Steven C. Darnold

Games for Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, Amiga, Apple ][ and the rest of the 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. Pleas for help, puzzles, bug reports etc.

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Strident
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Steven C. Darnold

#1 Post by Strident » Fri Aug 13, 2021 6:35 pm

Given that Steven C. Darnold's...

Tunnelmaze Adventure
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C59 ... nture.html
seems to be a version of Peter Gerrard's Tunnel Adventure...
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C56 ... nture.html

...and that GB64 credits him for Castle Maze Adventure...
http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=10805&d=18&h=0
...which appears to be... Peter Gerrard's Castlemaze Adventure...
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C67 ... nture.html

...and one of his other games is a port of Dog Star/Star Wars/Death Star adventure...

I'm guessing that the two others, listed in the CASA database for him, are probably just ports too? (He's credited to other obvious ports, like Nellan is Thirsty http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=10850&d=18&h=0 and Westward Ho on Gb64 etc... although, to be fair, the title screens do credit the original authors too.)


Perhaps...

Valleymaze
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C57 ... ymaze.html

...might be based on another of the Duckworth/Peter Gerrard games. Will look into that.

I can't think of anything obvious for...

POW Adventure
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C19 ... nture.html

...perhaps that one is original.

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Garry
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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#2 Post by Garry » Sat Aug 14, 2021 4:10 am

The third in the Peter Gerrard series is 'Underground Adventure'. I thought 'Valleymaze' may have been based on that, but the walkthroughs are quite different. It may be that 'Valleymaze' and 'POW Adventure' are both originals. I think you have to assume that's the case until proven otherwise.

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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#3 Post by Strident » Sat Aug 14, 2021 9:40 am

Yeah, I'm going to look at Tunnelmaze and Castlemaze a bit closer too first, before I even think about combining the entries into the Peter Gerrard ones... Just in case they've been altered so much that they are basically new games.

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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#4 Post by Strident » Sat Aug 14, 2021 10:07 am

Strident wrote:
Sat Aug 14, 2021 9:40 am
Yeah, I'm going to look at Tunnelmaze and Castlemaze a bit closer too first, before I even think about combining the entries into the Peter Gerrard ones... Just in case they've been altered so much that they are basically new games.
Well, those two do match the solutions we have for the similarly named Peter Gerrard games... However, I do think that the solutions were made for the Steven Darnold versions so that probably isn't conclusive... I should quickly check the original listings in Peter's books.

Interestingly, one of the solutions refers to Tunnelmaze/Castlemaze/Valleymaze being a trilogy. The three Darnold games are connected... You start in similar locations... and the knight in the first one, is a dead knight in the second adventure, and then reduced to a skeleton by the time of the third game.

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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#5 Post by Strident » Sat Aug 14, 2021 10:30 am

So, checking the listings in the book and also playing through the first twenty or so turns of the Spectrum versions... both Castle and Tunnel match the book.

Which leaves ValleyMaze potentially as being an original game by Steven, inspired by and designed to follow on from Peter's Castle & Tunnel adventures.

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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#6 Post by Richard Bos » Sat Aug 21, 2021 8:24 pm

Hm. You call them "ports". I think you're being too nice. I'd call them rip-offs.
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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#7 Post by Strident » Fri Aug 27, 2021 12:38 pm

As I came across this, when researching Dog Star, I thought I'd post a link to an adventure column written by Steven Darnold...
https://archive.org/details/nzbitsandby ... 4/page/n9/

(I need to read through these at some point...
https://archive.org/search.php?query=%2 ... 22&sin=TXT )

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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#8 Post by Strident » Thu Aug 25, 2022 1:09 pm

Hmm... a tweet has led me to this issue of TPUG, which frames Steven's games in a completely different light... and actually suggests that he wrote Valeymaze initially and then he, himself, was "ripped-off" by an "Englishman" who published the listing in a book...!!

The article also states that "Steven's" "Castlemaze" started as a port of Greg Hassett's Sorcerer's Castle... I hadn't noticed the similarity before but... yes, this seems to be the case!

See the article starting on page 14...
https://ia800502.us.archive.org/27/item ... un_Jul.pdf
tunnelmaze.PNG
tunnelmaze.PNG (66.81 KiB) Viewed 9435 times
I'm going to mull this over for a while. Things certainly seem a little more complicated and I will reflect that (in a suitably sensitive way) in the entries, noting that the authorship is "disputed".

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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#9 Post by Strident » Thu Aug 25, 2022 1:37 pm

From the introduction to Peter Gerrard's book...
exploring-adventures.PNG
exploring-adventures.PNG (50.86 KiB) Viewed 9433 times
And later in the book...
exploring-adventures-2.PNG
exploring-adventures-2.PNG (73.29 KiB) Viewed 9431 times
...which pretty much proves I was far too quick to jump to conclusions here and that Steven deserves full credit for the original version of Tunnelmaze and the credit for adapting Castle Maze from Greg's earlier adventure.

I'll amend the entries accordingly, with Peter moved out the author section and down into the notes for credits for the "ports".

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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#10 Post by Garry » Thu Aug 25, 2022 1:53 pm

Excellent detective work!

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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#11 Post by jgerrie » Sun Sep 11, 2022 8:33 am

Indeed. Neat investigation.

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Re: Steven C. Darnold

#12 Post by Garry » Mon Sep 12, 2022 9:01 am

I have just read that article by Peter Archer in TPUG Magazine, issue 15, June/July 1986, pp. 14-15. It's a fascinating read. All the dates make sense and fit into the timeline.

So, the sequence goes like this...

Steven C Darnold wrote 'Atlantis Adventure' as a reworking of Greg Hassett's 'Trip to Atlantis' and 'Castlemaze' as a reworking of Greg Hassett's 'Sorcerer's Castle'. Dates unclear, but most likely 1981 to early 1982.

He then wrote 'Tunnelmaze' as a sequel to 'Castlemaze' and intended it to be the second part of a trilogy. These were all on the Commodore PET.

He sent 'Castlemaze' and 'Tunnelmaze' to Peter Gerrard, who ported them to a bunch of other computers (without Steven's knowledge) and published them as 'Castlemaze Adventure' and 'Tunnel Adventure' respectively in the Exploring adventures on the xxx series of books (along with 'Underground Adventure') in 1983. Credits are given in 'Further Information', which is the last chapter of the book.

When Steven found out about this, he immediately put his games in the public domain. He later completed 'Valleymaze' as the third part of the trilogy, but delayed releasing it for over 1 year. This was for the Commodore 64. It was eventually released in mid 1986.

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