Scott Adams adventure game coding

[Shift838]

I was wondering what these adventures were programmed in on the Atari?

 

I have permission from Scott Adams to create sequels to his famous adventures.  I have already started on Pyramid of Doom 2 on the TI-99/4A  and it’s almost complete, but would like to be able to port it for use on the Atari 8 bits.

 

Thanks

[Wrathchild]

Yes, the Atari data that can be run from the existing interpreter can be generated from the standard DAT file, I adapted the Scott2Atari tool from ScottFree to output assembler format for me.

[thorfdbg]

Does this include the Scott Adams adventures with graphical output? I would assume that they require an extended version of the interpreter as the rooms need to include rendering information (e.g. Adventureland and Pirates! exist both as pure text adventures as well as text+graphics output).

[Wrathchild]

Just the text-only:

 

[Shift838]

Still looking for the answer for this topic.  Is there an equivalent program on the Atari 8 bits to be able to code adventures like the Scott Adams adventures (Adventureland, Pirate Adventure, Pyramid of Doom, etc).  On the TI-99/4A we had a Adventure Editor that allowed us to do it, but what about Atari?

 

 

[+DjayBee]

Atarimania has this list of Adventure Creators but I have no idea how sophisticated they are.

[Wrathchild]

4 hours ago, Shift838 said:

Still looking for the answer for this topic.

You didn't answer @thorfdbg's question regarding graphics and if the answer to that was no then I could make the binary executable for you from the DAT file.

[Shift838]

9 hours ago, Wrathchild said:

You didn't answer @thorfdbg's question regarding graphics and if the answer to that was no then I could make the binary executable for you from the DAT file.

i'm just talking about the standard text adventures from Scott Adams like Adventureland, etc..

 

I have permission from Scott Adams to make any sequels to his games and I am currently coding one for the TI-99/4A, Pyramid of Doom 2.  When I am done, I want to port it over to be used on the Atari.  But I need to know what is used to create these type of adventures?  Does atari have like a Adventure editor for the Scott Adams text adventures or what?

 

 

[Wrathchild]

you shouldn't need one as existing adventures were portable due to the common format, so if you have a tool already then you should be able to provide something that can be reworked to the Atari target

[Shift838]

5 hours ago, Wrathchild said:

you shouldn't need one as existing adventures were portable due to the common format, so if you have a tool already then you should be able to provide something that can be reworked to the Atari target

the tool I have was designed only to be able to be used with the TI-99/4A and using a specific language only available on the TI-99 for adventures (APL).  It's not a datafile, it's a program that has all the data wrapped up in it and is ran from a cartridge that interprets the APL.

Edited March 6, 2023 by Shift838

[Wrathchild]

Then I'd recommend taking a look at ScottKit and see if there is a tool, or knock one up, to convert your source into that format.

[devwebcl]

On 3/5/2023 at 2:57 AM, Shift838 said:

Still looking for the answer for this topic.  Is there an equivalent program on the Atari 8 bits to be able to code adventures like the Scott Adams adventures (Adventureland, Pirate Adventure, Pyramid of Doom, etc).  On the TI-99/4A we had a Adventure Editor that allowed us to do it, but what about Atari?

 

 

Text-only adventures can be done with AdventureWriter http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-adventurewriter_126.html 

 

[EdwardianDuck]

If you're looking to have your game run on multiple vintage platforms, have you considered Inform6 + PunyInform + Puddle Build Tools? OK, that's going to give you an Infocom style of game rather than a Scott Adams style of game but at least once you've compiled the .Z3 (game files) using Inform6 + PunyInform, that's a game which can be run on many platforms, including the Atari 8 bits using the Puddle Build Tools to package the .Z3 file up with the relevant interpreter and disk format for each platform. This does mean you'd be writing your game on modern hardware, which might not be what you want to do, but at least the tools are still being maintained / developed.

[Shift838]

6 hours ago, EdwardianDuck said:

If you're looking to have your game run on multiple vintage platforms, have you considered Inform6 + PunyInform + Puddle Build Tools? OK, that's going to give you an Infocom style of game rather than a Scott Adams style of game but at least once you've compiled the .Z3 (game files) using Inform6 + PunyInform, that's a game which can be run on many platforms, including the Atari 8 bits using the Puddle Build Tools to package the .Z3 file up with the relevant interpreter and disk format for each platform. This does mean you'd be writing your game on modern hardware, which might not be what you want to do, but at least the tools are still being maintained / developed.

i have thought about that.  I will have to learn the Z-interpreter language.

[Wrathchild]

If you want to have a look at the Scott format then the attached contains the Crystal of Chaos example.

 

map & solution are textual support to the game's "code" in the "sck" source file.

 

this would be compiled to something along the lines of the "dat" file.

 

For the Atari target I transform that to the ".s" (assembler) source file that it linked with the interpreter to produce the "xex" binary.

 

 

crystal.zip

Edited March 6, 2023 by Wrathchild

[_The Doctor__]

Beings his brother was into Atari, forming Happy Computers line of drive enhancements and copiers... you would thinks all of the Atari building blocks would still be around for all things Adams/Atari.

Richard Adams Happy Computing, Scott Adams doing lots of software for his brother own machines and so on.

[mono]

@Wrathchild: I can't decompress this archive (using Ubuntu's unzip) because I got the message once I try:

$ unzip crystal.zip
Archive:  crystal.zip
  inflating: crystal.dat             
error: invalid zip file with overlapped components (possible zip bomb)

I got only crystal.dat with correct length (7487).

Listing of archive content is:

$ unzip -v crystal.zip
Archive:  crystal.zip
 Length   Method    Size  Cmpr    Date    Time   CRC-32   Name
--------  ------  ------- ---- ---------- ----- --------  ----
    7487  Defl:N     3041  59% 2020-10-21 00:27 6580db6f  crystal.dat
    2282  Defl:N     1159  49% 2023-03-06 20:05 4a0dbdc3  crystal.map
   23501  Defl:N     4792  80% 2020-10-25 05:03 868e0bdd  crystal.s
   13049  Defl:N     4208  68% 2023-03-06 20:05 a179855b  crystal.sck
     758  Defl:N      289  62% 2023-03-06 20:05 09c68bb5  crystal.solution
   15372  Defl:N     9061  41% 2020-10-25 07:26 3886ee3a  crystal.xex
--------          -------  ---                            -------
   62449            22550  64%                            6 files

Could somebody help me?

--------------------------------------------

Edit: Forgive me, I can deal with it using 7z tool:

$ 7z l crystal.zip

7-Zip [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=pl_PL.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,12 CPUs Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz (906EA),ASM,AES-NI)

Scanning the drive for archives:
1 file, 23382 bytes (23 KiB)

Listing archive: crystal.zip

--
Path = crystal.zip
Type = zip
WARNINGS:
There are data after the end of archive
Physical Size = 20819
Tail Size = 2563

   Date      Time    Attr         Size   Compressed  Name
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------  ------------------------
2020-10-21 01:27:05 ....A         7487         3106  crystal.dat
2023-03-06 21:05:45 ....A         2282         1159  crystal.map
2020-10-25 06:03:43 ....A        13459         3739  crystal.s
2023-03-06 21:05:45 ....A        13048         4320  crystal.sck
2023-03-06 21:05:45 ....A          758          289  crystal.solution
2020-10-25 08:26:39 ....A        16556         7374  crystal.xex
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------  ------------------------
2023-03-06 21:05:45              53590        19987  6 files

Warnings: 1

But it's absolutely strange that the file is bigger than it should be (look at Tail Size).

Neverthless now I have got all files with proper lengths.

Edited March 7, 2023 by mono

[scotty]

We talk a couple of times a month on Facebook.  Do you want me to ask him for you?  There is a multi platform freeware tool for creating text adventures, and it is very powerful (think Infocom ) and super simple to learn.  It is older, but still runs on Windows, Mac, Dos, ST and Amiga and maybe even a few more.  It is called the Adventure Game Toolkit.  It was shareware, but has been freeware for years.  Give it a go.  I would recommend AGT BIG (more characters, rooms etc...) now that it is free.

 

 

Edited March 7, 2023 by scotty

[Wrathchild]

4 hours ago, mono said:

@Wrathchild: I can't decompress this archive (using Ubuntu's unzip) because I got the message once I try:

Was a Windows own zip but also files were replaced with same named ones via drag-drop and so might explain the padding.

 

One thing I found thought is that the xex is linked with the Brian Howarth version of the interpreter rather than the Scott Adams one.

This highlights something in the example code (which is supposed to exercise the interpreter) in that currently it does not scan the actions again after a successful command.

Spoiler

This shows when you try and burn the woods when they are all present in one location as one will set the next alight. 
In the BH interpreter this isn't happening and hence you cannot get the honey from the bees.