Unfinished Text Adventures

[EdwardianDuck]

It's probably not worth worrying about now, it was just unexpected. As there's no more interest from the community, it might be the final build any way, even if there are still bugs in it. Nosing around a bit I've discovered that the Atari build is on AtariMania as well, also news to me.

[Ptolom]

As there's no more interest from the community...

Don't say that, I've only just got the bottle jack working.

[EdwardianDuck]

Cool, I hope your enjoying it. The bottle jack (and what, if anything, one might do with it) wasn't in the original 6502 assembly version, so has had less testing. If you want hints or are prepared to offer feedback, it would be best to post over at the original topic.

I'm in the process of setting up all the tools needed to update this on a new Mac Studio, so I'll be able to make changes if the need arises.

Jeremy

[fuzzel]

I've completed my walkthrough for Chark and uploaded it to CASA with a map. Next up for me is Mayday! by Database Publications (Micro User). This one looks very promising indeed. It's got that Scott Adams-esque style display with brief location description, objects and exits shown in the top half of the screen with input and messages below. The scenario is the old spaceship in peril one, you're seemingly alone on board (no explanation as to where the crew have gone) and the ship's functions are limited to life support, teleport and autodoc (surely these would require a lot of juice) because the reactor's down. Working against you are radiation sickness, hunger, damage, fatigue, a meteor storm, a hole in the ship's hull and a very mean inventory limit of two (although it seems to be extended to three in some instances). So I'm presuming a very tight walkthrough will be required to complete the game. Wish me luck!

[fuzzel]

According to The complete BBC Micro Games Archive: "This game was one of four on the Compendium Of Classic Arcade Games, first advertised in Micro User, volume 2, issue 6, in August 1984. The four games were Snapman, Alien Intruders, Panzer Assault, and Mayday."
Arcade game?

[EdwardianDuck]

Interesting. Despite only being a beta, my game has appeared on bbcmicro.co.uk without my knowledge. Is this the expected practice?

Hi,
No, it isn't standard practice!
I don't generally add beta versions to the site.
I think I may have been overly eager to add it as text adventures are my favourite genre.
It was around the time that I was adding my own text adventure to the site, so I must have been a bit giddy
Sorry about that.
Would you like it removing?

Lee

I've uploaded release 1 to the usual thread. You can upload that to bbcmicro.co.uk if you like.

Jeremy

[fuzzel]

I've now completed Mayday. Turned out to be not as tricky as I'd originally feared. After exploring and getting killed a lot I realised that the priority was to repair the ship bit by bit with some sickbay recuperation taken whenever I was passing and it looks as though I finished in the nick of time before requiring any sustenance or sleep. There were a couple of items that I didn't need to use, maybe they were red herrings or were there just to unnecessarily complicate things. A step-by-step walkthrough can be done for this one so I'll upload it to CASA shortly. My next game will be The Five Doctors (there are 70 unsolved BBC/Electron games remaining (not sure how many are MIA) so looks like I'll be busy over the winter months).

[fuzzel]

I've just completed 5 Doctors. I can understand why a solution hasn't been posted yet as there appears to be a bug whereby if you see a mobile character in your location and you try to kill it, the program sometimes appears not to accept that it's actually there.
Looking under the bonnet of the main game Basic file (5DOCT-3) the reason becomes apparent:

270 PROCdescript - this procedure prints the location text
310 This line prints the objects
320 This is the input line
400 PROCmovement - this procedure moves the mobiles eg doctors to their next locations
490 onwards - analyses the input command eg KILL DOCTOR and goes to the appropriate section to execute it
810 GOTO 270 back up to the main loop again

You can see that the program prints the location and objects and when you input your command at line 320 the program then moves the mobiles around before then so if you typed KILL PATRICK it has already moved him before checking whether he's in your location so you can kill him. I've modified the program moving line 400 to line 305 instead - see attached files which are the modified ssd, a map and a solution. Note that due to random elements within the game there is no guarantee of success, repeated quitting and restarting is probably necessary for the walkthrough to work.

Disc999-FiveDoctors.ssd

(47.5 KiB) Downloaded 56 times

5 Doctors Amended Program Max Score.txt

(3.63 KiB) Downloaded 63 times

[lurkio]

Nice work, solving all these adventures, fuzzel!

I notice in your modded version of Five Doctors you've got repeated code on lines 300 and 308. Is that intentional on your part? (I haven't looked into the program logic at all, so I wouldn't be able to tell.)

[fuzzel]

Hi lurkio. After moving PROCmovement from line 400 to line 305 I had to copy line 300 to 308 so the objects were printed. Looks like I forgot to delete line 300. Still works ok though but line 300 is now redundant.

[fuzzel]

My latest game is the above average Satan's Challenge or Nevil Rides Out by MicroTest Ltd. Unfortunately, after playing for a couple of hours I've discovered a bug. From the start of the game if you type:
W, W, N, E, N, N, N, E, GET SHOTGUN, W, S, S, E, E, N, W, SHOOT DOG, W, U
the game breaks due to the ON ERROR CALL!-4 command within the program. If anyone would like to have a crack at fixing it then please, be my guest. I still intend to continue with the game in the hope that a fix can be found. As far as a league table for the best unsolved BBC adventures goes it's probably right up near the top behind Plague Planet. Here's Alice's review in TMU January 1985 pp71-72:

[fuzzel]

There's also an advert in the same issue:

I don't suppose, by any chance, anyone has a copy of the wonderfully obscure Dairyfile for Dairy Farmers? I'd love to have a look at that (there's a history of dairy farming in our family in case you think I'm being sarcastic).

[lurkio]

Satan's Challenge or Nevil Rides Out by MicroTest Ltd. Unfortunately, after playing for a couple of hours I've discovered a bug. From the start of the game if you type:
W, W, N, E, N, N, N, E, GET SHOTGUN, W, S, S, E, E, N,

SHOOT DOG, W, U
the game breaks due to the ON ERROR CALL!-4 command within the program. If anyone would like to have a crack at fixing it then please, be my guest.

I've hacked the .SSD from bbcmicro.co.uk without really understanding what I'm doing. But you can now go up and down the tree (although the description of the treetop leaves something to be desired!):


[See updated .SSD below.]


I trapped that specific move (UP) at that specific location ("...by a large oak...") and hacked the program so it didn't crash there — I just guessed what integer to replace T% with in the formula for calculating D% (see line 321, DEFPROCdc)!

locdata_reversed.txt

(49.87 KiB) Downloaded 56 times

EDIT: Removed superseded .SSD.

[lurkio]

... I've hacked the .SSD from bbcmicro.co.uk ...

Some more hacking, to try to get some (all?) of the room descriptions:

rooms 4900.txt

(7.12 KiB) Downloaded 51 times

rooms 5000.txt

(10.69 KiB) Downloaded 51 times

rooms 5100.txt

(4.89 KiB) Downloaded 43 times

rooms 5200.txt

(5.51 KiB) Downloaded 55 times

[Previous file (rooms.txt) had been downloaded 15 times.]



EDIT: Removed old room-description textfile (rooms.txt). Added new room-description textfiles.

[fuzzel]

Many thanks for that lurkio, I was reluctant to take a peak at the listing in case I learned something I shouldn't and It's reassuring to know that there are no objects in that location. As that data file is called LOCDATA, I presume the objects reside in a different file or in the main program itself. Maybe the data file has become corrupted somehow (Alice in her review mentioned a potential issue but that was towards the end of the game). I don't suppose anyone else has a copy of this game from another source which we could check?

[lurkio]

… that data file is called LOCDATA … Maybe the data file has become corrupted somehow

On the bbcmicro.co.uk .SSD, I think the contents of the LOCDATA file begin with a long string of &E5 bytes, which usually denote unformatted (parts of) disc sectors — or file corruption! I think that’s where the program was looking for the missing description of the treetop location.

I wonder if there’s more location data that’s missing that should have been where those “unformatted” bytes currently are? If so, there may well be more rooms in the game that will cause the program to crash…



EDIT: It would be interesting to get a copy of the cassette version:

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/ ... Challenge/

EDIT2: A call for help: viewtopic.php?p=373854#p373854

[fuzzel]

On the bbcmicro.co.uk .SSD, I think the contents of the LOCDATA file begin with a long string of &E5 bytes, which usually denote unformatted (parts of) disc sectors — or file corruption! I think that’s where the program was looking for the missing description of the treetop location.
I wonder if there’s more location data that’s missing that should have been where those “unformatted” bytes currently are? If so, there may well be more rooms in the game that will cause the program to crash…

Alice wrote in her review: "I recently received Satan's Challenge from Microtest on an 80 track disc. An attempt to copy it to a 40 track evoked the response that ravening wolves would tear me limb from limb, so I asked Microtest for a 40 track version. This quickly arrived and was similarly well cursed and protected (the tracks are scrambled) so, like Mocata in "The Devil Rides Out", I got someone else to investigate."
If the original discs were protected then perhaps there was an error in the unprotection process when that LOCDATA file was created. Incidentally, I've now mapped 127 locations and not encountered another location text bug which is a relief. I have encountered a possible bug though when using the READ command. READ PAPER and READ BOOK both result simply in a carriage return rather than a message suggesting there's potentially some corruption in the messages data but where they're stored I've no idea. To reach the book from the start:
W, S, S, OPEN DOOR, S, E, GET BOOK, READ BOOK
The same thing happens with the piece of paper but it's not so easy to get to.

[lurkio]

READ PAPER and READ BOOK both result simply in a carriage return rather than a message suggesting there's potentially some corruption in the messages data but where they're stored I've no idea. To reach the book from the start: W, S, S, OPEN DOOR, S, E, GET BOOK, READ BOOK

I'm not seeing that. This is what I get:

Are you getting something different?

[fuzzel]

That's what I get. No message, just the prompt "Ok what now?" Same thing when I try to read the piece of paper.

[fuzzel]

Now mapped 153 locations but have come across another location bug. Here's the walkthrough to get there (note that the final N results in the bug):

Code: Select all

W
W
N
E
GET TORCH
N
E
E
E
N
N
GET MATCHES
S
W
S
S
W
N
W
N
N
E
GET SHOTGUN
W
S
S
S
W
DROP SHOTGUN
N
N
W
N
W
S
W
N
W
S
GIVE MATCHES
GET PAPER
S
D
E
S
W
GET CROWBAR
E
N
W
U
E
N
E
N
E
S
E
S
S
DROP PAPER
DROP MATCHES
W
GET BATTERY
FIT BATTERY
E
S
E
S
S
OPEN DOOR
S
E
E
E
N
W
N
E
PRISE BOARDS
D
GET SPADE
N
U
N
W
S
DIG
GET DAGGER
N
W
N
W
S
W
DROP CROWBAR
GET SHOTGUN
S
E
GET GATE
TORCH ON
S
S
S
S
D
E
E
N
N
D
W
W
N
E
E
N
N
SHOOT DOG
W
U
S
W
W
GIVE GATE
D
W
N
E
D
N
N

lurkio, could you see if you can fix this location please? I've now run out of locations to visit so I suspect that the way ahead lies to the north.
I'm pinning my hopes now on the cassette version being retrieved from the Centre for Computing History by Diminished. No pressure of course.

[lurkio]

lurkio, could you see if you can fix this location please? I've now run out of locations to visit so I suspect that the way ahead lies to the north.

I did, but then the next location north threw an error! So I created a more generic hack by just trapping whenever T% was zero (which results in an invalid PTR# value) and recalculating D% (by replacing T% with a value of 1) in all such cases So I trapped the next location north as well and made sure that it too didn't cause a crash:

Disc999-SatansChallengeOrNevilRidesOut-HAK2.ssd

(200 KiB) Downloaded 58 times

Not sure if that helps or not, really..! (The game has started (randomly?) mentioning a <rot13>yvsg</rot13> now!)



EDIT: Updated .SSD disc-image

[fuzzel]

Hi lurkio, unfortunately it hasn't worked, the move north now takes you to the graveyard back near the start of the game. Whilst I'm waiting for the cassette version I think I'll have a look at this location file myself.

[lurkio]

Hi lurkio, unfortunately it hasn't worked, the move north now takes you to the graveyard back near the start of the game. Whilst I'm waiting for the cassette version I think I'll have a look at this location file myself.

I don't think it necessarily does take you back to the graveyard. I think it may be taking you to the correct room but just printing the wrong room description. (In my latest hack I effectively changed the value of the replacement for T% so that you didn't just get an asterisk for the room description -- but that just seems to have caused you more confusion! Oops! )

[lurkio]

FWIW I've updated the .SSD, two posts back, so that it now just displays the default asterisk when a room description is missing.

[RonBate]

There is a line numbered 36 between lines 48 and 49. The contents of line 36 can be appended to 48. This doesn't help with the current issue but will prevent a crash should line 48 ever be interpreted.

Ron

[RonBate]

I should have said this is in the SAT2 listing.

[lurkio]

There is a line numbered 36 between lines 48 and 49. The contents of line 36 can be appended to 48. This doesn't help with the current issue but will prevent a crash should line 48 ever be interpreted.

Out-of-sequence line-numbering doesn't by itself necessarily cause a crash in BBC BASIC:

http://bbcmicro.co.uk/jsbeeb/play.php?a ... ertest.ssd

But in the case of the Sat2 program on the Satan's Challenge disc those lines aren't just out of sequence — they also seem to have got corrupted or messed up somehow, so, yes, what appears as line 36 isn't valid as it stands.

But fortunately the Sat2 program won't try to run lines 48, 36 and 49 unless the user types QUIT.

[lurkio]

I'll have a look at this location file myself.

I found more room-descriptions and attached them to a previous post upthread.

[fuzzel]

Nice work, I'll compare your full list of locations with those I've found already.

[fuzzel]

Hi lurkio, I've encountered another location error having finally managed to get past the Angel of Death. Could you do your fix routine again please:

I presume there's enough info in the screen grab above for you to do so?