Two Days to the Race

[Mike]

The presentation to the user is different for a single file though, so it's cleaner that way.

Joe Random User just drags the *.prg file or *.d64 file into the VICE window or does a LOAD"*",8,1 or LOAD"*",8 (which loads the first file in the directory) followed by RUN. So it really doesn't matter whether there's a single *.prg file for the whole lot, or several files on disk or in a disk image.

And again, just given a big enough program/game, you're out of luck anyway.

Now the next challenge is a proportional font

What's challenging about that? ...

Also, if DarwinNE follows up to provide the 40 column I/O routines as C library, I'd rather have a monospaced font for a console application than a proportional font.

[Kweepa]

The presentation to the user is different for a single file though, so it's cleaner that way.

Joe Random User just drags the *.prg file or *.d64 file into the VICE window

I may have misunderstood - I thought the game actually would behave differently (asking the player to select one of three parts like in the picture).

[DarwinNE]

I may have misunderstood - I thought the game actually would behave differently (asking the player to select one of three parts like in the picture).

The entire game compiled for the C64 occupies 49KB in total and barely fits in the space available for Cc65 executables.
I had to split it in three parts for the versions meant to be run on machines with less memory (or where for a reason or another it's convenient to have smaller files).

Two Days to the Race now runs in three separate parts on the VIC-20, the ZX Spectrum 48K, the Commodore 128 (yes, I know...) and the Olivetti M20. The latter is a rather obscure machine, but I have one and a friend put together a nice C compiler for it. I simply had to port the game to it to see the results

A onefiler for the VIC-20 game would mean... one file per part, to be loaded separately with the appropriate commands (now, there're two files per part). Thinking about this problem, I tried to put together a loader that lets you choose what you want to play and I think the result is not too bad, I kind of like it, actually.

BTW someone tried to play the game?

[DarwinNE]

Kudos to Kweepa! He spotted plenty of typos and weird-sounding sentences in the first part of the game. Thanks to him, I corrected some embarrassing errors and learned quite a few expressions.

Hopefully, the use of English language in part 1 of the game should now be better. I already updated the disk images for the version in 22 columns and in 40 columns.

[Kweepa]

I finished this - it's a nice medium length game (3 hours or so) with a lot of atmosphere, an unusual setting, and a few not-too-difficult puzzles.
Thanks Darwin!

[DarwinNE]

Hi Kweepa!

Thank you again for all the very useful corrections you suggested: I will implement them in a few days' time. It's not easy for a non-native English speaker to work on a text adventure game. Thank to your feedback, I think Two Days to the Race will be tremendously improved.

I saw you sent me the final game password privately, I added you to the hall of fame on the web page: http://davbucci.chez-alice.fr/index.php ... h#finished

Edit: corrections are implemented (I think I could do most of them). Version 1.7 final is out!

[DarwinNE]

I put together a graphical load menu for the 40-column version of the game.

[highinfidelity]

Very nicely done! We now see that Emilia has violet eyes like Liz Taylor. And custom fonts are always a nice touch!

[orion70]

Darwin, it's a great adventure. I'm playing it in Italian, 40 columns. It's a pleasure, the first true, complex, big text adventure in our native language. We had to wait until 2019 to enjoy it... Thanks so much

[DarwinNE]

Thank you very much highinfidelity and orion70!

Yes, Emilia has blue eyes, I like the violet-ish shade of the VIC-20 palette. She's brave, intelligent and very determined. I quite like her; I created the character with my girlfriend, who is a historian and among other things has a richly furnished library about ancient Egypt. We love cats and we have a tabby mix Siamese (hence Democrito), but our Cannelle is a she-cat.

I'm glad you like the game. Orion70, I think there's not very much for the VIC-20, indeed. For modern platforms, there are some great titles among text adventure games in Italian language. Have a look to the work of Marco Vallarino, for example: https://www.marcovallarino.it/avventure-testuali/

Marco tried TDTTR at an early stage of development and gave some very useful hints about how to improve it. As Kweepa said, TDTTR is a medium-sized game, nothing spectacular (Zork I was larger, for example). I may work on more complex games in the future, but given the amount of work I did for TDTTR in the last few months, I think I need a break for a while

I wrote the English version of the game at first; if you like the Italian translation, it is really due to the great work of Alessio Colopardi. His translation was precise and elegant. The merit is completely his.

[Kweepa]

So you are French, not Italian?
Why no French version of the game?

[orion70]

So grazie Alessio! The prose is absolutely elegant, indeed. It really feels like you're there, in that particular time in history. I know of Vallarino's works, and also other famous ones (I was an avid player of Bonaventura di Bello's adventures for the C64). But you're a first time producer for the Vic!

Kweepa: I guess Darwin is Italian, he just wrote the English version in the first place. Maybe a Canadian guy, or a French native, could translate it, and make it one of the few adventures in three different languages (Spanish anyone?).

[Kweepa]

I'm guessing his mother is French
3 languages, 7.5 platforms = update headache!

[DarwinNE]

I'm Italian, but having lived almost half of my life in France I'm now practically bilingual. My girlfriend is French, so I can ask her when I have doubts.
However, I don't know how to handle accents and other diacritical marks on the VIC-20 and on other 8-bit machines.

I must extend the character code so to include them. It's not a simple problem, but of course, it's doable, the 40 column driver for the VIC works in bitmap mode, I can superpose characters, for example writing "automobile à vapeur" may be written as "automobile `a vapeur". I don't know if I want to embark myself in such a hassle, however, as TDTTR is meant to be portable and multiplatform and it would be a big deal to do that on the C64, for example.

[DarwinNE]

3 languages, 7.5 platforms = update headache!

Yes, things become complicated, but after all I can compile with a few "make all" commands, it's not a big deal, after all.

The problem I have now is that I have to split the game in three parts for some platforms (VIC-20, Spectrum 48K, C128, Olivetti M20) and is presented on a single file on others (C64, Plus/4, MS-DOS). If I correct a bug or a typo, I should do that twice.