Peter Shaw Adventures

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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Peter Shaw Adventures

#1 Post by Strident » Sat Sep 10, 2022 4:56 pm

Peter Shaw was one of the many (very young!) teenagers that were writing programs for books and magazines back in the 1980s. His work for Tim Hartnell's Interface Publications included books for the Spectrum, Oric and BBC Micro. He had various technical writing, reviewing and editorial roles for magazines such as Your Spectrum, Home Computing Weekly, ZX Computing and QL User.

We seem to have most of his "adventures" catalogued...
http://solutionarchive.com/list/author%2C4408/
("adventures" in inverted commas because they're all basically avoid the monsters and do one or two things to win)

I think this is probably another one that can be added, though...

QL Quest
1984
Written in SuperBASIC for the QL
"Escape the mansion with the magical gem"
Published as a type-in in the QL User dossier #1, c. January 1984, pp.61-64
https://archive.org/details/ql-user/QL% ... 01/page/60
Really doesn't have many puzzles but still qualifies as a text adventure, I think; in the same way that his existing entries do.

Some of Peter's other, non-CASA similar games, such as The Riddle of the Black Chateau,
https://archive.org/details/virgin-book ... c/page/44/
https://archive.org/details/sybex-jeux- ... l/page/10/
which has fairly verbose location descriptions, are just "move around and fight monsters" games and wouldn't qualify for CASA, but QL Quest has objects and GET/DROP which takes it into adventure territory.

I notice that as well as being a deputy editor for Your Spectrum, he also wrote a few columns on adventure writing...
"Routine Adventures"
Issue 12 - https://archive.org/details/your-spectr ... 2/page/n41 "Command recognition routine"
Issue 13 - https://archive.org/details/your-spectr ... 3/page/n25 "Using arrays"
Issue 14 - https://archive.org/details/your-spectr ... 4/page/n33 "Simple demonstration" (no objects etc.)
Issue 15 - https://archive.org/details/your-spectr ... 5/page/n27 "Adding monsters"

Nothing substantial there and issue 15 ends with, "Next month, for the lost, confused or just plain lazy they'll be the final part of Routine Adventures and we'll be presenting you with the adventure to end all adventures."

The final part of "routine adventures" didn't appear in issue 16, although issue 17 did include "Escape from Castle Rathbone" (by a different author) which might've been the adventure referred to.

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jgerrie
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Re: Peter Shaw Adventures

#2 Post by jgerrie » Sun Sep 11, 2022 2:49 am

So QL Quest has not got a working copy anywhere as far as you know?

Jim

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Strident
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Re: Peter Shaw Adventures

#3 Post by Strident » Sun Sep 11, 2022 10:23 am

I'll try and check with one of the QL guys. I find it hard to believe that they haven't typed that one in.

Apparently there is a correction in the October 1984 QL User, submitted by a user...
https://archive.org/details/ql-user/QL% ... /page/n12/

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jgerrie
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Re: Peter Shaw Adventures

#4 Post by jgerrie » Mon Sep 19, 2022 6:24 pm

Thanks. As always, I'm looking for type-in games that are missing...

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