Beta testing for a text adventure game under development

[DarwinNE]

By the way, I enjoyed very much drawing splash screens for various computers where the game runs. Here are some of them.

C64 (Plus/4 is very similar):

ZX Spectrum:

Macintosh 68k being worked on:

[Kweepa]

These look great!
Thanks for this game - very enjoyable and atmospheric!

[orion70]

Great pictures! I agree, sooo atmospheric. They make me want to try this adventure on several retrocomputers, just to test the look'n'feel

Are you planning a short soundtrack just like e.g. in the title screen of Two Days to the Races, Plus4 version? [BTW, why didn't you do it in the VIC version? ]

[DarwinNE]

Great pictures! I agree, sooo atmospheric. They make me want to try this adventure on several retrocomputers, just to test the look'n'feel

Go on and test it! Maybe one day there will be a version in Italian, but for the moment everything is available only in English.

Are you planning a short soundtrack just like e.g. in the title screen of Two Days to the Races, Plus4 version? [BTW, why didn't you do it in the VIC version? ]

For Two Days to the Race, this was a contribution from Luca/FIRE.
Concerning The Queen's Footsteps, I don't know. For such a game, I'd choose impressionistic music (Debussy for example) and I am not sure the sound generators of our beloved computer would put it to shine.

At the moment, I feel I can write simil-techno-electro tunes like the one I did for Cavern Explorer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvhkRBfTAec (chiptune starts at 1:33)

but they would not fit to The Queen's Footsteps, I believe.

[AndyH]

Also love the title screens

[DarwinNE]

Thank you, AndyH!

[DarwinNE]

Hi to all!

A small update: the VIC20 version of The Queen's Footsteps can load and save the game state.
To do that, you can just type LOAD or SAVE in the game prompt and you will be asked for the file name.

[DarwinNE]

Hi to everybody.

Just a word to say that the VIC-20 version of "The Queen's Footsteps" has now reached the release candidate state, i.e. it there is no bug report in the next few weeks, it will be promoted to version 1.0

Download it at the usual address: http://davbucci.chez-alice.fr/index.php ... ge=English

[orion70]

Final version arrived, very happy with that ! Thanks so much Davide.
Will you work on the Italian translation then? Please excuse my insistence, but there aren't many text adventures in Italian, and none of this complexity, except for Due Giorni Alle Corse.
My setup is ready to follow the Queen's footsteps anyway (I know, I know, the 1020 is only an empty shell, but it adds to the retro look ).

[DarwinNE]

That's a really cool setup, Orion70!

It is certainly possible to translate The Queen's Footsteps in Italian, but I definitely need some help. For Two Days to the Race, I got someone who did most of the translation work. In this moment, I have a lot of things to do to polish the game on other platforms (Mac 68k for example) and I still have plenty of work to do for the game in English. There are other surprises coming, too

[kokkiklhs]

Very very impressive game, congratulations and thank you for creating it!
And the story seems interesting, I have already tried it with an emulator...

But as for the real hardware, I'd like to ask if there's any chance of releasing independent .T64 versions of the 3 parts, it would be a nice extra gift for us tape-lovers!

[DarwinNE]

Interesting. It is doable, but the load/save routines would only work for disks.
Three separate .T64 would do?

I currently use the c1541 command line tool (included in Vice) to put together the .d64 files, I would need something similar to produce .t64 as well.
Be prepared for long waits, nonetheless, I don't have fastloaders available and I am not currently interested to dive into them, as I am currently developing other projects.

[Mike]

People, please stop confusing *.t64 and *.tap files!

*.t64 are a container format which combines binary *.prg files and a directory, strictly for use on emulators only. They do not provide any support to handle non-KERNAL fast tape routines.

*.tap files contain the actual magnetic flux changes present at the tape head and can thus handle both the standard KERNAL tape format and any conceivable fast tape format. And they are as inflexible in use as any real tape use is.

IMO, DarwinNE, there's nothing wrong with friendly turning down kokkiklhs's request. The game is multi-file and that makes it inherently unsuitable for a tape version.

[kokkiklhs]

Interesting. It is doable, but the load/save routines would only work for disks.
Three separate .T64 would do?

Yes, I'm talking about 3 standalone parts, able to load on emulators and also on real hardware, after transferring to tape.
You'd only have to exclude the starting menu and the disk loading routines that follow...

[kokkiklhs]

People, please stop confusing *.t64 and *.tap files!

*.t64 are a container format which combines binary *.prg files and a directory, strictly for use on emulators only. They do not provide any support to handle non-KERNAL fast tape routines.

No need for fast tape routines here, just the game loading in normal speed from tape...