'Good' adventure games

[wemb]

Okay - so right out of the bed, I apologise to anyone who really enjoys BBC adventure games and who might think I'm being deliberately provocative - I'm not. Perhaps I'm just spoiled - when I was growing up in the eighties, I owned a C64 and played things like Scott Adams Adventure International games - such as Pirate Adventure and Voodoo Castle - which were fun but a bit lightweight - then I played things such as CRL's parodies like The Very Big Cave Adventure and Bored of the Rings and similar which were a bit more advanced - and then I got a disk drive and moved up to playing Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls games.

Exposure to BBC adventure games back in the day was very limited so - the only one I remember playing extensively was, I think, a type-in from A&B called Xanadu - when I got the Master I've just finished renovating working I was sort of assuming there'd by some really incredible adventure games for the system given its focus wasn't really audio or graphics as much as the C64 was. But have been really disappointed by how basic and poor the few adventure games I've played so far have been. They mostly make the Scott Adams stuff look advanced.

I know infocom never made it to the platform - and I don't think Magnetic Scrolls did. I know Level 9 did - but I never really enjoyed many of their games as they seemed to mostly feature very big maps with very little depth.

Any recommendations for anything remotely like an Infocom or Magnetic Scrolls game? Anything with a decent parser?

Thanks
Dave

[EdwardianDuck]

While Infocom didn't release games for the BBC, it turns out they did have an unreleased interpreter viewtopic.php?p=408727#p408727. Further down that thread I did package the games mentioned in an Infocom memorandum with this interpreter (lightly fixed) so you can play some Infocom games on a "what if Infocom had released games for the BBC basis". Due to lack of memory, these will be painfully slow because of excessive swapping in from disk. I'm no longer working on doing anything further with this interpreter for, well, reasons. Realistically Ozmoo is the way to play Infocom and modern z-code .z3 and .z5 games on the BBC. In particular, games written using the modern PunyInform library will work well. These also have an Infocom-like parser. However, these are not specifically written for the BBC, so that may not be quite what you're looking for.

I've no specific recommendations, I'll leave that for others to supply.

Jeremy

[davidb]

But have been really disappointed by how basic and poor the few adventure games I've played so far have been. They mostly make the Scott Adams stuff look advanced.

What have you played so far?

Any recommendations for anything remotely like an Infocom or Magnetic Scrolls game? Anything with a decent parser?

There are a few adventuring enthusiasts here who have a good overview of the back catalogue, and I'm not one of them.

Perhaps something by Robico to start with?

[vexorg]

The hobbit was quite big, I never finished it as the 'copy' (literally copy) had a bad bit somewhere when loading.

[Lardo Boffin]

If you fancy a go at something annoying try this one:

https://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewt ... 39#p207539

[wemb]

But have been really disappointed by how basic and poor the few adventure games I've played so far have been. They mostly make the Scott Adams stuff look advanced.

What have you played so far?

Well, I had a go at all of the adventured games from Acornsoft - e.g. Philosopher's quest, Quondam - I had to resort to walkthroughs to even get out of the first couple of rooms. Blatantly unreasonable games both. Sphinx Adventure didn't seem much better.

The Scott Adams adventures which I'm familar with. A&B adventures which I believe are a type-in. Cute but not sophisticated. I tried Superior's 'Star Trek Adventure' - seemingly six rooms with an incoherant map and with nothing to do in them. Nearly as bad as the Acornsoft ones. ('You see a button'. 'Push button', 'What?', 'Press button','No power available..' <sigh>). Colditz Adventure seemed slightly better, but not much.

I tried a fair few more - but didn't seem to find anything better than Level 9 games. That surprised me.


Dave

[wemb]

While Infocom didn't release games for the BBC, it turns out they did have an unreleased interpreter viewtopic.php?p=408727#p408727. Further down that thread I did package the games mentioned in an Infocom memorandum with this interpreter (lightly fixed) so you can play some Infocom games on a "what if Infocom had released games for the BBC basis". Due to lack of memory, these will be painfully slow because of excessive swapping in from disk. I'm no longer working on doing anything further with this interpreter for, well, reasons. Realistically Ozmoo is the way to play Infocom and modern z-code .z3 and .z5 games on the BBC. In particular, games written using the modern PunyInform library will work well. These also have an Infocom-like parser. However, these are not specifically written for the BBC, so that may not be quite what you're looking for.

I've no specific recommendations, I'll leave that for others to supply.

Jeremy

Thanks - I skimmed through that thread - very interesting. Not at all surprised they couldn'treally do it on a 32k machine - the games are more or less playable on a C64 with a disk, but did involve pretty much continuous disk activity. Might have been extremely playable on a Master - and would have loved to play them in 80 column mode - but I guess the market just wasn't there - especially by the time the master came out in '86 Infocom were more or less going downhill after their failed database project.

Cheers.

[dr_d_gee]

The Acornsoft games, and most others from this era, had simple verb/noun parsers.

Not having had a BBC Micro, I haven't played the vast majority of these, though I did spend a little time on Countdown to Doom, but running on RISC OS, and it had been developed for that system using Inform. I've not really looked at it seriously, but I did get through the first puzzle. The parser may have been more capable than the original.

I'd avoid Level 9’s Emerald Isle — there's an unmappable maze right at the start. The Hobbit is good — but the graphics (if any) on the BBC version would not be as good as on the C64.

The main issue with the BBC was, I suspect, the shortage of available memory.

[james]

The Hobbit is good — but the graphics (if any) on the BBC version would not be as good as on the C64.

FWIW, there is a version of The Hobbit with graphics https://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13336

[Cybershark]

There are a few adventuring enthusiasts here who have a good overview of the back catalogue, and I'm not one of them.

Perhaps something by Robico to start with?

I'm also not a real adventure enthusiast but I do recall the name of Robico having quite some weight, back in the day.

This more recent addition to the Beebography certainly ticks the boxes for prettiness. There's a review of it here.

[wemb]

... but the graphics (if any) on the BBC version would not be as good as on the C64..

I'm a big fan of Infocom, so the graphics are all in my head anyway As I said, it's the parser that always wowed me with infocom stuff - instead of [VERB][NOUN] you typically got a parser that could handle [ACTOR,] [VERB PHRASE] [DIRECT OBJECT PHRASE] [PREPOSITION PHRASE] [INDIRECT OBJECT PHRASE] [.|THEN]...

So far it looks like I'm lucky to find a game were 'I' is a synonym for inventory. Haven't found one that does 'get all' yet - let alone deal with things like 'except'.
Dave

[rmbrowngr]

How about my favourite adventure game for both the BBC and Electron, Twin Kingdom Valley? Great graphics on both.

Another graphical one, The Lost Crystals. A three parter on tape. I owned this one.

[vexorg]

'Graphical' is a bit of a stretch on twin kingdom valley

[julie_m]

I was never a fan of unnecessarily-complicated parsers. They eat up precious bytes that could have been used for rooms, objects or puzzle logic. For me, distilling a command down to one, two (or occasionally three, so I baked that ability into AdveBuilder ) words always seemed to be an integral part of the gameplay.

Besides which, I'm too lazy to type something like TAKE EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE DUCK, GO SOUTH TWICE THEN EAST ONCE, FILL THE WOODEN BUCKET AND GO NORTH in full .....

[Lardo Boffin]

I managed to squeeze a seemingly reasonable parser into my SITC game.

In theory it would support something like
SHOOT THE WEREWOLF WITH THE SILVERBULLET THEN TAKE IT’S PELT AND GO SOUTH.

It would just split the sentence into an array of individual commands based on AND / THEN etc. and parse them one at a time as if typed in separately. ITS or IT would be replaced with the token for WEREWOLF.
It also supported as many synonyms as I could type in (and have space to store), e.g. I and INV for INVENTORY. At most I would generally only do two due to lack of space, e.g. GET and TAKE.

[EdwardianDuck]

Thinking about @julie_m's comments, I took a look at the test script for my own game, which is written in Inform6/PunyInform, so it has a somewhat sophisticated parser. However, most of the commands used to play the game are either a direction or a simple VERB/NOUN. In a few cases I have to chuck an adjective in to disambiguate nouns. Only about 10% of the commands take the form VERB NOUN SOMETHING SECOND, such as "THROW ROCK AT SMURF". In a real game play experience rather than a minimal test script, I think the proportion of longer commands would be smaller because the test script doesn't bother examining things etc.

Also you get the usual quality of life features such as abbreviations like X for EXAMINE and the ability to use commands like "E,E,N,GET ROCK, N, THROW ROCK AT SMURF, N".

Of course, none of this necessarily makes my game a 'good' game.

In the original 6502 implementation, the most complex command understood would have taken the form VERB ADJECTIVE NOUN SOMETHING ADJECTIVE SECOND, such as "THROW LARGE ROCK AT BEARDY SMURF".

Jeremy

[Triax]

Well, I had a go at all of the adventured games from Acornsoft - e.g. Philosopher's quest, Quondam - I had to resort to walkthroughs to even get out of the first couple of rooms. Blatantly unreasonable games both. Sphinx Adventure didn't seem much better.

Oh, I made a playthrough of Quondam if you’re interested..!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lVXwNPtWDM

13 years ago… back when I was at the tender age of 29…


Kind Regards,

Kev

[leenew]

I know it's not "weighty" and the parser is only (a very decent) verb/noun jobby, but I am really rather fond of my recent BASIC effort (written in covid lockdown)
https://bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=3472

In the style of Scott Adams / Brown Howarth games.
I think the story is pretty cool... but then I know all the answers....

Lee.