I’ve received the first batch of John’s source code files. I think there is more to come. It’s probably best to put them all in a zip file and post them here. At any rate, I’ll keep you updated as things progress, but there probably won’t be much to report until after submissions for ParserComp close.
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As I understand it there’s about 30 adventures in this style. Is this correct?
I’m willing to contribute but I’m a bit unsure what the goal is. Is it to modernize the games with fuller parser and more text or is it only to convert them to a more modern platform that makes them more accessible?
For alternative 1, I would choose i6 with PunyInform or Zil.
For alternative 2, I would convert them to Scott Adams format that would make them playable in an Scott Adams interpreter and also wrap the resulting datafile in scott2zil to make a file playable in the z-machine.
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I only used 8 adventure games my last semester: cave of the troll, toyland, cursed castle, townhouse or babysitting (publisher liked midnight emergency), pirate, boardwalk, uptown and Hangtown. I left off farmtown. John h doolittle search of csus (Sacramento state) will find my school web page amazingly still there 16 years after i retired. The other games on the disk iclude logic puzzle generators, mastermind tpye searc puzzles and word games. I think the video helps explain things, but my wife fears a bumbling old man in sky blue pants is hard to take seriously.
As to the style, I’m following warrigal’s lead.
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Just a quick update. I’ve got the source code for 8 of the 9 adventures that @Dooriddle has mentioned in various places. I’m still waiting for ‘Toyland’. According to John, these were written in ZBasic. I’ve scoured the internet and downloaded ZBasic version 4.21 for the Apple II and ZBasic version 4.7 for MS-DOS.
I’ve run ZBasic on the AppleWin Apple emulator and there’s no way that it will compile the source code. I’ve run ZBasic on the DOSBox emulator and there’s no way that it will compile the source code. In both cases, there are hundreds of errors, far too many to fix by hand without knowing the differences between the language that it’s supposed to be and the language that it actually is.
If anyone can recognise the dialect of the BASIC source code in the two files that have been posted for ‘Hangtown’ and ‘Pirate Island’, then we might have a fighting chance of finding an appropriate compiler and creating an executable for each of the games. Don’t be shy. Please help out if you have any knowledge or expertise in this area.
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For knowledge so have I started a adaptation of Pirate Island in Inform6 with PunyInform.
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Apologies. All my stuff is in turbo basic.
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Is that for PC or Mac or what?
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Could it be this?
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Pc
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Both Hangtown and Pirate Adventure seem to be in Borland’s Turbo Basic like John has mentioned. But I haven’t tried to compile them yet.
Addendum:
Also note that,
Therefore, I assume that the Hangtown trilogy versions playable in archive.org are from different source than the ones posted here. In fact Hangtown source code above seems to have an “Inventory/I” command implemented, but the one in archive.org does not have it. Instead it has inventory listing in banner like Scott Adams games.
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I’ve managed to find and download Borland Turbo BASIC 1.0 and compiled all the games, except Hangtown. It has a bug, possibly because of the cut and paste exercise from earlier in the thread. It’s after 3:15 a.m. here, so I’ll take a look at it tomorrow.
I’ve tried running them with DOSBox and they all run. So, we’re making progress.
More later.
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PowerBASIC has an interesting history. It was originally written by Robert Zale and released as BASIC/Z. This was bought by Borland and released as Turbo BASIC. When they retired the product, it was bought back by Robert Zale and renamed to PowerBASIC. He passed away in 2012, but his wife took over the product. It was later sold to the current owners. PowerBASIC is now a commercial product that works with Windows.
If anyone has a PowerBASIC licence, it would be interesting to see whether John’s games can be compiled for Windows using PowerBASIC. If they can (perhaps with minor modifications?), then we’d be able to play the games without mucking about with emulators. That would be sweet.
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QuickBasic in DosBox could be an alternative. Microsoft seems a bit lax about enforcing the license for version 4.5 when I scan the net.
EDIT: Or try QB64? - https://qb64.com/ (seems to be approximately similiar dialect.)
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You guys are amazing. I even understood some of it. In the 80s, borland had a big building by highway 17 in scotts valley near my cabin in Santa Cruz. Turbo pascal was required at Sacramento state in all computer science classes.
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The story so far…
There are known to be nine games. The first three were included on the ‘Hangtown’ trilogy. This was released commercially by Critical Thinking Press sometime in the early to mid 1990s (date to be determined). These were believed to have been written and compiled in ZBasic and are known to have been available for the later Apple II series. The trilogy can be played online or downloaded from the Internet Archive and played with an Apple II emulator.
Hangtown trilogy
Hangtown
Farmtown
Pirate Island
The next three games were included on the ‘Adventures in Danger!’ trilogy. This was released commercially by Critical Thinking Press sometime in the early to mid 1990s (date to be determined). These were believed to have been written and compiled in ZBasic and are known to have been available for the Macintosh. This trilogy has not been found on any online archives.
Adventures in Danger!
Cave of the Troll
Midnight Emergency (called ‘Townhouse’ in the game itself)
Cursed Castle
The last three games were intended for a commercial release, but this never happened.
Others
Uptown
Boardwalk
Toyland
At some point in time, the games were ported to Borland’s Turbo BASIC for IBM-compatible PCs and continued to have occasional updates until 1996. John has now released the source code for all nine games and I’ve attached them below as a zip file. If anyone would like to compile these to a Windows compatible executable, please do.
Turbo BASIC source code.zip (75.2 KB)
In the meantime, I have also attached the compiled MS-DOS executables. These will need an emulator, such as DOSBox, to run on modern machines.
MS-DOS executables.zip (299.1 KB)
Thanks to John for making these available for all to enjoy.
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Ok…
I made a first attempt to adapt Pirate Island to QB64. Here are the changes I made:
- Declare all global variables in the main module (QB64 don’t allow globals to be defined inside subs) with
ReDim Shared .... These are later dimensioned inside the subs withReDiminstead ofDim. - Variables and Subs can’t have same name in QB64 so I renamed
INVENTORYtoINVENTORYSUBandMOVEMENTTABLEtoMOVEMENTTABLESUB. BEEPdon’t take arguments in QB64 soBEEP 3→BEEP.DELAYis_DELAYin QB64.- Functions are defined by
FUNCTIONinstead ofDEF. - Syntax error on one place where there is two underscores instead of one to split a line (
__→_). NUMBERCONVERTSare hardcoded in a loop to 20. Redefined this variable as a global and used it instead of the hardcoded number.- Removed reading/writing to
REPORT.DTAandPIRTDATA.TXTwhen quitting or winning.
The QB64-source (and an executable) below:
pirate_island_qb64.zip (2.0 MB)
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I’m a bit unsure how to handle the files REPORT.DTA and PIRTDATA.TXT, before I convert the other games…
I can’t see the purpose of the REPORT.DTA. The file needs to be present and there is only one new value written to it every time.
The second file is a running transcript of the gameplay. Should I keep it, or skip it and also remove that you need to login and remove the requirement to save and quit after 300 turns?
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Report.dta is described in my clumsy and embarrassing video between minute 7 and the ending at minute 19:
01 doolittle VIDEO.mp4
In the late 90s, I gave a presentation to the faculty about an online version of my Scientific Thinking class and stuck in a lot of stuff about using IF as a teaching tool. The highlight of this video is at minute 7 where I conclude that “If you teach people problem-solving skills, they become more intelligent. Hello.” In retrospect, it’s not as obvious as I then thought. Because later parts of the video refer to the Uptown, and Boardwalk Adventures, as well as Farmtown, I’ll send those along
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Garry, are you still pursuing a more playable version of Hangtown using inform?
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