World Builder is a

game creation system AHjbhb job u tv in ubjb, A game creation system (GCS) is a consumer-targeted game engine and a set of specialized design tools (and sometimes a light scripting language), engineered for the rapid iteration of user-derived video games. Examples incl ...

for point-and-click adventure games. It was released in 1986 by

Silicon Beach Software Silicon Beach Software, Inc., was an early American developer of software products for the Macintosh personal computer. It was founded in San Diego, California in 1984 by Charlie Jackson and his wife Hallie. Jackson later co-founded FutureWave So ...

and had already been used for creating

Enchanted Scepters ''Enchanted Scepters'' is a point-and-click adventure game, released in 1984. The player must find the four fire, earth, air and water scepters hidden across the Kingdom, and return them to the Wizard. The gameplay is much like a text adventure ga ...

in 1984. On August 7, 1995, developer William C. Appleton released World Builder as

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

Functionality

The games World Builder created used different layers of code to manipulate the images the game contained: object code, scene code, and finally world code. The World Template included with the program contained default world code with default failure responses to standard text commands like north, south, up, down, and so on. Other than actions with characters (which were always combat oriented) and clicking on objects to pick them up everything had to set up through code and dialog boxes. The map is organized in compass directions and up/down as was common in earlier

interactive fiction '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...

. Characters can be defined to move around independently and interacted with. There is also a special provision for weapons, which have a

stochastic Stochastic (, ) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution. Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselv ...

impact just as the

dice Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing g ...

role-playing games A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal ac ...

. The game system includes QuickDraw vector graphics, a scripting language and digitized sound. A large number of games were made and released in circulation, many after the application was made freeware in 1995. The software does not support 32 bit addressing and hence games created with it are not compatible with

System 7 System 7, codenamed "Big Bang", and also known as Mac OS 7, is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and is part of the classic Mac OS series of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13, 1991, by Apple Co ...

or later. A ResEdit hack was provided to allow the program (and its games) to run on System 7 to 9 but sounds would not play on Power PC Macs. Ray Dunakin, author of numerous titles using the game development system, contributed various documentation and supporting files for the World Builder 1.2 release.

Reception

The program was reviewed in 1987 in ''

Dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...

'' #118 by Hartley and Patricia Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers stated that "The variety of worlds, scenes, and characters you can create and motivate seems endless... We are really impressed with ''World Builder''." In a subsequent column, the reviewers gave the program 3½ out of 5 stars. In 1994, World Builder along with Course Builder,

SuperCard In sports, a card lists the matches taking place in a title match combat-sport event. Cards include a main event match and the undercard listing the rest of the matches. The undercard may be divided into a midcard and a lower card, according to ...

, and HyperDA was cited as the reason Appleton was "something of a legend".

Games

Another Fine Mess ''Another Fine Mess'' is a 1930 short comedy film directed by James Parrott and starring Laurel and Hardy. It is based on the 1908 play ''Home from the Honeymoon'' by Arthur J. Jefferson, Stan Laurel's father, and is a remake of their earl ...

* A Mess O' Trouble * Bug Hunt *

*Little Pythagoras * Lost Crystal * Minitorian *

Midnight Snack A snack is a small portion of food generally eaten between meals. Snacks come in a variety of forms including packaged snack foods and other processed foods, as well as items made from fresh ingredients at home. Traditionally, snacks are p ...

* Mountain Of Mayhem * Psychotic! * Quest for T-Rex * Radical Castle * Ray's Maze * Star Trek Game *

Wishing Well A wishing well is a term from European folklore to describe wells where it was thought that any spoken wish would be granted. The idea that a wish would be granted came from the notion that water housed deities or had been placed there as a ...

References

External links

The unofficial World Builder home page
(internet archive; 2006 Jan 20)
World Builder description at Applefritter
1986 software Adventure game engines Classic Mac OS-only games Classic Mac OS games Macintosh-only software Freeware game engines {{mac-software-stub

Functionality

Reception

Games

See also

References

External links