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Friday, 21 April 2017

Retro Challenge 2017: Greg Hassett Adventures

I have finished porting two Greg Hassett adventures. "Atlantis" was ported from a Coco version. It was very buggy and the screen formatting was very weird. It also lacked save and restore routines. So I had to go back to the TRS-80 16K version and put them back in based on what I found in that source code. I have played it through using a walkthrough, so I hope it is pretty much bug free now.


I also ported "Enchanted Island." I used source from TRS-80 16K source. Working on Atlantis had prepared me well for Hassett's programming style, so this conversion went very fast.


After completing these two adventures, I realized from internal advertising that Hassett displays in them that he had set of adventures.
59000 R1$="TRY SOME OTHER GREG HASSETT ADVENTURES: JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES"
59005 R2$="KING TUT'S TOMB, SORCERER'S CASTLE, VOYAGE TO ATLANTIS"
These messages get displayed at various occasions, such as when your character reads a newspaper, or at the end of the game. I realized that I had previously ported the others. So I went back and fixed them up to use a common visual aesthetic (eg. solid line demarcating main messages from input prompt). Now I have a set of six Hassett adventures:
  1. Voyage to Atlantis (ATLANTIS.C10)
  2. Sorcerer's Castle (SORCAST.C10)
  3. King Tut's Tomb (TUTSTOMB.C10)
  4. Enchanted Island (ENCHANTI.C10)
  5. The House of Seven Gables (GABLES.C10)
  6. Journey to the Centre of the Earth (JOURNEY.C10)
The House of Seven Gables

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Sorcerer's Castle

Tut's Tomb with my own intro screen

They can be played online at: https://archive.org/details/@james_gerrie

3 comments:

  1. I think I found a couple of bugs in the versions that came down in a recent download of the VMC10 emulator people seem to use. Atlantis: You can get the minotaur, not the right solution to the puzzle and won't get you full points, but I wondered if that was an original bug or a port artifact. In Journey to the Centre of the Earth, the pointless hard way of getting the Troll's treasure doesn't seem to work, it appears to but then you get killed anyway....also in that one various attempts to burn non-essential things crash the game, again not sure if that is an original bug or port artifact. Oh yeah, and in King Tut's Tomb a syntax error in one line ends the game if you try to drink anything, this is required for one optional strategy or puzzle (not the only ridiculous puzzle here, but hey, he was 12).

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    1. I think I have fixed the bug in Atlantis. I suspect it was in the original. There was some redundant checking done in the GET routine and the number used to check for the minotaur object (and other objects) were slightly off in the redundant checks which printed messages that the NPC objects wouldn't let you "get them". So I restored those NPC specific checks and fixed their item numbers so those messages worked and removed the references to those items from the generic "don't be silly" message checks. The problem was that the don't be silly message checks left out the minotaur object number (they only included things like the squid, octopus, etc.). I don't know how to fix the troll issue. I'd need to know more about the alternative "hard way" of getting its treasure. Maybe that was unique to another computer's version of the game? I can't recreate any errors with the burn verb in Journey. Tried many things. Or with the drink verb in Tut's Tomb. Is it possible you have an old version of the VMC10 distro? I've updated the link above to one that is perhaps more up to date.

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  2. Thanks for your bug reports. Sorry for the delay getting back. Didn’t realize anyone actually read my blog, or even more surprising played my game ports. I’ll try to fix everything you mention and put respond here. Thanks again.

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