I've started working on the next version, which will fix the
misfeatures mentioned in the README and add some bells and whistles.
Here is the README file:
Scott2Zip, version 0.91-beta
----------------------------
(RCS ID: $Id: README,v 1.1 1995/10/30 06:18:45 bjorn Exp $)
This is the second beta-version of Scott2Zip, a converter of the
classic Scott Adams adventures to source which can be compiled
with Inform. The original adventure can be in either the TRS-80
or TI-99/4 format. Note that Brian Howarth's adventures, which
are free and can be found at GMD, can also be translated by
Scott2Zip.
Note that the Scott Adams adventures are still copyrighted.
The translated version obtained by Scott2Zip is for your personal
use only; it must not be distributed to others in any way.
To use Scott2Zip, you'll need:
* Perl 4.036
* Inform 5.5 (no library needed)
* An adventure in the TRS-80 format
* A good Z-machine interpreter (Zip recommended)
There are versions of Perl available for most operating systems,
including Unix, MS-DOS, and VMS.
Do like this to convert an adventure:
scott2zip pirate.dat > pirate.inf
inform pirate.inf
The translated adventures have a few meta-commands. These are
documented in the translated adventure itself.
Scott2Zip is provided under the GNU General Public License.
For further information, see the start of the scott2zip program and
the file COPYING.
Bug reports and suggestions can be sent to the address found below.
Known misfeatures
-----------------
The following minor misfeatures are known and will be corrected
in a future release.
* Since the current version Inform does not allow dictionary words
starting with digits, Scott2Zip automatically insert the letter
'd' before any digits in dictionary words (but only for nouns).
That means that when you have to type digits in 'Pirate Adventure'
or 'The Count', you must prefix them with a 'd'.
* In 'Ten Little Indians', there is a verb beginning with a digit.
This must be handled like above; now you get a compilation error.
* Items in inventory listings are listed in essentially random
order (depending on the order in which the items were picked up).
In contrast, in the original game drivers, the items were always
listed in item-number order. Some games depend on this order.
In 'Strange Odyssey', for instance, there is a 'space suit' item
and a 'which I'm wearing' item, which must be listed next to each
other when the space suit is worn.
* If the entered verb is unknown, it will be printed out truncated
to the word length in the message (I don't know how to "XXX").
* The error reporting if the original adventure file is corrupt
could be better -- the line number reported is most likely not
the correct one.
Credits
-------
For help to understand the TRS-80 format, thanks to Paul David Doherty,
who wrote the decompiler ScottDec, and to Alan Cox, who wrote the game
driver ScottFree.
Thanks to Graham Nelson, for creating Inform, and for documenting
the Z-machine.
Thanks to Graham Nelson and Gareth Rees, for suggesting how
word-wrapping in the upper window could be done.
Changes in 0.91
---------------
- TRS-80 format: The action 'Refill lamp' was not correctly translated,
causing a compilation error.
- TRS-80 format: When the owner of an item was set to -1 (meaning player),
it was not correctly understood, aborting Scott2Zip.
- Empty descriptions for items are converted to 'ITEMnn', where 'nn' is
the number of the items. (Emtpy strings are not allowed by Inform
and the Z-machine.) An earlier attempt to not include such items
in the converted file failed, because of a bug in 'Golden Odyssey',
there typing 'get sandals' would give you item 0 which has an empty
description. You will never notice it, though, because you are immediately
thereafter killed for stealing!
- TRS-80 format: Action 71, 'Save', was not translated correctly,
causing other trouble as well.
- To avoid cluttering up the screen when compiling, any warnings about
strange things in the adventure being translated are now printed at
the end of the converted file. In particular, that applies to
verbs without action.
- The message "I'm carrying too much" was shown with an extra carriage
return.
- Scott Adams' Adventure 14 contains an item belonging to room 50;
but the highest room number is 35. Since the item obviously should
be in room zero (object store), Scott2Zip now changes the owner in
such cases to 0. A warning will be shown at the end of the converted
file.
- TRS-80 format: Action 89, 'Draw picture', is now properly ignored.
- If an adventure defines a verb more than once, a warning message
will be written to the end of the converted file and all
but the first definition will be ignored. (Earlier, Scott2Zip
didn't write the warning message.) Example: In 'Savage Island',
part 1, 'yell' is first defined as a separate verb, then later
as a synonym to 'ask'.
- If an action references a noun which has too high number,
the action will be ignored and a message written to the
end of the converted file. (4_arrow2)
- All items with the description 'ITEMnn' (empty in the original
game file) and not referenced from any action will be listed at
the end of the file.
- TRS-80 format: Continued actions didn't really work; now they do
(I hope). There were several bugs.
- TRS-80 format: Action 75, 'Put item x with item y', got the
arguments in the wrong order.
- TRS-80 format: Empty actions (all zeros) was interpreted as
an each-turn action and causing trouble (resetting the address
for each-turn actions).
- TRS-80 format: The argument to action 79, 'Set current counter value',
was truncated to an 8-bit value, making 'Mission Impossible' really
impossible (44 turns instead of 300 before the bomb explodes).
Bjorn Gustavsson
ermbgus@at.ericsson.se