Ratings and Reviews by jgerrie
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Elegantly Written BASIC Text Adventure, February 16, 2020The Secret of Flagstone Manor by Brian Betts of Mountain Valley Software is reportedly Australia's first text adventure from 1981. Or so reports Renga in Blue.
Renga in Blue suggested that the game had similarities Scott Adams early games, but I'm pretty sure it's not like the Adventureland parser. The BASIC version of that program is very complex (and slow) and uses lots of numeric arrays, probably because it is meant to be a generalized "engine" for multiple adventures. This one uses a more standard and simple cascade of IF/THENs to parse input for different verbs. It also doesn't read its locations into an array. There are only 18. So it just uses a sequence of IFs to print specific room info. Lot's of ELSE statements used that I had to disentangle. I'd say this game does not have a parser engine at its core. It just applies some common approaches to programing adventures that had developed from 1979-1981.
On the whole it is a very well debugged, basically elegantly written, BASIC text adventure program. Although the room count is small it is fairly complex. There is a timer aspect that can result in death, but it is basically fair. The puzzles make sense and there is a pretty interesting dynamic HELP command. So don't just accept the first responses of "LOOK AROUND" from that command. They eventually do change according to progress and context. The other sources of death are also fair, and there are clues to help avoid them too.
A Late Classic, February 12, 2020There is a text adventure program that I have been wanting to complete for a long time. It's by Jason Dyer. The name of the game, "The Night of the Vampire Bunnies" is what intrigued me.
The game has the feel of being a creation of someone deeply inspired by the the classic early 80's BASIC games but who was creating games in the later part of the 80s. Bunnies is interesting because it plays like an early Greg Hassett, Scott Adams or Tim Hartnell adventure.
That being said, the original GWBASIC version has a parser that aims to go beyond simple two-word input. It is clear that Jason did not simply use a standard existing two-word parser example program like "Tower of Mystery" from Compute's Guide to Text Adventures (1984). He created his own unique system for parsing command input. He had a complex system for removing extra article words like THE and ON and TO. He has ways of breaking the sentences input not just into VERB NOUN, but also supplemental words. I commend the author for the ambition to have his players type in more complete English sentences and then to try to parse the input into coherent instructions that could be handled by the program.
This ambition appears to have bitten in the buttocks when it came to the reception of his program in more recent years. The reviews found here and other places on the Net tend to complain about its departure from the standards of two word VERB-NOUN parsing. Some of the puzzles involved having to figure out 4 word command sequences. (Spoiler - click to show)For example JUMP OVER THE RIVER rather than JUMP RIVER. To be fair, in the context of 80s hobby BASIC programming, this convention was not sacrosanct.
It was with a little regret that I had to strip this unique parsing engine and put in its place an extremely simple 2-word parser in order to port the program to my little 8-bit home computer system.
I now have a working version of "The Night of the Vampire Bunnies." I spiffed up the title page a little by adding an ASCII text graphic of a Vampire Bunny. I also added some screen flickering using to evoke lightning flashes on the title screen, which I think is in keeping with the B-horror movie feel Jason was attempting to evoke (along with Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail).
I have played it through to the end. It is whimsical and atmospheric. I enjoyed playing it.
Lost Classic 8-Bit Space Adventure, March 2, 2019The Basic source code from the Sinclair Spectrum that I worked from to port this game to the TRS-80 MC-10 was very buggy and unwinnable. I used a scan from The Computer & Video Games Year Book (1984) of the original Dragon 32 version to help with the debugging. I got the impression this version might be unwinnable too. If that's the case, the MC-10 version might be the only working version available online.
There is a BBC micro version you can play online. I tried it using a playthrough I developed and discovered that it did not seem to recognize the command PUSH BUTTON in the hanger, which which would prevent the possibility of winning. There were also a number of minor annoying but non-catastrophic bugs shared with the Speccy version. For example, despite there being a REMOVE command, you can drop wearable items while wearing them, which results in them being listed as being (WORN) even after they are dropped. The interactions with the captain and the spy in the captain's cabin also don't work.
All the bugs and typos are probably why this program has no playthrough online and why it seems to be "missing" from so many games collections for various machines (See this thread: https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12062&start=30)?-- It might have been unwinnable all these years on all the systems it was ported to from the original Dragon 32 version. And maybe even that version is too buggy to complete?
If so, this is a real shame because it is an incredibly rich and subtle puzzle, with neat NPC interactions, good story and evocative mood created through many little flourishes. Definitely not something you could finish in an hour. It would have kept me occupied for many days, if not possibly a week or two back in the 80s. That being said, it is pretty brutal in it treatment of even the most minor mistakes on the player's part, such as forgetting to close a door behind yourself!
Despite its brutality, with careful attention to all the in-game story elements you can discover, you can obtain all the clues necessary to complete the game. Still, I added some additional instructions and story background to the MC-10 version just to help get players off on the right track, if there ever are any additional players. I hope there is because this is a lost classic 8-bit space adventure, which deserves to be played.
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