Alice 爱丽丝

作者: 安迪·赫茨菲尔德 日期: 1982年6月 人物: 史蒂夫·卡普斯、布鲁斯·丹尼尔斯、史蒂夫·乔布斯、乔安娜·霍夫曼 主题: 软件设计、游戏、丽莎、营销 概要: 关于苹果第一代Macintosh的开发以及制造它的人的轶事: Macintosh 上第一款伟大的游戏 , 爱丽丝 Alice

Although Bruce Daniels was in charge of the Lisa software team, he really liked the Mac project. He had made a special text editor that we used on the Lisa to write our code. For a little while, he even joined the Mac team as a regular programmer in the fall of 1981. But then he decided he preferred being in charge of the Lisa team. Sometimes he would come to visit us to see what was new, but this time he had something really exciting to share with us.

尽管 Bruce Daniels 负责 Lisa 软件团队,但他非常喜欢 Mac 项目。他制作了一个特殊的文本编辑器,我们用它在 Lisa 上编写代码。有一段时间,他甚至在 1981 年秋天作为一名普通程序员加入了 Mac 团队。但后来他决定更喜欢负责 Lisa 团队。有时他会来看望我们,看看有什么新鲜事,但这一次他有一些非常令人兴奋的东西要与我们分享。

“He said to me, ‘You have to play the new game Steve Capps wrote’. Then he connected his computer to my computer, which is called a Lisa. Steve booted up his computer to get to a special screen that looks like a simple word processor, and he started a game called ‘Alice’. Steve Capps is a person who works at Apple and has been there since September 1981. I had seen him before, but we hadn’t really talked yet.”

“他对我说,‘你必须玩史蒂夫·卡普斯写的新游戏’。然后他把他的电脑连接到我的电脑,这台电脑叫做丽莎。史蒂夫启动他的电脑,进入一个特殊的屏幕,看起来像一个简单的屏幕。文字处理器,他开发了一款名为“Alice”的游戏。史蒂夫·卡普斯(Steve Capps)自 1981 年 9 月起就在苹果公司工作。我以前见过他,但我们还没有真正交谈过。”

The screen went dark and then showed a big, 3D chess board. The board was tilted and made the chess pieces look like they were falling. The back of the board had little white chess pieces in their normal places. Suddenly, the pieces started moving up and flying through the air in slow and big curves.

屏幕变暗,然后出现一个巨大的 3D 棋盘。棋盘倾斜,使棋子看起来像是正在掉落。棋盘的背面在正常的位置上有一些白色的小棋子。突然,这些碎片开始向上移动,并以缓慢而大的曲线在空中飞行。

All the chess pieces were lined up on the board, looking like people, except for the tall rook. Each piece was special and could move in a certain way. The player had to choose a piece to start the game. It was a good idea to choose the queen first, because she can move a long way and is very powerful.

所有的棋子都排列在棋盘上,看上去就像人一样,除了那只高高的车。每件作品都很特别,并且可以以某种方式移动。玩家必须选择一个棋子来开始游戏。首先选择女王是个好主意,因为她可以移动很远的距离,而且非常强大。

The game pieces went back to where they started on the other side of the board. A picture of a little girl in an old-fashioned dress floated down in front of the players. She was Alice from the books “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”. She was drawn to look like the Alice from the old pictures. The player controlled Alice and saw the game board from her point of view, but looked at her from behind.

游戏棋子回到了棋盘另一侧的起始位置。一张穿着老式连衣裙的小女孩的照片飘落在玩家面前。她就是《爱丽丝梦游仙境》和《爱丽丝镜中奇遇记》中的爱丽丝。她被吸引到看起来像老照片中的爱丽丝。玩家控制爱丽丝,从她的角度看到游戏板,但从后面看她。

A big number, written in a fancy style, appeared on the screen. Then, the game started. The chess pieces began to jump up, one by one, very quickly. If you stayed in one place for too long, one of the pieces would jump onto Alice’s square and capture her, which would end the game.

屏幕上出现了一个巨大的、写得很花哨的数字。然后,比赛开始了。棋子开始跳跃起来,一颗接着一颗,速度非常快。如果你在一个地方停留太久,其中一个棋子就会跳到爱丽丝的方格上并捕获她,这将结束游戏。

It didn’t take long to understand that if you clicked on a spot where Alice could move, she would jump to it. So, it wasn’t hard to get out of the way when an enemy piece was coming towards her. If you managed to jump on top of another piece before it could move out of the way, you would knock it out and get some points. You win the game if Alice is still alive when all the other pieces are gone.

没过多久我就明白了,如果你点击爱丽丝可以移动的地方,她就会跳到那里。所以,当敌方棋子向她袭来时,想要闪开并不困难。如果你在另一块棋子移开之前设法跳到它上面,你就会把它击倒并获得一些分数。当所有其他棋子都消失时,如果爱丽丝还活着,您就赢得了游戏。

I was amazed by the creative team that turned “Through The Looking Glass” into a fun and exciting video game. The game was colorful and enjoyable to play. The character Alice was also very challenging, and it took some time to learn how to survive for a longer period. We really needed to make it work on our Mac computers right away.

我对创意团队将《镜中奇遇》变成一款有趣且令人兴奋的视频游戏感到惊讶。游戏色彩丰富,玩起来很有趣。爱丽丝这个角色也很有挑战性,需要花一些时间来学习如何更长时间地生存。我们确实需要立即让它在我们的 Mac 计算机上运行。

Bruce Daniels was happy that we liked the game. He said, “Maybe Capps could put Alice on a Mac computer.” He was thinking we were going to ask that. “Would you be able to get him a test version?”

布鲁斯·丹尼尔斯很高兴我们喜欢这款游戏。他说,“也许卡普斯可以把爱丽丝放在 Mac 电脑上。”他以为我们会问这个。 “你能给他一个测试版吗?”

Everyone agreed that we should give Steve Capps a Mac prototype quickly. I went with Bruce Daniels to the Lisa building, where I had to be with a Lisa team member because of the rules. I finally met Steve Capps, who seemed nice and funny. Later in the day, he came to our building and I gave him the prototype. I answered a few of his questions about the screen and how it works. Steve said he didn’t think it would take a long time to make it work on the Mac.

每个人都同意我们应该尽快给 Steve Capps 一个 Mac 原型。我和布鲁斯·丹尼尔斯一起去了丽莎大楼,根据规定,我必须和丽莎团队成员在一起。我终于见到了史蒂夫·卡普斯,他看起来很友善而且很有趣。当天晚些时候,他来到我们大楼,我给了他原型。我回答了他关于屏幕及其工作原理的一些问题。史蒂夫表示,他认为不需要很长时间就能让它在 Mac 上运行。

Two days later, Capps brought a special disk to show us something he had made. It was a video game called Alice that now worked on Mac computers. The game worked even better on Macs than on another computer called Lisa because Macs had faster processors, which made the game run more smoothly. Soon, almost everyone on the team was playing Alice for a long time.

两天后,卡普斯带来了一张特殊的光盘,向我们展示了他制作的东西。这是一款名为 Alice 的视频游戏,现在可以在 Mac 电脑上运行。该游戏在 Mac 上的运行甚至比在另一台名为 Lisa 的计算机上运行得更好,因为 Mac 具有更快的处理器,这使得游戏运行得更流畅。很快,团队里几乎所有人都玩了很长时间的爱丽丝。

I must have played Alice many times, but one person, Joanna Hoffman, was an expert at the game. She was the first person to promote the Mac computer. Joanna would visit the computer programming team at the end of the day to see what was new. She would often play Alice for a long time and was very good at it. Playing the game made her feel better when she was stressed from work. Joanna thought the game was too easy, so the person who made the game, Capps, made some changes to make it harder. This might have been a mistake because it made the game too hard for most people.

我一定玩过爱丽丝很多次,但有一个人,乔安娜霍夫曼,是这个游戏的专家。她是第一个推广Mac电脑的人。乔安娜会在一天结束时拜访计算机编程团队,看看有什么新鲜事。她经常扮演爱丽丝很长一段时间,而且非常擅长。当她因工作而感到压力时,玩游戏让她感觉好多了。乔安娜认为这个游戏太简单了,所以制作游戏的人卡普斯做了一些改变,让它变得更难。这可能是一个错误,因为它使游戏对大多数人来说太难了。

Steve Jobs didn’t play the Alice game very often, but he was very surprised at how well it was made. “Who is this Capps person? Why is he working on Lisa?” he said. He said Lisa with a slight tone of dislike. “We have to move him to the Mac team!”

史蒂夫·乔布斯并不经常玩爱丽丝游戏,但他对这款游戏的制作效果感到非常惊讶。 “这个卡普斯人是谁?他为什么要为丽莎工作?”他说。他用略带不喜欢的语气对丽莎说道。 “我们必须把他调到 Mac 团队!”

Lisa wasn’t ready to be shipped yet and Capps was still needed to finish some work, so Steve couldn’t make the transfer happen. One weekend, Capps met Steve Jobs and was told not to worry, he would join the Mac team. Later, a deal was made that let Capps join the Mac team in January 1983, after the first Lisa was complete.

丽莎还没有准备好被运送,卡普斯还需要完成一些工作,所以史蒂夫无法让转移发生。一个周末,卡普斯见到了史蒂夫·乔布斯,并被告知不用担心,他将加入 Mac 团队。后来,在第一个 Lisa 完成后,1983 年 1 月,Capps 加入了 Mac 团队。

Capps became an important part of the Mac team. He brought new and exciting ideas to help us finish some important projects, like the Toolbox and the Finder. He worked on many things, including a special guide that came on a diskette. Capps also found time to make Alice even more amazing by adding even more cool features.

Capps 成为 Mac 团队的重要组成部分。他带来了令人兴奋的新想法来帮助我们完成一些重要的项目,例如工具箱和查找器。他做了很多事情,包括软盘上的特殊指南。卡普斯还抽出时间通过添加更酷的功能来让爱丽丝变得更加令人惊奇。

One day, he showed me a special menu hidden in a game called “Alice”. This menu let you change different settings. The game didn’t have a usual menu bar, so it was fun to figure out how to make the settings appear. To do this, you had to click on the score at the top of the screen. This would slowly make a picture of the Cheshire Cat appear, just like the pictures by John Tenniel. You could change settings by clicking on different parts of the picture. The creator of the game also made a very small picture of the Cheshire Cat to be the game’s icon.

有一天,他向我展示了隐藏在一款名为“爱丽丝”的游戏中的特殊菜单。此菜单可让您更改不同的设置。游戏没有常见的菜单栏,因此弄清楚如何显示设置很有趣。为此,您必须单击屏幕顶部的分数。这会慢慢地出现柴郡猫的照片,就像约翰·坦尼尔的照片一样。您可以通过单击图片的不同部分来更改设置。游戏的创作者还制作了一张非常小的柴郡猫图片作为游戏的图标。

He added some cool changes to the Cheshire Cat. This was done by clicking on different parts of the Cat. For instance, one change made some of the squares on the chessboard suddenly disappear. This sometimes made pieces fall off the board and disappear. He also added something that Steve Wozniak suggested. As the cursor (the arrow on the screen) moved to the back of the board, it got smaller and smaller. This made the board look deeper.

他给柴郡猫做了一些很酷的改变。这是通过单击猫的不同部分来完成的。
例如,一个变化导致棋盘上的一些方格突然消失。这有时会使棋子从棋盘上掉下来并消失。
他还补充了史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克建议的一些内容。当光标(屏幕上的箭头)移至棋盘背面时,它变得越来越小。这让董事会看起来更深入。

By autumn 1983, Capps started thinking about how to bring Alice to the market. One idea was to work with a company called Electronic Arts, which was run by Trip Hawkins, Lisa’s old boss. But Steve Jobs thought that the game should be connected to Apple and insisted that Apple should be in charge of publishing it. He made a deal with Capps and promised that Apple would do a good job with the box design and advertising.

1983 年秋天,卡普斯开始考虑如何将爱丽丝带到市场。一个想法是与一家名为 Electronic Arts 的公司合作,该公司由丽莎的前老板特里普·霍金斯 (Trip Hawkins) 经营。但史蒂夫·乔布斯认为这款游戏应该与苹果挂钩,并坚持由苹果负责发行。他与卡普斯达成了协议,并承诺苹果会做好包装盒设计和广告工作。

Alice was talked about at the launch event and was shown in the brochure, but it was not available until a few months later. Steve kept his promise and the packaging was very nice. The game disk was in a small cardboard box that looked like an old book. The book cover had a special design and a hidden logo of the band Dead Kennedy’s, which was a favorite of Capp’s. Since Alice didn’t use the whole disk, Capp also included some extra things with it, such as a font and a program to make mazes.

Alice 在发布会上被谈论,并出现在小册子中,但直到几个月后才面世。史蒂夫信守了他的承诺,包装非常好。游戏光盘装在一个看起来像一本旧书的小纸盒里。书的封面有一个特殊的设计,并隐藏了卡普最喜欢的死亡肯尼迪乐队的标志。由于爱丽丝没有使用整个磁盘,因此卡普还附带了一些额外的东西,例如字体和制作迷宫的程序。

When I saw the finished packaging, I was surprised. The game was no longer called “Alice”. It turned out that someone else had already used that name for a different kind of program. So, the game’s name was changed to “Through The Looking Glass” before it was sold to the public.

当我看到成品包装时,我很惊讶。该游戏不再被称为“爱丽丝”。事实证明,其他人已经将该名称用于不同类型的程序。因此,游戏在向公众发售之前更名为“Through The Looking Glass”。

Apple didn’t promote Apple’s computer game “Alice” as much as they promised. This was because people didn’t understand that the visual interface on the computer made it more efficient to work with. People thought that graphics only meant games, so the Mac had a bad reputation for being bad for business use. Apple didn’t want to show off a game on the Mac, even though it was very good, so “Alice” didn’t reach as many people as it deserved.

苹果公司并没有像他们承诺的那样宣传苹果公司的电脑游戏“爱丽丝”。这是因为人们不明白计算机上的可视化界面可以提高工作效率。人们认为图形仅意味着游戏,因此 Mac 因不适合商业用途而声名狼藉。苹果不想在 Mac 上展示一款游戏,尽管它非常好,所以《爱丽丝》并没有吸引到应有的那么多人。
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