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The Press

Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:37 am
by Blerkotron
Does anyone know how to use Gilsoft's "The Press" successfully? I've been trying to use it to compress the text in some old, half done Quill adventures but I can't help feeling I'm missing a step.

I load my Quilled database into the program and compress it as per the instructions, saving a bunch of space. Then I save the database back out and reload it into Quill, but now all of the text is just tokenized garbage.

The manual says you might have trouble editing it afterwards, which is fine, but says nothing about not being able to play the game any more. :roll:

Anyone ever used this before? The manual goes into huge detail on how the compression works but really skimps on what you're supposed to do once you've compressed your game so I'm sort of making it up as I go along.

Re: The Press

Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:58 am
by Nomad
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/mag.php ... 34&page=76

It seems like its a multi part utility, the compression portion builds the database/tokenizer then you have ex pander reverses the process according to the review.

I haven't used it but it seems you are looking the compressed tokens without the expander working its magic.

Re: The Press

Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:45 am
by Blerkotron
From what I understand The Expander is actually something completely separate which allows you to use memory which isn't usually available to The Quill for extra messages and locations... Unless I've misread that part of the manual completely.

You can also load The Press directly into The Quill, so I tried that too but the results are just the same. I can't help but think I'm missing a very important point, I just don't know what it is.

Re: The Press

Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 2:50 pm
by Nomad
Considering how popular The Quill was I am surprised a magazines didn't do a feature on this. Perhaps the company didn't give them a big enough bung :lol:

Re: The Press

Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 7:19 pm
by Blerkotron
I wonder if it was a bit late in the day - most of the mags had stopped doing much 'serious' stuff by the time The Press came out.

I *think* I've figured this out now. There are another pair of programs on the tape called 'auto savers' which aren't really very well explained and I thought they were just for inserting loading screens into your finished game, but if I run the compressed database through that program then the standalone adventure it produces works okay. This must be the way you're supposed to do it.

That makes things a little difficult, I guess - once you've compressed your database you can load it back into The Quill and do more work, but you can never 'test' your game without saving a final, which is a bit of a faff. I suppose you're supposed to have completed all the logic first before you start compressing stuff and fluffing the text out.

Man, PAW does this so much more elegantly! I've obviously been kind of spoiled. :)