Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Want to talks about games you like, would like to see developed on the Oric, it's here.
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Chema
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Chema »

Hi Adam!

I am one of the authors of Pinforic. The other one is indeed Fabrice Frances, author of Euphoric. I laid down the first C version and he started converting function by function to asm to make it faster and more compact. He also provided all the disk routines and many more things!

But, yes, it was designed to work with disc from the beginning. If I remember correctly, version 3 games (the highest supported) were up to 128Kb, with only a small part of it being variables or player space and the rest was constant data, so it has to load data on demand (using a paging system). Basically, using tapes was out of question. In addition, the upper 16Kb were a bless, as you want to keep as much data in main memory as possible to make the game run at a decent speed.

The magic Farbice did was supporting MSDOS disks with the adventure, so you can basically format a MSDOS disk (720K) and copy the adventure .dat file onto it (no other file, freshly formatted) and it will work with it and load/save just beyond the game's data file. You just need to boot pinforic and it will ask for the game disk. Swap disks and that's all.

Recently he patched it to allow for bundling an adventure and the engine on the same disk for the game Tristam Island (https://hlabrande.itch.io/l-ile-tristam).
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Jonh »

The answer is the same for the Scott Adams disk. Fabrice ported the SA interpreter to the Oric, added the game files, and released it all on one disk in September 1998. So never on tape, and the entry on Oric.org is the original disk by Fabrice.
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Adam »

Chema wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 3:18 pm Hi Adam!

I am one of the authors of Pinforic. The other one is indeed Fabrice Frances, author of Euphoric. I laid down the first C version and he started converting function by function to asm to make it faster and more compact. He also provided all the disk routines and many more things!

But, yes, it was designed to work with disc from the beginning. If I remember correctly, version 3 games (the highest supported) were up to 128Kb, with only a small part of it being variables or player space and the rest was constant data, so it has to load data on demand (using a paging system). Basically, using tapes was out of question. In addition, the upper 16Kb were a bless, as you want to keep as much data in main memory as possible to make the game run at a decent speed.

The magic Farbice did was supporting MSDOS disks with the adventure, so you can basically format a MSDOS disk (720K) and copy the adventure .dat file onto it (no other file, freshly formatted) and it will work with it and load/save just beyond the game's data file. You just need to boot pinforic and it will ask for the game disk. Swap disks and that's all.

Recently he patched it to allow for bundling an adventure and the engine on the same disk for the game Tristam Island (https://hlabrande.itch.io/l-ile-tristam).
Thanks for the info Chema, and for pinforic.

Looks like I'm going to have to seriously consider something like Cumana Reborn.

I'm all for emulation most of the time, and I have a ton of emulators. But the Oric was my first ever computer, and I still have the very same machine from my childhood, so I'd like to use the real machine as much as possible for nostalgia reasons.
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by ibisum »

Adam wrote: Sat Jan 22, 2022 2:16 pm Looks like I'm going to have to seriously consider something like Cumana Reborn.

I'm all for emulation most of the time, and I have a ton of emulators. But the Oric was my first ever computer, and I still have the very same machine from my childhood, so I'd like to use the real machine as much as possible for nostalgia reasons.

I just wanna chime in, also as an old-school user, whose current Atmos has a Cumana Reborn and an original, once you get some solid-state action going, you'll never wanna go back to the discs. The discs are cute, do doubt, but .. 8 gigs of disk space is also pretty freakin' mind-boggling, once you get it loaded up. Get *every* .TAP file in your collection into a .DSK, and you'll be a very happy 21st century Oric owner ..
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Steve M »

Yes, Pinforic is disk based. Those adventures were never available for Oric, so it's a recent achievement to be able to have a program that allows them to work on the Oric.
Oric as a disk-based system is a great improvement. I much prefer it though the old cassette programs had to be converted. For games it offered much quicker loading. If you used the Oric for anything other than games then the disk system was great.
The modern Erebus system allows for fast loading on a par with a disk system, but none of the improvements you get with DOS etc.

Cumana Reborn is good value. Arguably a better choice than an old disk system.
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Adam »

ibisum wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 7:43 pm Get *every* .TAP file in your collection into a .DSK, and you'll be a very happy 21st century Oric owner ..
It's tempting, once I have the money.

I haven't looked into how to convert formats yet, but can I take it from what you're saying that it's possible to convert any program in .tap format to .dsk format? How about programs on tape that were multi-part?
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Adam »

Steve M wrote: Mon Jan 24, 2022 12:50 pm Yes, Pinforic is disk based. Those adventures were never available for Oric, so it's a recent achievement to be able to have a program that allows them to work on the Oric.
Oric as a disk-based system is a great improvement. I much prefer it though the old cassette programs had to be converted. For games it offered much quicker loading. If you used the Oric for anything other than games then the disk system was great.
The modern Erebus system allows for fast loading on a par with a disk system, but none of the improvements you get with DOS etc.

Cumana Reborn is good value. Arguably a better choice than an old disk system.
True, the Scott Adams adventures on the Oric are after-the-day so to speak. Plus they are available on many other systems. So it's not the greatest loss to not be able to play them on a tape-based Oric.

I'm already thinking I may end up with a Cumana Reborn if possible. The Erebus is great, but I used to do a bit of programming, plus some games can save progress, so I may upgrade eventually.
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Steve M »

Adam wrote: Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:26 pm I haven't looked into how to convert formats yet, but can I take it from what you're saying that it's possible to convert any program in .tap format to .dsk format? How about programs on tape that were multi-part?
Some progs are harder than others. Basic programs are easier. You will need to alter code changing CLOAD command to DOS LOAD ones, for example.
Program can have autorun status which can be turned on or off under DOS. Sometimes you need to write a little loading routine so that each part of a multiloader is loaded in the right order.
You can some progs that use code to load parts. That can be hard to find/ adjust

Machine Code progs are more difficult as the code needs changing to load from disk rather than tape.

Some programs clash with the area of code used by DOS.
So it's not that straight forward, but a lof of programs have been converted already. There are utilites to convert on the PC - but then you need ot get the file from the PC to your disk device. How difficult that is depends on what device you are using.
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Adam »

Steve M wrote: Tue Jan 25, 2022 6:19 pm Some progs are harder than others...
Thanks for all the info.
Chema wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 3:18 pm Hi Adam!
...
I've been reading around, trying to convince myself I can get good use out of a "disk drive". One good use would be to play the Blake's 7 game on real Oric hardware. Am I right in thinking you are the author of that?

Would the Cumana Reborn be a suitable device to run that?
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Chema »

Adam wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 6:46 am Would the Cumana Reborn be a suitable device to run that?
Sure. I don't personally own one, but it should work perfectly. Just make sure your disk image is not write protected so the game can save.

I am quite sure people played Blake's7 with it with no problem.
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Adam »

Chema wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 9:38 am I am quite sure people played Blake's7 with it with no problem.
I finally persuaded myself to buy a Cumana Reborn... but when I went on Sell My Retro website, it wouldn't let me order it, as international shipping for items under a certain value was "disabled"!

Oh, well... Maybe at some point in the future.
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Dbug »

I'm sure you can contact Zaxxon directly, he is on Facebook, I got mine from him and I'm in Norway.

EDIT: I contacted him on Facebook, and apparently it's Brexit related, he wrote "I cannot sell my toys to UK at the moment"
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by ibisum »

Its not easy for Piotr to ship to the UK at the moment, he's had a few issues with this in the past and it has caused problems. I know some UK-bound folks who have been frustrated by this, alas ..
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Adam »

Dbug wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 4:05 pm I'm sure you can contact Zaxxon directly, he is on Facebook, I got mine from him and I'm in Norway.

EDIT: I contacted him on Facebook, and apparently it's Brexit related, he wrote "I cannot sell my toys to UK at the moment"
Oh, well. To be honest I'm not on Facebook and am reluctant to sign up for it, so it's just as well! Thanks for contacting him to check what's going on.
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Re: Adventure Games and Solutions, Help needed !

Post by Adam »

ibisum wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 1:23 pm Its not easy for Piotr to ship to the UK at the moment, he's had a few issues with this in the past and it has caused problems. I know some UK-bound folks who have been frustrated by this, alas ..
Thanks for the info. Pity!
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