McDeath

Well, Jolt bbs seems dead. I haven't done much of anything with ACS since these posts. Things came up over the years. I did get a new laptop so I might fire up some win10 compatible emulators and recheck everything. Seems like these days my head is in a heavy fog and doing anything is a monumentous task. I've been eyeing some other old games like Aardvark's Dungeon of Death & Magdarr series. Someone kn gamebase64 uploaded a c64 version of DOD which I thought didn't exist. I've tried the vic-20 version and it was difficult to get my bearings since it looked so odd. I like to see new itchio games as they come out as demos and play them. Mostly, i garden now. cheers.

Now it isn't UFO abduction but UAP. I still recall the minecraft recreation of The City.

Update time: Man those release dates: Release: 1984 (C64) 1985 (Apple II) 1986 (Amiga) 1987 (MS-DOS) So, c64 was the flagship even though I swore it was AppleII. The rest of this post I might get some flak (esp the dos version as it is a pain and I had to package it the way I did rather than let others try to install it via floppy drive (but hey.. I have a usb floppy now so HUZZAH). I've been posting here and there on Melon64, Lemon64 and Jolt Country. I've been working on trying to piece together all of the old Electronic Arts Adventure Construction Set Data I can. And let me tell you, it has been a pain in the ass since sites have dropped off and there has been little in the way of people from the past caring about it. Oh there is the niche group which is great but all the old adventures in storage seem gone. Maybe, if I can get enough attention brought back to this then they can be rearchived and maybe even Stuart Smith will pop up and give a nod. So, I will put up some stuff I have worked on. So far it has been getting copies of every thing for emulators and dosbox. God this was a headache in and of itself as not everything was available and I had to go through hoops and old broken laptops with shitty floppy drives and destroyed OS's with barely DOS on them to finally getting a copy of an emulated AppleII version that wasn't entirely corrupt so I could MAKE adventure disks. From there it was hell getting ACS to finish adventures and figuring out the emulators. When I finally got all up and running to life-support standards I started to work on recording the sounds and music (as youtube had pretty iffy versions out). Once I did this and edited them via audacity and tried to clean them up the best I could considering they were entirely from emulation. (remember.. I can't program so that type of ripping and shit is beyond me). After that, I have been spending months creating tilesets for all the basic modules for each platform. A real shitter was that I had to draw all the appleII tiles by hand on ms-paint as the screenshot cut/paste and copy just looked like crap. I can't say the final result is all to great but it is clean for the pixels in png and that's what counts if one is going to use them in say ACK or some other builder program. I have created tilesetes, individual tiles, and comparison sheets. this took ages it seems but it puts me up to the next level of working on the data in each module. Eventually, I will get an additional manual written with the shortcuts, dos and don'ts, and problems with the engine. There are some things that annoy the crap out of me and one would be speed of creation and drawing inside the program. Lordy is that slow and tedious. I still have hopes to convert Stuart Smith's FRACA from appleII to an ACS module for each platform. I wouldn't mind turning the Amiga version in a go to for even the older graphics on the other platforms (ie playing the amiga version with appleII graphics). The amiga has the most color and extra sounds. I must say my cleaned up versions sound better and I'm more partial to the C64 musical score and sound in many cases. Maybe if I work on the ACK I can just bypass all that guff except for the purists who won't play or work on anything but ACS instead (yeah.. like there are many of those around.. ) So here's what I have for you: ACS Compilation version 1 This is what I started with and some of it is incomplete. It has some extras that I will eventually edit and try to clean up like old articles and manuals. Stuart Smith's Other Games Yeah, I included these for nostalgia purposes and if you wanted to try them out. I still have hopes to try and convert to acs but some of it is just impossible considering what the games entail and ACS just cannot do. ACS Music/Sound Archive After all my painstaking work I hope these came out OK. Some of the sounds are god awful and I don't know if that's the emulators or just the version period. Eh, it is what it is and back then it may have been great. ACS COMPLETE TILESETS I sure hope its complete. It is all the basic stuff in the types of modules for each of the 4 platforms (C64, AppleII, Amiga, DOS) (the modules being Land of Adventuria, Rivers of Light, Fantasy Set, Spy/Mystery Set, Science-Fiction Set, and Galactic Agent (Amiga Only)). I didn't include the modules out there yet or the latest entry from 2018 by a talented fellow. I will get to those later after all the basics are done. The Basic Files for the Modules on their respectable platforms A lot of this is repat of v1.0 but there is some clean up here and I included a disk so you can let ACS finish adventures on the AppleII. Basically you should be able to do all the basics here provided you have the correct emulators and dosbox. Its old shit and only oldies will give a damn but there ya go. I'll put up some screenshots of tilesets eventually or you can just download that and take a look for yourself. Maybe, I can get a website up and resurrect the ACS project. And for those who complain its too small then just copy it and look at it under your own viewing program. I spent a a hell of a lot of time to get to t here and the files are available to peruse as you see fit. I'm hardly done yet dissecting the games on all the platforms. It actually doesn't seem like much and I'm sure some programmer could have ripped these easily and produced similar tilesets and audio in no time flat. ......... I am not that person and I have to use the old ways of drawing on mspaint, copy/past, creating templates, recording and editing etc etc etc.

And i solved my appleII problem with the "let ACS finish adventure." The online disks were messed up for creation "make an adventure disk." Someone submitted to me fixed versions of those. But, it turns out the fixed version could NOT let ACS finish. On a bloody whim i used the originals and BAM!!! IT WORKED! Note: i depressed SCROLL LOCK to speed up the emulator; otherwise it would take 30-40 minutes to finish. Leaving your finger on scrolllock in applewin finishes the task in a minute or two. Neat stuff. When you mess with Lands of Adventuria or Rivers of Light you will notice weird stuff as names for the regions beyond whats in the game. So, still lots to do and probably no enthusiasts of ACS left on the planet. Ha.

I've still been going through all platforms. Having finished recording the music i am now creating tilesets. After that i'll go through the data of each version and hopefully create decent spreadsheets and documentation. Its a god awful slow process when i have other things going on. I did note one error on the apple disks. It seems it freezes when i try to let the appleII emulated version try and let ACS complete the adventure. Its a tad annoying as that means i can't gauge on how exact each version is for all functions. I may try another emulator. Its not a huge priority at this time. Finishing just tilesets will lift some of the stagnation i feel atm. At least its more than ive ever done with the program. I still hope to try and make FRACAS on ACS since they should be similar. There are some glaring things in each original i find annoying esp in graphics. I learned why there are character-monsters in the things category and its because when creating or using THINGS you can't use the character-creature pics on them. I believe you can only use from THINGS & TERRAIN. Annoying again and i bet ACK doesnt have that limitation. You cant really edit THINGS in rooms like characters-creatures. Its probably in the manual. I have noticed some graphics for particular adventures used in wiki and other sites. One is kingmaker that changes the empty blue to a grassland and changes the sky blue background to a light green. I cant find that amiga module. https://openretro.org/amiga/adventure-construction-set The wikipedia has another example i scratch my head at as well. 50 submitted adventures lost in spaces d never converted to emulation. The adventureconstructionset.com site is dead and nowjust an ad.

On the one way portal I mentioned in LOA; its a bug of sorts. So if you create a one way portal and it has its own activated long message you get the error or freeze during construction phase if you examine it In play the one way portal with long message works flawlessly; just dont examine it during construction or it WILL CRASH and FREEZE the emulator.

I originally found baber64s medialink files by accident while going through my dos and AppleII crisis. Then I found his melon64 thread: melon.64 ACS: Chan's Ambition (2018) I also encourage people to look at the jolt country bbs Thats where I had my own stuff, via posters there, aid in d64 images of my acs stuff and my Pas stuff. Ive mentioned other interests like the ataris own construction kit ACS v1.0 adventure creator adventure creation kit Theres the dos ACK and Azalta as well. Azalta has the issue no one has the adventure writer to construct adventures or it hasnt been uploaded. The developer from the 90s might have it but so far we are left with only the adventure the cult of the raven or whatever its called.

So far there are a lot of differences. And we will just compare these two platforms since they are the most similar. Sound is far better on c64. The artwork was always a bit annoying. Technically they are 16x16 pixel sprites I guess but while drawing you draw 2wide x 1high. Thats an odd way to draw and difficult to make something. The old CRT monitors and TVs also do some bleeding on the display so you better be an artist with patience. The commodoree art size thus in the game is thus an odd paint brush for 8 strokes wide but 16 stokes tall. Ah, the appleII is even more odd. It always bleeds a bit and the actual strokes it allows is 7wide by 16tall. You get 1 less stroke entirely. That technically makes its pixels 14x16. How it manages to come together is beyond me but it works and you will notice the bleeding even in the emulator on any setting. Fun note: usually you get only 4 colors to choose at a time but each can be of any of 8 possibilities (black, white, yellow, red, green, purple, blue, cyan). Apple might be different. Here is the FUN thing to know: boot up the Rivers of light and construct edit it. Go to graphics and notice you have a base of 6 COLORS TO CHOOSE FROM! Hi ho ho! It would take some time but if you were to reconstruct the fantasy, sci-if, and spy/mystery from scratch then Id just erase everything but graphics from the ROL on appleII. If you have recorded all the monsters/things/terrain/graphics from the other sets then its just a matter of constructing them. I think itd be well worth the effort to try and I may do that since 6 is better than 4. Sadly, c64 ROL only uses 4 colors. I give an edge of gfx to c64 but that little appleII cheat is nice. I wonder if any of the entries in the 80s realized that. The tilesets: AppleII had pretty complete tilesets and only a few graphics in the 3 main construction genres was duplicated. Im not sure why youd need 2 darth Vader images or thieves but its a waste and any constructor will replace them. All in all most spaces are filled up with only a few BLACK EMPTY images for you to tailor. The c64 is another matter. Not only do you get duplicates but you have far more BLACK EMPTY spaces. Fantasy is missing oh 4-5 and sci-fi is worse. The most LAZINESS is the spy/mystery. OMFG! Not only do the images look lazy compared to apple but you are missing about 1/2 the creatures and there are duplicates as well. Terrible. Tilesets go to AppleII. (Art is comparable but both could use work) Using the emulators I found the Apple win was way faster than ccs64 or winvice. Hell, it was faster than Amiga winaue and almost as fast as dosbox. APPLE WIN here for speed. I couldnt get 2 drive emulation to work for acs on winvice64. Maybe Im an idiot in this department. Everything else looks pretty good. I will note that if you erase everything like things and monsters then let acs complete the adventure it will create all the creatures in the friendly category with no name and odd stats including non existent weapons. Its basically an error. I did this to see what it would create. It generally only creates treasures for things and Im recording exactly what. Im also recording random region names and room names. Theres some nifty ones and I suspect each theme has different ones. Itll be good to compile the list for fast fun room naming. There is a winvice error I ran into on LOA via a long message portal between regions posted here: https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=69571&start=0 Im not sure but maybe the landing spot is on the time machine and causing an internal loop error. I need to check ccs64. I hope its not just a general error for long message portals between regions as that limits an already limited construction set. Ill check play an adventure as well. I will construct an adventure and check as well. Its all very time consuming. I need to make a zip of only the adf, dsk, d64 etc images. It was a little harsh to pile on baber64 as he spent quite a bit of time on his adventures and is a true enthusiast to ACS. Ive only checked his tilesets since graphics and sound of ACS resonates with me. He used and modified the fantasy theme set. Hes got some good tiles as well. I need to post some blown up images of all the tiles for all platforms. Im in no hurry and I want to do it as correctly as possible for my limited skill set. Cheers

Fracas was the first of the group but I believe only on AppleII. I was hoping Kroah would have deconstructed this game and fracas like he did for ROH. I want to try to reconstruct on ACS. One could probably do a closer job with ACK. Tbh, I’d like to see a more windows based win7,8,10 ACK. I realize there are other construction sets like rpg maker but it seems heard more to JRPG style and not the tone or pacing like ACS. i wish I could find the Azalta creator and get the construction set for that. Combat is odd and even has party based combat.

I need to properly thank everyone who helped and I think I included a txt thanks in there. For Apple II I MEGA THANKS qkumba on the google groupsfor appleII.

Ok heres a few things cobbled together for ease. ACS compilation v1.0 And just for fun: Stuart Smith's Other Games

Hopefully Tuesday I upload a basic zip. Those usb floppy drives are AWESOME! I might look to see if there is a 5.25. Usb floppy drive.

Thanks for the help. Another guy from another site sent me a fresh cracked side 1 of acs main program disk. It seems to be the bad one usually. I was able to make full sets brand new for Apple emulation. Ill check yours out but we have them now. My current problem is getting my fresh Dos sets on 3.5 to a hard drive. I exhausted all my physical resources as I only have a few computers. First I was uncertain I could make the disks. I pulled out an ancient Toshiba laptop I kept and it didnt work. I/o error. The drive was stripped clean. So, I pulled out an old win98 boot disk and that enabled me to get to dos prompt. From there I was able to format fresh diskettes and make new adventures of each set. The USB port didnt work and windows never started because of failed drive. So next step. I hoped library had some 3.5 drives on their computers. NO! I realized I had one more very ancient win95/98 desktop pc. It had 2 USB ports. Windows worked but I have no small thumb drives it can recognize or the driver disks. I purchased some usb 3.5 modern portable drives. They might arrive next week. Maybe Ill figure out how to change virtual drives in d-fed by then. At least I now have apple2, c64, and Amiga fresh adventure disks. Man, pretty annoying and odd no archived made disks. When I am done there sure as hell will be. Im going to try to be as thorough as I can in this. Once I have solid fresh adventures for all platforms Ill release them to the cloud. As I add content and eventually work my way to ACKS I will expand the zipor make other zips.

So I tried one last time from some fresh disks from jolt country. Again nada same error. Another oddity is I cant switch disks on ULTIMA 3 to the player disk. Just hangs. Now I can make working disks for Sword of Kadash. And it looks like all version of the 3 adventures for acs made have been modified so they are NOT authentic masters. I still need fresh made authentic master disks of: LAND OF ADVENTURIA RIVERS OF LIGHT FANTASY SET SCIENCE FICTION SET SPY/MYSTERY SET I again ask if someone can upload freshly made master .dsk of these then please do. Otherwise, I guess they are lost except to actual machine owners of appleII for however long they continue to work.