Excalibur by Jim Macbrayne 1983

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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Alex
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Excalibur by Jim Macbrayne 1983

#1 Post by Alex » Sun Nov 22, 2020 9:44 pm

This week I played the c64 version of Excalibur from Jim MacBrayne. With 267 locations it was rather big. I solved the game and have uploaded a map, but I was unable to get all 411 points ( I only managed to get 336). Furthermore, the sword excalibur can be found in the location east of the starting location. This is strange because there is an elaborate puzzle where you should release the sword from a granite block inside the chapel of a castle. When you solve this puzzle however, although the text mentions otherwise, the sword does not appear in the room and you lose two of the treasures you need to get a maximum score.

I started searching the internet and found another solution on a Russian website written by Dorothy Millard:

https://be.convdocs.org/docs/index-120753.html

The strange thing is There are some differences in the puzzles in comparison with the version I found on the internet. It seems that the version Dorothy played did have the sword at the end of the game. The solution mentions it was published by Alternative Software.

The version downloadable here :
http://8bitag.com/info/jim-maybrayne.html
where all Jim's games can be downloaded is the same as I have.

Does anyone know where to find the other c64 version?

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Strident
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Re: Excalibur by Jim Macbrayne 1983

#2 Post by Strident » Sun Nov 22, 2020 10:36 pm

The Russian website has some incorrect details... The Alternative game was by Ian Smith and Shaun McClure and was published for the ZX Spectrum, not C64 http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C19 ... Kings.html

The solution on the website *is* for Jim's Excalibur, though. It's strange that your version seems to differ from the one Dorothy must've been playing. The C64 version was derived from the PET original.

You could drop Jim a line to ask. IIRC he didn't have a copy of the PET or C64 versions of his earlier games, so I don't think he'll have anything that isn't archived on one of the main C64 repositories (which is where I grabbed the Excalibur file from). He also mentioned that he didn't really remember much about the puzzles in the games and was using Dorothy's solutions as a guide.

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Alex
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Re: Excalibur by Jim Macbrayne 1983

#3 Post by Alex » Sun Nov 22, 2020 11:31 pm

My version is the one found on gamebase64 and the solution written by Dorothy does not work with that version on several points, e.g. finding excalibur, looking at the print (on the gamebase64 version you don’t need to fix the print before you can examine it) and the different location where to get the pipes are a few differences which I noticed when I compared them. So it looks like she and Donald Hay where playing a different version or maybe they were playing the original PET game.

Canalboy
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Re: Excalibur by Jim Macbrayne 1983

#4 Post by Canalboy » Thu Feb 29, 2024 11:30 pm

There is an Amiga version of the game which Jim reliably informs me is bug free. He sent it to me some time ago but I haven't had the opportunity to set up an Amiga emulator to test it.

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Alex
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Re: Excalibur by Jim Macbrayne 1983

#5 Post by Alex » Sat Mar 02, 2024 7:40 pm

Would be interesting to check if that version can be solved with all the points

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Re: Excalibur by Jim Macbrayne 1983

#6 Post by Canalboy » Thu Mar 14, 2024 11:05 pm

I will check my backups. I must still have it somewhere. I know setting up the workbenches on the emulator was a colossal pain in the behind. Amiga emulators are very intricate in my experience. Even RPCEmu for RISC and my HP3000 emulator were easier to get up and functioning.

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