World Builder

Poll without page-refresh

	del.icio.us
	Digg
	Furl
	Reddit
	Rojo
	Add to OnlyWire

This article may not meet the general notability guideline or one of the following specific guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: Biographies, Books, Companies, Fiction, Music, Neologisms, Numbers, Web content, or several proposals for new guidelines. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for redirection, merging, or deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.
This article has been tagged since October 2008.

World Builder
Developed by	Silicon Beach Software
Latest release	1.2 / 1995
OS	System 3
Type	Adventure game authoring
License	Freeware
Website	http://we.got.net/~mapman/wb/

World Builder is an authoring system for point-and-click adventure games. ^[1] It was released in 1986 by Silicon Beach Software and had already been used for creating Enchanted Scepters in 1984. In 1994 World Builder along with Course Builder, SuperCard and HyperDA was cited as the reason Appleton was "something of a legend" ^[2] On August 7, 1995 developer William C. Appleton released World Builder as freeware.

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 ^[3] 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. Characters can be defined to move around independently and interacted with. There is also a special provision for weapons, which have a stochastic impact just as the dice of role-playing games. 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.

As of April 2007, the program is no longer hosted on its own page, with the creator citing the discontinuing of "Classic" mode by newest Macintosh computers.

References

^ Robinson, Ronda (November 20, 2006). "On-demand software company replaces Appleton's fun 'n' games", Knox Business Journal. Retrieved on 4 November 2008.
^ Kantrowitz, Barbara (Aug 29, 1994). "Garage-Band Programmers", Newsweek. Retrieved on 5 November 2008.
^ (1986) World Builder. Silicon Beach Software, 83-85.