This is a type-in text adventure from Computronics magazine, April 1982, which I don't think exists as a playable game anywhere on the Net. It was originally for the TRS-80 Model 1/3, but my version is for the TRS-80 Micro Color Computer:
Here is a walkthrough map:
The magazine scan was very clear. I mostly only had to add carriage returns and fix a few lowercase L's in place of 1s. Otherwise it was just a standard exercise in using my word-wrap routine and reconfiguring (cutting by half) the PRINT@ commands from the Model1/3 screen, which is 63X16 to scale the messages to the MC-10's 32X16 screen. The program has a somewhat unique screen layout with room descriptions and items being printed at the top, response messages in the middle, and commands entered in the bottom two lines. I had to make new clearing routines for these different zones and I bumped the response message area up a line to just below the demarcation line (now a sequence of SG4 characters representing a castle "parapet") between the top description zone and the message zone. This is because some of the messages obviously take multiple lines on the MC-10 and the bottom of the main message area is used for temporary messages like INVentory lists and random messages, such as when the damsel yells for help.
Finally, I added a pixel art title screen to replace the simple REMarks with the authors name and date info. I didn't include the old address info.
The game "CASTLE" can be played at my GameJolt page under the "Text Adventures" menu item. Just select PLAY GAME, then the "Text Adventures" item, then CASTLE from the Cassette menu and type RUN and hit Enter in the main (green) menu screen.
I've typed-in a demo text adventure from a UK computer magazine called "Let's Compute." The CPC computer wiki describes the history of this publication as follows:
Let's Compute! was a monthly British magazine that catered for the Electron, BBC Micro, Commodore, Atari ST, Spectrum, Archimedes and Amstrad CPC. The magazine was 99 pence and only lasted 12 issues (August 1990 to July 1991).
It was produced by Database Publications-- with the managing editor being Derek Meakin (from Computing with the Amstrad).The last two issues were published by Europress Publications.
The magazine covered as much as possible in its 48 pages - game reviews, news, cartoons/jokes, reader questions and type-ins. Sometimes the type-ins would specific only to certain platforms, other times they would provide you with the lines to change in order to make it work for your platform.
The text adventure engine/demo program was covered in the magazine's last 5 issues (March-July) 1991. The game as published functions but it's puzzles/storyline were not completed. There was going to be a least one other installment of the series covered but the magazine was cancelled after issue 12.
This loose end struck me as particularly sad because when I typed in the program I discovered quite a nicely programed and flexible text adventure system programmed in BASIC. It uses DATA statements with a clever system for sensing additions and calculating the number of items and actions being added, and adjusting itself accordingly. It also uses a complex system of hashing/encoding what happens with new vocabulary, items and actions that is both flexible and efficient. The result is that the parser is both quick and able to sense unique vocabulary terms, either verbs or nouns, that can trigger appropriate responses even if the user types complex phrases or even sentences.
It seemed a waste that this program should not be preserved for posterity. I suspect that I wasn't able to find any evidence that it had been preserved as a running program anywhere on the Net because 1991 was a bit late for type-in games and the timeframe of the computer systems the magazine was directed at were already well into the period of the dominance of commercially produced software. I suspect very few people using them would have wanted to type in and preserve type-in games, especially ones that were never fully completed.
So I have completed the story as best I could from the clues and the layout of the items provided in the source code and also from the discussion in the accompanying articles. I feel pretty confident that I have recreated the demo adventure storyline that the author or authors were aiming at and likely to have produced in the final article. And just for my own fun in TRS-80 MC-10 programming I added a fancy title page using semi-graphics-4 characters.
The magazine article begins "We're off on the road to Adventure." It's a simple space adventure somewhat akin Lance Micklus' 1979 Dog Star Adventure. There are a few tricky puzzles and only a few possibilities for insta-death. No specific author is identified in the articles from what I have read (perhaps they are mentioned elsewhere in the magazine). The version I made is for Micro Color BASIC on the TRS-80 MC-10 but the article claims the program should work with only a few minor changes on the BBC, Archimedes, Amiga and PC (GW-Basic), but that it will not work on the C64/128 or Spectrum. However, I can see no reason why it shouldn't work on the C64/128. I suspect the intensive use of string handling and string handling commands (MID$, LEFT$, RIGHT$) used in the program might be difficult to translate to Spectrum BASIC, which treats strings as string arrays instead of using string functions to manipulate them. The C64 omision might simply have been due to its shorter line length (80 characters), which might have required some extensive editing of long lines to reconfigure for the C64.
The game can be be played by selecting "Play" on my GameJolt page, then "8-Bit BASIC Text Adventures" and then choosing LCADVENT from the Cassette menu. Finally, type RUN and hit ENTER in the emulator's main green screen:
This program is a "solitaire" logic puzzle game. The goal is to transpose the red pegs and blue to finish with the red pegs on the right and the blue pegs on the left. A peg can only move diagonally in the direction it is meant to travel, towards an empty space or jump over a peg to reach a space that is empty. You can start with any colour that you want. To move a peg, just type box number in which it is located. If you are stuck, type 99 to restart.
Published in the French language magazine Micro 7, April 1985. I translated the French prompts and ported to the code to Micro Colour BASIC. The game was originally for the ZX Spectrum 8-bit computer.
Not sure if this puzzle even works. But it struck me as an interesting piece of code to get working, from a old computer magazine that I had never heard of before.
I also typed in another program called "Testamour" (TSTAMOUR). It is credited to the editorial team of Micro 7. It's meant to test the reader's knowledge of BASIC. If they could figure out what was going on, then they would be able to respond in a way that they would get rewarded with an image being printed on the screen. Perhaps the answer of what the program did would have been revealed in the following month's edition of the magazine for those who didn't understand BASIC well enough to figure out the trick for getting the image to display.
I know Steve Bjork had mixed feelings about the MC-10, but as an MC-10er I have nothing but the deepest respect for him. His programming skills were an inspiration to me as young programmer. Allen Huffman recently sent me some old BASIC code of Steve's. I have ported his perpetual calendar source. Now he is a contributor to the MC-10 program library. Thanks so much Steve!
Finally, here is a slight update to an old program from way back that I typed-in called XMAS. It is from the Coco. But the program only used to blink red lights by using RESET. But now I have it cycle through multiple colours.
Update:
Christian left a message on Facebook and says the puzzle is solvable:
