Help Finding A.R.V. Text Adventure

[RandolphSc0tt]

Long shot but I don't suppose anyone has a copy of A.R.V. for BBC or Archimedes? Myself and a couple of pals wrote it about 30 years ago and released a demo on PD. We even sold a couple of copies for real money but sadly none of us have the source.

Been trying to track it down for a while to see how awful it was.

[leenew]

What did A.R.V. stand for?
My guess: Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle.

Lee.

[RandolphSc0tt]

Rather tenuously it stood for Armed Robbery with Violence but this was never made explicit.

[lurkio]

I don't suppose anyone has a copy of A.R.V. for BBC or Archimedes? Myself and a couple of pals wrote it about 30 years ago and released a demo on PD. We even sold a couple of copies for real money but sadly none of us have the source.

When you say you “released a demo on PD”, what exactly do you mean? Which PD library did you release the demo to?

Did you sell the copies of the full game by mail order? Did you advertise the game anywhere?

[RandolphSc0tt]

I can't actually remember which PD library we released the demo to. I think APDL had it for Archimedes.

And yeah we sold the copies via mail order.

https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C4684/A.R.V..html

I think we got it reviewed in BBC Acorn User. I had a quote: "one of the most original ideas around" or similar from them on my CV for a while.

[lurkio]

https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C4684/A.R.V..html

CASA (solutionarchive.com) seems to have a screenshot of your game. So whoever took the screenshot must have been running a copy of the game, right? So maybe you could try contacting CASA..?

Also, there’s been some talk of APDL on this forum lately. Maybe try searching the forum for APDL for more leads..?

[RandolphSc0tt]

Thanks will give it a shot

[8bitAG]

Steven Hodgson did provide us with some extra information about the game, which is included on the current entry.
And here... http://solutionarchive.com/articles/not ... odgson.txt

Are you Steven or one of the other writers?

Edit: probably not Steven as here's also on here already... memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=10649

Actually Steven mentions where the game was available back then in the interview above...

the Archimedes public domain version can be found on
disk 126 from the APDL Public Domain library (http://www.apdl.org.uk/apdlpd/library/g.htm).

The link is no longer active, but I guess that at least identifies which library and which disk has it on.

[RandolphSc0tt]

Yeah I chatted to Steve a couple of years back about it he didn't have the source either.

[iamaran]

https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C4684/A.R.V..html

CASA (solutionarchive.com) seems to have a screenshot of your game. So whoever took the screenshot must have been running a copy of the game, right? So maybe you could try contacting CASA..?

Also, there’s been some talk of APDL on this forum lately. Maybe try searching the forum for APDL for more leads..?

'Dave' on CASA took the screenshot. I'll message him. 'Tautology' on here or am I getting confused?

[tautology]

Yep, I'm Dave on casa (long story); I think I had a copy of it from somewhere - it should be on my emulators disk. Hold the line a second...

[tautology]

It was in my APDL archive; so it must have come from there.

It's attached below, stardot will only let me attach zips; so it's a zipped arcfs archive; so unzip it on Windows and then put it in hostfs for arculator and set it to filetype 3fb and load the arcfs reader to read it.

[RandolphSc0tt]

Thankyou so much.

[lurkio]

I'm probably doing something wrong (because I'm hopeless at wrangling Arculator, etc.), but after getting the game running I find that if I get past the "tough" maze, I end up "at the side of a road, which runs east-west", but I can't go any further: if I try going east or west, I don't seem to actually go anywhere!

Or maybe I've run into the limits of the demo version?

[RandolphSc0tt]

I just woke up thinking about this particularly heinous part of the game. I think it's RAISE THUMB or LIFT THUMB. I promise it opens up a bit after that.

[fuzzel]

I can't actually remember which PD library we released the demo to. I think APDL had it for Archimedes.

And yeah we sold the copies via mail order.

https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C4684/A.R.V..html

I think we got it reviewed in BBC Acorn User. I had a quote: "one of the most original ideas around" or similar from them on my CV for a while.

I'm trying to locate the advert for this game. I presume it would have been around 1992? Also, I wonder how easy it would be to convert it back to the BBC B / Master? If it's written in Basic and there are no memory constraints it shouldn't be that hard?

[RandolphSc0tt]

'92 sounds about right. Maybe a little later. 94 at the latest.

I couldn't honestly say how much effort it would be to convert back to BBC. It shouldn't be too bad. The actual guts of the game changed very little but the codebase is a very distant memory.

[lurkio]

I just woke up thinking about this particularly heinous part of the game. I think it's RAISE THUMB or LIFT THUMB. I promise it opens up a bit after that.

RAISE THUMB and LIFT THUMB didn't seem to be recognised. Instead I think you just have to say HELP and/or WAIT. Then a car stops and gives you a lift.

I couldn't honestly say how much effort it would be to convert back to BBC.

It needed a bit of tweaking and compressing (with the Pack option in the PRES Advanced BASIC Editor ROM), but the program now seems to basically work in Shadow MODE 128 on a BBC Master:

http://bbcmicro.co.uk//jsbeeb/play.php? ... del=Master



EDIT: Attached the uncompressed source code:

!BOOT.txt

(178 Bytes) Downloaded 46 times

ARV.txt

(32.54 KiB) Downloaded 54 times

dataout.txt

(3.48 KiB) Downloaded 54 times

[RandolphSc0tt]

Wow. Fantastic work. Thanks so much

[jms2]

I had a quick play with the BBC version; it seems to play except when I tried to move East outside Curry's, it crashed with "No room at line 750".

So possibly there are still some memory issues!

EDIT: Having said that, I can't repeat the problem. The second time I just went into Curry's. I see that you are only let in during certain times, so I must have been outside the proper time window previously. Looking at line 750 I can't see anything that would claim more memory, so I'm a bit at a loss to understand what happened there. M$ gets defined, but I think it must have been defined already so surely it wouldn't get any bigger?

[RandolphSc0tt]

Ah maybe we disregarded "LIFT THUMB" because it was too opaque.

[lurkio]

I had a quick play with the BBC version; it seems to play except when I tried to move East outside Curry's, it crashed with "No room at line 750". So possibly there are still some memory issues!

I can't reproduce that crash.

Are you using the link in my previous post?

[jms2]

Yes I was - but see my edited post, I can't reproduce it either now!!

[jms2]

I have managed to provoke the correct "its shut for lunch" message, so it seems to be working perfectly now. Odd.

I had certainly quit and restarted the game several times before (due to thinking I was irretrievably lost in the moors). That could have claimed more memory perhaps?

[lurkio]

I had certainly quit and restarted the game several times before (due to thinking I was irretrievably lost in the moors). That could have claimed more memory perhaps?

I doubt it because when you QUIT and restart, the program does a RUN.

But M$ does get redfined quite a lot, so I've now maxed its size out at the start of the prog. Same link to play online (see upthread).



EDIT: Ah, but once the game has initialised itself and is waiting for the player's first command, VARTOP is already above &7EF0, so there's not much headroom left for the BASIC heap to grow into! Updated.

[stevenjameshodgson]

Yes, I'm Steve, one of the co-authors with RandolpSc0tt.

Just loading this up (the Master version) and looking through the code brings back a lot of memories from the best part of 30 years ago....

It's surprising how much of it comes back - for example the cheat code - when you start looking.

Apologies for the annoying puzzles, they probably made a lot more sense when we were designing them!

[stevenjameshodgson]

Yes, I'm Steve, one of the co-authors with RandolpSc0tt.

Just loading this up (the Master version) and looking through the code brings back a lot of memories from the best part of 30 years ago....

It's surprising how much of it comes back - for example the cheat code - when you start looking.

Apologies for the annoying puzzles, they probably made a lot more sense when we were designing them!

From what I remember, we started coded this on BBC B and Masters, then ported it to the Archimedes for further development - but never considered it being backported. So maybe that's why it prangs out fairly regularly...

And yes, Curry's definitely has set opening times. You can view the in-game time by typing the command "TIME", but then the game obviously tries to get the real time from the (Archimedes) clock because it errors out.

[lurkio]

Offloaded some of the DATA values to a data file to save RAM, and bodged the in-game TIME command (which works better in BeebEm than in JSBeeb). Same link, upthread.

RandolphSc0tt and Steve, apologies for messing with your game! I'll stop now.

[stevenjameshodgson]

RandolphSc0tt and Steve, apologies for messing with your game! I'll stop now.

No need to apologise! It belongs to the community now.

[RandolphSc0tt]

RandolphSc0tt and Steve, apologies for messing with your game! I'll stop now.

Not at all. Thankyou. As Steve says it belongs to the community now.