Garry

This is great news. For anyone that hasn't done so, I strongly recommend reading the interview with author David Alzofon at the Atari Mania link. It's quite sad, but typical of the stories from that era. It's a pity that the original Synapse game with the sex and gore has been lost and we are now only left with a prototype of the heavily-modified Brøderbund G-rated version. Oh, well. Anything is better than nothing. Thanks to John Hardie of the National Videogame Museum for both the interview and for recovering the game.

Please ignore my previous request. I managed to finish the game without getting killed. There are seven rooms, but two of them can only be seen if you do something wrong that results in your demise.

I played the game tonight. I have only discovered five rooms, then got killed by the sewage. I suspect that might be the end, as there's a note from the authors that imply that's the case. Has anyone managed to get any further than that? I must warn you that it's reasonably hard if you're not a seasoned adventurer. There are also lots of bugs that will cause the game to lock up or crash the emulator.

The Kickstarter page includes a 16-minute video with voice-over and demonstrations of the game running on various platforms. This means that the "hacker" had also stolen the source code for the game, compiled it to run on various platforms, had intimate knowledge of PunyInform and the tool chain needed to compile to those platforms and stolen Chris' voice, as well. Yes, certainly a sophisticated scam.

Chris struck me as being a pretty friendly bloke, so let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He may have been the subject of a very sophisticated scam. He has contacted me to explain what happened. He has cancelled the Kickstarter campaign and deleted all the Facebook posts related to this campaign. If anyone finds any that have not been deleted, perhaps let him know. Let this be a warning to be very careful about supporting any Kickstarter campaign unless you are very sure that it is legitimate. Whover did this did a lot of research, had inside information about the game, knew what platforms the game could be supported on and went to a lot of trouble to create box art and feelies.

Really? That's interesting, if true. I sent you a message earlier today to ask what was going on.

For those that are interested, I can assure you that the game exists. How do I know? Because I spent two months working on it, answering questions, providing advice and sample code, testing and providing transcripts and bug reports on 9 beta versions, then completely rewriting it when the final version was still a disaster. At no point did the author tell me that he intended to make this a commercial game. I thought I was just doing a favour for a new author and he took advantage of my goodwill. If this sounds ethical to you, then by all means back it. Otherwise, send me a DM and I'll send you the z3 or z5 file of the version I wrote for free. It may still be a bit buggy, as I was getting sick of it by this time. The game itself is okay, but not great. You can get much better text adventures (including mine) for free.

I downloaded the game this morning. It looks interesting. I haven't played it yet, so can't pass comment on the game itself, but I was also interested in this bit: That's right up my alley. I could port it to Inform 6 using the PunyInform library, then compile it to z-code. In this way, it can run with any z-code interpreter on Linux, Mac, Windows, Android and iOS. I can also do a browser-based version and build disk images for Atari 8-bit, Atari ST and numerous other retro platforms. I'll send you a PM. I wouldn't be able to do this straight away, as I'm currently building enhanced versions of nine text adventures that were originally written by a professor of psychology in the early 1990s. That project is going quite well, but there's probably another month or two of work before all the games are finished and beta tested. In the meantime, anyone unfamiliar with my text adventures can see them at https://warrigal.itch.io/. Of the four published this year, one was in a game jam and the other three won the competitions they were entered in. Some are playable online and some need to be downloaded and played in a z-code interpreter. I plan to do post-comp versions of all these games and make them all playable online, as well as doing disk images for numerous retro platforms. This may take a while because of my other commitments, but I'm hoping to get them all done this year, together with some new games.

I should have mentioned that I also uploaded a map and solution for 'Gefahr im Kaufhaus' to CASA.

Of course! I'm always playing adventures, writing up maps and solutions for the Classic Adventure Solution Archive (CASA), and writing new games. I'm currently working on a game for SeedComp and have just started a brand new game for PunyComp #3, which only opened a few hours ago. These are both written in Inform 6 using the PunyInform library. For those that don't know, this allows you to write Infocom-like games with full-sentence parser. This time around, I'm hoping to publish them for web browser, multiple 8-bit and 16-bit platforms, as well as a downloadable z5 file to play in your favourite Z-code interpreter on Linux, Mac, Windows and mobile phone. For anyone that's interested in my existing games, you can play them all for free from my home page on itch.io. If all goes well, I plan to do new releases of all these games for multiple platforms throughout the year. Late last year, I ported a number of ZX Spectrum Quilled games to the Atari 8-bit using AdventureWriter. This was just for fun, but if there's any interest, I might make these more widely available. I have to play them and test them first to make sure there are no errors. However, with all my other projects, this is a low priority. Looking back through this thread, I see that I didn't post a download link for 'Gefahr im Kaufhaus'. For anyone that's interested, you can download the bug-fixed version for the Atari 8-bit and Amstrad CPC at CASA. I haven't released the English translation, as I was thinking of expanding the game and converting it to PunyInform.

Apologies to all. It looks like I got side-tracked on other things and forgot about this little project. I'll take another look at it this weekend. I never heard what happened about the scan of the Atari book. Does anyone know if that was ever finished?

I just spent a few minutes looking up the difference between crutch and crotch (as in the groin, not the other usage). What fun. It looks like crutch is predominantly UK English, whereas crotch is American. Geez, you learn a lot when you write adventures. My current game in progress has a pirate theme, so I've been researching things like rum, rowboats, sailing ships and lighthouses during the golden age of piracy.

You can actually do that, or at least try, and you'll get a sensible response.

'Crutch' is the correct spelling. Maybe it's an Aussie thing. Do you spell it as 'crotch'? As you have a knife, try cutting the apple.

For anyone that's genuinely interested in creating new adventures for the Atari 8-bit, you can certainly use AdventureWriter, but there are more modern alternatives available nowadays. These allow you to create an adventure on your Linux, Mac or Windows PC and deploy to a wide range of 8- and 16-bit platforms, including the Atari 8-bit and Atari ST. First off, there's DAAD. This is a souped up version of PAWS, which is itself a souped up version of The Quill/AdventureWriter. Unfortunately, this only supports Atari ST at the moment. See https://github.com/daad-adventure-writer/daad. Then there's PunyInform. This is a fine-tuned version of the standard Inform 6 library that makes it really easy to create Infocom-like games for a wide range of platforms, including the Atari 8-bit and Atari ST. It does have a steep learning curve, but it's worth the effort. I'm creating my first PunyInform game for PunyJam #1. The jam page has links to the library and there is now a PunyInform Discord server. Even if you're not interested in creating your own game, you may want to keep an eye on the jam for new games to play. If you just want to create adventures to play in a browser, then you should try Adventuron. See this topic for many Adventuron links, see the Adventuron games on my itch.io home page to see the sort of games you can create or play and rate the Text Adventure Literacy Jam submissions. For more on these and many, many other authoring systems, playing hints and tips, reviews, authoring questions and answers, competitions and more, see the intfiction forum.