Any French Speakers on here?

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dave
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Any French Speakers on here?

#1 Post by dave » Wed Dec 08, 2010 1:20 pm

I've been looking into games for the Matra Alice, but I'm coming up against the old language problem as most of the games are in French (as a native English speaker, my abilities with other languages are poor :-).

It would be helpful if somebody who understands French had a look over the games I added and confirm that they are indeed text adventures and not something like "Hunt the Wumpus" or equivalent.

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#2 Post by Gunness » Wed Dec 08, 2010 3:16 pm

Your co-admin Eriorg speaks French, so he should be able to assist :)

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#3 Post by Gunness » Wed Dec 08, 2010 4:15 pm

I've uploaded screenshots for three of the four games, and they look positively adventure-like to me. The fourth one, La Caverne des Morlocks, looks a little more shaky. I have a hunch that it might simply be a multiple-choice game.

Btw, where the *bleep* did you locate the Alice? I've never ever heard of it, but I have to say that it sports one funky casing :D
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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#4 Post by dave » Wed Dec 08, 2010 4:22 pm

Gunness wrote:I've uploaded screenshots for three of the four games, and they look positively adventure-like to me. The fourth one, La Caverne des Morlocks, looks a little more shaky. I have a hunch that it might simply be a multiple-choice game.
That's what it looked like from the screenshots, but I stopped learning French over 20 years ago as I was no good at it, so I haven't been able to work much more out!
Gunness wrote:Btw, where the *bleep* did you locate the Alice? I've never ever heard of it, but I have to say that it sports one funky casing :D
Say what you like about the French, they at least have style :-)

I found by chance when looking through articles on Wikipedia about CPUs used in 8-bit computers (through the TRS-80 MC-10 computer). I was in two minds about this platform as it seems that TRS-80 MC-10 games are binary compatible, but I can't find any text adventure for it - but with 4K of RAM, there's not much that can be done!

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#5 Post by Alastair » Thu Dec 09, 2010 12:14 am

Gunness wrote:The fourth one, La Caverne des Morlocks, looks a little more shaky. I have a hunch that it might simply be a multiple-choice game.
We already have some multi-guess games, e.g., Level 9's The Archers and Adrian Mole games, so where is the problem?

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#6 Post by Gunness » Thu Dec 09, 2010 7:01 am

It's not a problem - I was merely trying to explain why it was difficult to identify. Sometimes multiple-choice games and simple strategy games look somewhat alike, and I'd rather not include the latter.

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#7 Post by FredrikR » Sat Jan 01, 2011 8:07 pm

dave wrote:with 4K of RAM, there's not much that can be done!
4K is a lot. The Dragon and the Troll is about 2K worth of C64 Basic code. So is Mickey & the Blot, which you can find on Gamebase 64.

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#8 Post by dave » Sat Jan 01, 2011 9:24 pm

FredrikR wrote:4K is a lot. The Dragon and the Troll is about 2K worth of C64 Basic code. So is Mickey & the Blot, which you can find on Gamebase 64.
I was going from generics; for example the rewrite I did of the SAGA game system in 6502 is around 3K (though 1/2K is due to uncompressed system messages), with the compressed version of the SAGA data file for The Golden Baton is 4.5K, making a total of 7.5K for a relatively small game. I thought I'd done well to reduce them down that far! (Brian Howarth's engine and TGB is around 14K).

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#9 Post by FredrikR » Sat Jan 01, 2011 9:40 pm

dave wrote:
FredrikR wrote:4K is a lot. The Dragon and the Troll is about 2K worth of C64 Basic code. So is Mickey & the Blot, which you can find on Gamebase 64.
I was going from generics; for example the rewrite I did of the SAGA game system in 6502 is around 3K (though 1/2K is due to uncompressed system messages), with the compressed version of the SAGA data file for The Golden Baton is 4.5K, making a total of 7.5K for a relatively small game. I thought I'd done well to reduce them down that far! (Brian Howarth's engine and TGB is around 14K).
That is an impressive feat!

Small is of course relative. But if a platform has 4K of RAM, it's still quite possible to write some small text adventure games for it. All descriptions will have to be short, there can't be messages for very many actions that aren't necessary to complete the game, but that's really just like all of the Scott Adams and Brian Howarth games that I've played.
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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#10 Post by Alex » Mon Jan 03, 2011 3:52 pm

La Caverne des Morlocks is an adventure game but the known verbs are very basic it only understands North, South, West, East and Inventory . Whenever you encounter an object or require some other kind of action, the game asks you a question which you have to answer with yes or no. (all the commands are in French ofcourse :) )

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#11 Post by Alex » Tue Jan 04, 2011 5:31 am

Tonight I played La Caverne des Morlocks. The dumb thing is that the cavern exists of 60 rooms and at the beginning of the game at random one of them is choosen to be the room that ends the game. The only way to solve this game is to wander around all the rooms untill by chance you enter this room. The caves are full of danger and you have to solve several puzzles to be able to walk around without being killed.

I also looked at the other games you've added:
Sorcellerie :This is the most interesting one. You have to investigate a castle.

Casse-tête dans le Métro: As you might have noticed I've added a solution to this one.

Sphinx d'or, Le: This is not an adventure. To enter the pyramid you have to solve three riddles. The first one is to guess a number beteween 0 and 999 within 10 turns. The second one is to play a game of mastermind and win it. The third one is to answer which company makes the best games and playing on Alice you have to answer “ Matra et Hachette” of course :) .

I’ll submit some hints on how to solve La caverne des Morlocks and will try to solve Sorcellerie but for now I’m going to Chile on vacation to do some real adventure :D . You'll hear from me again by the end of february.

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#12 Post by dave » Tue Jan 04, 2011 10:39 am

It always amazes me at how the Dutch are so good at being polyglots.

I've deleted Sphinx d'or, Le and we can update the others when you return from your real-life adventure! Thanks for your help!

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#13 Post by Gunness » Tue Jan 04, 2011 11:16 am

dave wrote:It always amazes me at how the Dutch are so good at being polyglots.!
For a second there I thought you were saying something really nasty ;) I guess the word "polyglot" doesn't appear nearly often enough in adventure games.

Thanks, Alex, for assisting with these games!

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#14 Post by Eriorg » Fri Jan 28, 2011 6:32 am

Gunness wrote:Your co-admin Eriorg speaks French, so he should be able to assist :)
Well, it's unfortunate that I've not been here recently... If you ever need me again, you could try sending me an e-mail or PM. But I see you could find the answers without me this time! :thumb:
Alex wrote:Sorcellerie :This is the most interesting one. You have to investigate a castle.
Oooh, Sorcellerie :D -- I discovered text adventures thanks to this game! Actually, I didn't play it myself, but someone I knew played it on a computer at school (a Thomson, not a Matra Alice; I'm not sure I had ever heard about the Matra Alice myself, either! :wink: ) and that's how he got a passion for parser-based text adventures, and he then gave that passion to me!

Actually, it was a BASIC listing published in the 77HS issue (December 1985) of L'Ordinateur Individuel (pages 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28), designed so that it would be easy to port to any computer with BASIC, not just the Matra Alice! I wonder what we should put in the "Platforms" info of the game page, in cases like that?

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Re: Any French Speakers on here?

#15 Post by dave » Sun Jan 30, 2011 1:54 pm

Eriorg wrote:Oooh, Sorcellerie :D -- I discovered text adventures thanks to this game! Actually, I didn't play it myself, but someone I knew played it on a computer at school (a Thomson, not a Matra Alice; I'm not sure I had ever heard about the Matra Alice myself, either! :wink: ) and that's how he got a passion for parser-based text adventures, and he then gave that passion to me!

Actually, it was a BASIC listing published in the 77HS issue (December 1985) of L'Ordinateur Individuel (pages 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28), designed so that it would be easy to port to any computer with BASIC, not just the Matra Alice! I wonder what we should put in the "Platforms" info of the game page, in cases like that?
Normally magazine/book program listing are put as whatever platform is listed in the book/magazine and ports ignored. I suppose generic "should work on everything" type listings should have a general platform; but normally most books/magazines listings have them written on a specific platform and conversion notes are printed separately.

Does anything else in the magazine point to what machine the program was designed for?

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