Urban Upstart - Spectrum to BBC Conversion

[AndyF]

Well, I've had no time at all to do anything with this for ages but I made some time last Saturday and about four hours work produced this so far:

1.jpg (47.47 KiB) Viewed 7220 times

2.jpg (65.34 KiB) Viewed 7220 times

Reminder of loading pic:

uu.jpg (33.12 KiB) Viewed 7220 times

For those who do not know, this is an attempted conversion of the Spectrum adventure game Urban Upstart, which is relatively easy to play.

There's not a lot of progress as I say as time has been very short however the few hours last week enabled me to get the room data and 90% of the connections sorted out, along with one object. Tis progress after all. Graphics ( ! ) may come later depending on memory available, plus I'd have to draw them myself

[Samwise]

Looking good Andy ... if you want to make this a Retro Software project, you'd be more than welcome.

Always room for more adventures!

Sam.

[AndyF]

That's a good plan. I'll pop over there at the weekend (I do recall you suggested I do anyway from before) and see what they have to say. , it will probably be a month again before I get to touch the code though, still eventually we'll get there.

[Samwise]

Andy, just an FYI - "they" is us.

It's the same ppl behind that community as these forums and you can see how it evolved from these very forums here, many moons ago ...

The primary reason I reckon for putting it under the RS label is so that your project doesn't get lost in the forums here. It's taken a few years, but we're collecting together a really good catalogue over there. It's amazing how talented some of the ppl we have round here!

Sam.

[AndyF]

Thanks!

Just skim read it.

Have remembered to join / post on Retro, just done a detailed(ish) topic there now to see what feedback / complaints / comments / thoughts* there are.

* choose as appropriate

[AndyF]

This is on hold for now, due to wanting to redo it completely with Quill instead.

For the moment the 'finalised' loading pic is as far as it stands given I need to start afresh really with it.

uu.png (5.68 KiB) Viewed 6842 times

However, I've not been idle

See here > http://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewto ... =40&t=5261

And here > http://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewto ... =40&t=5262

[vanpeebles]

I loved Urban Upstart on the speccy, the atmosphere was superb. With the current climate the setting has come back into fashion too.

[Steve8bit]

Urban Upstart was the first Adventure game I ever finished (without looking up clues or cheating) so I have fond memories of it.
I'd love to play it on my new BBC!

[fuzzel]

I'm also looking forward to playing this game, the idea of porting classic games from other 8-bit platforms is a great way of keeping the BBC flame alive.

[fuzzel]

I couldn't resist playing the C64 version of Urban Upstart. Although the graphics are a bit basic they do actually add to the atmosphere of the game. With 90-odd locations and minimal location text it's possible that a lot of the locations' graphics could be incorporated into a BBC version. I think I'll check it out.
C64 Screen:

UU RedRm C64.jpg (8.57 KiB) Viewed 5013 times

BBC Screen:

[fuzzel]

I'm enjoying this.
C64 Screen:

UU Landing C64.jpg (9.04 KiB) Viewed 4968 times

BBC Screen:

[lurkio]

Are these mockups or are you actually porting the game?

[fuzzel]

Are these mockups or are you actually porting the game?

I've decided to port the game. I've used a disc editor to get a dump of the C64 disc and have copied over the location text, objects and messages to a spreadsheet. I can then copy and paste these into my BBCSDL data files. Once I have a complete text only version working the aim is to then create all the graphics screens at which point I'll find that they don't all fit into a standard 32k model B so I'll pick and choose the best. I'll probably also do a sideways ram version to include all the graphics screens. Btw, I hope AndyF doesn't mind me stepping into his shoes but it looks as though his project went cold some time ago. But if he'd prefer me to stop, after all it is/was his baby, then I'm happy to find another game to port (I just couldn't resist the idea of creating a text with graphics adventure for the beeb as they're few and far between).

[lurkio]

I've decided to port the game

Interesting!

Once I have a complete text only version working the aim is to then create all the graphics screens at which point I'll find that they don't all fit into a standard 32k model B

Have you looked into tricky's compression/decompression code?:

http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/forum/vi ... f=73&t=999

It was used to compress all the graphics for The Darkness Of Raven Wood, all of which now fit onto a single side of a .SSD disc-image. The picture for each location is loaded on demand from disc and decompressed in screen RAM.

EDIT: More details:

viewtopic.php?p=157219#p157219

[fuzzel]

I've decided to port the game

Interesting!

Once I have a complete text only version working the aim is to then create all the graphics screens at which point I'll find that they don't all fit into a standard 32k model B

Have you looked into tricky's compression/decompression code?:

http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/forum/vi ... f=73&t=999

It was used to compress all the graphics for The Darkness Of Raven Wood, all of which now fit onto a single side of a .SSD disc-image. The picture for each location is loaded on demand from disc and decompressed in screen RAM.

EDIT: More details:

viewtopic.php?p=157219#p157219

I've created a rudimentary teletext graphics compression routine which works by looking at each of the 512 bytes in turn (top half of the screen) and where it encounters a sequence of identical characters it replaces them with the original character plus the number of copies. For the two locations done so far it compresses from 512 bytes down to 171 (i.e. roughly a third of its original size). It'll be interesting to see how big my text only version is.

[fuzzel]

This game has a weird scoring system. I've followed one of the two walkthroughs on CASA and managed to get the score up to 10 out of 22 but by the end of the game it has dropped down to 7 and the congratulatory message for completing the game excludes the final score (so potentially I might have earned 15 points for my final command). Looks like I'll have to suss out the scoring system whilst programming the game as neither solution mentions the scoring system. Another thing I need to consider is how true to the original I make it, for example, when you move north the game says "You go north" but in my standard adventure system you just go that way. Do I reproduce the game's message or stick with my own (it'll save a bit of memory if I use my method). This will obviously apply many times to the port.

[Richard Hallas]

I loved Urban Upstart on the Spectrum. I agree with some of the comments above: it has real atmosphere, and it was actually the first adventure game I ever completed.

I don't think I've ever seen the C64 version, but I'm sure the Spectrum version was the original. The programmer, Pete Cooke, went on to do incredible things, and his Tower of Babel (from Microprose) became, I believe, the lowest-selling Archimedes port of all time!

Anyway, Pete Cooke wrote a number of accessible adventures, for the Spectrum at least, in the early days (e.g. Invincible Island was another) – of which Urban Upstart was the best. His last such game was called Upper Gumtree, and I've been looking for it for years. But unfortunately, it's a MIA title on the Spectrum and has still to turn up.

However, the C64 version can be found online. It might be another candidate for porting. I don't know if it's as good as Upper Gumtree (I haven't played the C64 version), but it came later so hopefully it'll be a decent game. Everything Pete Cooke produced ranged from pretty good to brilliant.

[8bitAG]

Upper Gumtree/Up A Gumtree was C64 only. There's no Spectrum version mentioned in Peter's Crash interview.
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.ph ... 09&page=47

[Richard Hallas]

Upper Gumtree/Up A Gumtree was C64 only. There's no Spectrum version mentioned in Peter's Crash interview.
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.ph ... 09&page=47

I can tell you with 99% certainty that this is incorrect, and one should be cautious about trusting the word of a single article – especially one that can't even quote the game's name correctly! It's ALWAYS been Upper Gumtree, not Up A Gum Tree. That's almost certainly a simple transcriptional error, made while writing down a recorded interview (it's consistent throughout the article), but whoever wrote/edited it really should have checked the titles properly. It's a very clear mistake.

I do agree – having just read a bit of the interview – that the wording is ambiguous, and can be interpreted as saying that he wrote Upper Gumtree only for the C64, because he happens to be referring specifically to the C64 at that point. But it's in the context of being 'the other game' that he 'also' wrote for the C64 (in contrast with everything else that was for the Spectrum) – the first C64 game being Urban Upstart, which was unquestionably on the Spectrum too. But this is clearly a spoken interview, and that's the sense that emerges from the context. It's not explicit in saying that the game was or was not only for the C64. It's only mentioned as the second game that he wrote for the C64, and he could just as easily have written it for the Spectrum too. It's much more probable that he did, in fact. The game was advertised as being available for the Spectrum, and I imagine Pete Cooke probably worked on both platforms for delivery at the same time, especially as he'd already had the experience of writing the same game for both machines with Urban Upstart.

Anyway, I can tell you the following for certain:

1. To the best of my knowledge, ALL of Richard Shepherd Software's titles were published for the Spectrum, and only a tiny handful for other platforms too; indeed, I think Urban Upstart is the only one I'm aware of (other than Upper Gumtree itself) that came out for C64, and it's highly unlikely that they'd abandon the Spectrum just for this one title – particularly as the Spectrum was Pete Cooke's main programming platform at the time. (Yes, he did write the C64 conversions of those adventures himself, but virtually everything else he wrote was on the Spectrum, right up until the very end of the 1980s.)

2. There were Richard Shepherd Software magazine adverts that mentioned this game (and I wouldn't have remembered seeing them in C64 magazines because I didn't read those).

3. There's a solution to the game to be found online, which says explicitly that it's for the Spectrum version.

4. The Spectrum software library sites (World of Spectrum, Spectrum Computing etc.) all list this title as an official release, albeit MIA – and their catalogues are all based originally on information printed in the form of magazine adverts and reviews of the day.

5. And here's the kicker: a few months ago, I was actually in direct contact with Pete Cooke myself. So I took the opportunity to mention to him that Upper Gumtree for the Spectrum appeared to be lost to history, and I asked him if he still had a copy himself. He said he'd have a look and see if he could find it. Sadly, I didn't hear back from him after that, so I have to assume that he couldn't locate it. But the reaction was "I'll have a look for it" rather than "I never wrote it for the Spectrum".

So I'm very satisfied that the Spectrum version does (or did) indeed exist. It just hasn't turned up or been retrieved yet.

[8bitAG]

Yes, I'd never trust a single source... And I know what the correct title should be... It's just referred to in so many articles as "Up a Gum Tree" that it's worth noting that as an unofficial alternative... Especially when trawling the magazine archives for references.

The Spectrum archives sites often have entries created from no more evidence that a mention in a news column. They're not proof a game actually exists... and there are so many errors in the databases! We've been working on fixing them for years.

Aside from a couple of magazine articles mentioning that a Spectrum version was planned, I've not seen any concrete evidence that a port was actually completed. The solution isn't a primary source... there have been a few of Dorothy's solutions that she's incorrectly labelled with the wrong machine.

Do you have a reference for a published advert showing the Spectrum version? Anything like that can be added to the existing entry at Spectrum Computing.

Would be very happy if a Spectrum version turned up, as Spectrum text adventures is my area of interest/work, but I just haven't found enough evidence (or enough of a footprint left in all the various magazine and fanzine sources) to yet indicate that version actually existed.

RSS did promise Amstrad and MSX versions of the game too.

[Richard Hallas]

Do you have a reference for a published advert showing the Spectrum version? Anything like that can be added to the existing entry at Spectrum Computing.

Would be very happy if a Spectrum version turned up, as Spectrum text adventures is my area of interest/work, but I just haven't found enough evidence (or enough of a footprint left in all the various magazine and fanzine sources) to yet indicate that version actually existed.

I don't have a reference of an advert to hand, but if I find one I'll let you know. I'm sure I remember seeing it back in the day, and why else would I have known about the game? Also, it really does seem extremely unlikely to me that Pete Cooke woudn't have written it for the Spectrum given that everything else he wrote was for the Spectrum, and Richard Shepherd was almost exclusively a Spectrum publisher.

But to me, the really compelling pieces of evidence that it exists for the Spectrum are that (a) I've seen a solution for the game that states explicitly that it's for the Spectrum version, and (b) Pete Cooke himself has acknowledged to me that the Spectrum version did in fact exist. Point (b) in particular is pretty hard to argue with. I suppose I could ask him again if he's absolutely certain – but until now, no-one has suggested to me that it might not have existed for the Spectrum.

The fact that it's hard to find is not surprising if one considers that Pete Cooke made only about £500 from it at the time. For whatever reason, if he only made so little from it, and he'd written it for TWO platforms (like Urban Upstart), then it must really have failed to sell many copies. Ergo, there simply aren't a lot of Spectrum copies out in the wild. But being very rare doesn't mean that it doesn't exist…!

[fuzzel]

I'll see if I can find any adverts for Urban Upstart and his other games, just out of curiosity. Incidentally you can see that Pete Cooke took on board the criticism about the slow graphics printing on his original Spectrum version, for the C64 version he added GRAPHICS ON and GRAPHICS OFF commands. The C64 version also had less detailed graphics than the Spectrum version. I'm not sure of the rationale for this but I guess it would either be memory constraints, reducing graphics printing time, he couldn't be bothered to replicate the detailed graphics of the Spectrum version or a bug in the emulator, particularly affected are the buildings which just appear on the C64 version as crude blocks).
Spectrum:

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C64:

UU fg.png (5.48 KiB) Viewed 4678 times

[fuzzel]

Here's my teletext title screen for Urban Upstart. It was a bit fiddly getting the hold graphics graphic character working correctly but I'm reasonably happy with this screen given it's only 1k in size:

BBC Version:

Spectrum Version:

Btw, the game itself is coming along nicely - all locations, objects and messages are in and I'm now working through each verb in turn, programming all of the related puzzles. Once the text only version is complete I'll start work on the graphics screens.

[tricky]

I've had a chat with fuzzel via PM, but I thought that others might be interrested, so here is my side:
The compressort is in basic C++ and runs on windows command line but I would expect anyone who uses other OSs could convert it very easily.
I use the decompressort like:

Code: Select all

.BEGIN

INCLUDE "game.equb"

.MAIN

lda #LO(BEGIN) : sta decompress_src
lda #HI(BEGIN) : sta decompress_src+1
lda #LO(load)  : sta decompress_dst
lda #HI(load)  : sta decompress_dst+1

INCLUDE "beebop.asm"

I only run it once at startup, hence it is inline, but call be called if you put a libel before it and an RTS after it.

I think my compressor is lz77, so it is good for repeated patterns, like repeated characters or some gfx.

The thing me decompressor does best is has 5 bytes of ZP and is <80 bytes of code, so it has the lowest permanent overhead. There are much better compressors, but they can require several KB of temp storage and are hundreds of bytes of code. There is a reasonable compromise, but I can't remember what it is called!

I've attached the windows exe, as I couldn't find it.
I use it like this:

Code: Select all

for /F "tokens=1,2,4,5,6" %%P IN ('..\tools\beebop.exe game') DO set "name=%%P" & set "uncom=%%Q" & set "comp=%%R" & set "pad=%%S" & set "equb=%%T"
if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :EOF
echo.name=!name! uncom=!uncom! comp=!comp! pad=!pad! equb=!equb!

echo.len=end-load >>build.asm
echo.uncom=!uncom! >>build.asm
echo.comp=!comp! >>build.asm
echo.pad=!pad! >>build.asm
echo.INCLUDE "make_ssd.asm" >>build.asm

[lurkio]

Here's tricky's brilliant decompressor code in action:

viewtopic.php?p=157219#p157219

[ChrisB]

I'm using the LZSA decompressor for Untitled Dungeon Game from here : https://github.com/emmanuel-marty/lzsa

As I recall it doesn't require workspace and comes in at around 256 bytes (possibly just under) but AFAIK it is self modifying. It seems a good half way house if you have lots of data to decompress. LZ77 and similar compressors take a while to get going so small sections of data are often badly compressed initially but get better as the size increases. As such I'm not sure how well they will do on your graphics screens (or indeed the text - looking at your question about huffman) as I presume they are only around 512 bytes.

Taking the classic Acornsoft logo for Arcadians the original mode 7 screen is 1024 bytes (and there is quite a lot of repetition there). Tricky's compressor brings that down to 536 bytes. LZSA manages 281 bytes. But taking only half that screen (512 bytes) Tricky gives 269 bytes and LZSA 217.

[fuzzel]

fuzzel wrote:
This game has a weird scoring system. I've followed one of the two walkthroughs on CASA and managed to get the score up to 10 out of 22 but by the end of the game it has dropped down to 7 and the congratulatory message for completing the game excludes the final score (so potentially I might have earned 15 points for my final command). Looks like I'll have to suss out the scoring system whilst programming the game as neither solution mentions the scoring system.

I've now completed the location text, messages, objects, all of the location graphics (92 locations but some duplication) and almost all of the puzzles so it's time to revisit UU's scoring system. Over the last couple of days I've been scouring the adventure columns from old magazines for any hints I can find and have come across the excellent book, "Adventures on the Spectrum by Mike Gerrard" in which he offers full solutions to a number of Spectrum games including Urban Upstart as well as an introduction to adventuring and some recommendations for games to try. Here's what he has to say on the scoring system:

The maximum of 22 points referred to is misleading, as it cannot be scored. You can get through with a minimum of 19 and a maximum of 21. You get points for picking up useful objects, then once you've used them you retain the point when you drop them again. See the entry for THE RED HERRING for the explanation of that point. You swap the lager for the rat trap, and don't get an extra point for it, and you can also get through the game without needing the old hat, for which there's also a point.

And here's his entry for THE RED HERRING:

Almost certainly the first 'red herring' joke in adventure-game history. Does this fish that you find on the counter in the chip shop have a purpose, or is it a red herring? If you pick it up you gain a point, which you lose again if you drop it. This suggests it has a purpose, but it doesn't. You don't need maximum points to get through the game, and in fact it's impossible to score the maximum 22 and finish. If you carry the red herring round with you a swarm of cats follows you wherever you go. Drop it and they stop.

In the main he appears to be correct but he doesn't offer a complete guide to the scoring system. I think I've managed to take it a step further, when I get more time later on I'll explain in more detail what I've found. He does appear to be correct that the maximum number of points you can score is 21 out of 22 but it's not clear whether he achieves it in the same way. I'm also not sure if he's right about it being the first 'red herring' joke, maybe he is, it's certainly an early 8-bit adventure.

[fuzzel]

Ok, so here's my interpretation of the scoring system. There are 23 objects in the game, 18 of which you get a point when you take them but if you then drop them in the same location you lose a point. The other five are not in any location until their related puzzle is solved and you get the point when you solve the puzzle, not when you pick the object up (you also can't lose a point for dropping these objects anywhere). However, there are two objects where you lose a point when you use them to solve a puzzle. So this means your maximum final score is 21 out of 22. Unless, of course, you get a point for finishing the game but the author has neglected to inform you of your final score in the congratulatory message so I'm going to assume in my version you're awarded the extra point on completion.

[fuzzel]

I have a dilemma with one of the puzzles. In the basement is a cardboard box which you need but there are rats swarming about and they kill you if you hang around too long. However, you just have enough moves to take the box before you end up in hospital (without losing any score or objects). Do I replicate this "bug" or do I prevent you from taking the box? My preference would be to do the latter. Here are a couple of screenshots to illustrate my point:
You just manage to get the box in time:

rats eat you after you grab the box.png (4.64 KiB) Viewed 4143 times

You have the box in hospital:

in hospital bed with box.png (5.3 KiB) Viewed 4143 times

[fuzzel]

I've now produced a final test version after adding the save and restore functions. Unfortunately, I've now run out of memory so am looking at my graphics compression technique to squeeze a few more bytes out of the data file. My current method of graphics compression, as I mentioned previously, is to take the uncompressed file which is 440 bytes in length (top half of screen) and look for consecutive bytes of the same character. For example, character 255 may appear 20 times in a row across the screen so I would replace 255 x 20 with 255 then 20, a saving of 18 bytes. As the screen memory will not include characters with a value of less than 40 (except for space - 32) this doesn't cause a problem. To get around the space issue, I've replaced it with character 128 which is spare (I'm sure someone out there will point out that it isn't!) Anyway, I reckon I can reduce the file by a further 5% to 10% by working downwards rather than across for the first two columns as these tend to include identical background or foreground colours - see below. Once done I have some final testing to do (my walkthrough of the CASA solution works fine so looking good) and a decision to make on what to do with the cardboard box error and how to account for the missing point in the scoring.