Spectrum Computing

Re: The Globe https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=6356

The text adventure The Globe in the database is listed as being written by John Wilson and published by Zenobi Software. Probably because that's what it says on the loading screen and in the game itself.

However... it was not actually written by John Wilson and it definitely wasn't published by Zenobi Software. John has no knowledge of the game. It's nothing to do with him. He would be grateful if it could be unlinked from both his name and Zenobi Software and a suitable disclaimer placed on the entry.

Thanks.

Interestingly the credit in game is to a "J. Wilson". Only the loading screen says "John Wilson" and "Zenobi Software"... was this added later, I wonder?

This is very strange as its on the other sites as John Wilson and Zenobi too. I will make contact with John.

Peter

This fix will appear in the next update. Thanks!

Hi PeterJ... This is coming direct from John Wilson as it is, so no particular need to contact him yourself. I've been working with John on his newer Spectrum releases, being an ex-Zenobi author myself.

Thanks, Einar.

See... https://twitter.com/RochBalrog/status/1 ... 9535818753

Thanks.

That's fine. Thank you for the clarification. [mention]Einar Saukas[/mention] will sort in the next ZXDB release. The change will then appear on SC when we update the database.

I see you also contacted WoS. They don't use ZXDB but hopefully they can also make the change for John.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Oh yes, I always do things on both sites.

Would love to find out more about the history of the game and who really made it. Whether it was produced by some other "J. Wilson" and someone later added a "John Wilson/Zenobi" loading screen (grabbing a picture from the game) because they thought it was a lost game, perhaps. But I doubt we ever will know.

Shame it's such a buggy mess of a game too... some interesting ideas in it, but it can't be completed in its current form.

8BitAG wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:25 pm Would love to find out more about the history of the game and who really made it.

The differences between the TAP and TZX are interesting. The TAP has a non-standard loader with more blocks, and a game-info loader that doesn't mention Zenobi. The TZX is a simple loader, with the 'Zenobi' screen, that loads the game code in one big block; much like one we'd do these days for a bugfix or something.

I wonder if the TAP is the original by John, Jack, Jenny, etc Wilson, and the TZX is a later version mistaken for a lost Zenobi game.

I hadn't noticed that the TAP and TZX were different! But you're right, that is an odd loader on the TZX game. Nice spot.

Looks to me, then, like that TZX is a later fabrication... someone has just dumped the memory from the loaded game and grafted on their own loading screen, jumping to conclusions that J. Wilson was John Wilson.

Would the best solution be to remove the TZX, and separating the author IDs for the mysterious J. Wilson and Zenobi John?

There would be no need for a disclaimer then.

I'm assigning this title to a separate author J. Wilson, but also adding a disclaimer. Otherwise people will frequently contact us to point out we are missing the Zenobi credit.

Instead of removing the other file, I'm marking it as "hacked (probably)". I don't think we should remove a file unless we can be 100% sure it's not authentic. Also if it's removed, I bet people will also contact us to provide "the original tape that we missed".

Yeah, unless all the other sites change their references that is certainly an issue.

We can be 100% sure it's not authentic but it is quite an interesting artefact in itself. Certainly a cautionary tale when it comes to the whole process of archiving. Luckily John is still around to set the record straight.

(If I had more spare time, I'd fix the bugs in the adventure so it could be completed.)

Aye, agreed. Just fulfilling my role by of giving a naff solution that Einar can replace with a better one

8BitAG wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 6:46 pm (If I had more spare time, I'd fix the bugs in the adventure so it could be completed.)

Is it so flawed? I hacked it to look for clues regarding the author, and saw none, but it's clearly a full game with a congrats sequence.

As for the author: we can probably (but not definitely) rule out Jackie Wilson, who died in 1984, but not Jocky, who outlived the Speccy's commercial era to pass on in 2012.

It's a start.

R-Tape wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 8:45 pm Is it so flawed? I hacked it to look for clues regarding the author, and saw none, but it's clearly a full game with a congrats sequence.

Yeah, both John and I have been having a good look at it and we've found the issues that Terri mentions in the partial solution here...

http://solutionarchive.com/file/id%2C1311/

...namely there's no routine in place to create the small cylinder, you can't get to location 153 and you need to carry the sword to trigger a lot of the actions.

John has put up a blog post about the game...

http://www.zenobi.co.uk/2018/10/global-mystery.html

All bug reports in this thread were already applied to ZXDB database, therefore I'm now locking this thread for convenience.