Our next title is a graphic text adventure that was being produced by St. Brides and was started as far back as 1985. Featured in issue 45 of Sinclair User in particular when the School team was working on a new batch of games.
Thanks to an article at 8bitag.com, we learn that the original plan was for the software to be distributed with a comic book. At the time it was being developed using Quill and Illustrator, and was felt needed a new and more powerful system to write it. By the time it was released by GI Games in 1989 on the ZX Spectrum, it had already been moved over to Professional Adventure Writer.
It was heavily delayed, but eventually made it and was worth the wait – scoring highly in magazines, including a 9/10 in Your Sinclair. The plan though had been to always release the game on other formats. It was confirmed that Gilsoft’s Tim Gilberts worked on the conversion, but the company had gone bust before he was paid. The conversion was completed though, and used Gilsoft’s C64 PAW/Illustrator interpreter.
A document was shared with 8bitag.com which we have included in the “Creator Speaks” section below. Sadly though the conversion is still very much at large, but we hope to find out more from Tim soon and establish if anything has survived of the conversion.
Contributions: Strident
Supporting content
Gallery
Creator speaks
Original source: http://8bitag.com/info/dogboy/silverwolf-c64.txt
(From the Gilsoft archives, Feb 1989. Many thanks to Tim Gilberts for sharing this file.)
Silverwolf for the CBM 64
=========================
Phew what a job, you wouldn’t believe some of the Bugs! Anyway the enclosed
CBM disc contains the following files:-
sw?c – Commodore PAW databases
sw?g – Converted CBM Illustrator graphics
pi – Paw/Illustrator interpreter
part1 and part2 are full games you can LOAD “part?”,8 and RUN.
I have centralised the system messages that needed it, and amended the
PRINTAT actions for the Object Removal System.
I also had to add Plot statements to the Illustrator file for part 2 to
fix the position of the character graphics, you must have used MOVE Relative
when drawing them.
File Details
————
The file sizes are as follows;
Both text databases load at 3800h
‘sw1c’ – 21779 bytes long
‘sw2c’ – 23047 bytes long
The graphic databases load at
‘sw1g’ – A633h
‘sw2g’ – A729h
The last byte of both is BFFFh
‘pi’ loads at 0801h, and ends at 34ABh.
(The space from there to 3800h is mostly used for buffers)
Any other space between the databases is free for use by fast loaders etc
as is the area from C000h to CBFFh (not D000h note). Fast loaders must
leave ROMS and KERNAL vectors undamaged as on RESET, so that SAVES, LOADS
of game position work correctly.
Loading
——-
The interpreter contains a small BASIC program to start it and thus you
could save 0801 to BFFF to cassette or disc (as I have done with ‘part1’
and ‘part2’) then just LOAD “”,8 & RUN or SHIFT/RUNSTOP for cassette.
The entry address for m/c is 080Fh.
I assume you will put a fastloader on the cassette one though as 47K
files tend to take a while to load.
Tim Gilberts – February 1989
Important Note
————–
Programmers will always be one bit operators, they only exist in two states:
0 – Total depression because their code doesn’t work.
1 – Total elation because they know WHY their code doesn’t work.
When’s your next toggle or full Reset!
(anon)