DAAD for Spectrum Next, among others

[Uto]

Hi all!

As some of you already know, DAAD was the name of the engine Tim Gilberts made for Spanish company Aventuras AD. Largely based in previous engines made at Gilsoft, as the Professional Adventure Writing System, and The Quill, DAAD has the advantage of being able to target multiple 8 bit and 16 bit machines from the same adventure source database/code.

DAAD also allowed being modified via some kind of add-ons which were, back in the day, called "EXTERNs".

So I decided more than one year ago to create a "extern" able to provide DAAD with raster graphics, instead of old vectorial ones, which can be loaded from disk. Then I have also added some more features, like allowing saving games to floppy disk.

Well, job was done, but we found using DAAD is a bit more complicated than using PAWS/Quill, as there is no GUI (it's all coded in a source file). But the biggest issue is you have to learn how to compile, and then how to add files to the specific platform format (i.e. DSK for Spectrum +3 or CPC, D64 for Commodore 64, etc.)

So what have I done? I've created "DAAD Ready!", a package which includes all the required tools, and what is more important: it includes prepared BAT files which make all the work for you (compile your game, put all files in the .DSK, .D64, etc. files, and launch emulator)

If you need a sample, just get a copy of The Curse of Rabenstein, by Stephan Vogt here:

https://8bitgames.itch.io/rabenstein

Having some knowledge of PAWS/Quill programming is a plus, but not required. DAAD is easy to learn, as much as PAW/Quill.

The package can create games for Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Amstrad PCW, Spectrum 48K/128K tape (text only), Spectrum +3, Spectrum 48K with DIvIDE/MMC+ESXDOS, Spectrum Next, ZX-Uno, Commodore Plus/4, MSDOS, MSX1 and MSX2. DAAD is also able to build games for Amiga and Atari ST, but sadly I wasn't able to find command line tools able to manage Amiga or ST disk images, so automation was impossible.


DAAD Ready! 1.0

You will need 190Mb disk space in your PC. Open the "instructions.html" file for more details.

For DAAD support I am in several Telegram groups, together with others that may help. Please notice DAAD Ready! is prepared to build adventures in English, I'm preparing another package ready for Spanish, as it's the other language supported by DAAD.

- "8 bit text adventures" - English
- "Retro Aventuras" - Spanish