''The Quill'' is a program to write home computer

adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or Puzzle video game, puzzle-solving. The Video game genres, genre's focus on story allows it to draw ...

s.Sinclair User 37
/ref> Written by Graeme Yeandle, it was published on the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

Gilsoft Gilsoft was a British developer of video games and related utilities. The company was best known for developing the text adventure authoring tool '' The Quill'' and its successor, ''Professional Adventure Writer''. History Gilsoft was set up by T ...

in December 1983. Although available to the general public, it was used by several games companies to create best-selling titles; over 450 commercially published titles for the ZX Spectrum were written using ''The Quill''.

Development

Yeandle has stated that the inspiration for ''The Quill'' was an article in the August 1980 issue of ''

Practical Computing ''Practical Computing'' was a UK computer magazine published monthly. The magazine was published by IPC Electrical Electronic Press Ltd. The headquarters was in Sutton, Surrey. The first edition was released in August 1978 as a special computer ...

'' by Ken Reed in which Reed described the use of a database to produce an adventure game. After Yeandle wrote one database-driven adventure game, ''Timeline'', for Gilsoft, he realised that a database editor was needed, and it was this software which became ''The Quill''. After the original ZX Spectrum version was ported to the

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sin ...

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...

, and

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

and

Oric Oric was the name used by UK-based Tangerine Computer Systems for a series of 6502-based home computers sold in the 1980s, primarily in Europe. With the success of the ZX Spectrum from Sinclair Research, Tangerine's backers suggested a hom ...

. Versions were also published by CodeWriter, Inc. in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

(under the name of ''AdventureWriter'') and a version by Norace in

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe *Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway *Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including the ...

and

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

. A French version was also made by Codewriter. In 1985 Neil Fleming-Smith ported ''The Quill'' to the

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

and

Acorn Electron The Acorn Electron (nicknamed the Elk inside Acorn and beyond) was a lower-cost alternative to the BBC Micro educational/ home computer, also developed by Acorn Computers Ltd, to provide many of the features of that more expensive machine at a ...

computers for Gilsoft. Although not credited in the article, Chris Hobson submitted a patch to ''Crash'' magazine which allowed the Spectrum version to save to a

Microdrive The Microdrive is a registered trademark for miniature, 1-inch hard disks produced by IBM and Hitachi. These rotational media storage devices were designed to fit in CompactFlash (CF) Type II slots. The release of similar drives by other ...

. This was published in th
September 1986 edition
''The Quill'' only allowed for the creation of text-only adventures, using a text interpretation process known as a ''verb–noun''

parser Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from Lati ...

. Later an add-on called ''The Illustrator'' was made to let the user include

graphics Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture ...

in the adventures. Further add-ons included ''The Press'', ''The Patch'', and ''The Expander'', which enhanced the engine by adding text compression, split-screen text and graphics, and more efficient use of available RAM.

Critical reception

''The Quill'' was generally very well received by the computer press at the time of its release. ''Micro Adventurer'' described it as "a product ..to revolutionise the whole microcomputer scene" and rated it "10 out of 10", while ''

Computer and Video Games ''Computer and Video Games'' (also known as ''CVG'', ''Computer & Video Games'', ''C&VG'', ''Computer + Video Games'', or ''C+VG'') was a UK-based video game magazine, published in its original form between 1981 and 2004. Its offshoot website ...

'' described it as "worth every penny of the £14.95 price tag", while ''

CRASH Crash or CRASH may refer to: Common meanings * Collision, an impact between two or more objects * Crash (computing), a condition where a program ceases to respond * Cardiac arrest, a medical condition in which the heart stops beating * Couch su ...

'' said it was "almost ludicrously underpriced for what it does and, more importantly, what it allows others to do." ''

Sinclair User ''Sinclair User'' was a magazine dedicated to the Sinclair Research range of home computers, most specifically the ZX Spectrum (while also occasionally covering arcade games). Initially published by ECC Publications, and later EMAP, it was publi ...

'' were somewhat initially less enthusiastic, saying "no package, even if it is brilliant in the production of games using the sausage machine technique, will provide an answer to properly machine-coded and original games", although later in 1984 they said "''The Quill'' produces programs on a par with handwritten commercial programs". ''The Quill'' was awarded "Best Utility" in the ''CRASH'' Readers Awards 1984.

Sequel

Following the success of the original, a second generation ''Quill'' was produced with more capabilities and sold under the name ''

Professional Adventure Writer Professional Adventure Writer or PAW (sometimes called PAWS for Professional Adventure Writing System) is a program that allows the user to write textual adventure games with graphic illustrations. It was written by Tim Gilberts, Graeme Yeandle a ...

'' for the ZX Spectrum and

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

range.

References

External links

CASA: A Feather In His Cap - Graeme Yeandle and The Quill

The Digital Antiquarian: The history of The Quill
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quill, The 1983 software Commodore 64 software Text adventure game engines Video game development software ZX Spectrum software