Apple ][ Graphic Adventure Part I
Having recently played the Apple ][ game Transylvania and its sequel, I was inspired to mess with the art program which those games used. The Graphics Magician was a huge hit for Penguin Software, but I never actually had a chance to use it when we had an Apple ][. I just remember it being advertised in every computer magazine I had.
My go to art program back in the day was always Alpha Plot from Beagle Bros. It wasn’t the easiest software to use. In fact, it came bundled with a cardboard overlay for your keyboard so you had an immediate reference as to what the various keys did. Still, I managed to draw pixel by pixel and create masterpieces like this:
![](https://robertgomez.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/alpha-plot-gross.png)
The Graphics Magician is something altogether different though. Instead of meticulously drawing each point on the screen, you create images programatically using a language of lines, fills and brushes. The end product is what today we would call vector art.
![](https://robertgomez.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/graphics-magician-weirdo.png)
The advantage of vector art is that file sizes are small. The other advantage is that these drawing routines can be used within one’s own Apple ][ programs.
This gave me an idea for a project. Take the text-based adventure game I had made years ago, and use these routines to add graphics to the game. As I type this, I am already pretty far along in the project, but I will be going back and documenting my progress. Hopefully someone might find this informative and, if I am able to follow through, maybe I will have a releasable game in the end. It’s doing more than I ever imagined already:
![](https://robertgomez.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/parser-inprogress-01.jpg)
Continue to Part II