A very early developmental snapshot of my game is available via the wiki page. It can understand directional commands (e.g. 'NORTH', 'GO NORTH' or just 'N') and the 'LOOK' command.

Bear in mind that this game is still at a very early stage and things like the location descriptions still need a lot of work.

Any comments (good or bad) would be appreciated.

Kind regards,

Francis.

had a quick play, seems nice. I didn't find the disk access for locations distracting.

That's actually a good point. Developing the game using BeebEm I had forgotten about the constant disk access using a real BBC whenever you move location and whether players would find this distracting. Were you using a real Beeb or an emulator?

The Search For The Lost Football should fit into the memory space of a BBC B so the final version will probably just load everything on startup.

I hope to do bigger adventures later on (I'm sort of using this game as a stepping stone) that will require more advanced methods of storing large amounts of text such as compression and loading only certain blocks of text.

Kind regards,

Francis.

I was using beebEm but I think it replicates disk access speed fairly well. It feels about the same anyway when I've loaded in large amounts of data. Perhaps it's a little faster but I've never tested both side by side. Certainly doesn't seem to go a lot faster than a real beeb anyway I've not got easy access to my Beebs again at the moment, so can't do a comparative test for you.

I was actually thinking more about the clicking/whirring of the drive rather than the speed.

Kind regards,

Francis.

Oops, sorry. Didn't/doesn't one of the emulators do the sound of disk access ? Sure soemone mentioned it once.

Don't know, but I can use my Master to try it out.

Kind regards,

Francis.

Francis,

Well, I got to the party late - the other faeries have worked their magic a couple of days after your request and before I arrived back in Retro Towers. Even the wiki page has taken shape and is looking good ... Honestly, this place almost runs itself. Who's silly idea was that?

I guess you can carry this party on in the Lost Football forum from hereonin.

Sam.