Interviews
Just
Adventure Interview with Howard Sherman – Malinche Entertainment
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JA – Even
though it’s covered quite exhaustively on your web page, could you
describe us the research and travels you made in order to create PFL?
I always enjoy recounting
my research because of all the fun I had doing it. First I started
out with some caving in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania before
flying across the pond to London to explore the Tower of London and
Windsor Castle to get a real feel for the magnificence and glory of
royalty as well as the more utilitarian uses of castles and keeps.
Then me and Mrs. Sherman went to Kent and explored the 22 mile expanse
of Chiselworth Caves. They really aren’t caves as they were all manmade
which gave me the inspiration to create the tunnel system located
in the game.
Going further we then
flew to Paris and spent a good deal of time at the Palace of Versailles
and other residences of French royalty to really crystallize the full
range of emotion one gets when walking the halls of royalty. I faithfully
recreated that in Castle Delphin. It’s the largest structure of its
kind ever implemented in a text adventure game.
JA – Have you received
some feedback (suggestions, opinions, etc) from Pentari‘s players?
If so, do you like getting such kind of messages?
Yes, quite a bit of
feedback comes in every week and I welcome it all. Since the Interactive
Fiction I create is for the players I take their input very seriously.
Player comments have been taken into consideration and used in perfecting
PFL from Revision 1 released in March, 2003 to Revision 6 which
is being released on May 25th. Players have been great in reporting
bugs, making suggestions and sharing their insights with us. It’s
fantastic.
JA – If you don’t mind,
would you share with us how many copies have Pentari: First Light
sold so far?
Sorry, but no numbers.
I will say that I am quite satisfied with sales figures so far and
our forecasts going into the third and fourth quarter are very exciting.
JA – PFL is written
with Inform. Why did you choose this programming language? What do
you think about other widely known parsers, such as TADS or Alan?
While TADS is a mighty
fine platform but I cut my teeth on Inform and Graham Nelson, Inform’s
creator, envisioned Inform being used to further the IF genre created
by Infocom which is a vision I share, albeit from a slightly different
perspective. I’m aware of Alan’s existence but I don’t see it as the
very best platform for the development of the Interactive Fiction
I create.
