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 and Phil Wade, based on Yeandle's earlier system called ''
The Quill''.
PAW was published by
Gilsoft in 1987 and quickly gained a loyal following. PAW improved over ''The Quill'' in several ways. In particular, its textual input parser was more sophisticated, meaning inputs were no longer confined to the two-word telegraphic ''verb noun'' (e.g. "GO WEST; TAKE LAMP") style. PAW also supported
NPCs, different character sets, and full use of the memory of the 128K
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...
. However, unlike ''The Quill'', the PAW no longer supported other computer systems like the
BBC Micro
The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a family of microcomputers developed and manufactured by Acorn Computers in the early 1980s as part of the BBC's Computer Literacy Project. Launched in December 1981, it was showcased across severa ...
or the
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 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 ...
. Over 400 games were written using PAW.
To ensure that as much text as possible can be used, PAWS compresses the descriptions by replacing the most common letters combinations by tokens, using characters greater than 127 (the ones that, in the Spectrum, are used for storing the BASIC tokens).
In 2001, WinPAW was written by Douglas Harter. It could read adventures written in PAW, but ran under
MS-Windows and had a few extensions to the original. The adventures made in WinPAW could only be played using the MS Windows runtime. In 2009, InPAWS was released in its first version. It allows to extract PAW adventures, edit them or create from scratch and write back a database for PAW for either Amstrad CPC or ZX Spectrum. Thus, it also allows PAW adventures to be ported between the systems.
InPAWS
/ref>
Graeme Yeandle also released an updated version of the 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/Intel 8085, 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Dig ...
version of PAW for MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...
and called it ''PC Adventure Writer''.
References
External links
Graeme Yeandle's Text Adventure Page
The PAW Reservoir by Nacho A. Llorente *deleted by author*
* {{WoS game, id=0006825, name=Professional Adventure Writer
WinPAW
- PAW ported to MS Windows
ngPAWS
- PAW in JavaScript
- compiler/extractor for Gilsoft's PAW
1986 software
CP/M software
Interactive fiction engines
Video game development software
ZX Spectrum software