There's documentation!

Bugger, that would've made things a lot easier with Ascape. Which disc are the docs on (or can you post them here or pm them to me)?

@ Samwise and DaveJ

Not used any of those programs (that I know of, can't remember what office software the school used on the network). Feel free to poke around with the files attached and see what format they are.

http://nvg.org/bbc/dir.php3?dir=sw/AB

Adventurescape-disk.zip is the one you want, inside is two ssd images (without the extension so rename them). a_b_adventurescape__generator is the one with the documentation files inside.

I've attached the contents of the "X" directory, that is the documentation, to this post as well. They are just raw files + .inf pairs, so you can read them into anything on the PC too.

Mini Office 2 half loads it, then barfs on some of the codes; I wonder whether it may be Mini Office 1 (but I can't find an image of it anywhere)

It's in Wordwise plus format; though DFS explorer won't read it. Some of the underlining doesn't work *quite* right, but it's close enough.

Before you ask I checked it in Interword too and it failed to even load!

Spent this weekend working on reading and writing the data files that store all the messages, rooms, objects, puzzles etc. Prior to this I just had all the array data stored in a big proto, which was getting unwieldy.

Messages and rooms were easy, as they are single files containing only that data. The rest of the data is just lumped into the puzzle file in one big lump. A pointer system keeps track of what is stored where, plus what is actually used, eg objects used 4 out of 50.

Its all very complicated so I'm using what I can from the original code, which means digging around in various files to find the nicely written procs.

So now I have all the data for a basic test game loaded into a set of procs that produce the end output. Its not finished yet so it does crash the editor, but works fine in the datadump programs I wrote to investigate this mess.

Next stage is to make sense of this pointer system, as I have to re-write that soon to store longer verbs and fix a few other problems. At the moment verbs are stored as 4 letter words, which means more 4 letter words while I try and increase that to 12.

Turns out fixing the verb length was the only easy part. So now it can use words like 'examine', I also discovered the code I'm using at the moment copes with multi word items, say "pay 5 dollars"

The locations file format had to be rewritten for various reasons. It was slow to write the entire file and would sometimes crash the file system. So its now faster and less bloated code wise. The "write" program actually plays nicely now with *CLOSE thrown into line 65 under the comments.

I did a general clean up of the code, got rid of a lot of duplicated stuff. Weird programming style, its as if different people wrote each separate basic listing. Some sort of attempt to use the same variable names, but some naming conflicts.

Plus I have a piece of paper with the first proper adventure planned out on it. Some annoying puzzles for you already. Actually has a long story behind it all, not just blundering around trying to escape from something.

My reason behind leaving the more advanced text parsers several of you have posted till later is clear now. IMHO option the real problems lie with the editor, and the way the puzzles code works.

Anyway to business

LOAD "ADVRUNF"
and find PROCpuzzle



Notice anything wrong here ?
It matches the first puzzle it can then goes off to water the plants.

Now this creates a problem with combined with the inbuilt limits on Conditions and Actions for a single puzzle.

Lets make an example to illustrate the problem




Ok the Conditions:
Need the "Axe"
Need the "Length of Cable with plug"
Verb = Chop
Object = Cable

Its within the limits, but we can't specify the object needs to be on the ground. No matter.

Ok the Actions:
Remove "Length of Cable with plug" from scene/inventory
Add "Length of Cable" to the scene
Add "Plug" to the scene

Oh dear, the current code only allows two end object changes (or one and a change of location. For added effect lets add this too


See now it needs 5 changes to the scene, it can be done if we make 3 puzzles with the same Conditions, but different end Actions.

*takes hammer*



Beware that 2nd and later puzzles with the same triggers may not work if they rely on something the 1st one removes. If this happens have the 1st set a flag and the others use that instead.

Basically that *should* work perfectly in the many Adventurescape based games, I've not tried all the changes above as yet. You get the idea anyway.

This has raised an interesting point, seems there never was anything more than a few updates to the original version. Hence I can use v2.0.

So I've been pondering what name to use, options are:
a) Adventurescape II
b) Adv? (as I'm using this as a folder name with ? as a number)
c) Adventurescape2010 <-- possibly implies microsoft style new version each year.

Been some pretty major changes to the code base, it is actually a lot neater now. Not sure if it still looks the same, the text colours etc, as I've not really been checking that. I've made some changes so it can support coloured text in none Mode7 displays.

... or how about Adventurescape 2.0?

Sam.

Thought of that, though you can't really do .'s in directory names under DFS/ADFS. The special - symbol isn't accessile in Windows, which only leaves commas.
There is 100% chance people will tinker with this version, as ACP/Pres, Heyley Software and others did with the original, hence need to consider versioning.

I'm leaning towards:
a) Adventurescape II
As this can be reduced down to ADVII3 (3 being a version number), and is easier to type.

Besides it fits in nicely with how Sierra did Kings/Space quest etc.

More reading material
http://www.acornelectron.co.uk/mags/aab/arts/a-adve.html
The text from A&B Computing, volume 2 issue 7

I'll add the A&B Computing scanned onto DVD set to my shopping list.

That's the feeling I get, it looks like modifications were released, but the version number was never changed (even when the header changed drastically).



Adventurescape II sounds good to me.

While I wait for Samwise to setup a subforum/wiki for this project I'll explain what is next to add.



Looks like these two are the things I need to implement next.

I think I can do containers at a basic level by implementing the inside of the object as a room.
An example:
I'm trying to implement a rubbish bin, so will try making a puzzle triggered by "examine bin" which teleports to a "BIN" room, with up to return. Another puzzle "bin can" would put the can inside the bin.

I think it would be more useful to add a custom PROC to deal with this, just checks to see if an item called "BIN" is in the room and acts accordingly.

A 3rd feature I need at the moment is a way to restrict access to to certain rooms unless a certain item is obtained/worn or a puzzle solved. The blocked exits puzzles aren't so useful with an area has multiple entrances (8 in this case). Easiest way would be to have every room have a 'flags' field, if flag set then room open, else its closed. A further idea is to have rooms themselves set a flag if your in it, an area flag.

I'm thinking of situations where you need some magical item or clothing (radiation suit) to survive in one area. Therefore need to have it so you die without that item, or at least get told off.

Will go experiment with this, to see what the best way to implement this sort of thing is.

A couple of screen shots from the new complete replacement puzzle editor.
No more screen of numbers you need print outs/bits of paper to decode




Still some fixes to make, the exit field defaults to N when it should be blank, and some of the 0 values should be empty.

Still to do it to link the cursor keys to allow left/right to change the value and up/down to change the current field.

You may have to re-think the name. I was looking around the first issue of Disk User (June/July 1987), and on page 33 of the PDF there's an advert for a load of ASP (i.e. the publishing company behind Disk User and A&B Computing) software, which include "Adventurescape III"

It may be best to skip ahead to "V", just to ensure that there's no possible clash!

Figures, no matter not been able to do much on it for a while now. Got some major renaming to do around here.

Stuck at the moment at the stage of rewriting the documentation so it can be read in mode7 with page numbers etc. Been too sore to spend the hours it will take to finish all that.

Where I have access I've renamed the references to "Adventurescape II" its only the forum group name and a direct link url to the wiki page I can't change. I'll redo the graphic next, at least I've saved Samwise some work.

You certainly have and it's much appreciated, thanks! There's still three references to Adventurescape II on the Adventurescape V page, but I'll leave those to you to pick up.

I've updated the redirect URL to the new number and changed the name of the forum. When you've finished updating your forum logo, send it over and I'll upload that too.

Sam.

Some new entries in the Development Diary for April.

Update for what's has(n't) been happening lately with this game.

I found and fixed a few bugs, game didn't like lowercase text input for example. Can't find the original file for the icon I'm using on the forum.

Been having some 'fun' with hardware. Yes idiot me uses actual machines not emulators, because PC keyboards are terrible for a start.
1) got svideo fitted to one machine, so I can do colour screen captures.
2) got my CF drive setup fried by a storm , pretty sure the card is fine, its just the adapter.
3) got a Model B to develop on, just need to fix it again.

Rats given a few days more work I would have had a demo of Adventurescape V for people to try out. Oh well.