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what programming language was used for the hobbit (1982)


Jackel192

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then can someone give the source code? i have no idea what to do with disassembled code

To translate the facepalms... the source code was never released because it was, at the time, a commercial product and nobody in their right mind goes around distributing the source for something they're selling since it can be used to recreate said product or produce competing products.

 

You don't have the skills to port The Hobbit, it's Z80 machine code in it's original form or 6502 machine code for the C64 versions (there are two if memory serves) and, without a solid working knowledge of both the source and target platforms (because you'd have to understand how the source machine handles it's bitmapped screen just to start with), porting something just isn't going to happen.

 

A slight edit to add that porting code is significantly harder than writing something from scratch. The sensible thing to do as a beginner would be to pick one platform, learn to program it and write your own games. 6502 and the Atari 8-bit are a good starting point and, if you ask sensible questions people will be able to help... assuming you haven't annoyed them already with threads like this one to the point they won't. Then once you have something worth protecting you'll probably have a bit more knowledge of what that entails to actually do it.

Edited by TMR
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The Hobbit was also launched for the Apple ][, BBC Micro and Oric 1, to mention a few 6502 based systems to run head first into. Actually the Beeb had two versions according to Wikipedia, the disc version with graphics and the tape version without graphics. Possibly the latter might be the "easiest" task to port to the Atari 8-bit, a text only adventure game.

 

Then again if someone is seriously interested and willing to learn something about converting binary code, there should be plenty of much easier games to practise on than a 32K+ adventure game.

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Polish is hard for non-Poles, but if you learn it being a kid as your mother's tongue it is not so bad at all, right? ;)

 

But let us not go out of the scope of this thread. It was said that the game is available in C. The C language is something everyone knows or, if not, it is certainly something everyone can learn, as it is for sure about 100 times easier than Polish. ;)

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The question is which C compiler is suitable for the Atari 8-bit. I know about CC65, perhaps there is a version of LCC too that can be used. If the source code would contain complex constructs that need rewriting to get it to compile, perhaps having a go at hacking one of the existing 6502 versions of The Hobbit anyway would be less work. Supposedly you'd have at least 5-6 different versions of the game to choose from, counting different releases on the Beeb and the C64. It is not within my interests, but the text only version for the Beeb perhaps is most straightforward to work with as you don't have any graphics subsystem to worry about. How difficult it is to plug in graphics to the game afterwards is another matter.

Edited by carlsson
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  • 1 year later...

I would be interested in seeing this ported to the 8bits. This would be a fun project to see come to fruition. Instead of the Hobbit you could call it the dragon and the ring of power. Im only just starting my text adventure venture. Id love to see a new homebrew released on a 5.25 floppy or 4.

Edited by adamchevy
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  • 2 weeks later...

https://github.com/RevCurtisP/C02

 

C02 is a simple C-syntax language designed to generate highly optimized code for the 6502 microprocessor. The C02 specification is a highly specific subset of the C standard with some modifications and extensions

 

The compiler generates assembly language code, currently targeted to the DASM assembler.

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Is there any significance to the file extension .dane ? Google just says data, but I'm wondering if .txt is closer to the truth looking at the files. My Slovak is pretty rusty and doesn't seem to work with Polish.

 

pl2en("dane") == "data"

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Aren't there Atari compatible tools or frameworks to create your own text adventures, with or without graphics? Something like Graphic Adventure Creator, The Quill etc? I mean if you have a full map of The Hobbit with all objects, puzzles and so on, you might be able to reimplement it in a such tool sooner than you get the C + Lisp or for that matter disassembling one of the 6502 versions working. Also if you're going to make changes to the game in order to circumvent copyrights and trademarks, you might as well design your own adventure game from scatch, perhaps inspired by The Hobbit without cloning it.

 

Edit: Ok, I found this about The Quill: http://devwebcl.atarionline.pl/quill/quill.html

Edited by carlsson
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Ilmenit put together a framework for adventure games on the Atari.

 

Here's the readme, zip, and 4 PDF tutorial docs. I'm not sure if he did any work on it further than this...

 

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

 

Adventure Studio is a framework to create adventure games.
You can write the game in a modern IDE and compile it both to modern PC and to 8bit Atari, using the same code!
This is a demo version, so don't expect stability or speed.
To access your Inventory move cursor down in the Atari version and press the right mouse button in Windows version.
The Windows version has an option turned on to show clickable areas.
The API is as much object oriented as both C language and 8bit allow.
To create a game you don't need a great programming skills nor knowledge about the Atari.
All you have to do is to define rooms, clickable areas, objects, containers, actions and of course to draw the graphics.
The current engine supports files created by Quantizator (gr. 15, different colors in every line).
The API is full of useful functions and will be extended in the future to support sounds and music (Raster Music Tracker).
The full source code with the sample game will be available as soon as I clean the code.
best regards,
Jakub 'Ilmenit' Debski
Edited by MrFish
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