The Ballpoint

[8BitAG]

"The Ballpoint" https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=7945

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.

✓ Reviewed

[8BitAG]

But what might the 'Ballpoint' actually be and who was it used by?

It's hard to know without the source of the file and knowing how it came to be added to the archives.

What follows is pure conjecture and shouldn't be added to its entry until any proof is found...

We do know that several games are credited as "being produced using heavily modified versions of the Quill". Could this be one of them?

The Ballpoint features a familiar font as its default... I've typed in some entries into the Ballpoint database to make it easier to compare...





Could this be the program that Smart Egg used for the Serf's Tale and went on to modify further for Rigel's Revenge?

Their interviews (and related news pieces) always said they moved on from the Quill and developed their "own" system... despite the Spectrum archive sites listing their games as being produced using 'heavily modified versions of the Quill' - something that has been copied and pasted around the Internet so often that it's now treated as a fact, despite no source being given. On the contrary, in fact, many references to Smart Egg in magazines, contain quite disparaging comments about the Gilsoft system.

Is this their "own" system? In which case, that's really stretching the definition of "own", even with some of the clever three word parser and graphics stuff their later games had. It still has the Quill at its heart.

Given that Holy Joystick and Federation started out as fully Quilled games, before being made into "Smart Egg" titles... perhaps they didn't move that far away from the Quill? Or perhaps this 'Ballpoint' is completely unrelated and the font is just a coincidence.

It's hard to tell, without a lot of further analysis of the code. I'm keen to find out more. As is Tim, who says he's not bothered about the copyright issues after all this time, but thinks its more important to find out the story behind the games.

[druellan]

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.

VERY interesting stuff. I'll love to have more and more of this kind of things incorporated into the database. I know is not a wiki, but I believe tech notes, comments and trivia really enrich the data.

[Einar Saukas]

The only reason I can imagine for removing menu text is to free memory, in order to allow bigger adventures. That's a hack that would make a lot of sense.

Is this the case?

[8BitAG]

The only reason I can imagine for removing menu text is to free memory, in order to allow bigger adventures. That's a hack that would make a lot of sense.

Is this the case?

That's what I intiially thought... but not really... as this is what is shown when you choose the "free memory" option... a version from the Quill is shown afterwards as a comparison...





(that's from a version A Quill, with some of the default text in, so might vary a little)

So, I'm guessing they might have been trying to make room for other stuff... such as improved graphics routines... that may or may not have been added using an additional program.

[8BitAG]

Quill version C bytes remaining, for a fairer comparison, although it does include a chunk of default location (and other text) which the Ballpoint doesn't have...



The Ballpoint may well have other stuff preloaded in (such as character sets) which may be giving a false impression of the initial free memory space.

[Einar Saukas]

Any chance there's more free memory left, but they didn't bother to modify the space calculation routine accordingly?

That's still the most likely explanation...

[8BitAG]

Any chance there's more free memory left, but they didn't bother to modify the space calculation routine accordingly?

That's still the most likely explanation...

There's not really that much menu text for it to make much of a difference in terms of freeing up space.

It would be interesting to find out what features 'Ballpoint' adds, though. There must be some. I did find it accepts the condact LIST... but have no idea what it does. Without documentation it's hard to guess what other new condacts might be.

[8BitAG]

Could just be another coincidence but I just noticed that the "press any key" prompt in Ballpoint matches the one in Rigel's Revenge too!

[Gio]

Well, this thread was a fascinating read. I figured it would end up as a Quill hack, disappointing as that is. Still, I am curious to see what further analysis can uncover.

[Ralf]

Good research!

[Morkin]

Interesting - I can understand why people might want to tweak the Quill engine a bit - I personally thought it was quite flexible but there may have been features people wanted to add or change.

From what I understand, Gilsoft were obviously aware that people would want to produce commercial games using their product and it was only a polite request that The Quill be credited, not a stipulation.

I don't know why writers of 'tweaked-Quill' games would mind that their games were associated with the tool, or claim that they'd written a new game engine though. Perhaps there were so many Quill'd games written by independent authors, they wanted to distance themselves from them? Obviously this is all pure conjecture..

[8BitAG]

Interesting - I can understand why people might want to tweak the Quill engine a bit - I personally thought it was quite flexible but there may have been features people wanted to add or change.

There were quite a few things that the Quill was lacking. Many were added in later updates to the engine and in the expansions, such as Illustrator and the Patch. The Spectrum version came out first so early games made with that initial "serial A" are very similar... it was only in later releases, for example, that you could customise the standard system messages.

I've put a whole document together that compares the various releases of the Quill on the Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, C64, BBC/Electron, QL, Oric 1, Atari, Apple II and IBM PC... http://8bitag.com/info/documents/Quill- ... erence.pdf (some of those versions were produced in the US as the Adventure Writer).

From what I understand, Gilsoft were obviously aware that people would want to produce commercial games using their product and it was only a polite request that The Quill be credited, not a stipulation.

There is a difference between not crediting Gilsoft, and not crediting Gilsoft and slagging their adventure system off in the press while secretly still using huge chunks of it in the background to power what you are passing off as your own system. If that is indeed what was going on.

I don't know why writers of 'tweaked-Quill' games would mind that their games were associated with the tool, or claim that they'd written a new game engine though. Perhaps there were so many Quill'd games written by independent authors, they wanted to distance themselves from them? Obviously this is all pure conjecture..

At the time of the Smart Egg games there was quite a stigma attached to games that were produced with the Quill. A big publisher would often want to disassociate themselves from that. There are various games that are produced using "heavily modified versions" or, as in the case of Dodgy Geezers and Terrormolinos, where the Quill was used to develop the game on before it was "recoded".

Smart Egg undoubtedly added some clever features to their games... the graphics in the remade Golden Eggcup, for instance... a great improvement on the line-and-fill technique of the Illustrator, in terms of speed at least.

*this thread is from December 2018, by the way... but it's nice to have a bit of extra feedback.

[Morkin]

Heheh - 2018 is still fairly recent

Quill, Illustrator and Patch - the holy trinity of adventure games..! Oh, and the Press. The holy... err... Quaternity?? I think the Patch must have been responsible for the appearance of telephones as usable objects for most of the following year's adventure games...

There is a difference between not crediting Gilsoft, and not crediting Gilsoft and slagging their adventure system off in the press while secretly still using huge chunks of it in the background to power what you are passing off as your own system. If that is indeed what was going on.

Absolutely - very cheeky, even Harry Price kept quiet when it came to bragging about his game engine...

A big publisher would often want to disassociate themselves from that. There are various games that are produced using "heavily modified versions" or, as in the case of Dodgy Geezers and Terrormolinos, where the Quill was used to develop the game on before it was "recoded".

The draw for me at the time for a game like Terrormolinos was the impressive graphics. When you play the game, it's pretty Quill-like. But hey, it's a text adventure, The Quill parser is fine, what else do you need? Simple and effective.

I never recalled adventure gamers being dismissive about Quill-made games so yes, perhaps 'programmer pride'... Interesting that I suppose in later times adventure game engines, particular point & click ones, became quite popular (e.g. SCUMM) and nobody batted an eyelid. I think it became more apparent that the quality in this sort of game comes from the atmosphere and puzzles. (Rather than hunger, thirst and darkness anyway!)

[Jbizzel]

Fascinating research and analysis - thank you.

[catventure]

Hi,
I'm a big fan of text adventures and Quill/PAW games.
Agreed - it is Interesting about the "ballpoint"- so thanks for this topic.

I'm still occasionally searching to locate the advert I discovered and copied from some old text adventure magazine for a Quill add-on called "The Enhancer". Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted the image file by mistake and then later could not remember where on earth I had seen the advert...!!
The advert definitely existed though and it WAS for "The Enhancer". Added new commands to Quill.
All I can remember was it was a block ADVERT in an Xmas or New Year issue of some old mag online (might have been disk mag) around 1990. May not even have been an 8-bit magazine either!
I would welcome If anyone has any knowledge of it, or purchased it or can provide the advertisement.
Although I have tried hard and done a lot of searching over the last 2 years - I have never came across it again.
Please keep in mind and If you come across any info please post here.
If we can find the seller address on the ad - there may be a copy of this utility still existing.

Thanks,
catventure.

[8BitAG]

Just a note to say that The Ballpoint in the archives has now been confirmed as a version of the Smart Egg "system" by Harvey Lodder, as he was the one who donated it.

[catventure]

Great stuff! Thanks for update and the solution to the mystery.

[8BitAG]

As I've posted on other channels, I imagine that what is in the archives as The Ballpoint is just a section of the Smart Egg system... As it's basically just a hacked-about Quill C, it seems likely that it was just used by the authors to create a Quill-like database that was probably loaded into something else (or even hand modified) where the compression, graphics code & custom interpreter was added... Their equivalent of the Patch/Press/Illustrator. Perhaps it even had it's own codename... The Stamper?

There are still a lot of unknowns. Presumably they had a system for getting the database across to the C64 and Amstrad CPC for those versions.

[druellan]

Just a note to say that The Ballpoint in the archives has now been confirmed as a version of the Smart Egg "system" by Harvey Lodder, as he was the one who donated it.

Can this be added as an alias and a note to the The Ballpoint entry?

[druellan]

I'm still occasionally searching to locate the advert I discovered and copied from some old text adventure magazine for a Quill add-on called "The Enhancer". Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted the image file by mistake and then later could not remember where on earth I had seen the advert...!!
The advert definitely existed though and it WAS for "The Enhancer". Added new commands to Quill.

I was taking a look on the magazines archived on arvhive.org, there are many "Enhancers", still nothing for The Quill, but here is the link: https://archive.org/search.php?query=%2 ... 22&sin=TXT

[catventure]

Hi druellan,

Thanks for your reply. I have found nothing also using their search facility.
Someday I hope to re-find it though.
All I can remember is that it was in a supplemental or extra adventure ads section for the New Year near the end of the mag - but cannot remember the mag title or year. Size is about 3" x 3" square. Feeling it was a a paper-based adventure dedicated fanzine/mag, possibly 1990-ish.
Oh well - maybe it will resurface one day.

catventure.