Stuart Smith · Adventure

Adventure Construction Set

video game

Released: —
Platforms: Apple II Apple IIGS Commodore 64 MS-DOS
Genres: Adventure
Developers: Stuart Smith
Publishers: Electronic Arts
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Country: United States

About

Adventure Construction Set (ACS) is a game creation system written by Stuart Smith that is used to construct tile-based graphical adventure games. ACS was published by Electronic Arts in 1984 for the Commodore 64, then for the Apple II, Amiga, and MS-DOS. Smith previously developed several commercial adventure games of a similar style, such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1981).

ACS provides a graphical editor for the construction of maps, placement of creatures and items, and menu-based scripting to control game logic. A constructed game is stored on its own disk which can be copied and shared with friends; games exported from the Amiga version still require ACS to play. A complete game is included: Rivers of Light, based on the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Amiga version has an additional pre-made adventure called "Galactic Agent" by Ken St. Andre.

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Gameplay features of Adventure Construction Set include:

Turn-based system.

Development

Stuart Smith stated that the concept was based on his experience writing accounting software, during which he developed a report generator that would create a standalone COBOL program, and that Electronic Arts suggested the name Adventure Construction Set. It was produced by Don Daglow in parallel with the development of Racing Destruction Set.

In a 2020 interview, Smith said that he wrote Adventure Construction Set in the Forth programming language on a Commodore 64.

Reception

Troy Christensen reviewed Adventure Construction Set for Different Worlds magazine and stated that "The Adventure Construction Set comes with a 44·page manual, a two-sided diskette, one large pre-constructed adventure where your characters are transported to Egypt during the times of the pharaohs, and seven mini-adventures that will whisk your characters off to places such as the starship Enterprise and Alice's Wonderland."

Orson Scott Card criticized Adventure Construction Set's user interface, stating that it "was designed by the Kludge Monster from the Nethermost Hell". He praised the game's flexibility, however, reporting that his son was able to create a spell called "Summon Duck". Computer Gaming World's Scorpia described ACS as an "easy-to-use, albeit time-consuming, means of creating a graphic adventure".