"TPUG Sample Adventure" by Steven C. Darnold (1985)

This is a text adventure modified to work on the TRS-80 Micro Color Computer ("MC-10") using Micro Color BASIC from the author's published source code in TPUG Magazine June/July 1985 pp. 8-12. The game is a sample adventure described in an article "Do-It-Yourself Adventure", which provides the basic building blocks for creating your own text adventures in BASIC. TPUG Magazine was the newsletter of the Toronto Pet Users Group, one of the largest Commodore computer clubs in North America in the 1980s.

Here is a walkthrough:

N,GET CANDLE,EXAMINE PEWS,GET KEY,S,W,EXAMINE DESK,LOOK,GET MATCHES,W

LIGHT CANDLE,LOOK,READ SIGN,GET SHOVEL,E,E,DIG,DROP SHOVEL,GET GOLD,W,W

DROP GOLD,SCORE,E,E,E,OPEN SAFE,DROP KEY,S,GET COINS,N,W,W,W,DROP COINS

SCORE

TPUGADVR.C10 for TRS-80 MC-10 can be downloaded or played online at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/TPUGADVR

The source code can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/tree/master/quicktype/Text%20Adventures/TPUGAdvr

"Survival" by Stewart F. Rush (1981)

I've created a new MC-10 version of "Survival" aka "Moon Survival Adventure" from David Ahl's 1984 book "Big BASIC Games". I only made minimal changes to get the source code to work properly. Renga in Blue (Jason Dyer) did a blog post about the game which made me aware that a version I had created a while ago (from source found online) was actually a modified version with the authorship attribution changed (as was common back in the day). My new version is a faithful rendition of the source code found in Ahl's book. In fact you should be able to simply type in the following changes recommended by Rush in the description of the game to make it easier:

350 T2=275

360 P1=320

370 P2=75

730 IF T1>485 THEN 2960

740 IF T1>380 THEN 3840

The following line is the specific one that sets the item max to 3 items:

2270 IF C>2 THEN 2390

I wouldn't bother using that one. As Jason makes clear, the game difficulty is set too hard for enjoyable adventuring set at the original numbers. Typing in the first five lines above (i.e. without 2270) should make for a more enjoyable experience.

I made a few other changes. The carried item count is not decremented when you get the fuel and then use it to refuel your rocket. This shrinks your carry limit to 3. I fixed it. Also, the following line was missing from the code listing in the book:

3750 O(6)=14

This "exposes" the location of the de-activator, which is absolutely required to complete the game. Now it will show up at the appropriate time. Jason suggests in his blog post that this is because you have seen the clue in the space station indicating the location of the item, but it is actually just timed to occur at 200 minutes into the adventure. In other words, it appears after you have likely been exploring long enough to have got into the station and back out on to the surface.

In the following screen you will see that I have added some comments at the bottom of the listing that allow for a simple way to modify the game to be played at a more reasonable level:

Just type 9070 and hit enter before typing RUN.  However, this only modifies the oxygen level, line 350 in the list above.  It leaves in place other timed events like the coming of the meteor, that crushes the station at line 730, if you take too long:

I have played the game through using the walkthrough by Garry Francis over on the CASA Solution archive.  Here is the screen just before I blast off to game completion.

If you are looking for an authentic experience of the original 1981 version of the game published in Ahl's 1984 book, it can be played on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/survival_202504

"Drakulas Diamanten" by C. Seibt (1983)

Full Walkthrough

"Dracula's Diamonds" was originally published in German as a type-in for ZX-81 in the October 1983 issue of Homecomputer magazine, pp.30-35. I found out about it from Strident over on the CASA Adventure forum. He suggested it as a possibility for conversion and translation. Thanks Strident! He mentioned a VZ version and provided some useful info for tracking the game down. I was able to find it on one of the VZ repos under the collection of German Laser 200 programs. Using Google Translate I was able to translate the German messages and items into English.

Apparently, there are also Spectrum and C64 versions. The titles vary ranging from Dracula to Draculas Diamanten and also the more Germanic Drakulas. The main differences seem to be in tweaks to the graphics. I used techniques I've developed to translate the graphic characters from Laser/VZ-200 BASIC to something that works on the MC-10. Unfortunately, they all come over as red semi-graphic block characters. Then I have to "re-colourize" them.

A modern coder Frank Gerbig liked the game so much that he translated it into a modern Interactive Fiction (IF) creation engine (Inform), which can be played online (in German).  Like him I couldn't resist reimagining the game. First I tweaked the graphics using my MC-10 screen editor software. It was very awkward back in the day to draw text graphics using only the keyboard to input characters. But today I can just transfer an entire screen to my special BASIC editor program. Then I can print out the screen and re-line number it and add PRINT statements and reinsert it back into the code using a modern text editor. So I was able to fix some clunky aspects of the line drawings, and fiddle with colours and change shapes to make the images look a little more coherent and the items a little more identifiable. For example, I tweaked the "fan" in the bathroom to look more like a fan (I initially thought it was some weird decoration).

Original Painting and Cabinet

I also fixed the operation of the fan switch so that when it is turned on, it prints a message about the "stench" disappearing. The walkthrough for the ZX-81 or Commodore version on CASA mentions such a message, but it didn't appear in the VZ version.

I fixed the two-word parser to accept more synonyms. Now you can TAKE or GET, PUT or PLACE.  Nouns too. GET NOTE or GET PAPER. OPEN CABINET or OPEN CUPBOARD.  PULL or MOVE. FRIDGE or REFRIGERATOR, etc.

I changed many of the "hints" and added a few more. Some of the original hints seemed to imply that Count D. is aware that you are there. The first one was weird. It said "YOU WILL NEVER FIND THE STONES."  I didn't like this notion of D. being aware of the presence of the investigator., although this particular hint could have also been meant to give a hint about the puzzle in the Tower Room that involves a "stone" (seems a stretch). Another one was an outright instruction: "SOMETIMES PAINTINGS HIDE VALUABLES." I changed the notes to avoid threats, indications of awareness of your presence and outright instructions. I also altered the location of a few of them to make them slightly harder to find and more understandable as to why they might be there. In most cases I made them into notes of D. to himself, like the new one on the table in the first room: "REMEMBER: BUY MORE CANDLES." This seems more reasonable-- just a shopping list-- and that table is right below a chandelier with what might be recognized as having candles in it.  Or I made them jokes or cases of possible doodling.

I added to the graphic images that appear when you take actions in rooms that show the results of your actions. I fixed the door of the fridge to make it look more like an opened door, for example. I also added a board to the bathroom when you figure out where to place the last piece of the puzzle. I made some significant changes to the way young Count D. looks (i.e. Count Dracula-- As if it is really a mystery). I changed the code number to the actual birthdate of the actual historical Count.

Finally, I added "C. Seibt" back to the title screen. Wolfgang Wesemann, seems to have felt his alterations to the code warranted the dropping of the original author (not an uncommon practice back in the day). I would agree that it must have been a lot of effort to get the game working on a Laser/VZ-200 so I kept Wesemann on the title page, but I thought it best in the Internet Age to add back a reference to the original author.

If you want to compare the changes I have made to something closer to the original Laser/VZ-200 version, watch my walkthrough at the top and the other Youtube video, then these snippets of the rooms as they now appear. In the snippets I show all the possible actions available in each room.

New BOARD animation and game completion.  Ladder down added to hatch.

New Fridge door, New kitchen door to the east. Pipe added to cabinet.

New Count (scarier I hope). Now the blood can be opened anywhere.

Basement shows hatch above. Tweaked BLOOD RESERVES and CHISEL

New initial NOTE clue. Improved CABINET and PAINTING

New Bathroom clues re: BUTTON, toilet ROLL, BOWL.

New FRIDGE and STICKER clue. New Tower Room with WALL/STONES clue.

The game can be played on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/DRAKULAS

ADDENDUM:

Added color to the window in the first room and changed an aspect of the game that prevented the curtain from being opened until you read the note on the table. Seemed somewhat confusing and arbitrary that players couldn't draw a curtain simply because they hadn't read a note.

Cyan Window

I also added the ability to open the stove.  Seemed arbitrary that you could open the fridge and not the stove.  I also added the ability to COOK the the LAMB LEG you find in the fridge.  This eliminates a needed item, and represents another possible obstacle to completion.

"Bally's Alley" by John Collins (1980)

Jason Dyer made a post about an interesting little text adventure for the Bally Astrocade system. He was able to get a version of the game running from source code typed-in by Paul Thacker in November 2022 from a printed listing and handwritten notes of the original author, which were preserved by Bally Astrocade hobbyists. This game fits in 4K of memory, which is quite a feat of programming by the author. Jason wasn't able to complete the game because he ran into some apparent bugs. My MC-10 version contains bug fixes to ensure that it can be played to completion. 

The following is a map by Jason of how far he got (pink box) from the start (green):

The problems were probably a result of a few slightly misinterpreted numbers by Thacker from the handwritten notes.

I have two proposed fixes to the hand recorded list of variables:

• @(17) change from 370 to 3170. This allows the player to move on to room #19 of the Color Maze, which I don't think Jason would have been able to do. This was my best guess of where a typo would most likely have occurred to prevent a move to room #19 (and the whole subsequent section), as the method of room number parsing only allows jumps from 1 to 2 (plus or negative) from the current room number. So the problem had to be either #17 or #18 that was preventing movement onwards in the Color Maze. The handwritten note for room # 17 looked like it had a possibly partial "1"that needed to be added to its 3 digits (370)-- just the hint of a "1" in front of the "7." When I tried it, it worked. 
• @(14) change from 1603 to 10603 (this one is optional). Thacker's version just lets you go N from the WELL directly into the COLOR MAZE, which I think undermines a puzzle Collins wanted/was working on. I suspect he had some problems with his room number parser, possibly due to rounding errors, which was a problem for my MC-10 version. I fixed these problems by converting the room numbers to text, and then chopping them up as needed using the MID$ function instead of division by 10s 100s and 1000s and INT and subtracting INTed and non-INTed versions from each other.  Collin's handwritten notes have numerous scribbled-out numbers and replacements for the room data. (This data had to be entered directly by the user, to help conserve memory), which suggests that he might have been experiencing frustrations with rounding errors too.

I think the problems with transcription and the possible one with rounding were what was preventing Jason from being able to initiate interaction with the WELL and also the similar PURPLE room puzzle. Both these rooms need to have 5 digit numbers to initiate a COMMAND prompt after typing a DOWN direction. But only the PURPLE room (room #20 on my map) had 5 digits. It is possible that Collins had switched to 1603 for the WELL room (#14) just as a kluge to temporarily deal with these problems.

# of Room Jumps------>
Rooms	Get a Command?	+2	+1	-1	-2
17			3	7	0
New 17		3	1	7	0
20	1	0	6	0	8
14		1	6	0	3
New 14	1	0	6	0	3

The trick with the WELL is to be carrying the KEYS, have just tried to move DOWN, and then issue the command UNLOCK when prompted. This should take you to the COLOR MAZE room with the LAMP (I'm sensing that Collins was inspired by Crowther's original, Adventure and its formula of "get lamp").

Similarly, in the problematic PURPLE room (it's red in my MC-10 version), the player must have just tried to move in the DOWN direction, and then must issue the command "F."  I'm not sure what "F" stands for, but perhaps "Find" or "Fire," because the player must also be carrying the OIL (but the LAMP doesn't seem to be required in the original). I changed it so that if the player types "F" or "L" (Look) or "S" (Search), a descent to a new section which I call the "Echoing Cave" is initiated (room 30 "No Way Up" in my map below). It also might simply be for "Fall" (If so, wouldn't "J" for jump be better?)  However, since the COMMAND parser only looks at one or two characters (G for Get, DR for drop, L in unLock), it doesn't much matter. Apparently Collins mentioned that people could play the game "for weeks." I can understand why.

The descent takes the player to an area, where the rooms don't have descriptions. Instead, I'm pretty sure each room makes a different noise. I don't have Jason's patience to get an Astrocade emulator running, so I'm guessing based on a rough knowledge of Astrocade BASIC (original and extended versions). Maybe there are some screen effects too. I'm not super familiar with the system but I was able to build some knowledge converting Clyde Perkin's classic "O-Jello"4K "Othello" game, which has a wicked AI opponent for a 4K game. Each room has a slightly different tone/pitch to its sound. This is an absolutely intriguing game dynamic. I don't think I've ever seen a text adventure from this era that uses sound as a critical part of the navigation/description system. It could be a first.

My new MC-10 version fits into 4K like the original (I am in total awe of Collins) and has a few other "fixes" (possible improvements). I added an "L" Look command that can be used in any room to redisplay the description as well as other function ("S" for search will have a similar effect, and both will also accomplish the "F" Find/Fall action). I also added save/load to the main menu and an extra hint to help with the purple room puzzle. I made it so that the player must have both the LAMP and the OIL to descend into the Echoing Cave, based on the assumption that the player needs these items to navigate "the darkness." BALLYSAL.C10 for MC-10 emulators can be found here, but people should be aware that my colors for the Color Maze will be different from those of the Bally Astrocade original:

The MC-10 version can be played online at the Internet Archive.

BALLYSAL.C10 can also be found and played online at the Color Computer Archive (Thanks Guillaume!)

The source code is on the Internet Archive (highest numbered is latest).

I have managed to play it to completion. I'm not sure if 956 is a good score, but your score is decreased by how many moves you take. Since I was using maps and cheats (most importantly reading the source to know what to do), I suspect it's a pretty high score compared to what a real player, working from scratch, would be able to get:

Unlike Jason, I used maps and a temporary modification to the room display routine to print the room numbers (and to allow me to jump to rooms). This helped keep me well-oriented for my own map making. The following are two maps that I created, the first one based on those he posted:

Adjustments to Jason's Map for my new MC-10 version:

My additions to Jason's Map (for the MC-10 version):

Thanks to Jason for the inspiration for such an interesting "Reading Week" coding project, and for his map making and game history and links, which are so helpful when it comes to bug chasing. I'm curious if any of the Astrocaders will figure out other more accurate fixes to Thacker's groundbreaking work. I never know when I bug fix whether I am helping to restore/complete a programmers original vision, or mangling a classic piece of software. I hope it is the former. This one certainly deserves it.

"Computer Dominoes" by David Smith (1982)

I've typed in another game with an AI opponent and modified it to work on the TRS-80 Micro Color Computer ("MC-10") using Micro Color BASIC.  It's from source code in Your Computer Magazine, February 1982, and originally was for the Commodore PET.  The game plays a variation of the "All Fives" game of Dominoes.  But instead of just multiples of 5, scores are also awarded for end totals that can make multiples of 3.  A single point is awarded for each possible multiple of the two types. The computer and human player start with 9 dominoes. When a player uses up their dominoes or neither can place a domino, then a new hand of 9 is dealt. The goal is to be the first to earn a total of exactly 72.  If points are earned over this amount, they are ignored until the exact amount is achieved.

As usual, I had to chop out the Petsci text-graphic part of the program (involving lots of POKEs), and replace it with an MC-10  semi-graphic-4 character printing routine (using lots of PRINT@s).  I created a routine to lay down a string of dominoes that snakes around the screen so that all 18 possible dominoes can fit. The routine had to print horizontal and vertical dominoes, depending on their location in the string.  It also is used to list the human player's dominoes at the bottom of the screen.  The very low res. nature of the Semigraphics-4 (64X16) mode called for some compromises. The 6 dot domino looks like two solid bars instead of 3 discreate dotes for each bar and in order to differentiate between individual touching tiles, I alternate the colors of the tiles between white and yellow.  It is based on my recollections of  "mixed" sets of dominoes from my youth, which had pure white tiles and more yellowish "ivory" tiles.

Also as usual, I found what I think are some bugs in the original code, which would have affected play on the original PET version too.  One involved the zeroing of the array holding the tile info for the player's hand.  This array is a 0-6 by 0-6 grid.  But the routine meant to put the hand back to an empty state didn't start from zero for the "J" dimension:

1540 FORI=0TO6

1550 FORJ=1TO6:D(I,J)=0:NEXTJ

1560 NEXT

The result was that sometimes, after the first hand, some un-discarded low numbered tiles could be left in the array. Then, when the array was searched for tiles belonging to the player, more than 9 could be found. This error might not have caused an crash in the original program, but in mine it caused the program to try to print a domino to an undefined 10th screen location.  Since those locations were stored in an array (which only went up to 9 locations), an out of array bounds error was triggered.  So I just changed line 1550 above to:

1550 FORJ=0TO6:D(I,J)=0:NEXTJ

This ensures that when the array is repopulated with 9 tiles for a new hand, there is no possibility for old data to be left behind in the first J column.

The other error involved sensing when the computer had played out its final domino. The routine to select the piece would, if possible, select the last tile and designate it as played (=3), and then increment the number of pieces played variable (CD) for the computer. Then it would immediately check if that was the last tile or not (CD<>0).  If it was zero it would proceed to a message that it was "out of dominoes" and then go to the deal a new hand routine.  But this meant the routine would never get to the routine to print the tile on screen and would also miss the end of game/win checks, which follow line 3950.

3950 D(X,Y)=3:D(Y,X)=3:CD=CD-1

3960 IFCD<>0THEN3990

3970 M1$="OUT OF":M2$="DOMINOES"

I noticed that when the computer ran out of tiles it would always flash the "last domino" message and then go directly to a re-deal. Did it win?  Was it a good play?  Did it earn points? The lack of any domino played animation was weird.  So I switched the CD=0 check to the end of the display routine instead.

4140 IFCS<>72THEN4190

4150 M1$="COMPUTER WINS!":M2$="":M$=""

4160 IFPS<66THENM2$="MORE PRACTICE!"

4170 IFPS>65THENM2$="GOOD GAME!"

4180 GOTO2340

4190 D(X,Y)=3:D(Y,X)=3

4191 IFCD=0THEN3970

4195 GOTO1670

Now it displays the domino played (line 3990 - 4130) and then does the win check.  If the computer doesn't win it goes to 4190 and then checks if no tiles are left.  If there are none, it jumps to the no more dominoes message and does a re-deal.  Otherwise, it heads back to the input routine for the next player's move (1670).

I find that it plays a pretty tough game.  But then again, I'm no Dominoes player (no game player of any sort actually), but I forced myself to test it to the point of a "human win."  It was actually kind of fun.

Human for the win!

The game source can be found on my Github:

https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/tree/master/quicktype/Artificial%20Intelligence/Domino

It can be played online at the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/domino_20250125

Another Human for the win!

"Treasure House" AKA "Chateau of Gold" by C.J. Davison (1982)

I've been working on a port of a game called "Chateau of Gold" for the Dragon 32 computer by GEM Software to the TRS-80 MC-10 using Micro Color BASIC. The remarks at the top of the GEM code suggest that it was authored by a P. Allen:

10 REM***********************
20 REM**                   **
30 REM** CHATEAU           **
40 REM** WRITTEN BY P.ALLEN**
50 REM***********************

However, it turns out the original program was by C.J. Davison and was published as a type-in BASIC program in Your Computer Magazine January 1982 for the MZ-80 Computer. I learned this from a Chronologically Gaming video and from L. Curtis Boyle talking about that video on the Coco Nation livecast show:

I had to fix a few bugs in Allen's code having to do with RND function differences between Dragon and MZ-80 BASIC. I think my version should play a more faithful rendition and error free version of Davison's original game.

The problem with RND function conversion by Allen was that the Coco allows RND calls with a whole number like RND(10) or RND(100) to get ranges of 1-10 and 1-100, whereas most Microsft BASICs use the convention INT(1+10*RND(1)) or INT(1+100*RND(1)) to get ranges like this. The MZ-80 is a little different again, as it seems to use random numbers (or maybe this is just a quirk of Davison) in the place of the RND(1) or RND(0) to seed the RND function used in most MS BASICs. But these whole numbers do not produce whole number ranges as with Micro Color BASIC. So in the following random coordinate picker routine for putting objects into the 6X6 floor plan of each floor (Z), the refs to RND(7) and RND(5) simply seed the RND function:

1200 A=INT(1+6*RND(7))

1210 B=INT(1+6*RND(7))
1220 C=INT(1+3*RND(5))
1230 IF M(A,B,C)<5 OR M(A,B,C)>8 THEN 1200

For the Dragon, getting a random number from 1-6 can instead be accomplished with a simpler RND(6) call, and Allen correctly converted most of the RND calls to this method.  But in the case of the objects placement routine above, his eye seems to have been distracted by the "seed" number, so that he actually designated a range value of (7) instead of (6) for the 6X6 room populating function. This is Allen's modified Dragon code:

330 FORC=0TO3:FORA=1TO6:FORB=1TO6

340 IFM(B,A,C)<>0THEN360
350 M(B,A,C)=5+RND(7)
360 NEXTB,A,C
370 FORD=1TO2
380 A=RND(7)
390 B=RND(7)
400 C=RND(3)
410 IFM(A,B,C)<5ORM(A,B,C)>8THEN380

This use of 7 means that some items could be placed into the wall zone to the left and bottom of the 6X6 room grid. The wall zones (0 or 7) of the matrix were supposed to remain as zeros. Those zeros prevent the player from moving outside of the bounds of the 6X6 inner dimensions of the M(7,7,3) array, which stores what's in each room. So very occasionally I could move into the 7th space and then if I tried to move beyond the 7th space the program would try to check the un-dimensioned 8th space and a "Bad Subscript" BS error would be triggered.  Allen might never have done this because he had a better sense of the map, and paid attention to staying in the bounds of the walls while navigating the house. In my testing, I just kept moving in random directions to see how the program worked.

So, I checked all of the RNDs in the program. I think I might have found some other anomalies with the map creation logic (with some of the IFs for example), but I can't recall all the details now (too much late night coding). I think I recall a problem with how stairwells, desks, clues, entrances to the basement and the places to store your clues were distributed, leading them not to appear, or not to appear frequently enough. But I think my alterations, including how randomization was being handled, has got everything working like Davison originally intended.

The other major problem that I do recall clearly was with how Allen had implemented the final "mastermind-like" guessing game for opening the treasure chest that you find if you gather all the clues and make it to a place to store the clues. You  have to guess a four digit code (1-9) that has no digits repeating (I added a mention of this to the instructions). Instead of preserving the screen readout of the score of your prior guesses, as I think occurred in the MZ-80 version, Allen cleared the screen (he had implemented a fancy red semi-graphic border drawing system) and requested the input of a new code for each guess. This made it very difficult to work out the code by using your prior guesses, unless you were recording the scores on paper. Also, Davison's original version included a system call, probably to a beep routine, for indicating right numbers in a wrong position (1 point each), to help differentiate those from right numbers in a right position (3 points).  Since you are simply given an aggregated total for each guess, it is helpful to hear a number of "beeps" for how many of those are 1 point guesses. So I added in a SOUND command to do this (hoping my guess is right about the function call).

And Davison's original version compounds the difficulty by only allowing a random number of guesses between 1 and 10. But finding the code in anything less than 10 guesses is probably impossible, logically speaking, leaving game completion entirely up to chance. This seemed unfair. So I changed the system to a fixed 10 tries. In the magazine article Davison mentions only winning once in a month of tries. This indicated to me that there were problems in game balance. One area that also might have contributed to this was the random number used to determine any magical items you sometimes find when you uncover a cash of gold. You are given a 1 in 9 chance of also getting one such item. I changed this to a 1 in 4 chance, but I reduced the gold amount possible from 900 to 700 to compensate. Still, since treasure is fairly rare, finding special items is still fairly rare.

I also fixed how movement into a stairwell from a closed door is handled, and the ability to forego choosing to move up or down them after using the (E)xplore command. I also added back in (from Davison's original version) a message indicating that you are passing through a door. This seemed to have been removed by Allen. When you are on a door space, you are not shown that a hallway is next to it (doors close automatically?). I think it is a good reminder to the player that doors block indication of  the direction of nearby hallways. The message about a door being open reminds the player of this. It took me a while to figure out the ways doors work, and it required going back and carefully reading the original article.

I've also added 2 more color alternatives to the red borders that Allen had added and worked hard to improve and standardize the layout of messages. I had to remove REM statements and combine lots of single command lines to get the program shrunk to fit a 20K MC-10. Allen had added a nice mapping or (P)lan function to show the layout of the house and where you had travelled already. I added to that by using reversed characters in a way that indicates which rooms you have searched and found nothing. I also fixed some quirks with how the (E)xplore function reports messages. Sometimes Allen had it explicitly report that that nothing could be found, but other times it would just return to the main menu without a message. I changed it so that it always tells you explicitly when nothing was found. And I fixed a message that could appear after you open an object and find the entrance to the basement.  Sometimes, if you selected "yes" to exploring the basement, a message about "not being able to open an X" would be displayed.

The following video contains a demonstration of my new final puzzle routine, and fancy colors:

Chateau is a game with unique random map layout generation and interesting "hot key" text adventure command entry. There are a bunch of challenges and puzzles to overcome to solve the game, so I can understand why it would have taken Davison so long to accomplish a victory.  Back in the day, this would have been considered evidence of lots of "repeat play value." Today, I suspect this would just be considered frustrating. But in a time when software was expensive and relatively scarce, we were keen to find any computer gaming opportunities, especially if they were "free" just for the price of a little typing. This game shines in comparison to many contemporary type-in CRPG/text adventures BASIC games.

CHATEAU can be found in my Github repository here:

https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/tree/master/quicktype/Text%20Adventures/Chateau

It can be played from my GameJolt page.  Select the big green PLAY button.  Then choose the "8-bit BASIC Text Adventures" collection. Choose "CHATEAU" from the Cassette menu and then type RUN and hit Enter in the main emulator screen.

https://gamejolt.com/games/jgmc-10games/339292

It can also be played on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/chateau_202501

"Schatzoeken" or "Treasure Caves" by Unknown Author (198?)

Original Map Playthrough

I ran across a simple little BASIC Action game/CRPG on Jason Dyer's Renga in Blue blog. It was called "Schatzoeken" and was written in Dutch. Jason mentioned it because he was discussing a text adventure by the same name, which he needed to disambiguate as he did his research. His brief mention peaked my interest. The game was for the Sinclair ZX-81 and from the image of the simple semi-graphic "dungeon" screen, it looked like it should be able to be translated to TRS-80 MC-10 fairly easily. I've never had much problems with Sinclair BASIC, which is a good BASIC with some unique features that are fairly easy to work around. Translating to Dutch was made easy by Google translate. It rendered the title from the titlepage/instruction screen as "Treasure Caves".  However, Renga had mentioned that "Schatzoeken" is used in Dutch as something like "Treasure Hunt" and is even used more generically for things like "geocaching" in modern Dutch.

So the move from Sinclair to Microsoft BASIC and from English to Dutch was not too difficult.  However, once I had the game running I noticed that the movement between rooms seemed very odd.  It was extremely difficult to map, and there were all kinds of geographical incongruities. The first oddity was that it didn't matter which of the two differently numbered exits that you took from a room, you always ended up in the same room. But since the exits were numbered, it seemed like you should be able to get to different rooms depending on the numbered exit you selected.  A quick look at the code revealed an obvious cause of this behaviour:

800 REM ROOM CHANGEOVER 

805 CLS

810 LR=PR:IF PR<>21 THEN 815

813 PR=R3:REM INT(RND(0)*19+1)

814 GOTO 825

815 IF N=0 THEN PR=R1

820 IF N=15 THEN PR=R1

The N variable in the above is the Y coordinate of your player location.  0 is the top of the screen where one exit is, and 15 is at the bottom where the other exit is.  Clearly the assignment of PR (present room) needed to be set to different variables depending on which location you exited from.  It seemed obvious that R1 should be for the top and R2 should be for the bottom exit, so I changed those lines to the following:

815 IF N=0 THEN PR=R1

820 IF N=15 THEN PR=R2

This at least made it possible to go to different rooms, but there was still weirdness (see the video at the top of this post). The following spreadsheet shows how the map looked once I could travel in multiple directions and explore a little easier. I also added some test code to turn off the monsters, so I could explore in peace. Doing that made it fairly obvious that the map wasn't a random dungeon, but instead more like a cross, with the "Entrance hall" (Room 0) at the centre. This made sense of the start screen, which prompted you to choose a starting direction/room (1-4). The weird thing was that you could choose start room, 4 for example, but once you did the "exits" for that room would not allow you to go back to room 0 and on to another beyond (down the line), but instead to go sideways to room 3 or on to room 8. This "offset" return direction was echoed for all rooms.

There was also a kind of "tear" in this offset pattern at room 14/15 on the room 3 line, which clearly took you to room 14 that was also a part of the room 4 line. The whole thing was just very confusing.  The physical layout of the rooms with two entrances seemed to indicate that the original programmer wanted to have a cross-shaped dungeon.  Another thing that indicated this was that the game expects you to regularly return to Room 0 to cache your treasure. You can't carry more than 50 points worth at any time, but if you cache it in room 0 you can go back to get more to add to your score. The original map, also seemed to be missing room 15 and 18. If you could get to room 21 you could find a large hoard of treasure, although the treasure carrying limit still applied.  You would then have to navigate back from whichever random room you were sent to after exiting that room (see line 813 above).

Repeated rooms in red

So I examined the string containing the data for the map, which consisted of 3 characters per room.  Two of those characters obviously were meant to symbolize the two rooms that the exits would take you to. There was a special condition where the third character would be substituted for those two exit room numbers:

960 IF R1=LR THEN R1=R3

965 IF R2=LR THEN R2=R3

It seemed obvious that LR meant something like "last room" or "room just left."  But from the data it seemed clear that the numbers being assigned to the 3 characters were out of sink in terms of the pattern being broken at around 14 and 15 in the original map above, and also there was some confusion between the 2nd and 3rd character (R2 and R3).  The IF statements above seemed to be some kind of kluge to fix that confusion. Once I had fixed the break in the data pattern at 14/15, the cross-structure came into better focus. Now you could travel back and fourth on each of the 4 lines of the dungeon.  But there was sill a problem at the end of each line.

It seemed that the bounty of the special treasure of room 21 was meant to lure the adventurer down each line. As you travel down a line, if you fail to get the single treasure in each room it disappears not to be seen when you return back along the line. This was a normal function of the existing movement routine. It seemed to be an incentive for making periodic returns to Room 0 to cache treasure, and then make new forays to reach the (randomly) large treasure at the end. In the existing room rendering routine, you would then be sent to a random location after leaving the treasure chamber via its single exit at top of the screen. Once again this seemed geographically confusing. It seemed to me that the R3 value might have been added to each room so that for the last 4 rooms before the treasure room an extra coordinate could be stored to allow the player to return to a specific line after leaving that line's treasure room. So I changed the data to allow the program to do that instead.

Now, you can play for a max score by carefully exploring each line. This would involve getting all the single treasure from each of the total of 20 normal rooms (5 per line) and whatever treasure you can get returning to the treasure rooms as many times as possible, while making return journeys back through the cleared line rooms.  To maintain a random element to game movement I have added randomly appearing "magical white portals", which if you hit them, will transport you to a random room in the dungeon complex. You can simply avoid these if you wish, or duck into them if you find yourself trapped by the monsters.

New Map Playthrough

Because the MC-10 is so much faster than the ZX-81 I also had to change another feature. In the original the monsters tracked slowly.  Perhaps this was why the programmer made the walls kill you instantly if you carelessly stumbled into them. But this dynamic was impossible to deal with on the speedier MC-10 version. So I changed the walls to be simple solid barriers. Also, the monsters normally would just transit right through interior walls. But since they move so much faster now, I made it that they couldn't move only though the full block characters of those walls. However, they can still transit through the partial block characters (the "craggy" bits) of the interior walls. This means you must navigate in ways that take into account the possibilities of monsters being blocked, while trying to recognize and account for the less tangible walls that will not block them. But even with these changes, I found the monsters were too quick, so I added a level system at the beginning of the game that decreases their speed for the lower levels.

I'm not sure if I have destroyed some unique vision of the original programmer in terms of the "map" and game play, or whether I have untangled a coding knot in the mapping routine that they simply couldn't fix. They might have got the game to the point where it provided enough of a navigable "maze" for adventuring to occur, and then simply called it a day. Back in the day, especially on a dangerously unreliable machine like the ZX-81 (long cassette loading, ram pack wobble) and its horrible keyboard and awkward editing features, I can imagine the programmer might have felt that more bug chasing simply wasn't worth the trouble or risk.

It is a neat little CRPG, which I hope my tweaks have helped nudge towards an original vision. There were a couple of Youtube walkthrough videos that indicate that others were also been intrigued by its unique dungeon aesthetic. However, neither of those playthoughs went very far. For example, neither player seemed to have discovered that there was an ability to fire arrows to kill monsters and neither stuck with the game long enough to make it to a treasure room and its perilous "trap."

Playthrough of original

Another playthrough

My final edits involved adding to the instruction screen to give a description of the keys used for movement and firing. I also changed the movement keys to the more familiar (to modern game players) WASD pattern and added some sounds, "blood spatter" and a high score readout. I hope these changes will encourage people to try out this unique type-in game. I'd also like to say "classic game," but there is no date mentioned on archive sites, so it might not be from the early 1980s. However, from the limited bug chasing that seems to have been done I suspect that it is. If anyone knows anything about its programmer or timing, please let me know.

New Instructions

Here is the source code for the original game:

Here is a link to my updated source code: https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/tree/master/quicktype/Dungeon/Schatzoeken

"SCHATZOE" can be played on GameJolt. Hit the green Play button and then choice "More 8-Bit BASIC Game Ports."  https://gamejolt.com/games/jgmc-10games/339292

It can also be played on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/SCHATZOE