Adventure Construction Set

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I hope someone has Apple II acs and fresh created disks of each set to take up that offer. A few peeps on a google group confirmed that there’s an error on all the current acs appleII .dsk program disks.

[/quote]

I think there's a process that can make a perfect copy of a disk these days. .WOZ files or something. I'm doing some investigation. We deserve to have ACS for the Apple.

[McDeath]

Cool. I’ve been busy with some family issues this last week. Today I had to pull a wagon 15 miles with about 130 lbs of grain and my pack with groceries. Sometimes, I think my choice to not drive wasn’t the best life choice. Ah well.. exercise. Got back and going to take a nap. Kinda tired then I’ll work on my spread sheet and organizing the emulators and disks. I need to find my tilesets as well.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Have I got an update for you!

http://www.joltcountry.com/downloads/ap ... ionSet.zip should be an archive of a .WOZ and .DSK image of Adventure Construction Set for the Apple //. I am going to try it out in my Apple // right now! They should not have the error you described above, they should be perfect.

[McDeath]

Tuesday is coming up so I’ll DL then.

*My only internet access is for 2 hours a day at the local library Tuesday - Saturday.

A funny note on gfx with Apple II acs. Now on the c64 I always thought drawing your own gfx was odd in Acs. It’s technically 16x16 pixels except your art brush draws 1x2(wide) instead of 1x1 like dos and Amiga.

AppleII is even worse. It emulates the same art brush style as the c64 but is it just me or do you only have 16tall x 14wide (or 7 1x2wide) brush strokes. I noticed in screenshot that all the Apple pixels overlap each other by 1-2 pixels.



Note the healers, door, shrine player. All off by about a pixel overlapping. (Maybe 2 as it’s hard to tell).

Definitely check the editor and draw a graphic in there and count across. I’m pretty sure you can only draw 7 across. Dang weird.

Still, I find the graphics a delight to look at and it’s probably why I get frustrated at not having LOA or spy/mystery.


Looking at my computer it’s a mess. So I’m reorganizing and starting again from scratch sort of. I’m going to start with the c64 and make sure everything is proper and set out how I want it. I’ll relabel and get that spreadsheet correct. Oh it’s an absolute mess.

[McDeath]

Another note about old electronic arts and how they used to put the E C A or circle, square, triangle, or cube, sphere, pyramid into every game.




Look at the walls in this part of Adventuria.

Pretty clever as we see square, circle, triangle.

Ah, old ECA. The memories.

[McDeath]

Ok. Yeah the program works and I attempt to make an adventure but as soon as I put in the “blank”. I get an error.

I swear it must be a blank. Maybe it isn’t and I’ve been Messing up this whole time.

Gah!

[McDeath]

I have another foil problem. I can’t for the love of god switch disks in dosbox. I’m hitting pretty damn terrible here. Seems my dosbox version of fantasy set filled the monsters up and items.

Ok sure during construct I can erase those and remake with one problem. It created item #1 as a trinket (treasure) whereas a fresh MAKE AN ADVENTURE DISK creates #1 as Oil and Wick (missile weapon).

I feel like I typed this before. Simple is turn item 7 into a oil and wick and 1 into diamond packet. It just won’t be absolutely authentic.

Damn me for not understanding disk changing. It’s like a rush of ancient language hitting me like a tidal wave that I can’t understand.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

For what it is worth, the only success I have had with ACS was when I tried it with an Amiga emulator and WinAUE or whatever it is called - that one has a very straightforward implementation of source and blank disks. I was off playing games in no time in that.

[McDeath]

Success:, here’s my post for Apple.

HELL YEAH!! YEEEEE——HAAAAAWWWWW!!!

Fresh version of each set made. And zipped and copied.

Ok, last one to get base disks is dos. Sucks my old computer is gone. So I can buy a usb A 3.5” drive or figure out dosbox.

Thank you so much qkumba. You saved me a lot of time. Now I just have to make a few disks on Dos and I’m good to go.

AWESOMENESS TO MY DAY!


We HAVE APPLE!

[Flack]

I thought for sure there had to be a way to swap floppy disk images in DOSBox, but apparently in the latest official release, there's not.

One recommendation I found was to create a folder called "\Floppy" and mount the virtual floppy drive, pointing it there. Then, on your host PC, could copy files into and out of that mounted folder, simulating swapping disks. Not very pretty, but it should work.

[McDeath]

That old toshiba has issues; i/o issues and a wiped hard drive/drained battery.

Still, I had a startup disk and win98 cd. It worked enough to get me a dosprompt and basic functions.

First I had about 6 old Privateer floppy copy disks that I format a:’d the hell out of.

Ok!

Then I plugged in all the old ACS disks I had to check. Yeah... only the master disk was legit.

Reboot again.

I plugged in the master again and this time hit M to make fresh copies.

IT WORKED!

So 5 brand new scenarios on 5 floppies.

My temp problem. My other laptops don’t have floppy drives. So, I will check all the library computers tomorrow. I hope at least 1 has a 3.5” drive.

If that fails, well I will be ordering:
USB 3.5” disk drive

Actually, I’d be ordering it anyways. So no big deal. I just want to have the dos disks done tomorrow.

I kept looking at forums mentions a Ctrl+f4 or something for switching floppies in d-fend if you set it up right. I kept scratching my head. If there is a way I hope to learn it and retain that. I also hope I can restore that toshiba as old tech came in handy. I barely remembered I had it until part way through my evening work out.

Upon remembering, I cut that short and came up from my yurt to the house and started digging. Found it in clutter. Pity that I/o error. I don’t know if I have dos disks around. The FDisk command fails.

[McDeath]

Just copy/pasting my update.

Thanks for the help.

My current problem is getting my fresh Dos sets on 3.5” to a hard drive. I exhausted all my physical resources as I only have a few computers.

First I was uncertain I could make the disks. I pulled out an ancient Toshiba laptop I kept and it didn’t work. I/o error. The drive was stripped clean. So, I pulled out an old win98 boot disk and that enabled me to get to dos prompt. From there I was able to format fresh diskettes and make new adventures of each set.

The USB port didn’t work and windows never started because of failed drive. So next step.

I hoped library had some 3.5” drives on their computers. NO!

I realized I had one more very ancient win95/98 desktop pc. It had 2 USB ports. Windows worked but I have no small thumb drives it can recognize or the driver disks.

I purchased some usb 3.5” modern portable drives. They might arrive next week. Maybe I’ll figure out how to change virtual drives in d-fed by then.

At least I now have apple2, c64, and Amiga fresh adventure disks. Man, pretty annoying and odd no archived made disks.

When I am done there sure as hell will be. I’m going to try to be as thorough as I can in this. Once I have solid fresh adventures for all platforms I’ll release them to the cloud. As I add content and eventually work my way to ACKS I will expand the zipor make other zips.

[Flack]

Just spitballing here, but another option is to build a virtual DOS machine. You could use VMWare or Hyper-V depending on your operating system -- both have free options. You could then use .img files of the original DOS diskettes to install DOS onto it. You can also use FreeDOS, which works pretty well and comes in an ISO format so all you have to do is mount it on a machine and then install it. I could build you a DOS virtual machine, but based on your current download limitations, it might be difficult to transfer it to you electronically.

[Flack]

I downloaded the latest free version of VMWare Player (v15) and built a DOS machine, if you want it. I set up the machine with a 500 meg hard drive, but the image right now is only about 6.5 meg.

[McDeath]

I’m rather terrible at some things. I hate to admit that I seem more like a plug n play person. Since you know how to do this maybe you could just use the dos version of ACS main from say myabandonware, and some virtual blanks and just create the M(Aken adventures).
It’s just one of each. Sure, I’ll try to do it on my own but imho a group effort is fine. It’s the final product that matters to me and the hopeful enjoyment everyone gets out of nostalgia.

Once I have the Stuart Smith package done I can move onto ACKS to make sure everything is catalogued in one spot.

Another forum sent me some apple disks as well I should download. Today was a tad disappointing with the library and old win98 failures.

At least opening up these virtual emulators and working with them keeps my mind from going completely to jelly. I mostly download and then chuck the downloads in a heap on hard drives. Lord knows what’s on them besides lots and lots of duplicates.

I wish I knew a technician to completely fix that old toshiba. It’s ugly and bulky but I love the built in drives and that it’s an early 95/98 machine.

[Flack]

I'd be glad to make those. I'll work on it this evening when I get home from work.

[McDeath]

Awesome and thank you very much.

[Flack]

Let me know if this link works: http://RobOHara.com/download/ACS_Disks.zip

That zip has floppy (.flp) images of ACS along with all five adventure disks.

[McDeath]

I’ll be at the library tomorrow morning so I’ll let you know then. Thanks again. This is probably the most hyped up I’ve been in a long time.

[McDeath]

Well two boons today (3 if you count my bike light came). I downloaded the files but I will have to figure out .flp files. I downloaded all the info I could and associated suggested programs.

The next is my floppy drive came along with my thumb drive. I got home and easily transferred the builder sets and main program into separate folders (looks the same as if you installed on a Dos machine). And they work. I’m surprised amazon sent my stuff early as they weren’t scheduled until next week. Perhaps my complaining from failed delivery before on an MP3 player changed their minds on how fast. It was a surprise.

So, while I don’t have to figure out .flp images I will attempt to anyways. Initially I found info on flp images for pictures.

Tuesday I’ll upload a basic set for all platforms to a Dropbox. Depending on how excited I get I might finish everything and put them all in tidy folders. I may be missing the Dos instruction booklet but they are all relatively similar.

Cataloguing each sets items, terrain, and items will take a little time. I also want to write out a doc on the graphics for each set and the adventures (not just the ones made via M key).

If you want an draw your map while you explore experience then https://gridcartographer.com works well. I’ve used it with azalta the dos game (which reminds me of acs but sadly I don’t have the builder set.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/azalta-8t6





Wish I could contact that developer and buy a copy.