I rediscovered a little treasure today that I thought I'd lost.
In 1985 I was given the job of establishing a team of developers to make software for education. We were given quite a free rein with our initial projects and I chose to design an adventure game. I'd been a fan of cliffhanger serials since I was a kid and particularly loved pirates. I'd also been playing adventure games for some years so decided to combine my passions.
I remember sitting down with a sketch book, a set of Rotring pens and some coloured pencils. I drew a very small map of what I considered to be a classic island on which to have an adventure. As I drew the map I created the broad narrative for the story. That little map was the beginning of the project. It was photocopied and enlarged, used to create a 'room map' to assist in refining the game logic, featured as a map in the software guide, appeared as an interactive map on screen, and was a turned into a wall poster.
Pieces of Eight went on to be one of the most successful software games ever developed for schools in Australia and was released for Apple II, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, IBM PC and later Macintosh computers. It won awards and was shown around the world. It really made my name and led me to a career in software development and multimedia. So that original map is a special little thing.
I cut it out of the sketch book and pinned it up on my noticeboard for a few years, and when I moved on it came with me and sort of hung about my offices. A few years ago now, when I left my last job to start my own business it disappeared and until last night I thought I'd left it behind.
I'm writing a paper on creativity and went looking for a particular volume of poetry in my bookshelves. I'm not even sure what made me choose that book - a sixth sense I guess, because tucked away between the pages was my little map. I have no idea why I put it there - because it must have been me. I haven't touched that book in years.
It was a feeling of absolute delight to find it, not that it's particularly impressive, certainly not valuable and hardly going to change my life now - but I know it did then. That little thing represents a tipping point in my professional life and just having it again will allow me to more completely retell the story to others.