blood |
09/01/2011 |
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TAPLO
adventure system (unfinished, 1997-2001) |
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