SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

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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Strident
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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#46 Post by Strident » Sat Sep 04, 2021 4:43 pm

Good sleuthing.

Looks like this is him, too... https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-gaskell-86ab8880/

Edit: So this will be him on Facebook... https://www.facebook.com/graham.gaskell.7

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Garry
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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#47 Post by Garry » Sat Sep 04, 2021 4:52 pm

Not sure about the Facebook one. He sounds like a kiwi. I presume that ours is an Aussie.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#48 Post by Strident » Sat Sep 04, 2021 4:57 pm

Garry wrote:
Sat Sep 04, 2021 4:52 pm
Not sure about the Facebook one. He sounds like a kiwi. I presume that ours is an Aussie.
They're both the same person (see the photos) and the LinkedIn says New Zealand currently. His LinkedIn profile includes his programming work for Trident Technology Services; when he was in Sydney, Australia.
Programmer - Publisher
Company Name:Trident Technological Systems
Dates Employed:1983 – 1985
Employment Duration:2 yrs
Location: Sydney, Australia
Co-wrote several games and business applications. Also compiled & published a Bi-Monthly Computer Magazine for the Sega Computers.
Edit: As an aside, here is Graham commenting on a post about TTS...
http://www.ourdigitalheritage.org/archi ... systems-2/

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#49 Post by Strident » Sat Sep 04, 2021 6:45 pm

Graham posted this on the SC-3000 Survivors forums...
I was the co-author of Vortex Blaster and it is my voice in the game, along with Vortex Blaster we created a space invaders style and pac-man style game.
Trident Technological Systems was made of 2 people and we spent hours writing, marketing and selling these games back in Sydney had loads of fun and it was a special time in computing history mainly as it was pre windows. I also published a Users magazine which was very popular and always included some games.

Although the SC3000 was the main computer I worked with some of the others were, Apple IIe (Edusoft supplied), Amstrad (Cassette & Disc)(Thorn supplied), Sinclair, Commodore Vic20 & 64, Dick Smith VZ200, Tandy TRS80, Toshiba MSX (Toshiba supplied) and a few others.
The follow-up comment from Honestbob is interesting as it includes details of how Bob "hacked into" the games to cheat...
https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/fo ... top#p12607

Another comment from Graham...
I started off modifying CB Radios to get 200+ channels and used to spend hours talking to people over seas and locally and that allowed me to meet the half of our company which we formed in Sydney.
Like Bill Gates we saw the value in Software, not Hardware at the time, but I guess our biggest mistake was not predicting the impact of the IBM compatible and Windows into the Homes which was the birth of the "PC" as at this time every maker had a different operating system.

Extremely fun times and we could walk into a supplier and walk out with a free computer on the promise we would write some software, Apple, TRS80, Sinclair, Sega, Amstrad, Toshiba, Amiga and few others.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#50 Post by Garry » Thu Sep 09, 2021 9:02 am

The recovery effort is going well. I'll post an update somewhere soon. In the meantime, I have a mystery related to the text adventures published by Software Concepts. I have been able to recover 'Pyramids of Mars'. This is adventure #2. The game starts by saying "Look out for adventure #3 AFRICAN SAFARI". This begs the questions:
  • What is adventure #1?
  • Was adventure #3 ever published?
Have you guys come across any references to these in the NZ computer magazines?

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#51 Post by Strident » Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:45 am

Great stuff. I think I've added all your screenshots now.

I've noticed quite a few adventures (such as the Young 'Uns) in that Google Drive link that has just gone up on the Facebook page, so I'll check those out later.
[Edit: It includes...
The Tomb of Nozar
The Young Un's
Zivorx Adventure]

There is a second Software Concepts game in that archive (The Crusader Trilogy pt.1), but I haven't yet checked if it's a text adventure.

[Edit2: I doubt it is...Going on this advert, which also doesn't mention any other adventures as far as I can see.
https://archive.org/details/apc198404/page/n95/ ]

I wonder if there is a way of extracting the listings of all these BASIC adventures via the various emulators? Might be of use for those who like to port games to other platforms.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#52 Post by Garry » Fri Sep 10, 2021 2:36 am

Strident wrote:
Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:45 am
Great stuff. I think I've added all your screenshots now.
More screen shots to follow shortly. (I've done all the Dotsoft games, but I need to do a little more work on these before I can release them.)
Strident wrote:
Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:45 am
I've noticed quite a few adventures (such as the Young 'Uns) in that Google Drive link that has just gone up on the Facebook page, so I'll check those out later.
[Edit: It includes...
The Tomb of Nozar
The Young Un's
Zivorx Adventure]
There are two versions of The Tomb of Nozar, one published by A.D. Tolkiensoft and one published by Atfuros. I'm pretty sure the former was published first, but I'm not sure about the date. The latter was published in 1987. The game consists of two parts, a title screen and the main game. I've been able to recover the first part of both games, but I can only recover the second part from the Atfuros game. This one is going to be a bit tricky to convert to disk, as the image in the title screen is embedded as data at the end of the BASIC file. If I modify the BASIC file to load part 2, then save it, I lose the image, so I need to work out a way to extract the image data and load it from disk, then load part 2.

I've recovered The Young'ns, but it gives an out-of-memory error when run from disk. I'll look into this, otherwise it's the only game that needs to be run from cassette.

I haven't been able to recover Zivorx Adventure. There are two tape dumps of the main program, but they are both cut short. I'm getting better with the tools that I'm using, so I'll revisit this one and see what I can recover.
Strident wrote:
Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:45 am
There is a second Software Concepts game in that archive (The Crusader Trilogy pt.1), but I haven't yet checked if it's a text adventure.

[Edit2: I doubt it is...Going on this advert, which also doesn't mention any other adventures as far as I can see.
https://archive.org/details/apc198404/page/n95/ ]
Agreed. I had discarded this earlier, as it certainly sounds like an RPG.
Strident wrote:
Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:45 am
I wonder if there is a way of extracting the listings of all these BASIC adventures via the various emulators? Might be of use for those who like to port games to other platforms.
You'll be pleased to know that I am doing that as a matter of course. All games are written in BASIC and I now have plain text BASIC listings for anyone that's interested. The process is not necessarily easy. I started to write it up, but realised it was too complicated to explain in a general manner, so I'll leave that for another time, but only if anyone expresses any interest.

When this is finished, I just need to know where to make it all available. Any suggestions? Can I put the zipped disk images on CASA as bug-fixed games? The unzipped disk images are 160KB. The zipped images would be tiny. Alternatively, I do have GitHub and GitLab accounts, but I've never used them except for raising bugs on other software, such as Adventuron and the Inform 6 library. I was thinking of putting them there.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#53 Post by Strident » Fri Sep 10, 2021 9:01 am

You have been busy. ;) It will be a great resource for everyone... including the SC-3000 community themselves, I should think.

GitHub/GitLab might be the best choice for hosting the files, as they could be accompanied by the relevant BASIC listings there.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#54 Post by auraes » Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:35 pm

Strident wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 9:01 am
GitHub/GitLab might be the best choice for hosting the files
CASA GitLab or Garry GitLab?

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#55 Post by Garry » Fri Sep 10, 2021 1:10 pm

Garry. I don't think CASA has a GitLab or GitHub site.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#56 Post by auraes » Sat Sep 11, 2021 6:35 am

Garry wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 1:10 pm
I don't think CASA has a GitLab or GitHub site.
It would be nice if there was a GitLab CASA, but it would certainly add an extra workload. It would be, among other things, easier to propose minor corrections on solutions that I hesitate to do because the current system is not very suitable for that.
But it's already very good as it is.

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#57 Post by Garry » Sun Sep 12, 2021 2:56 pm

Woohoo! I have played and completed my first SC-3000 adventure. Of all the games I've been able to rescue, there are only two that won't run from disk due to an out-of-memory error. They are The Tomb of Nozar (A.D. Tolkiensoft & Atfuros) and The Young'ns (Flexisoft).

I wanted to play The Tomb of Nozar to see whether it was a text adventure or a RPG. It turns out to be a text adventure, but with RPG-like combat sequences. Most of these are unavoidable, as you need to defeat a monster to gain a necessary object or open up an exit. At one point, I got killed and this unveiled a syntax error that caused it to crash. It turns out that the syntax error was because the program had somehow modified itself, whereby it changed A$ to ?$, where ? was a non-ASCII character. I haven't been able to work out why that happens.
Tomb of Nozar, The (Grant Emms) screen 03.png

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#58 Post by Strident » Sun Sep 12, 2021 4:59 pm

I wouldn't be surprised if you were the first person to complete a SC-3000 game in 35 years. ;)

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#59 Post by Garry » Tue Sep 14, 2021 1:01 pm

After a brainwave, a lot of persistance, a bit of intuition and a lot of time manually editing binary files in a hex editor, I believe I have restored Zivorx Adventure. It gives an out-of-memory error when run from disk, but the tape version appears to be working. I'm playing the game now to make sure there aren't any errors. It is clearly based on the Steve W Lucas coding framework. First impressions are positive, but it's friggin' hard. Lots of sudden death and guess-the-verb.

Zivorx Adventure (Andrew Flexman) screen 05.png

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Re: SC-3000 Rabbit Hole... Unlisted Adventures

#60 Post by Strident » Tue Sep 14, 2021 3:19 pm

Impressive work. It sounds like it's going to be an excellent, and fairly complete, archive once you've finished tinkering. It'll probably be worth flagging it up to one of the local Australian/New Zealand academics working in this area, such as Professor Melanie Swalwell at Swinburne.

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