SQIJ! map

[Oloturia]

Yes I know that the game is unplayable (even with the POKE fix) but I noticed that its entry lacks the map.
I wonder if there's a way to extract a map from the code. IIRC someone unspaghettied the BASIC to explain what every single line did. I remember saving the link but now I can't find it anymore.

[sn3j]

It's on the Pavero map site if you don't mind to look it up there: https://www.zx-spectrum.cz/index.php?ca ... ps_page=27

[Ralf]

It's on the Pavero map site

It's not the original. Just some remakes.

And I agree that seeing it would be interesting.

[Lee Bee]

I have created a complete map of the game…

[Oloturia]

It's not the original. Just some remakes.

And I agree that seeing it would be interesting.

Yeah, they're from Sqij'd! and Sqij 2018.

I think it's possible to rebuild the map from the GO TOs:


GO TOing (or GOing TO?) to any of those lines teleports to a new location.

[sn3j]

It's not the original. Just some remakes.

yes I thought it's there, my bad

[Oloturia]

OK I did something...


It's very hard to understand the code, anyway I found the go-to-new-room routines and I linked them to wasd keys, so I didn't have to "flight" to the exits. I put the room number next to "level" label, which is unused anyway.

[Oloturia]

LOL! The map is more or less the same of the remake (which I think is the same of the C64 version).
https://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=SQIJ2018

[R-Tape]

It's very hard to understand the code,

anyway I found the go-to-new-room routines and I linked them to wasd keys, so I didn't have to "flight" to the exits. I put the room number next to "level" label, which is unused anyway.

Ah nice one. That's a good workaround.

LOL! The map is more or less the same of the remake (which I think is the same of the C64 version).

To be honest I've never thought about what the SQIJ map would look like, but if I did— being faithful to the blueprint, including the bits of tree, impassable walls and the Ener tree itself would NOT be one of the options!

[Oloturia]

To be honest I've never thought about what the SQIJ map would look like, but if I did— being faithful to the blueprint, including the bits of tree, impassable walls and the Ener tree itself would NOT be one of the options!

Anyway this confirms Creighton's story:
https://www.eurogamer.net/the-story-beh ... -ever-made
He said that CRL provided the map. They provided also the source code but very late and on disk, and Creighton didn't have the drive.

During my visit to SQIJ's cave I noticed also some other bugs:
- The bird always pops up in the middle of the room, no matter if you go out from the left or the top... it won't reappear on the opposite side.
- Except in rooms with a door, where it appears on the left, even if you went through the other opening.
- Objects aren't collectable. Pressing the keys for taking them just do a glitch.
- Sometimes the cyan shelf (it's a shelf, isn't it?) is persistent also in rooms without objects.
- Sometimes it crashes when "flying" from the right opening with a B Integer out of Range (that's also the reason why I hacked the movement).
- There is a label "LEVEL:" but there is nothing after.

These features works instead:
- Oddly, if you add a pass altering the relative variable pas, you can actually open the doors.
- If you use the same cheat on the variable that holds the part of the tree named tree, you can place pieces of the Ener Tree in room 22, the one with E.T.R. (Ener Tree R?), when the sixth piece is placed, the ending is showed.

The routine for changing room is very strange. If you go left it GOes TO 1430, if you go up it GOes TO 1492, then right 1523 and down 1566 (direction could be wrong, I did it yesterday night while half asleep) then it checks with a lot of IFs which room is displayed and GOes TO the new room. As you can see from the LIST I posted yesterday, 1430 IF room=13 THEN GO TO 2013 means that you went left from the room 13. 2013 is the line of the new room. If you break and give GO TO 1430, it will go left if there's an opening (otherwise it'll go wildly through the code).

There are some rooms that are referenced in the IFs, but not present in the map. You can access them by giving LET room=<number> and then GO TO 900. Openings are not refreshed though.
In spite of all this mess, the map is consistent. I mean, if you go out from the left and then you go right, you'll find yourself back to the starting point.

OK, I think we could fix it, eh?

[Oloturia]

AH! I almost forgot.

I knew that you have to fix the movement with a POKE, but it's possible to obtain the same result just BREAKing the game, write something just to pass the K cursor's status, and then deactivate the CAPS-LOCK with SHIFT+2. I noticed also that from a certain line onward, the variables are written with capital letters. They're case insensitive but anyway it's an odd choice.

[XTM]

They could have forced the player to patch the game by telling a lie:

To load the game, type LOAD "SQIJ" - you need to type it exactly this way, no lower case etc., otherwise the game will not be playable. This was a deliberate choice to (insert some bs excuse, something about copy protection)

[Oloturia]

I have a wild idea.

A competition in which you have to finish SQIJ! by fixing its bugs in the shortest possible time. You have to play through as intended (i.e. no teleports as I did) and have all the pieces of the Ener Tree in the right place. The game would be half the game itself and half a debugging competition.

[Morkin]

I have a wild idea.

Indeed, managing to convince any one of us to play SQIJ! at all is a pretty wild idea...

[equinox]

Anyway this confirms Creighton's story:

This is the kind of totally useless amazing digital archaeology that restores my faith in humankind.

(And before I get into my ego case, yes, I've mapped a zillion of these games for free. The last one that I submitted to Tipshop wasn't acknowledged, so I hope Gerard is okay, yes?)

If a game is broken purely because of CAPS LOCK, then who knows...
When I spent a lot of time going through the Speccy archives of text adventures, there were some that I could trivially solve by using written solutions (east, north, give bone to dog, there's always a fking bone and a dog) -- and there were some that had those trivial solutions but were not solvable (suggesting there might be a boring random element -- thanks Jack Lockerby) -- and much more and more.

If nothing else, it made me want to write the TOTALLY MISSING GENRE of traditional old-skool text adventures with unlimited memory (so you can write a whole damn book). For reasons I will never understand, modern adventures are mostly either "literary/theatrical" works where you just step through a bunch of events and think "oh yes, that was literature, I feel so literated, and liberated" -- or stuff with a really zipping obvious point like transgenderism or "capitalism is bad". Yeah like we didn't notice.

I have done a couple of "unlimited memory, you can be Douglas Adams and write a whole chapter on everything in the room" -- errrm.
Actually I've got another puzzle-based (mostly PHYSICS, water, and gravity) that I want to do, in Inform 7, but I also want to base it around an old abandoned mansion that we used to hang around as kids. Hmmm... long day... sadly it won't fit on a Speccy, going to be a 150 KB game for sure. Kill me.

Why did i mention this on the SQIJ thread -- lol oh yeah, because there was often some broken bllsht where you had to turn off a lamp but then the bulb was OH I CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO TYPE THIS BLL CRAP. I work on them hard, with pokes and workarounds. Vote equinox.

[R-Tape]

I have a wild idea.

A competition in which you have to finish SQIJ! by fixing its bugs in the shortest possible time. You have to play through as intended (i.e. no teleports as I did) and have all the pieces of the Ener Tree in the right place. The game would be half the game itself and half a debugging competition.

I'd rather jump in a threshing machine.

[Einar Saukas]

OK I did something...

Good work!

Please send it to https://maps.speccy.cz/

[Morkin]

...Don't forget to email a link to this thread over to your probation officer as proof that you've successfully completed your community service.

(jk, the effort is appreciated )

[TMD2003]

I have done a couple of "unlimited memory, you can be Douglas Adams and write a whole chapter on everything in the room" -- errrm.
Actually I've got another puzzle-based (mostly PHYSICS, water, and gravity) that I want to do, in Inform 7, but I also want to base it around an old abandoned mansion that we used to hang around as kids. Hmmm... long day... sadly it won't fit on a Speccy, going to be a 150 KB game for sure. Kill me.

Excuses excuses! Shove it on a +3 disc, or a +D, and load each scene and wall of text in as needed.

Vote equinox.

"...for a third glorious decade of TOTAL law enforcement!"

[equinox]

Excuses excuses! Shove it on a +3 disc, or a +D, and load each scene and wall of text in as needed.

Enjoy mate [https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=iq229ydvxexbv3x7]
Nobody likes an old-skool puzzler.
Yes I'll make the other game, in about five years, if my ticker doesn't explode.