Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

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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auraes
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Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#1 Post by auraes » Mon Aug 31, 2020 3:30 pm

A small bug that is probably not one, but is to be considered if you use The Quill.
What next?
>EAT BEAN
You can't go that way.
"You can't go that way." instead of "Sorry I don't understand you." or "You can't.", which seems more appropriate here.
What's going on?
In the source code, Bean is word number 12, so since it is less than 13, it is considered as a direction (It is possible to climb it after planting it: U BEAN).
Since the verb EAT does not appear in the source code, EAT BEAN is interpreted as a compass direction.
There is probably a mistake by Dorothy, and a clumsiness by the interpreter.

That's all.

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#2 Post by auraes » Mon Aug 31, 2020 3:44 pm

I don't know why, but Unquill refuses to give me a correct output of the Inform file with the -TI option.

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#3 Post by auraes » Mon Aug 31, 2020 3:57 pm

A very nice little game of initiation. I'm not sure if I'll be allowed to make an Adventuron remake?

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#4 Post by Garry » Tue Sep 01, 2020 5:30 am

You could try sending Dorothy a personal message. As far as I know, she's still around. See Dorothy is Still Here.

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#5 Post by auraes » Tue Sep 01, 2020 10:12 am

Hey Garry, you are really indispensable!
I'm going to do the Adventuron version (maybe also a French translation), and I'll ask her if she'll allow me to make it visible or not. I've already found some bugs in her code.
I like Doroty's interview in CASA: A chat with Dorothy Millard, Australian adventure author.
An Australian, just like you, I think! I don't know if there's an article somewhere, about the link between countries and interactive fiction (for example Spain seems to have a strong link with that).

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#6 Post by Garry » Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:10 pm

Yes, I believe Dorothy was from Brisbane, whereas I'm from Sydney. Dorothy was C64, whereas I was Atari 8-bit. We were both on the adventure scene around the same time, except that she wrote games in BASIC and AdventureWriter that were published and I wrote games in BASIC that weren't published. I hope she's still around.

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#7 Post by Strident » Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:50 pm

Hopefully so, as she was on the forums just last year.

Dorothy was a well known name to us on the scene in the UK; just as much for her regular letters and endless contributions to Adventure Probe, as for her own, well-regarded Quilled games. She even distributed a lot of UK authors' work in Australia too... although that's a whole other tale.

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#8 Post by auraes » Wed Sep 02, 2020 9:05 am

There are some synonyms to reconstruct that remain mysterious to me:
Word 10: D, DOWN, DESC(END), INTR(?)
Word 109: VERI(?), VERS(ION)

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#9 Post by Garry » Wed Sep 02, 2020 9:31 am

DESCEND looks right. I don't know what INTR is likely to be. It might depend on context.

VERI and VERS are also a bit of a mystery. Try them in the game and see what they return. If they give you the version, then just use VERSION and ignore VERI. If they give you something different, then that will be a hint to what VERI is short for.

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#10 Post by Strident » Wed Sep 02, 2020 9:42 am

VERI and VERS trigger message 45 which contains details of the version of the game. (Presumably VERI is a contraction for version information)

Looking through the response table I think it would be safe to ignore INTR.

(It can be important to remember that in the Quill, unlike later systems such as the PAW, that words can be used both as nouns and verbs. Not really an issue in this game but it's something that you need to think about when porting more complicated titles to systems that require strict verb/noun definitions.)

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#11 Post by auraes » Wed Sep 02, 2020 11:27 am

In some sentences, there are two spaces after the period. David Griffith also does this in some Inform 6 library messages. Is this an English rule?
This is a problem with Adventuron, because it contracts the spaces into one (I don't know if you can put a character in a string with its ASCII or Unicode code).
"You are in the garden.[][]You can go WEST into the house and SOUTH into the shed."
Contraction of spaces also complicates the creation of a text box:

Code: Select all

               **********************
               *                    * 
               * LAND OF THE GIANTS *
               *                    *
               **********************

Code: Select all

 : print "^c^^n^**********************\n*<********************<0>>*\n* LAND OF THE GIANTS *\n*<********************<0>>*\n**********************\n\n^m^" ;

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#12 Post by Garry » Wed Sep 02, 2020 12:03 pm

Two spaces between sentences is an antiquated practice from the day of the typewriter. It is redundant nowadays. If you find two spaces, change it to one.

Remember that in the day of the 8-bit micro, the font was mono-spaced and the number of characters per line was fixed. In the case of the C64, it was 40 characters. Multiple spaces were often used to space things out or prevent words being split at the end of a line. None of that is necessary nowadays with proportional fonts and automatic word wrap.

If the program uses character graphics, then you'll have to find an alternative. If it's just for a title, ignore all the asterisks and use Adventuron's centring ability. Or delete the 2nd and 4th lines with all the spaces between asterisks. They're not necessary.

If it's something like a map, perhaps just create an image of the map and insert it as an inline graphic. If using a mono-spaced font and the font has a 'hard space' character, use that instead of normal spaces. However, don't forget that Adventuron allows the user to change fonts dynamically, so this might mess up your character graphics. In most cases, I'm sure you can find a simple alternative, even if it's just a plain text description, rather than character graphics.

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#13 Post by Strident » Wed Sep 02, 2020 12:59 pm

In the early days of Adventuron, the system had an instant "port from Quill to Adventuron" tool which Chris deactivated as he wasn't keen on people porting games to Adventuron without the permission of the original authors. The import from PAW worked fairly well too.

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#14 Post by auraes » Wed Sep 02, 2020 1:54 pm

I will be curious to see the result of the code produced by such a tool. A 'The Quill compatible' mode in Adventuron could be nice.

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Re: Land of the Giants (C64), Dorothy Millard

#15 Post by auraes » Wed Sep 02, 2020 2:10 pm

Garry wrote:
Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:10 pm
I wrote games in BASIC that weren't published.
I thought you were one of the few people who still have a critical mind when testing games, but maybe it's just that you're a little frustrated and cranky that you never had a game published when you were a kid!
I myself had a game on ZX81, stupid and with spelling mistakes, published in a reputable magazine at the time. Nothing, unfortunately, comparable to the interactive fiction I only knew from magazines.
Cambriolage: http://www.hebdogiciel.free.fr/ZX81_2.htm

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