Dorothy Millard

Games for Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, Amiga, Apple ][ and the rest of the 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. Pleas for help, puzzles, bug reports etc.

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Roody
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Dorothy Millard

#1 Post by Roody » Tue Dec 06, 2016 1:33 am

While browsing the net tonight as I updated some IFwiki links, I was saddened to be reminded that Dorothy Millard passed away in 2012 (I mean, I imagine I must have heard the news back then somewhere as many of us remember her). Anyhow, her old site is down. Luckily, it's preserved through the Wayback Machine. As glad as I am that it's there, I also find it kind of sad that it's now the only place to see them. Is there any chance that CASA would host her pages as a little tribute?

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Alex
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Re: Dorothy Millard

#2 Post by Alex » Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:43 pm

Thank you very much for indicating where to find a copy of Dorothy’s website. I thought it was lost.

Dorothy was a very friendly person. I came into contact with her for the first time in 1995. We were both subscribed to Adventure Probe magazine. She wrote me a letter because she wanted information about a few games I solved. We swapped games (sending cassette tapes by mail) and she play tested the adventure game I wrote and gave me hints on how to improve it. After that we lost contact but 15 years later I encountered her website and we came into contact again. She wrote me about her site in 2010:

“I set up that website some time ago, there is a lot of information there for anyone who is interested in the old text adventures it seemed a shame to take it down, even though I no longer play adventures. I must confess if I got really stuck on one of those old text games I would say to myself just what words does this darned thing understand and hack into it to find out.... lol. If I say so myself I was good at hacking into the code and seeing as how I understood how to write them I was able to follow it and work out what to do.... lol, I know cheating, but sometimes I just got desperate and if I couldn't find a hint for it, that is what I would do.

I found many of the games had bugs, some of which made them unplayable and uncompletable. I have been known to go in and fix them.... lol. Especially when I was running the Adventure Help Line. I remember a set of games that were released here as a freebie when the Commodore 64 was sold and they were so bugged that it was impossible to finish them. I got so many requests for help on those because so many people had them.... I just used to send them a fixed version. How they ever got released I will never know.

I know a couple of my games had very minor bugs, but they were always thoroughly playtested and were definitely completable... oh well.”


After that I had a few times contact with her the last being in April 2011, until I unfortunately learnt she passed away when her e-mail did not exist any longer when I wanted to write her.

Concerning your question about her website I guess it’s up to Jacob to decide. I guess most of her solutions are already on the site.

Roody
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Re: Dorothy Millard

#3 Post by Roody » Wed Dec 07, 2016 3:46 am

Whoops, I guess I didn't properly configure reply notifications yet (will have to keep looking in the settings). Anyhow, yeah, I'm sure her walkthrough themselves are saved both here and at the IF Archive (which is where I first learned to recognize her name). I dunno, I just personally get a kick out of seeing her pages and remembering her contributions as she presented them to the net.

I never talked to her myself, but I thought it was cool that she was in Wisconsin like myself. I'm proud people like her and Scott Adams and Judith Pintar all made their impact from our humble state.

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Gunness
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Re: Dorothy Millard

#4 Post by Gunness » Thu Dec 22, 2016 10:11 pm

I had a lot of conversations with Dorothy over the years. She was always friendly and forthcoming, even though it was obvious that her interest in text adventures was waning for a number of years.
It's always heart-warming to hear that people such as her get some well deserved attention, as her contributions to sites such as our are huge.
That said, as Alex pointed out we already host the majority of her walkthroughs, so I'm not really sure if mirroring her old pages would be of general interest?

iamaran
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Re: Dorothy Millard

#5 Post by iamaran » Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:15 pm

I definitely added all her solutions some time ago.

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df
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Re: Dorothy Millard

#6 Post by df » Wed May 03, 2017 12:49 pm

Dorothy was a great person, she was somewhat local to me (lived in the same city). I knew her through the Australian Commodore Amiga Review. I still have some of her letters here in my correspondance pile I've saved since I first started writing letters as a kid.

She made a few games too, two I remember the most were Survival of the Fittest and The Dare!

I knew she passed but I must have put it out of my mind as I dont really remember hearing about it directly. Maybe it was not directly published in IF circles when I was active. :(
-- Stu / DF --
-- Mountain Valley + Softgold Adventure Fan --

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