The Spy from the North
Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 3:04 am
I'm working through some old type-in adventures and am currently frustrated by The Spy from the North written by Steve W Lucas for the Amstrad CPC. It was originally published in Games Computing in an unknown issue from 1984 and reprinted in Personal Computing Today, vol. 3, no. 7, February 1985, pp. 14–18. The latter has an obvious bug in the location data that is easily fixed, but it appears to have other bugs, as well. For example, according to the source code, you're supposed to be able to go IN at the main entrance to the office block (S, UP, W, S from the starting location) if aa%=1, however aa% is never set. In fact, it's not referenced anywhere in the source code at all. So what is it that you're supposed to have done to set aa% so that you can get in? You need to get in to get access to a computer repair manual that you'll need later in the game.
This is a huge game. It has 158 locations and I've only found 39 so far (after cheating to get the computer repair manual). You can always SAY FIRE to get teleported to a random location, but it doesn't feel like you should have to resort to this, except in an emergency.
The reason for this long rant is a desperate plea for the original version of the game as published in Games Computing. There must surely be someone somewhere who has a copy of the magazine. If so, can I get a scan of the article at 300dpi so that I can compare the listings?
This is a huge game. It has 158 locations and I've only found 39 so far (after cheating to get the computer repair manual). You can always SAY FIRE to get teleported to a random location, but it doesn't feel like you should have to resort to this, except in an emergency.
The reason for this long rant is a desperate plea for the original version of the game as published in Games Computing. There must surely be someone somewhere who has a copy of the magazine. If so, can I get a scan of the article at 300dpi so that I can compare the listings?