The text adventure “The Elves of Maroland” is now available for free downloading in its English language version for your ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Commodore 64, MSX1 and MSX2, CommodoreAmiga, Atari ST and PC MSDOS.
You can also play the Atari ST version online or in your Windows device.
Find the Shadow and free Maroland from the darkness!
All the info in the web:
Congratulations!
Coincidentally, the original Spectrum Spanish version just appeared on the IF Archive from the caad.es rescue, so I just updated its IFDB page to link to both that and your newer DAAD remake, and created another (minimal) IFDB page for this English version.
Also, while you’re here… on a lot of English IF sites, you’re credited as “David Carbonell”; this goes back to Baf’s Guide. But on Spanish sites and in your own material it’s Daniel.
Have… have we in the English community been misnaming you for two decades? If so, sorry, and I’ll go fix it.
Hello! Indeed, I am Daniel, not David, and I believe that this error has been creeping into some English-speaking pages since the publication of Rudolphine Rur, back in 2005. In any case, it is not something that worries me too much, since lately I have signed my works like Dwalin. In any case, thanks for your work!
Thanks. I’ve fixed what I can (IFDB, IFWiki, the IF Archive).
Not to throw a spanner in the works, but you are credited as Jose Daniel Carbonell on CASA. Is this correct?
EDIT: Sorry, that was meant to be a reply to @Dwalin, not @JTN.
Yes, this is correct. Thank you!
Thank you! Downloaded and checked in DOSBox. Nice pictures, intruiging setup. I’ll play after SeedComp/ConcoursFI.
¡Ole, ole!
I see that you’re using ADP for the web version to run the Atari ST version in a browser. Is that this ADP? GitHub - jlcebrian/ADP: ADventure Player
Have you found any advantages of using that rather than Uto’s jDAAD? (On the surface of things it looks like ADP may better replicate some of the layout aspects of the ST game better than the java interpreter.)
I started testing jDAAD with the Spanish version of Maroland, when it was still in development but we ran into some difficulties, which I don’t remember right now and I finally ruled out its use.
I actually don’t know the current state of the interpreter or if it is fully usable anymore.
When José Luis Cebrián announced ADP I tried it and saw that it worked very well, even using it on a mobile phone or tablet. There are still things to improve, especially in the English interpreter, but I think that, in general, the gaming experience is very good, although jDAAD allows for better graphics, for example.
There were a few initial bugs when I started using jDAAD, which Uto addressed, but other than that I have found it worked well. I think I popped up online versions of all my DAAD games. It shares some of the idiosyncrasies of some of the other new DAAD interpreters, in that there’s the odd formatting difference and somethings aren’t implemented exactly the same (such as how the QUIT condact works, iirc).
I’ll have to have a proper look at ADP and how to include it on a website. I don’t tend to have Atari ST as a primary target, but I see ADP now includes some support for my main platform Spectrum and PAW which it would really be interesting to investigate a web player for that doesn’t involve a traditional emulalator.
I don’t know if there is a hints-thread for this game right now, because I need some help with this game.
I met this girl just in the beginning of the game but there are some difficulties as I cannot set any quotes and therefore not talk to her.
I play this game with fs-uae, an Amiga emulator.
There’s a solution for the 2023 Spanish version, which I assume is the original for the '23 English version, on CASA.
:: CASA :: Elfos de Maroland, Los (solutionarchive.com)
Perhaps with a little help from a certain translating machine, or simply by deducing the English commands from the circumstances of the game in combination with the Spanish walkthrough, you can use this to get out of the pinch you’re in.
Well, the translation is not the problem. The point is, that I can´t set any “” to talk to anybody.
I play this game in FS-uae, an Amiga emulator, Haven´t tried any other version, yet.
A little later:
I have to admit, that I didn`t realise that there is the british keyboard layout active, which has other Key assignments than german kayboards,
Hello Bodhi,
Were you finally able to find the keys to type the " " ?
Yes, thank you for your help and patience.
I follow your videos and have to say they are very useful.
I’ve spent some time in the streets of Goil, and my first impression was very favourable. The translated text is certainly adequate, especially for an old-school adventure such as this. The introduction is great. Classic fantasy cliché, but great. I also like the graphics, although they’re a bit squashed in the full-screen DOS version. In short, this game has everything I want from a classic fantasy adventure.
The SAY [character] [topic] conversation system takes some getting used to but I got the hang of it. The syntax with the quotation marks ( SAY CHARACTER “WHATEVER YOU WANT TO SAY” ) seems to imply a lot of recognition of freeform input, but it’s a bit more rigid than I’d hoped.
I encountered a serious problem in the DOS version, where the conversation system seems terminally bugged.
(in the DOS version, played in DOSBox): The caretaker of the old well responds to a first attempt at interaction (SAY CARETAKER “HELLO”, or just SAY CARETAKER by itself) with “Good day. Do you want water?” None of the answers I tried got me any further in the conversation. The simple SAY CARETAKER “YES”, which is the literal translation of the original Spanish command, is met with a repeated “Good day. Do you want water?” My other attempts (SAY CARETAKER “GIVE ME WATER” and several other variations) either got that same “Do you want water?” , or I got a quote from the manual explaining the syntax of conversations ( → To communicate with the character use: SAY CHARACTER “WHATEVER YOU WANT TO SAY” , for example SAY PIRATE “HELLO” )
I put it aside for now. I’ll certainly come back to it.
The AI image generation came out quite impressively. I would not have known if I hadn’t seen the comments in the help. Are you willing to share a little bit of your process / post process?
Hello Rovarsson,
thank you for your comments!
I have been trying to reproduce the error you mention in the DOS version, but I can’t:
As you can see, if you answer the well’s keeper “Yes” to his question, he asks for “a bronze coin.”
In short, it is a conversation system, widely used in the Spanish adventures of the 80s, it can be frustrating at times, since being an adventure with a database common to 8 and 16 bit systems, the memory in the smallest machines , especially Spectrum and Amstrad, makes it difficult to add many more conversation options.
I hope that, with all these difficulties, you can enjoy the adventure anyway.
There really isn’t much to tell. I spent a lot of time testing different prompts until I got images from the AI that more or less adapted to the adventure texts (which were previous). Then, with the images already generated in “modern” formats, it was only a matter of transferring them to the different systems using converters. Depending on the graphic capabilities of each system, the result may be better or worse, taking into account that I am not an artist. Now a colleague is trying to improve the images for Commodore 64 and Spectrum, and if we’re lucky, we may soon have versions with better graphics for those systems.