Another Day... Another Subroutine...

OK, there he is, running across the screen. What now? So I might as well put him on a path. Jungles have paths -- better throw in a few trees -- always bearing in mind that I'd want to be able to do this for other machines. Basically, if you can do it on the VCS, you can do at least a shadow of it on other systems.

So anyway, what use is a jungle path unless it leads somewhere? So I pencilled in a few objects. How about some places to fall? A few holes. He's got to land somewhere -- I had to put in an underground level. Then I spent the next two months defining the game, saying where do I put the treasure, what kind of monsters lurk? Scorpions look pretty good. I thought I might have ghosts and skeletons in the tunnel -- none of them looked good, so they didn't get in. We drew a lot of these beforehand on squared paper, colouring them in and so on. But it never looks the same on the screen as it does on paper -- never.