Trying to find the name of an adventure game

[LardoBoffin]

Back when Atari STs were fairly new I remember reading a review for a graphical adventure in a magazine. I didn’t have an ST at the time (in fact only just got one) but for whatever reason the review stuck with me (kind of) and now that I have one (and it will be working soon too, I hope) I was wondering if anyone had any idea what it was?
Aside from the reviewer lamenting the lack of huge adventure games now that computers had huge anounts of RAM, the thing that stuck was the fact that you had to collect and combine things to make spells, such as Eyebright. There was also a woodshed involved!
And thats about it.
Its a long shot but if it triggers any memories that would be great.

[Atarieterno]

I can not know with that data, but you can look here
if there is luck.

http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_at ... 9_S_G.html

[Greenious]

Or if it was point and click there's this list

http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_at ... 1_S_G.html

It's a very vague description, most games in that genre combine things to do spells. Maybe the woodshed thing rattles someones mind...

[LardoBoffin]

Thanks for even thinking about it with such a vague description!
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t point and click and had pre-rendered location graphics, not drawn on the go.
I suspect this one is going to haunt me for some time.

[siriushardware]

If an ST text adventure with really good location graphics made a big impression on you, chances are it was one of the ones by British producers Magnetic Scrolls. But which one?

Incidentally, Eyebright is also the name of a real-world flower which was traditionally held to have magical or healing qualities.

Edit: Sorry I misread your original post. a Graphical adventure with predrawn backscenes similar to Monkey Island, etcetera?

[jury]

Reading this description, somehow Elvira came to my mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbWOAWQ0Yg4

[siriushardware]

Not a bad looking game, especially for a tie-in, where they tended to spend too much on the rights and not enough on the game. But I've been right through the list of spells (recipes) in a walkthrough for Elvira and I don't see eyebright mentioned there.

[Gaiyan]

Eyebright is mentioned here: http://www.mocagh.org/softguide/advgamersmanual.pdf

Three times under "The Price of Magik".

[LardoBoffin]

Eyebright is mentioned here: http://www.mocagh.org/softguide/advgamersmanual.pdf

Three times under "The Price of Magik".

I think we have a winner! Woodshed, eyebright and reading a bit further it reminded me of the pile of ash being used in a spell!

Thanks - that was going to bug me for a very long time.

[Gaiyan]

Eyebright is mentioned here: http://www.mocagh.org/softguide/advgamersmanual.pdf

Three times under "The Price of Magik".

I think we have a winner! Woodshed, eyebright and reading a bit further it reminded me of the pile of ash being used in a spell!

Thanks - that was going to bug me for a very long time.

Awesome

[siriushardware]

Huh! I even owned that game (for the Spectrum, not the ST) and still didn't remember those details. I had no idea any of that series had ever been made for the ST.

'The Price Of Magik' was the third in a fantasy trilogy of text adventure games produced by Level 9 in the UK, the earlier titles in the series being 'Lords Of Time' and 'Red Moon'. Even the Spectrum version of Price Of Magick had location graphics in some places, a reluctant departure for Level 9 who had previously, like Infocom, been pure textists up until that point.

On the Spectrum the location graphics were so crude that their main function was to consume memory which would have been better used to pack in a larger vocabulary and more verbose text descriptions. By comparison, the ST had memory to burn and a disc drive to load images from, so I imagine the location graphics were infinitely better. Anyone have some screenshots of the ST version?

[spiny]

Anyone have some screenshots of the ST version?

Some here:

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st ... 21652.html

edit: actually, the screenshot might be from the 8bit version

edit edit: youtube vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUx0A7TxS3w

[spiny]

Time and Magik (1988)(Datasoft).st

disk image of the trilogy, works in STEEM fine

[siriushardware]

Thanks, it is literally decades since I played any of that trilogy. My thanks to the OP for flagging up their existence and to spiny for posting the disc image.

It was quite frustrating watching that brief playthrough as the player let the candle - obviously a time limited resource - burn away and then spent fruitless turns looking for it. If the game was kind, there would have been another one in the woodshed by the time the player went to look. I thought of climbing the vine long before the game essentially rolled its eyes at the player and told him to try climbing the vine.

I can remember a time when playing a text adventure was, believe it or not, quite a social activity with one player (usually the fastest typist) at the keyboard and a few mates all trying to brainstorm their way past whatever the current problem was. That went all the way back to 'The Count' on the TRS80 with a floppy disc drive, wow, tech heaven.

The graphics in the video were quite nice, absolutely superior to the Spectrum version as you might imagine.

I seem to remember that by Red Moon and Price Of Magick, Level 9 were starting to experiment with alternative 'blunt' and 'smooth' ways to get through the game, a kind of forerunner of the now almost standard light path / dark path alternatives through modern games.

I wrote to them not long after purchasing these games (Spectrum versions) primarily to complain bitterly about their decision to inflict 'Lenslok'. a terrible optical copy protection system, on the game and also said that I preferred to think through, not fight through situations - there was a combat element to these games which had not been present in their earlier games- and they wrote back and said 'Well... you might want to think about that', clearly implying that there was a non violent way to solve most of the situations if I cared to look.

I happen not to run STEEM, Hatari was the emulator I picked first and stuck with so I will see how it runs under Hatari. I do also have two real STs so I might make a real disc from the .ST file.

[spiny]

I can remember a time when playing a text adventure was, believe it or not, quite a social activity with one player (usually the fastest typist) at the keyboard and a few mates all trying to brainstorm their way past whatever the current problem was. That went all the way back to 'The Count' on the TRS80 with a floppy disc drive, wow, tech heaven.

that still happens, theres an excellent point and click game (and a sequel) called 'Ben There, Dan That' that me and a few friends played together few years back - 'co op' point and clicking is still fun

link: http://www.sizefivegames.com/

games are available on Steam (not STEEM )

[MagikGimp]

Why do I think this cover-art has been stolen somewhere? Did Mandarin use it somewhere else, for a more productive progy or something?

[spiny]

it's the 'standard d and d wizard' style, probably loads of similar cover art for 80's games out there

[siriushardware]

So I played Price of Magik for quite a while last night (Under Hatari V2, where it runs fine) and encountered two aggressive enemies, a giant slug and a walking skeleton. Apart from fighting the slug I can imagine that the other way to deal with the slug must be to use salt, a traditional anti-slug treatment. I just don't have any salt yet.

The skeleton, though, I can't imagine what would destroy him - maybe I need a dog? (Dogs love bones). I have a cross, but all my attempts to show him a 'holy symbol' have failed so far. In any case that treatment is more intuitively likely to work with a vampire.

Anyway, I'm hooked already.

I actually started replaying Lords Of Time (first in the trilogy) on a Spectrum emulator a few months ago. Quite an unforgiving game, insta-death available in every time zone. Not my favourite thing to find in text games, along with non-linear mazes which also drive me nuts.

[LardoBoffin]

Well, glad I rekindled some memories!

Once I have my ST working I would like to give this a go. And Dungeon Master of course.

What is the best way to get this on my physical computer (aside the very slim chance of being able to buy a working copy)? I tend to avoid emulators.

I have a limited budget - especially after getting my ST fixed.
Gotek? Or is there a cheap SD card reader solition or similar?

Many thanks!

[spiny]

easiest way is get an older PC/laptop that has a floppy drive, then write the disk image to a floppy. USB floppy drives won't work though, it needs to be a PC with a proper floppy drive.

[LardoBoffin]

Sadly I don’t have an old PC. The only 3.5” floppy drive I have is an external one so therefore no use.
To think of all the work laptops that just got chucked out over the years...

[MagikGimp]

easiest way is get an older PC/laptop that has a floppy drive, then write the disk image to a floppy. USB floppy drives won't work though, it needs to be a PC with a proper floppy drive.

He says this but he hasn't been getting nowhere fast these last few nights like I have! ;D

In an ideal world it certainly should work, but only if you're lucky it seems. I'm at the point where because I can't tell if it's because the floppies I'm using are duff, the ROMs I'm attempting to write are too complex or just that the wonderful Floppy Image software just isn't quite up to scratch (it is a little buggy in general anyway), that I'm seriously contemplating ditching floppies altogether and going for a more modern alternative now.

Installing everything to harddrive is also possible these days but then you've got to deal with GEM's limitations, TOS's different versions and separate quirks or opting for a different Atari ST OS altogether, which is fun but I'd be learning from scratch.

TheShadowsNose on YouTube uses a hardware emulator for the floppy drive but I'm not sure which. It beeps quite a lot but personally if would mean I could use images of disks and so still enjoy "compact disk" pirate menus, the simple joy of desktop.inf file arrangements and the effort of reading all these disks I'm backing up to PC wouldn't be for naught either! I'm certainly interested in a more 'modern' ST setup but I think I'd rather emulate that as I do with (boo hiss) the Amiga. A lot less mess if you ask me! I'll have to do some research once I've finally put all the boxes of floppies away for good. They take up so much space too...

[spiny]

easiest way is get an older PC/laptop that has a floppy drive, then write the disk image to a floppy. USB floppy drives won't work though, it needs to be a PC with a proper floppy drive.

He says this but he hasn't been getting nowhere fast these last few nights like I have! ;D

In an ideal world it certainly should work, but only if you're lucky it seems. I'm at the point where because I can't tell if it's because the floppies I'm using are duff, the ROMs I'm attempting to write are too complex or just that the wonderful Floppy Image software just isn't quite up to scratch (it is a little buggy in general anyway), that I'm seriously contemplating ditching floppies altogether and going for a more modern alternative now.

Installing everything to harddrive is also possible these days but then you've got to deal with GEM's limitations, TOS's different versions and separate quirks or opting for a different Atari ST OS altogether, which is fun but I'd be learning from scratch.

TheShadowsNose on YouTube uses a hardware emulator for the floppy drive but I'm not sure which. It beeps quite a lot but personally if would mean I could use images of disks and so still enjoy "compact disk" pirate menus, the simple joy of desktop.inf file arrangements and the effort of reading all these disks I'm backing up to PC wouldn't be for naught either! I'm certainly interested in a more 'modern' ST setup but I think I'd rather emulate that as I do with (boo hiss) the Amiga. A lot less mess if you ask me! I'll have to do some research once I've finally put all the boxes of floppies away for good. They take up so much space too...

if you have a pc with real floppy drive, it just works.
what issues are you having ? any atari disk image (NOT a rom, ROMS are different) can be written to disk.

Format the floppies on your ST. If they format OK they are good, if they don't, bin them.

[siriushardware]

Maybe we should say that a file which contains an Atari disc 'image' typically has the extension .ST, although other formats exist.

If a Linux PC with a motherboard connected floppy drive is available, then the Linux 'DD' command can be used to write an .ST image to a real floppy.

if a Windows PC, then something like 'Win32Diskimager', perhaps.

[Zippy]

A USB floppy drive should be OK, I've transferred stuff with one of those OK under Windows Vista and 7. At least it works with the HP branded USB floppy I got years ago (manufactured 2006 it says on it).

You can use a DD (Double Density) floppy or a normal PC HD (High Density) floppy with a sticker over the "HD" hole, then from a command prompt format it with:

format a: /f:720

that should create a 720K disk that can read in the PC and ST. Obviously if the image is over 720K you'll need to split and rejoin it somehow.