TALESPIN

 TALESPIN is an adventure game creation system written by Mark Heaton and his
family, and published and distributed by Microdeal. This outstanding program
allows you to create interactive graphic- and text-oriented adventure games,
demos, books, tutorials, or whatever application you can think of. TALESPIN
offers excellent graphics, 100 development commands, mouse control, no copy
protection, hard drive support, and TELLTALE, a run-only module that allows
users without TALESPIN to see your work. The Atari ST version is the basis for
this review.

 Mark Heaton, his wife, and their five children (ages 6 to 19) all had their
heads and hands in TALESPIN. Nineteen-year Rudyard (who likes drawing and
adventures, but hates programming) used TALESPIN to create THE GRAIL, the first
TALESPIN-driven adventure to be published; a shortened version, used as a
demonstration, comes with the package. While most development programs are
limited to a specific form of game (WARGAME CONSTRUCTION SET, ADVENTUREWRITER,
SHOOT 'EM UP CONSTRUCTION KIT), TALESPIN provides the tools for virtually any
kind of application. As with any development program, it's best to keep in mind
that TALESPIN in not a toy or a game: It's a serious product.

 The design idea that drives TALESPIN is a "page" built from drawings, text, and
sound. Conditions and variables control the text, graphic, and action/solution
possibilities, and all pages are linked to form a complete story sequence. The
"Chain To Title At Page" option lets you connect one story to another, linking
new or continuing tales across more than one disk.

 The TALESPIN paint/drawing program offers Pencil, Spray, Mini-Spray, Block,
Blob, Line, and Fill functions. The Lens option allows magnification of a screen
area for detailed work; Undo removes the most recent drawing action. Although
TALESPIN can handle 512 colors, the ST can display only 16 at a time (due to a
hardware limitation); therefore, all drawings on a page must use the same
palette.

 To remedy this, TALESPIN offers a Modify Palette option, thus allowing
different color schemes to be used for drawings on different pages. Pictures can
be copied from other stories. Any current drawing can be modified, shrunk, and
reversed. Copying is useful for adding identical backgrounds and long-running
characters to other pages, rather than redrawing them. Shrink lets you adjust
perspective; reverse lets you use page transitions. NEOCHROME, DEGAS, and IFF
picture files can be imported and manipulated in the same ways an original
TALESPIN picture can be manipulated.

 Sounds can be lifted from other stories, sampled with REPLAY 4 (also from
Microdeal), or downloaded from online systems with REPLAY 4 libraries. The
neatest facet of the sound option is that each sound can be played back at any
of 11 frequencies ranging from 5 to 31 KHz, effectively allowing many sounds
from one. The Cry, Hullo, and Laugh sound files of THE WOLF (on the TALESPIN
program disk), the Beast and Mutant sound files of THE GRAIL, and any REPLAY 4
sound can be tested at any of the available frequencies, and saved inside a
story. Lower frequencies actually cause a sound to be replayed in "slow motion,"
a ridiculous yet accurate metaphor.

 Variables let you control the flow of text entries and drawings. Variables must
be defined (CONVERSATION, for example), set to a level, and given conditions
that will determine further text actions or movement to different pages. The
proper setting of variables, their values, and their conditions provides for
more than one action or solution for a given puzzle or problem, much as typing
in different commands in ZORK or THE PAWN send the story onto a different path
(or, at least, provoke a different response).

 The interrelated development commands of TALESPIN are many and complicated,
inclusive and valuable. Of equal value are those commands that let you know what
you've done: Statistics, Locate Item, and List/Set Variables. Each TALESPIN
title is a complete file with a directory that points to the pages, drawings,
and sounds of that title. (This directory is not the same one you'd see from a
Desktop window, which would show "THEGRAIL.TAL" or "TALESPIN.TOS".)

 Click on Statistics from the Development menu to see how disk space has been
allocated to all elements of the current title. Locate Item finds references to
any page, drawing, sound, value, variable, or deleted item, and lists the pages
on which they appear.

 As you create, modify, and delete drawings, sounds, and text entries, the disk
will become fragmented. The Backup option (which should definitely be used when
a title is complete) clears out all unused disk blocks. What's more, the
options, variables, and conditions associated with each area of development
(Page, Drawing, and Sound) can be listed and modified.

 All the menu selections of TALESPIN are controlled with the mouse: The pointer
highlights, the left button selects. Clicking the right button brings up the
Development menu.

 The only oddity about TALESPIN concerns text. Clicking on a character's head
brings up a bubble, within which will appear the currently available choices:
"Should I try my new spell on this creature?" or "Should I go back to the
forest?" The mouse pointer is used to highlight either question; the left button
selects it; the program will then take the appropriate action. This is strange
only because we're not used to it; most illustrated games don't work this way.
The method felt weird, but not for long.

 The TALESPIN package comes with two unprotected disks and an indexed, 133-page
instruction manual. Multiple disk drives, hard drives, and RAM disks are
supported. The program disk contains the TALESPIN program, the TELLTALE run-only
module, an alphabet file (which can be modified with the paint program), and THE
WOLF, a short adventure story based on "Little Red Riding Hood." The Grail disk
contains a shortened, playable version of THE GRAIL. Both GRAIL and WOLF can be
loaded into TALESPIN so that you can tear apart their inner workings -- an
instructive process, which is recommended. TALESPIN will run on any ST,
including the Mega series, with 512K and a color monitor.

 Of the different game development programs I've seen, TALESPIN is the most
versatile, especially since it is not limited to a specific type of application.
Think of SIGN OF THE WOLF, an illustrated (Commodore 64) story-on-a-disk from a
few years back; think of an illustrated math or computer tutorial; think of a
novel or a movie as an illustrated adventure: You'll see the possibilities of
TALESPIN.

 Although there was no downside to TALESPIN (which worked perfectly in all
respects), it's best to make note of the differences between THE GRAIL and THE
WOLF: GRAIL shows more accomplished drawing talents than WOLF. This is not to
say that WOLF's artist was a savage -- the artwork could have been deliberate --
but rather that any paint/drawing program can be put to good (that is, better)
use by someone with a sure hand. DEGAS is a comprehensive and professional
program that'll do just about anything concerned with drawing, but its value is
diminished greatly if the user can't draw.

 TALESPIN is complicated and involved, certainly not a package for the casual
user. Stories and pictures, graphic adventure games, and tutorials with
illustrations, cannot (should not) be thrown together. They require lots of
thought and planning, false starts, modifications, and work, work, work. In this
sense, TALESPIN is no different from other development programs. In the greater
sense of possibility, of "what if?" and "let's try this," TALESPIN doesn't have
any competition.

 TALESPIN is published and distributed by Microdeal.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253