Gilsoft PAW/Quill

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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catventure
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Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#1 Post by catventure » Thu May 04, 2017 3:00 pm

Hi,

For text adventure fans there is an interesting site about these creators with some recent and interesting articles, including a new interview with one of the authors, Tim Gilberts.

Check out the several pages concerning these utilities and a resurgence of interest in them which is maintained at:

http://8-bit.info/the-gilsoft-adventure-systems/

Regards,
catventure.
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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catventure
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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#2 Post by catventure » Thu May 11, 2017 2:06 pm

Well - apparently Tim Gilberts released a new version of QUILL (with a 4 word parser) after over 31 years. Can be downloaded from that 8-bit site.

That's good news for all Spectrum adventure authors!

Thought I'd just mention John Wilson's blog (The Rochdale Balrog) aka Zenobi Software; since many of their games were imaginative homebrew/indie titles made with the Gilsoft QUILL and PAW utes.

There are listings and pics + items of historical interest (+ links to file downloads) on the several pages maintained at:
http://zenobigames.blogspot.co.uk/?view=magazine

catventure.

Today I fixed some code on my page to show the youtube clips.
http://tab.thinbasic.com
TAB is an offline, downloadable, parser-based retro text adventure/interactive creator for Windows XP and above.
It is similar to popular 80's adventure creators like QUILL, PAW, STAC or GAC.
http://tab.thinbasic.com/

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Strident
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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#3 Post by Strident » Fri Oct 05, 2018 5:40 pm

Just a small addition to this.

Stefan's pages now include the DAAD system, including the recovered English-language files.

http://8-bit.info/infinite-imaginations-aventuras-ad/

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auraes
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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#4 Post by auraes » Fri May 15, 2020 2:10 pm

Hi,
I read the very good The Quill (and AdventureWriter) Reference Guide Version 0.2, and it seems that there is an error about Object type:
<199 – wearable
>200 – not-wearable
Instead of
>199 GDWR
<200 GD

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Strident
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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#5 Post by Strident » Fri May 15, 2020 2:27 pm

auraes wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 2:10 pm
Hi,
I read the very good The Quill (and AdventureWriter) Reference Guide Version 0.2, and it seems that there is an error about Object type:
<199 – wearable
>200 – not-wearable
Instead of
>199 GDWR
<200 GD
Indeed. :) I have fixed that in 0.3 but I'm waiting for my webhost to whitelist my current IP address so I can upload it.

Edit: Uploaded v0.3 now. Thanks for pointing out the error.

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auraes
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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#6 Post by auraes » Fri May 15, 2020 3:34 pm

I'm sorry, but it seems there's a misunderstanding:
object vocab word<200 –not-wearable(GD only) [1;199]
object vocab word>199 –wearable(GDWR) [200;254]
And not:
object vocab word<199 –wearable(GDWR)
object vocab word>200 –not-wearable(GDonly)
This is reversed. And you seem to rule out 199 and 200.

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Strident
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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#7 Post by Strident » Fri May 15, 2020 5:21 pm

auraes wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 3:34 pm
This is reversed. And you seem to rule out 199 and 200.
Ah yes, this is what I get for trying to fix it quickly. :) I think it should be correct now... I do plan to go back and expand the whole section about vocabulary numbers at some point.

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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#8 Post by auraes » Fri May 15, 2020 6:50 pm

That's not correct:
You reverse wearable & non-wearable, and it's < 13 and not < 12.
Which seems right:
object vocab word >12 && < 200 are not-wearable(GD only) [13;199]
object vocab word>199 && < 255 are wearable(GDWR) [200;254]

The Quill Adventure Writing System For the BBC B & Electron:
"Word values less than 13 should be reserved for movement words. Words
relating to objects that can be worn should have word values greater than
199."
"The GD or GDWR signifies which of the Actions AUTOG, AUTOD, AUTOW and AUTOR will
operate for each object. Whether GD or GDWR is shown depends entirely on the word values of
the words used. If the word value is < 200 then GD is shown otherwise GDWR is shown. Thus
objects which can be worn should be associated with words which have word values > 199. If you
test the adventure now, you will find that it works in exactly the same way as before the Object
Word Table was used."

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Strident
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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#9 Post by Strident » Fri May 15, 2020 6:59 pm

I agree that I've accidentally switched them around during all this editing. :)

However, I'm not sure I agree about your >13 point.

Word values less than 13 should be reserved for movement words.

So a word value greater than 12 is fine for an object word.

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auraes
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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#10 Post by auraes » Fri May 15, 2020 7:27 pm

That's what I said (maybe not written the right way): [13;199] for me and ]12,200[ for you? (I'm not a math geek!)
If (object_vocab_word >12 && object_vocab_word < 200)
object_vocab_word are not-wearable(GD only)
I think we're in agreement.

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auraes
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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#11 Post by auraes » Sat May 16, 2020 1:26 pm

It' s not probably the mistake of your life, but... NOTZERO flagon. => flagno.
There is also an "Ink x y" in the unquill.txt documentation:
*INK x y
On the CPC6128, this is used to change the palette used: x is
the pen number, 0-3, and y is the colour to use for that pen.
Are you sure there's a flag 64? There seem to be 64 flags, so from 0 to 63.
The ZX zpectrum C05 version (I seem to have read somewhere that it's not in the Gilsoft archives) doesn't work with my emulators; I get a "The Quill Master C05, Press S to Save or v to Verify" screen?

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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#12 Post by Strident » Sat May 16, 2020 4:49 pm

auraes wrote:
Sat May 16, 2020 1:26 pm
It' s not probably the mistake of your life, but... NOTZERO flagon. => flagno.
There is also an "Ink x y" in the unquill.txt documentation:
*INK x y
On the CPC6128, this is used to change the palette used: x is
the pen number, 0-3, and y is the colour to use for that pen.
Are you sure there's a flag 64? There seem to be 64 flags, so from 0 to 63.
The ZX zpectrum C05 version (I seem to have read somewhere that it's not in the Gilsoft archives) doesn't work with my emulators; I get a "The Quill Master C05, Press S to Save or v to Verify" screen?
My word-processor was constantly trying to change flagno to flagon. :) I was bound to miss one.

Regarding the Flag 64+.... There aren't official flags that high... that's why it's greyed out for most of the platforms... However Kelsoft's the Fix does use those flag numbers to access the locations of objects in the Spectrum version.

I will check the CPC INK command against the manual... I probably just have enough room to squeeze in that detail in the table. :) [Edit: Yep, it mentions that in the manual... must've missed it... let me try and squeeze it in..]

I've not actually read the unquill.txt documentation. Mind you, the author of the unquill didn't know about half of these different versions of the Quill/AdventureWriter. :)

Thanks again for the feedback.

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Garry
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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#13 Post by Garry » Sun May 17, 2020 5:55 am

My word-processor was constantly trying to change flagno to flagon. :) I was bound to miss one.


If you're using Microsoft Word, turn off anything that says "auto" or "smart", as "auto" means it will automatically screw up your document and "smart" means it's dumb.

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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#14 Post by auraes » Wed May 20, 2020 5:30 pm

I wonder why John Elliott, in Unquill, considers in his code that a movement word is less than 20 and not 13? (That's not going to keep me awake at night!)
Strident wrote:
Sat May 16, 2020 4:49 pm
Thanks again for the feedback.
Thank you for the acknowledgements at the end of your document, but it's useless. You can remove them in the next version (you will do as you wish; it's auraes and not auras.)
It's me who thanks you. There is a lot of documentation on Quill, and your summary document is very useful.

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Re: Gilsoft PAW/Quill

#15 Post by Strident » Wed May 20, 2020 11:13 pm

auraes wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 5:30 pm
I wonder why John Elliott, in Unquill, considers in his code that a movement word is less than 20 and not 13? (That's not going to keep me awake at night!)
Thank you for the acknowledgements at the end of your document, but it's useless. You can remove them in the next version (you will do as you wish; it's auraes and not auras.)
Urgh... Yeah, I need to turn off the auto-correct... I *did* type auraes. :)

I'm not sure about the movement words. PAW considers word values less than 14 as movement words; and those less than 20 as conversion nouns... Maybe that has caused some confusion. I'll do a test in the various interpreters at some point... anything the interpreter thinks is a movement word should give a "I can't go in that direction" response, so it should be easy to spot.

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