This is a summary of the investigation Philip Richmond, Tim Gilberts (Gilsoft) and myself have been doing on the 8-Bit Text Adventures Facebook group recently.
'The Ballpoint' is an odd entry in the Spectrum archives. It's listed without any additional information or instructions, as a text adventure creation utility. What I'm going to post here is our analysis of the program which ends with a recommendation of an additional note to attach to the entry.
Outside of the archive sites we can't find any other references to 'The Ballpoint' or identify the origin of the file. The only reference Philip Richmond has found is on a hobby database site which attributes the system to Adventure Soft. https://www.hobbydb.com/catalog_items/b ... ure-system This seems incredibly unlikley, given the lack of other references, that this is the case.
So what is the Ballpoint?
It seems to be a Quill-like adventure writing system... that completely lacks any user-friendly menu system... almost as though it was designed for in-house use (we'll come back to that later).
But... when you actually play about with it, you find out that not only is it a Quill-like adventure writing system... but it uses the exact same menu system as the Quill! It works in the identical way to the Quill... using all the same systems, condacts, flags and database structures... It is basically the Quill... it's just been hacked about!
Here's some side by side screenshots of some of the menus...
Tim Gilberts of Gilsoft, produces of the Quill, did some quick code comparisons and found that the Ballpoint uses huge chunks of the Quill's code. He thinks it looks like it was dissembled and put back together as there are lots of strange gaps in the code with NOPs, that you would get from moving code and making patches without modern tools.
It seems to use a version C of the Quill as its basis as it accepts new condacts introduced in that version, features the additional menus R and S, and... just to prove things conclusively... also responds to the entry T, which in proper Quill C switched between the two split menu screens... There's no need for that command in 'Ballpoint' (it doesn't really have a proper menu) but it still works... it even does a CLS and a reprint of the text.
So, in conclusion... we would recommend this note being added to the entry for The Ballpoint...
The Ballpoint is an unauthorised, hacked version of the Quill, whose origin and purpose is unknown. Any additional features that it possesses are yet to be determined.