Computer Novel Construction Set

Computer Novel Construction Set is a video game in the adventure genre developed by Hayden Software Co. and published by Hayden Software Co. originally released in 1985. It is currently playable on DOS.

Possibly the first commercial text adventure creation program for IBM PC, Hayden's Computer Novel Construction Set is a surprisingly versatile program that allows non-programmers to create stand-alone text adventures in the Infocom tradition, with a storyline and inventory-based puzzles.

CNCS uses a series of DOS-based menus and pop-up windows to build rooms, objects, descriptions, etc. A nice touch is that the game you create is automatically presented with different windows for each element of the game, e. g. , one window for your character's inventory, another for the room description, another for commands, etc. This is much more advanced than most of Hayden's own early games (e. g. , The Holy Grail), and this multi-window presentation is a nice format rarely seen in IF (with a few exceptions, e. g. , Infocom's Beyond Zork). The included tutorial file and mini-game give a good idea of what the program is capable of, and most of the options are self-explanatory.

Overall, CNCS is worthwhile for anyone who is interested in writing interactive fiction games but doesn't want to spend (much) time learning the ins and outs of current IF authoring languages (such as Inform or TADS). It is easy to use, versatile and stands the test of time quite well, more than a decade after its release. The parser appears to be more versatile than the later freeware Adventure Game Toolkit (AGT), although it is still largely limited by verb and noun construction.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.