Spectrum Computing

Ralf wrote: ↑Wed Aug 07, 2019 3:30 pm And another thing. I like games for Zx Spectrum. I like this distinct look, clever taking attributes into account.
But a text game without graphics looks and feel exactly the same on all systems. It doesn't matter if it's Speccy, C64 or modern PC.
So even if you play it on Spectrum, it's exactly the same experience as you'd play it anywhere. And it makes a lot of charm go away for me.

I would completely disagree with this and say that they really, really don't (in a large amount of cases) feel exactly the same on all systems as they do on the Spectrum.

Text-only games can be, and often are, incredibly distinctive on the Spectrum. It's one of the only platforms that you can instantly pick out in a batch of screenshots. Particularly PAWed Spectrum text adventures which often feature unique coloured text compared to homegrown efforts elsewhere.

The amount of text on a line and the amount of text you can fit on a screen at once, not to mention memory restrictions, can greatly shape the form and content of a text adventure. There's a rhythm to the text. A different pace to the delivery on the Speccy, simply because of the screen resolution that you have access to using the homebrew tools. A Quilled or PAWed game is a completely different beast to something like an Infocom or Level 9 adventure. And a Spectrum-produced Quilled or PAWed game, if done well, is also very distinctive.

I've written (and ported) text adventure games across a whole host of 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. I've played, playtested and reviewed hundreds of 8-bit text adventures over the past thirty years or so. And I can firmly say, there is nothing quite the same as playing a text adventure on the ZX Spectrum. Spectrum homegrown text adventures lose something, imho, when they're ported onto other machines.

(Getting back to Adventuron... Chris has cleverly managed to capture a lot of the distinct Spectrum-ness so if you want to recreate a Spectrum-like game in that engine, you can.)

I'd certainly agree with 8BiTag that adventure games on the Spectrum have a unique feel, which I adore.

Dinosaur Island DX (on the Spectrum) to me is not just plain old text, it uses colour to draw attention to important details on the screen, and to make the game look more visually appealing without graphics. It'll never look as visually appealing as a game with (good) graphics, but text is not just text as much as a car is not just a car. The quality of the content, style, layout, and flow, is really important.

This converter doesn't carry across graphics because it's not a trivial task to carry bitmap graphics into PAW, as PAW never supported bitmap graphics back in the day (directly), only vector graphics. I'm not arguing against graphics in adventure either, after all the Adventuron version of Dinosaur Island DX and The Cave of Magic have them - and some of my favourite adventures had amazing graphics (Robin of Sherwood, Gremlins, The Famous Five).

If you want to write (and play) a game, on the Spectrum, with images, you can take the source code produced by Adventuron 2 PAW and splice it with some location graphics edited on PAW. Or just write in PAW proper, and use the graphics editor there.

Re: the graphics discussions, I'm split on this. While I don't think they're necessary (Level 9's offerings came along oozing with atmosphere), I remember being excited by The Hobbit when I saw a new location graphic appear.

I also liked the Speccy styled graphics of Dinosaur Island (which is pretty good BTW).

I've been playing around with this and it's very impressive.
If I was to create a game with it, how easy would it be to convert it to the spectrum?
Would I be better off sticking with PAWs?

RWAC wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 9:18 pm I've been playing around with this and it's very impressive.
If I was to create a game with it, how easy would it be to convert it to the spectrum?
Would I be better off sticking with PAWs?

If you know PAWs and your real ultimate intention is to create a game for the Spectrum then, yes, you'd be better off sticking with PAWs. (I'd actually recommend using inPAWs. personally, for a quicker development loop.)

Moving from Adventuron to PAWs is perfectly doable, though. (I've ported across several games now) And Adventuron is a great tool to develop a game with. You just have to be aware of potential issues with memory and the possible need to recode elements not yet supported by the Adventuron to PAWs conversion process. (You also do really need to know a bit about PAW, because you'll always need to tidy up and fix little issues in any converted game)

These are the Adventuron games I've ported across to the Spectrum...
http://8bitag.com/games/deer-creek.html
http://8bitag.com/games/trolls-revenge.html (I even jury-rigged a way of getting the graphics into this one)
http://8bitag.com/games/hoppit2.html

Using the Adventuron to PAW tool is certainly a lot easier than having to manually convert an Adventuron game to PAW, which is what I did for John Wilson's Ramsbottom Smith and Behind Closed Doors 7.

Things have moved on a bit since this thread was first posted, by the way.

There is now an Adventuron to DAAD tool, which has allowed Chris to port a version of Escape from Dinosaur Island DX to the Spectrum +3 that includes the graphics... See...
https://adventuron.itch.io/dinoisland
...for download.

I tried the online version. It is very good and simple.
Convertion tool "Adventuron 2 DAAD/InPaws" doesn't work though.
It shows error for "at" and "msg" (Non expected attribute provided : msg)

Is there a workarround? What is the simplest way on making an adventure on PC (Win/Linux) and converting it to ZX?

firelord wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 8:32 pm I tried the online version. It is very good and simple.
Convertion tool "Adventuron 2 DAAD/InPaws" doesn't work though.
It shows error for "at" and "msg" (Non expected attribute provided : msg)

This is a very old thread... over two years old now! (Well, nearly three years since the starting post!) It'd probably be worth checking with Chris what the current status of the tool is and which specific build of Adventuron you need.

Which version of Adventuron are you using and what are you trying to convert to DAAD? You have to specifically work in 8-bit mode to create a compatible adventure.

Is there a workarround? What is the simplest way on making an adventure on PC (Win/Linux) and converting it to ZX?

Adventuron *is* nice and easy to use but you will always need to do some post-export editing to make a really decent Spectrum game, imo. There is a Discord group if you have questions and an active community in various places. Chris is also reachable on Facebook and Twitter.

Other options for coding on PC to make Spectrum text adventures include using inPAWs with a text editor (such as Visual Studio Code) to create a PAWs game. Or to use DAADready! and a text editor (again, such as Visual Studio Code) to create a DAAD game.

8BitAG wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 9:12 pm
Other options for coding on PC to make Spectrum text adventures include using inPAWs with a text editor (such as Visual Studio Code) to create a PAWs game. Or to use DAADready! and a text editor (again, such as Visual Studio Code) to create a DAAD game.

Thanks for the reply
I know it was an old thread but It seemed an active project.
I tried the online https://adventuron.io/classroom/ . Copy/pasted code (with 8-bit compatibility checked) and the online convertor to inPaws/DAAD (which seems old) showed the error I posted above . Is there another more recent tool for doing a conversion?

Adventuron scripting language is extremely easy to use. InPaws is a bit more messed.

The process is -as I understood- you create a file with your script and then you convert it (using InPaws/DAAD) to a TAP that contains data for ZX version of Paws.

So, my 3 options for PC are Adventuron/InPaws/DAADReady . This saves me a lot of searching time

firelord wrote: ↑Wed May 25, 2022 6:28 am I know it was an old thread but It seemed an active project.

It is. Lots of games being made with Adventuron and there's just been another successful TALP game jam where the winner was an Adventuron game.

I tried the online https://adventuron.io/classroom/ . Copy/pasted code (with 8-bit compatibility checked) and the online convertor to inPaws/DAAD (which seems old) showed the error I posted above . Is there another more recent tool for doing a conversion?

What are you trying to convert? Ticking the "8-bit compatibility" mode, only means that any code you create from that moment onwards has access restricted to just features that can be used in an 8-bit game.

If you're copying and pasting code then you are not necessarily pasting code that is suitable for porting to an 8-bit machine.

Adventuron scripting language is extremely easy to use. InPaws is a bit more messed.

As an experienced user of both, having produced many finished games with each of them, I'd say that both languages are equally easy to use.

If you are creating a ZX Spectrum game with Adventuron then you are going to ultimately end up with code in PAWs/DAAD format, so it is really useful to actually understand how an inPAWs/DAADready source file works as well, anyway.

The process is -as I understood- you create a file with your script and then you convert it (using InPaws/DAAD) to a TAP that contains data for ZX version of Paws.

Yes, you're either translating the Adventuron commands to transpose them into a source file for PAWs (via InPaws) or a source file for DAAD (via DAADready).

So, my 3 options for PC are Adventuron/InPaws/DAADReady . This saves me a lot of searching time

There are other popular options, such as PunyInform. There are also other less used tools such as Lantern or AWS.

Which system to use really depends on what type and size of game you want to make, and what sort of features you want in the finished product.

Thanks for the detailed answer.

I do not want to make anything fancy. My target would be a ZX Spectrum simple game (I use adventuron because the online development enviroment is great and very easy to use & understand).
I have used ZX Paws in the past for a CSSCGC game entry. I have completely forgotten who it worked. So, now instead of re-learning Paws I thought it might be simpler to begin with my PC and then move to ZX.

I copy/pasted code because -as I understood- the way to convert Adventuron script was by the online converter.

I guess I must abandon Adventuron and go from the start to InPaws code.

I copy/pasted code because -as I understood- the way to convert Adventuron script was by the online converter.

Oh, perhaps that's the issue then. Like I said, this is a *very* old thread. The export to DAAD/PAWs is now done through Adventuron itself, rather than the standalone converter, as far as I'm aware.

My question was (and is still) what is the source of the code that you're trying to convert? Did you follow the tutorial to make an 8-bit compatible adventure?

The tutorials take you through all the processes of making a simple game and exporting it for 8-bit platforms. Obviously, as Adventuron is in active development, things change so the tutorials might not exactly line up.

See...
https://adventuron.io/documentation/8bit.html

...for the end part of the process; once you've coded a simple game in the 8-bit compatibility mode.

Edit: I've just tried out one of the demo games included in that tutorial, and it works fine...



(Didn't see a PAW export option in the menu, but DAAD export worked okay... Although I prefer PAWs, DAAD is a better option for export from Adventuron anyway as Uto has added all sorts of nice little load from disk/128K code extensions that mean you don't need to worry as much about the size of the game or the number of messages.)

ok thanks.
I guess the problem was the outdated online converter.
I'll check again