I have started with Pirate Island and I know @Warrigal have started with Hangtown, both in Inform6.
At the moment I got a bit derailed with modifying the BASIC-code to run and compile under QB64 (that can create executables for Windows, Mac and Linux). Currently I’ve done Pirate Island and Farmland.
The progress of QB64-files can be folllow at my GitHub-page, here. You, or anyone else, are more than welcome to beta-test the modified files for any hickups (I can provide executables for Windows or Linux, if you don’t want to compile the games yourself. Just ask in a DM).
I had to get all your games into a playable state, finish my ParserComp game, finish playing and rating the Text Adventure Literacy Jam games, handle all the post-comp TALJ admin issues (such as prize distribution), help a newbie with his game development, update the TALJ competition entry in IFDB and add entries for the TALJ games to the CASA database. I also need to do maps and solutions for the TALJ games and I have a couple of testing commitments this week. Other than that, there’s plenty of time to finish Hangtown and play your other games. Oh, I have also started playing Farmtown.
If you like, I’ll drop you an email with a work in progress. You can play the game from beginning to end, but it’s pretty rough around the edges. It needs a lot of work on grammar extensions, possibly some new action handlers, richer room descriptions and scenery.
Not at all. Just reminding you that I had a busy week this week and next week, but it’s high on the list of priorities now that I’ve ticked a few things off that list. I’ve sent you a game that you can play. It’s like a pre-alpha release, probably buggy and certainly not ready for public consumption.
Good question. It was not an orderly process. Clearly, troll and toyland are beginning games. Looking at numbers of rooms and perceived difficulty, I’d say: troll, toyland, midnight, cursed castle, pirate, farmtown, Hangtown, uptown, and boardwalk. Hope this helps.
If you mean the order of the adventures on the disks, it’s the order in my lengthy message above. If you mean the order that they were written, it was Hangtown first, then Pirate Island, then Farmtown. Not sure about the rest. John’s response above is the perceived order of difficulty.
The Hangtown triology: Hangtown, Farmtown, Pirate Island
The Adventures in Danger trilogy: Cave of the Troll, Midnight Emergency/Townhouse Adventure/Babysitting, Cursed Castle
The Unpublished triology: Toyland, Uptown, Boardwalk
(Toyland is definitely the first one in te last triology because there is a NPC introduced here that returns in the following adventures. The order of the other two are a bit uncertain.)
I have finished the port of Hangtown to Inform 6 using PunyInform. It is not a straight port, but an enhanced version with modern parser, richer room descriptions, added scenery, ability to examine anything, expanded vocabulary, a few extra puzzles, prologue with back story, slightly modifed scoring and other niceties done in consultation with John.
While doing research for the game, I discovered that Hangtown is a real town, now named Placerville, and it was never abandoned. The town was originally called Dry Diggins and became known as Hangtown after some vigilante hangings of a few professional gamblers that were found guilty of theft, bashings and murder of gold prospectors. The exact details of the hangings are not clear and I have read several different accounts of the story. However, several things are consistent: some of the hung men were foreigners (as was to be expected during the gold rush), none of them were black and the hangings took place at an old oak tree in the town. As a consequence, I changed the first location from Hangtown Square to the hanging tree just outside of an unnamed ghost town. The map, the rest of the locations and all the original puzzles are pretty much unchanged.
The new game is tentatively called ‘The Hanging Tree’ to avoid any confusion with the original ‘Hangtown’ and John is currently testing it. When John is happy with it, I will ask for more testers. It is a classic treasure hunt set in an abandoned gold rush town.
I have finished playing ‘Farmtown’, which is a fun little game, and it will probably be the next to port after I’ve completed some testing commitments.
After compiling all the original Turbo BASIC files, I played them with DOSBox. I’ve finished all nine games and will probably do maps and solutions for CASA when time permits. I haven’t looked at @heasm66’s versions, but for anyone that doesn’t want to muck around with emulators, this is probably a better option if you want to play the original games.
This was some weeks ago. In the meantime, I’ve ported all nine games to PunyInform. All the games have been enhanced and brought up to modern-day standards. Of these, five games have been finished (at least to an alpha stage) and sent to John. He is very happy with the progress so far. The sixth game is nearly finished and will be sent to John shortly. As the games have been considerably enhanced, the titles have been changed to avoid any confusion with the originals.
Three of the original nine games were not released commercially, so I’m tempted to release them first. I’m calling this the Andrea trilogy. John has play tested the first two in the trilogy and I’ve just sent him the third part. I’ll do some further fine tuning when I get John’s comments back, then ask for beta testers.
So, all in all, things are not stagnant, but have been progressing quite nicely. Stay tuned for requests for testers over the coming weeks.
It’s time for another update. It seems like an eternity since I started on this project. As I look back over this thread, I see that it’s been almost three months.
Well, the good news is that all nine games are finished and ready for beta testing.
The full list of new games is as follows:
Former Hangtown trilogy:
Hangman’s Gulch
Stranded in Kansas
Captive at Pirate Island
Former Adventures in Danger! trilogy:
Escape from the Troll’s Cave
The Babysitter
Nightmare Castle
Former (unpublished) Andrea trilogy:
The Toy Factory
The Boarding House Murder
Blue Eyes and Board Wax
I will ask for testers shortly, so if you’d like to see how John and I have brought the old games up to date, keep an eye out for requests for testers on the beta testing channel. I realise this is not a good time for testing due to clashes with IFComp, ECTOCOMP and Bare-Bones Jam, but there’s no hurry.
John has been very good to work with and he’s given me the freedom to make lots and lots of changes and improvements. I hope you enjoy the games when you get around to playing them.