Graphic Adventure Creator
Incentive's answer, and it arrived on the Amstrad first
Sean Ellis and Brendan Kelly's authoring system for Incentive Software combined a text adventure generator with a drawing package. It won its reputation on the Amstrad before reaching the Spectrum in 1986, where Sinclair User gave it 5/5.
The Graphic Adventure Creator — GAC — was Incentive Software’s rival to Gilsoft’s authoring tools, and its distinguishing feature is in the name: it generated illustrated adventures, with a picture editor built in rather than sold separately as an add-on.
Fast facts
- Publisher: Incentive Software.
- Designed and written by: Sean Ellis and Brendan Kelly.
- Price: £22.95 on cassette.
- Spectrum release: 1986.
- Origin: the Amstrad CPC came first.
It went the other way round
Most British software of this period reached the Spectrum first and was ported outward. GAC did the opposite. CRASH reported in May 1986 that Incentive were “about to release a Spectrum version of Graphic Adventure Creator, which has already won acclaim on the Amstrad”, with the Spectrum build still in bug testing.
That is a small fact with a large implication: by 1986 the Amstrad CPC was a large enough market to originate a serious tool on, and the Spectrum was the port. The machine that had defined British home computing was starting to be one platform among several.
How it was received
| Magazine | Score | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Sinclair User | 5/5 | July 1986 |
| Your Sinclair | 9/10 | August 1986 |
What it did
The vocabulary handling splits into three areas — nouns, verbs and adverbs — each able to hold a substantial word list. CRASH noted the obvious consequence for the author: it is your job to trap nonsense input and give intelligent responses, because the tool will happily accept whatever you fail to think of.
The picture generator is the part the advertising led on: dot, circle, elastic line, ellipse, fast fill and shading. Incentive’s own advert lists “step by step review, easy editing and the ability to merge pictures”, so common elements need drawing only once. The same advert promised “fast, compact adventure games with the minimum of effort and the maximum of creativity”.
GAC against the Gilsoft tools
The Quill needed The Illustrator bought separately to produce graphics; GAC had drawing built in from the start, and arrived while The Quill was still the default and a year before PAW answered it.
The two houses drew different conclusions about what adventure authors wanted. Gilsoft’s line went towards parser sophistication and ended at PAW’s adjectives and pronouns. Incentive’s went towards presentation. Both cost £22.95, and both reviewed at the top of the scale.