Very few people will know what the title of this blog post refers to. There may be a few who have heard it and still don’t know what it refers to. It is from a game called Camel which is very, very old, and which was around in the time of the original Zork and other BASIC language games. A reboot of Camel can be found at PegaSoft games, complete with typographical errors (“knocked keed pygmies” as opposed to “knock-kneed pygmies”). The BASIC file language for the game can be found here or here, and a RUNBASIC version can be found here.
The object of this simple game is to travel 200 miles across a desert on your camel while outrunning a tribe of pygmies who want to capture and dine on you and your camel. Your command entries determine what happens next. Do you run out of water? Do you fall farther behind or gain some ground? Do you wear your camel out at a break-neck pace? You have the power to rest, take a drink, move forward, or put the pedal to the proverbial metal as you try to out-run the pygmies.
Until recently, when I looked it up, I had forgotten everything about that game except for the line, “your camel is burning across the desert sands.”
When I was in high school, we experimented with computer programming by using BASIC and QBASIC. We learned line numbering (10, 20, 30, 40, and so on), the use of commands like PRINT, GOTO, IF and THEN, LOOP, and many other simple but highly functional commands. The game Camel was an easy one to break down and examine when learning BASIC because it didn’t consist of thousands of lines of code.
I still enjoy playing with BASIC and QBASIC, and I still love text-based online games. Unfortunately, there are very few of them that are worth playing, and many aren’t truly text-based because they either require graphical elements for a significant portion of the game or the text part is supplemental to the graphics.
One text-based online game I’ve played for years (and years and years) is Gemstone, by Simutronics. When I started playing it, the game was based on Prodigy, which functioned similar to and came out around the same time as CompuServe and America Online (the old AOL, with tons of chat rooms and games and loads of cool stuff that it lost or got rid of along the way). After starting out on CompuServe and Prodigy, Gemstone became available on AOL in 1995 and eventually progressed to being based off the company’s own servers rather than online Internet service provider hubs.
Gemstone started out as Gemstone II for a brief stint on GEnie, then became Gemstone III on AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe (as well as on Simutronics’ servers). It is now currently called Gemstone IV. Simutronics also offers a couple of other games like Dragon Realms, and they did have an adventure RPG (also text-based) with a modern setting called Modus Operandi, but they neglected that game until eventually removing it in the past year or so. This was much to my dismay as I used to spend hours and hours immersed in the Modus world with hundreds of other players (eventually the “active at any given time” player base dropped to around half a dozen, most of which had been – like me – playing the game for over 20 years).
Gemstone is one of the first MMORPGs ever introduced. MMORPG stands for “massively multiplayer online role-playing game.” It is also one of the longest-running online games that is still active. (Source: Wikipedia)
One of the biggest reasons I enjoy text-based gaming is because I used to have a computer that couldn’t handle the graphic requirements for many of the graphic-based role-playing games. A “text only” fallback was a requirement, in other words. Some of the reasons I have stayed connected to Gemstone IV over the past 20+ years are because the game is extremely solo-friendly (meaning you don’t need a group or gaming partner to progress in the game), you can play at your own pace (you aren’t stuck in dungeons or dangerous places where you have to find a “safe” place to quit before logging out), and the game hasn’t undergone any drastic changes that render it unplayable or unenjoyable.
Also, in my opinion, text-based gamers tend to be smarter people – and thus don’t act like crybabies, griefers, trolls, or other undesirables – because you have to read the game and react to it via typing. True role-playing of characters is seen more often in text-based games, the player base is often older and more mature, and there is more of a cooperative spirit rather than a “what’s in it for me” attitude.
Coming soon – an in-depth article examining Gemstone IV and why you should play it if you enjoy online gaming.
UPDATE (August 27, 2016): Check out the recently posted Updated & Comprehensive Gemstone IV Game Guide, with more detailed and thorough information for new and returning players.
siouxsays 