A downloadable game

This little program for the ZX Next let you "replay" the wonderful
"What-do-I-do-now"-adventure-book series written by Steve Meretzky and
released by Infocom in the mid 1980ies - and  unfortunately out of print since then.

I mainly wrote this game engine for the ZX Spectrum to get back into writing software for old 8-bit computers (that's why I heavily used Spectrum Basic) and I also tried to use the technical advantages of the ZXNext (like real 256 colors and direct file access to the SD card).

Another motivation was to give anyone the possibility, to enjoy this great Adventure-Gamebook-Expierence, like I did back then. 

And since the syntax of the book-script is quite simple, you're of course welcome to use your fantasy and write your own adventure gamebook :)

So far I only transformed two of the four books:
- "Zork 1: The forces of Krill" (available in  English and German)
- "Zork 2: The Malifesto Quest"  (available only in English)

But other might join in the near future... 
I also adapted and colored the graphics from the first book and I'm currently reworking the graphics of the second book.

Finally I have to thank Mr. Steve Meretzky in giving me permission to transform and add the Zork books to my Gamebook Adventure Reader Engine. 
StatusIn development
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(2 total ratings)
Authorhtw8849
GenreAdventure
TagsGame engine, Text based, zx-next, ZX Spectrum
Average sessionAbout a half-hour
LanguagesGerman, English

Download

Download
gamebookreader.zip 5.7 MB

Install instructions

Download and extract to the SD-Card of your ZX Next

Comments

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Hi, I'm having trouble creating new adventures.. I've defined a txt file with the text from a gamebook, like this (to test it out).. 

[1]

text....

<G|2>

[]

[2]

more text...

<e|0>

[]

When I try and run it through checker I get

*** Search for double defined pages:

 is defined more than once !

 is defined more than once !

 is defined more than once !

 is defined more than once !

 is defined more than once !

 is defined more than once !

 is defined more than once !

 is defined more than once !

Error found - exiting

all text lines have a maximum of 47 chrs and a carriage return at the end of the line, plain text file done in Windows notepad. 

If I run in framer.sh I get a blank box with no text!

Any ideas?

Thanks .

(6 edits)

Hi ayster,

I think I found the solution:
When generating an ascii-file in Notepad, it seems that by default Notepad saves the ascii file with CRLF-Returns, while a standard Linux Ascii-file has different line escapes. This ultimatly leeds to problems in my tools.

I usually work under Linux when generating ASCII-files - so I never noticed how notepad might screw up things.

To solve, please install a tool called "dos2unix" (it's usually in the Linux repositories) on you linux box and then use it to transform the line escapes from Windows to Linux-format.

The scripts will then work afterwards :)

Oh, I also noticed, that you need to change your "end"-command to a captial "E": 

<e|0>  should be <E|0>

Thanks, I'll give that a go :)