does anyone remember in the early to mid 80's you could get books where you got a text adventure game but you had to type in the program yourself in basic.

you would spend days typing in and saving all the code to find you had mis spelled something or missed something out and the game wouldnt work lol

No, I never heard of this Was this done with a C64? Do you have a name of such a book?

I sure do! I even still have some of those old books. They weren't all text adventure games though. They had a program listing in BASIC, and then had modifications to the code listed based on different computers like the TRS-80 and the Commodore Vic-20. They were also printed in magazines like Compute! These books were pretty much non-existant by the 90's though.

I still have one of those books on my shelf. It's called Computer Monsters and was published by K-Power.

Ah, I found your book here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/55348106/K-Po ... r-Monsters
But it contains only simple programs. I thought nodgen74 was talking about real, large textadventures like zork

i managed to find the book online last night it was mainly for the commodores and called island of secrets

http://openlibrary.org/works/OL6671505W ... entures%29

Pertex, there were programs of varying complexity listed in the various books and magazines, but they tended to lean towards simpler games because people often wouldn't type in really, really long programs.

Compute! for example put out the code for a machine language interpreter called MLX. They would then list the assembly code for more advanced games and programs to be entered using MLX, like a full word processor.

It's great that you guys found a couple of these old books. I wonder how many more are floating around? It would be cool to find them and host them all in one central place.

Edit: Not only have I found a downloadable copy of Island of Secrets, but a whole FTP archive full of these books, plus a couple of collections on scribd as well...

Island of Secrets (and more): ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/books/
K-Power Magazine Collection: http://www.scribd.com/collections/29884 ... r-Magazine
Huge collection of Commodore programming books: http://www.scribd.com/collections/30218 ... oks?page=1

That should provide enough entertainment for anyone interested for a little while.

Oh this is great, thanx for the links! There I got my copy of Island of Secrets and of Mystery of the Silver Mountain. And other funny things like Scelbis Secret Guide To Computers. The author published his private telephone number there. You could call him day or day if you had a question.

That's hilarious!

I've actually been looking at that Island of Secrets game and it looks like it could be a pretty fun game to "remake" using Quest. I'm thinking I might take a crack at it when I'm done with Sleuth.

Yes a remake would be nice, but then you would need a walkthrough of the game. I only found a map of it

maybe if one of us could play it and devise a walkthrough lol

This probably makes me a giant nerd, but in addition to being able to glean a lot of the game just by reading the program listing, I installed a Commodore 64 emulator on my computer and started typing in the program so I could actually play it, so I'll have a go of it and see what it's like.

I believe there are walkthroughs for the game available online though. Should we maybe join forces and see what we can do with it?

You dont have to type all the program! The code is in the net!

and here is the map

Has anyone else played around with the game at all besides me?

not me

I've got the books first time around back in the late 80's.

I've just put Silver Mountain on Quest and added some graphics because in the original you need to find clues in the pictures to solve the game, which I have done. It's online now.

I was also thinking of adapting Island of Secrets but the walkthru to it is about a third of the size of Silver Mountain's walkthru so I'm not sure whether to bother. I did think maybe I should rewrite it to extend the gameplay but I think that might be too much?!

i have started inputting it into a bbc emulator but still typing it in

Yeah, I saw that you uploaded that game. Was it easy to adapt?

sgreig wrote:Yeah, I saw that you uploaded that game. Was it easy to adapt?

The map is a 10 x 8 grid and the directions are easy to work out. When I first got the book I had programmed it into my Acorn Electron and wrote a walkthru at the time. Most of the 'verb command' program lines are not in code and easy to identify the object location, flag, etc. in the listing.

Island of Secrets is a different matter. It's 'verb command' answers are in a string code e.g B$="500070" and made up of STR$ codes: first the command used , then the location of the object, the flag of the object and finally the room number. Time is the key to work them out.

The awkward thing was the location for all the objects were an ASCII code and you have to find a table to convert its ASCII code into its decimal value (you also have to deduct 32 from the decimal value as seen in the program listing) to get its location number. Everything else is pretty much straightforward.

In other words, all you need is a map, the list of commands used, locations, objects and chars, a walkthru you did nearly 30 years ago and patience to work it all out.

I'm still contemplating adapting the first book into a Quest game when I'm finished with my SpringThing entry. It seems like it would be a fun game to play with some modern day enhancements.

Interesting. I'm gonna have to give this a look at.

Hi. I also have copies of the Usborne books - The Mystery of Silver Mountain, The Island of Secrets, and a few others. Back in 2003, I translated Island of secrets to Inform 6 but never published it to the wider community due to worries about copyright, etc although I did acknowledge the original authors and publisher in the opening of the game.

I have started using this as my test case to build something in Quest 5.2 and have so far added a few of the rooms and descriptions. It is slow going as I am scouring the tutorial & forums for 'how to' stuff. I must say, I am finding Quest to be quite easy to use.

I have added a lot of embellishment to the descriptions based on what I saw in the book's drawings. I've also created a map in Excel (saved as PDF) I have attached the z5 file here if you would like to play the game to see how it works. (enjoy)

PS. As I am not creative when it comes to writing from scratch, I find enjoyment from translating code into other languages. I did this a lot back in the '80s when computer magazines were full of listings but not for my Exidy Sorcerer.

If you think I should load this to the IF archives, I'll include the other material with it including the source file.

PPS. I have downloaded Mystery of Silver Mountain here and will play it alongside the book to compare.

Pertex wrote:and here is the map

Note; the pdf comes up corrupted/truncated after my download. I get 28 rooms/locations, numbered and described. Thought there'd be 43 or so.