The author of the Retroprogammez blog made a nice post about this game. It is an example program from a fairly regular contributor to the French computer magazine Jeux & Stratégie. Garry over on the CASA Adventure forums noted that in terms of items in the CASA database:
The only games I'm aware of from Jeux & Stratégie are 'Nordal le Magicien' and 'La Route de Samarcande'. Both are role-playing games for the Amstrad CPC written by Michel Brassinne.
Garry wasn't sure whether Mission Adventure would be worth translating to English (it might be an RPG given its pedigree). He also pointed out that the source I was working with from Retrprogrammez had been modified by a number of individuals.
1 REM ====MISSION AVENTURE====
2 REM Auteur : MICHEL BRASSINNE
3 REM Jeux & Strategie numero 29 - pages 44-48
4 REM Reprise : DOMINIQUE RIOUAL
5 REM Version : 1.0 du 17/12/2017 6 REM 1.1 : 16/09/2022 - Corrections avec VSC
I can confirm that it is definitely a text adventure, but it is not going to be a historically pristine representation of the original listing. It's unclear what if any "corrections" were made by Rioual or drawn from the follow-up article in VSC (See below). Taking a look at the scan of the original code I couldn't notice anything obvious. But I found that the code still seems to have some bugs, or oddities that perhaps I simply couldn't figure out correctly. There are some uncompleted or redundant (non-operative) lines and a number of other issues.
There is a "candle" listed among the items/objects in the program, but I couldn't find any aspect of the code that would seem to allow a player to find that item. That being said, I did find a reference to an unmentioned single word command. If you typed "LUX" at the "Action" prompt the variable for turning on light in the cave areas would be switched on and the French equivalent (at least according to Google) for "cheater" would be printed. This seemed to be a kluge, perhaps used by Brassine during the debugging process, and maybe he mentions it in the original article. I changed it to a formal "QUIT" command instead.
There is a routine for uncovering a hatch in room 5 of the cave. You "move" the green foam, and then the hatch appears. Then you can open the hatch and see a lead box, which you can also open. Inside is a key. But there isn't any apparent function for the key. The box, however, will turn out to have a use.
The main source of light is to "search" the "uniform" of the skeleton in room 3. You must issue the right command of "look skeleton" to find that he is wearing a uniform. "Search" and "examine" also produce various messages throughout the game, but for the most part the heavy lifting is done by using "look" in combination with an object. That being said, "search" is needed for finding the matches in the pocket of the uniform and "examine" to find a paper in a book-- so standard "guess the verb stuff." Also using "open" or "move" with many objects will produce interesting results.
"Look" normally must be used with any object, but I added the function of a single word version of it redisplaying the current room description and object list, which seemed absent. Otherwise, you might find that you had to leave and re-enter a room to observe it. Normally for most rooms, you need to periodically "light match," to get room descriptions displayed instead of the message "It's pitch black" because most of the adventure takes place deep in a cave complex (only the first few rooms do not require matches).
The main objective is to find the "portrait" in room 15, "move" it to reveal a hidden safe, and then use the hint written on a note found in room 8. The note is inside a book in a cupboard in that room. If you "examine" that book a "paper" falls out, with the cryptic message "U40.W25.U12" on it. I took the "U"s and "W"s to be references to the directions for a combination lock, with German annotations. Google translate produces "Uhrzeigersinn" for clockwise, but "counter clockwise" doesn't" produce an obvious "W" word. But I went with that interpretation in trying to make the combo dial routine work for the safe in room 15. A walkthrough in the next issue of the magazine mentions that the letters should actually be "L" and "R" as "in German (rechts and links)" (the words for "right" and "left"). But the original source definitely looks like "U" and "W". Weird. I left the message as at is. I changed the routine that runs when you "read book" to make the output look more like actual text rather than simply a scoll of random characters. I also added descriptions to make the messages clear that the book is a manual about special "hydraulic safe" installation.
For some reason the safe routine expects that you will reach a final total of 37. But +40-25+12 only totals to 27. I'm not sure if this was a typo or not. Or whether I was missing something obvious. But in the end I changed the number to reach after 3 turns to be 27 not 37. As long as you get the dial to 0, which prompts a restart to your number of turns, then you can get the safe open by ending on 27 after three turns. Inside are a bunch of "Bars" or "Ingots" depending on how Google feels like translating at any particular moment. I standardized on "Bars" and added a few elements to the descriptions to clarify that these are solid gold bars.
Another aspect to the game is that you must carefully choose the number of bars you will try to get out of the cave. If you select more than 3, then a gate will fall at the entrance. If you try to "open" that gate you will be dropped down by a trapdoor to your doom. You can increase the number of bars you can escape with up to 10 if you get the lead box and drop it in the safe. If you do that the hydaulic mechanism will lift the gate. There was no accurate way to report the number of bars. The variable that keeps track of the "weight" you are carrying seems to count other things as well. So I added a dedicated bar count variable.
Another change I made was a better check for whether items are in a room when you try to interact with them. No check was made for whether an item is actually in the room, or your inventory. The only check was that you typed the item name correctly, and that it was one of the items recognized in the game (I changed this check to look only at the first 5 characters-- this allows you to type "light match" instead of "light matches" while still allowing "matches" to be the default item name). The lack of full checking meant that you could issue commands regarding items from anywhere in the dungeon and actions could work. Now you must either be in the room with the item, or have it in your inventory.
I also fixed up the "dropping" and "taking" items routines so that items consistently get dropped in the room you are in, instead of some original room in which you might have found the object containing that item. For example, you could get the skeleton's uniform, take it to another room, search it and then the matches would appear back in the skeleton room. Similarly, if you took the book and examined it in another room, the paper would fall out back in the room where you originally found the book.
Finally, nothing would happen when you got back outside with your loot. I made the game print a message with the number of bars you manage to "liberate" from the NAZIs. Also, just for giggles, I added a graphic for the "portrait." It's an ASCII image of der Führer and is displayed when you "look" at the portrait.
Here is my attempt at a walkthrough map:
“Mission Adventure” by Michel
Brassinne (1984)
|
12 Narrow Corridor |
13 Narrow Corridor |
14 Narrow Corridor |
|
10 Narrow Corridor |
11Room (NESW Exits) |
15 Room (NW Exits) -
Portrait -
Safe -
Dial
(R40,L25,R12) -
Bars |
|
9 Narrow Corridor |
8 Nearly Empty Room -
Wardrobe -
Book -
Paper -
(Code:
R40,L25,R12) |
|
|
|
6 Passage (N.E.S) |
7 Slippery (E-W) Corridor -
Move
east until Dead End is reached, then W |
|
|
5 Damp N-S Corridor -
Foam -
Hatch -
Box -
Key |
|
|
4 Dusty Room -
Calendar |
2 Crossroads -
Gate
(Don’t try leave with more than 3 bars) |
3 Dark Room -
Skeleton -
Uniform -
Matches |
|
|
1 Start -
Entry -
Exit
(to win) |
|
Map: Jim Gerrie (2023)
Here are some of the details from the follow-up article that was published in the next issue of Jeux & Stratégie translated into English (curtesy of Google Translate):
Solution... of the Mission Adventure game
You had to discover that the cave was occupied by a German soldier (green uniform), who died on July 25, 1944, as the ephemeris indicates, that is to say during the Liberation. The exploration of the central corridor to the north is only possible with a means of lighting. This one is discovered by searching the uniform: a box of matches is there. Each match has a lifetime corresponding to three actions or moves. Then you had to strike a new match to see clearly. In one of the rooms, a portrait is visible. As is often the case in reality, there is a safe behind it. The order to move the painting makes the safe appear. However, you still have to open it.
Looking at the safe, you could see that it has a dial. The combination of the safe was written on a sheet of paper, slipped into the book placed in the cupboard (when leafing through the book, the paper falls out). The letters accompanying the numbers were the initials of the words "right" and "left"... in German (rechts and links). You could therefore turn the button of the safe to the right, to the left then to the right again, the number of notches indicated on the sheet providing the combination. And this, after having reset it. As the title of the book found in the cupboard suggested, it was a safe with hydraulic protection. Indeed, the bottom of the safe is like the plate of a scale, capable of knowing at any time what weight it supports. As soon as it detects a difference in weight compared to that initially indicated, it triggers the fall of a gate which condemns forever the intersection near the entrance. Grid which, in turn, triggers the opening of a hatch as soon as one tries to force it.
Cutting the Lines Several readers have rightly pointed out to us — after having tried in vain to type in the listings for the adventure game and checkers (J & S micro of n°29) — that their machine did not accept 255 characters at the sequence of a single instruction number. It is therefore necessary to cut the lines and to include each of the sections under a different line number. Two cases can arise: simple instructions and tests. Simple instructions can be split into as many lines as there are instructions separated by “:”. For example: 345 A = 2: Z 3: PRINT "ACTION —" T can become 345 A = 2. 346 Z = 3. 347 PRINT "ACTION -" T. Care must be taken when it comes to testing , i.e. lines of instructions where there is an IF THEN, because if what follows the IF is verified, then everything after the THEN will be carried out. If the condition following the IF does not hold, then nothing following the THEN will be read, and the program's read pointer will jump directly to the next line. You must therefore split the test in two, or even divide it into as many successive tests as necessary so as not to exceed your capacity of signs per line. Let's take the following example: IF A = 2 THEN B = 3 : C = 4 : D = 5 :.../... Z = 27. This test modifying the value of all the variables from B to Z will be much too long for one line of instructions. So you can do:
340 IF A = 2 THEN B = 3 : C = 4 : GOTO 350
345 GOTO 1000 (case where A is different from 2)
350 IF A = 2 THEN D = 8
5: E = 6: GOTO 360 355 GOTO 1000 Another way to proceed, this one faster, by reversing the test:
350 IF A < > 2 THEN 1000
360 B = 3: C = 4: D = 5: F=6
370 G=7: H=8: I=9: J=10 etc.
If A = 2, the pointer does not jump to 1000 and reads all lines that follow the test. Reversing the test is often the most practical procedure. NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE Adventure game on Commodore Philippe Peltier, from Juan-Les-Pins, tells us that owners of Commodore (Pet, Vie. 64) must very slightly modify the program proposed in J & S n°29, page 44 to respect the syntax of the Commodore, otherwise it is guaranteed to crash. It is particularly necessary on this machine to concatenate (paste!) a space at the end of the string A$, otherwise MID$ (A$, I, 1) will cause a “BAD SUSCRIPT ERROR” when it reaches its maximum value. On the other hand, there is memory loss of the loop pointer because of the ON T GOTO in line 1 100. Here is the remedy proposed by Philippe Peltier:
1000 IFX=OTHEN370
1010 00SuB1230 1020 IFY.OTHEN370
1030 011SUB1300 1>340 GOT0370
1050 REM========
1060 IFRIOHT$KR$,U="3"THENF=1
1077 1071 RṢ. -R$+" 1020
1090 IFEe=CHR$(32)ORE$=CHR4(39)THENT=T+1 ri0T01130
1100 ONTOOT01130,1120
1110 Ve-VS+1 ; e:GOT01130
1120 Ne-,N.e+B $ 1130 I=I+1
http://fr.1001mags.com/parution/jeux-strategie/numero-30-dec-84-jan-1985/page-112-113-texte-integral
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