Gilsoft PAW/Quill

[Strident]

You can also correct "auras for corrections" by "auraes for corrections ", but you can put my real name or nothing at all.

Yeah... I know I've amended that in the past... I think the autocorrect keeps changing it back. I'll add it to the list.

Are you interested in French articles about The Quill from old magazines?

I haven't really indexed English-language articles about the Quill as that's a little outside the scope of the document. With regards to the French material, it would really depend if they added anything from a technical standpoint.

[auraes]

it would really depend if they added anything from a technical standpoint.

No, these are not really technical articles. I don't know if The Quill or Adventure Writer are well sold in France, and if there are games that are archived somewhere.

[Strident]

No, these are not really technical articles. I don't know if The Quill or Adventure Writer are well sold in France, and if there are games that are archived somewhere.

The Adventure Writer got a French release, even though that was apparently against the terms of the arrangement CodeWriter had with Gilsoft. There are only four French "Quilled" games in the database, though...
http://solutionarchive.com/list/languag ... ystem%2C3/

(I'm not sure how complete our list of French text adventures is)

[auraes]

"L'enigme du triangle" seems interesting. The gameplay seems to be in the style of "Local call for Death" and "Two Heads of the Coin".
I don't know if I can get the source code with UnQuill or something else.

[auraes]

There seems to be a small error in The Quill Reference Guide in Other Observations & Notes:
The C64 version also uses, in the tables, the character * rather than _.

[Strident]

There seems to be a small error in The Quill Reference Guide in Other Observations & Notes:
The C64 version also uses, in the tables, the character * rather than _.

That's been corrected in the current version I am working on. The various versions of Adventure Writer use the asterisk too. PAW uses underscore and asterisk in a slightly different way, which anyone porting Quill games to PAW (or DAAD) need to be mindful of.

I have seen C64 games where underscore (_) has been used as well. So I need to do a bit more investigation on that at some point before I publish any update.

There is quite a few bits and bobs to tidy up and research still. It's not really a huge priority at the moment as I don't think the document is really being used by anyone.

[auraes]

I don't think the document is really being used by anyone.

By me. But it' s indeed not a priority at all.

[Strident]

I don't think the document is really being used by anyone.

By me. But it' s indeed not a priority at all.

You seem to be juggling multiple adventure systems at once.

[auraes]

You seem to be juggling multiple adventure systems at once

I'm a woodland tramp who juggles bugs. Understand who can.

I will add color to zQuill, but your document doesn't have much on the subject. I'll see what I can learn about it.

[auraes]

So I need to do a bit more investigation on that at some point before I publish any update.

The Pc DOS version, Atari 400/800 and Apple also use the character *.

For the colors it's incomplete, I can't find all the roms...

Permanent colours

Zx Spectrum:
Border 0-7
Paper 0-9
Ink 0-9

C64:
Border 0-15
Paper 0-15
Ink 0-15

Amstrad cpc:
Border 0-26
Ink0 0-26 (paper)
Ink1 0-26 (ink)
Ink2 0-26
Ink3 0-26

Oric-1/Atmos:
Paper 0-7
Ink 0-7

Atari 400/800:
Border 0-255
Paper 0-255 (screen)
Ink 0-7 (text intensity)

Pc Dos:
Border 0-15
Paper 0-7 (screen)
Ink 0-15 (text)

BBC:
(It seems there is none.)

Apple 2:
(It seems there is none.)

Sinclair QL:

[auraes]

Are there any Quill games that use the 4-word parser feature of the extended c64 version? Bugsy doesn't seem to use it.

[Strident]

Are there any Quill games that use the 4-word parser feature of the extended c64 version? Bugsy doesn't seem to use it.

Yes, like you say, although it was apparently produced for Bugsy, I've not been able to find any evidence that the archived/released version of Bugsy uses it, or rather that it uses any of the four-word parsing aspect of that codebase.

I'm not sure if Stefan used the four word parser version in his original Quilled C64 version of Hibernated 1 in the end.

[auraes]

For the two games mentioned, flags 25 and 26 are not used in a 4-word context. The FOURTEST example in the QI4wd.d64 database shows the rather simple use of these flags.

[Strident]

Yes, that was my conclusion after investigating the database of Bugsy C64.

As it was a custom build for St. Bride's it's unlikely any games ever used it, as their later titles were all PAWed which has built-in four word support as standard.

[auraes]

A small error in the document Quill-AdventureWriter-Reference.pdf (a 'value' is missing.):
NOTEQ flagno. BBC => NOTEQ flagno. value BBC