windows – Hein Pragt Software

CpmBox a CPM 2.2 emulator

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

The second operating system I used (after TrsDos) was CPM on a Z80 development machine. Some time ago I build the Z80 MBC2 board and I played with CPM again. I included a fully working MBC2 emulation in my Z80 IDE program but after using DosBox I got the idea of creating CpmBox. CpmBox is a full CPM 2.2 implementation on a Z80 emulator for Windows, including a VT100 terminal and 8 CPM disks based on the MBC2 with the looks of a real terminal. It is a portable windows program (one single executable) and the zip file contains the emulator, a directory with a lot of disks and the bootdisk and a dos based directory to load CPM files from and to dos. It is also possible to save and load programs from dos and save or load them to a CPM disk. It is freeware and I hope you like it. . Regards, Hein Pragt.

Copyright

I respect copyright and I will not distribute illegal software. Part of this program was inspired by the Z80 MBC2 project and the boot disk and bootloader are from this project. I kept them as they are. The CPM disks are filed with old CPM based software I had in my collection and I filled the first 6 disks with all kind of software. Legally some of this software maybe is still copyrighted BUT in my opinion the copyright was from 40 to 45 years ago, these products have not been on the market for a lot of years and I think that most company’s will not complain. I do not ask any money for this package and the main goal is to keep the old spirit alive. I anyone can identify him or herself as a legal copyright owner and has problems with the distribution I will remove that content. But I seriously believe there is no one to object to distributing these old artifacts as freeware. My program itself is closed source but freeware.

What is inside this emulator

This emulator is exactly like a Z80 MBC2 computer running CPM 2.2 (without the i/o chip) and connected to a VT100 terminal.

Emulates: Z80 and VT100 terminal;
OS: CPM 2.2;
Keyboard: full 53 keys emulated by the PC keyboard;
CPU: Zilog Z80 the speed is depending on the PC hardware;
RAM: 64 kb;
Textmode: 24 x 80 characters;
Graphics: None;
Color: White on green screen;
Sound: None;
I/O: 15 CMM disks and access to DOS disk;
Design: Like an old terminal screen.

Download

Here you can download the latest version if this CpmBox emulator. This download is a zip file containing a portable x64 (and a x32 version) Windows exe programs, a directory with CMP disk images and a directory for DOS based CPM files. It is a portable program, just unpack it somewhere on the disk and start it by clicking it. This program is digitally signed with my own code certificate and it is trusted by Microsoft windows.

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.01 of CpmBox (2022)

Version 1.01
- First (beta release) version, the program has been testen by myself on my hardware.

CPM disks

I made some disks for this program and I got a question about how to make and maintain the disk image files. I have searched for a solution myself for a while until I found a utility program called cpmtools. But it were command line tools and not so user friendly. Then I found a gui for this toolkit and although the visual views are sometimes a little strange because of misinterpreted characters, it works fine. I zipped the complete directory as it is on my disk, including the correct disk definitions. You can download it here. Just download it and unpack it somewhere at your harddisk. Just doubleclick: CpmtoolsGUI.exe.

First you select a disk image in the upper left corner (or create a new one) and then you select the disk format. I use the disk formats of the MBC board project, use d0 for bootdisk 0 and d1 for alle other disks. You can now select the directory on you own harddisk in the right corner and you can select a file in the cpm view of the dos view and use the buttons to mover them from dos to cpm, or from cpm tp dos. I can read other cpm disk formats as well. This way you can create your own cpm file repository on your hardisk and copy them to the cpm disk images. This tools is not that user friendly and not very beautiful in UX but ir works fine for me.

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Emulators

Apple 1 emulator

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

The original Apple Computer was designed by Steve Wozniak. They were designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak. Wozniak’s friend Steve Jobs had the idea of selling the computer. The Apple 1 computer board was fist demonstrated in July 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California. The rest is history and although only a few machines were sold and a lot of them were lost in time, only a few machine are left and they are VERY expensive nowadays. Wozniak’s first wanted to use the Motorola 6800 processor but this was very expensive ($175) at that time and so he choose the much cheaper MOS Technology 6502 processor ($25). I started with the ISN8060 and the Z80 processor and I really disliked the 6502 processor, it was a simple and very limited processor in my view. A few years ago I build all kinds of replica machines in hardware and I also build and Apple 1 replica. It was then that I read the book IWoz and learned about the history of the machine. In modern design the Apple 1 was quite simple, Wozniak had build a terminal with a lot of logic chips in the past, he just added a cheap cpu, a small rom and ram and a PIA chip to create the Apple 1 computer. And yes, the Wozmon was a complete monitor program in just 256 bytes, that is something I respect. The basic version that Wozniak wrote was really bad, did not meet any standards and used integer arithmetic only. They hired Bill Gates and Paul Allen to write a decent basic for their new machines. I had written a decent Z80 emulator and a Intel 8052 emulator, this time I wrote a 6502 emulator. The first idea I had was building the Apple 1 computer emulator as I knew the design. The result is a portable Apple 1 emulator program for Windows 10 and 11. Regards, Hein Pragt.

Copyright

I respect copyright and I will not distribute illegal software. But this program includes the Apple 1 roms, and the zip file includes some old programs that still might be copyrighted. BUT in my opinion the copyright was from 40 to 45 years ago, these products have not been on the market for a lot of years and I think that no one would not care if someone was using a 40 year old basic interpreter on their own Windows 10 machines. As for the software, I feel the same, I do not ask any money for this package and the main goal is to keep the old spirit alive. I anyone can identify him or herself as a legal copyright owner and has problems with the distribution I will remove that content. But I seriously believe there is no one to object to distributing these old artifacts as freeware. My program itself is closed source but freeware.

What is inside this Apple 1 emulator

This Apple 1 emulator is exactly like the original Apple 1 computer with the Wozmon, but with a build in basic rom.

Emulates: Apple 1 computer with keyboard and TV monitor attached;
Basic: The original basic is loaded at startup at location E000;
Keyboard: Emulated by the PC keyboard;
CPU: MOS 6502 emulator the speed does not match the old hardware;
RAM: 64 kb with Wonzmon at FF00 and basic at E000;
VRAM: none;
Textmode: 40 chars x 24 lines;
Graphics: None;
Color: Black and white on green with screen;
Sound: None;
I/O: Emulation of the 6821 chip is done;
OS: No disk and no DOS.

Keyboard mapping

The keyboard is mapped to the original Apple 1 keyboard mapping, f.i. the backspace key is converted to the Apple 1 mapping. Alle characters are converted to uppercase, just like the original Apple 1 keyboard would do.

Wozmon

At startup of this program it will load the Wozmon and the Basic in memory and then start the Wozmon. You can play with the Wozmon, and go to basic using the E000R command. But you can also go the basic using the menu on top, or reset the machine back to the Wozmon monitor program. In Wozmon mode, you can download .woz (hex files) to load machine code programs from your Windows filesystem. But you can also save of load binary files into memory and execute them with the xxxxR command.

Apple 1 basic

I also load the original Aplle1 basic on startup of the program, you can start basic with the E000R command from Wozmon of with the top menu bar. You can type in your own programs or load them from your Windows filesystem. This is done by keyboard redirection. I have found some Aplle1 basic programs and games to demonstrate the old Aplle1 basic, they are included in the download zip file.

Apple 1 figFORTH 1.1

You can start a port of figFORTH 1.1 for the Apple I from the top menu, resulting in a powerful programming environment for experimentation or computer control applications. The binary file is in the root directory together with the exe files and can be exchanged. It will be loaded at 0x0300 and after loading it will be executed at 0x0300.

Download

Here you can download the latest version if this Apple 1 emulator. This download is a zip file containing a portable x64 (and a x32 version) Windows exe programs, and a directory with programs in .BAS and .WOZ format. It use a portable program, just unpack it somewhere on the disk and start it by clicking it. This program is digitally signed with my own code certificate and it is trusted by Microsoft windows.

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.03 of Apple 1 emulator (2023)

Version 1.03
- Added support for Forth, you now can also select in the top menu to load and run Forth on the Apple 1 emulator, the binary file is external.
Version 1.02
- Rom is now external so you can experiment with different roms or build your own rom for the Apple1 hardware.
Version 1.01
- First (beta release) version, the program has been testen by myself on my hardware.

Download old versions

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.01 of Apple 1 emulator (2022)

Apple1 replica hardware kit

There is also a nice DIY project to make a working Appl1 1 replica, with the correct 6502 / 6821 / ram / rom hardware and a Arduino Nano to emulate the keyboard and video circuit hardware. It is a nice compact kit and this emulator is based on this kit. I sell the PCB and a partial Kit in my webshop.

The PCB together with alls the chips and sockets.

The PCB of this board only.

Retro computing webshop

Heinpragt.nl is a daughter site of this website and a webshop focused on retro computer parts, retro electronics components and chips and other articles that have a connection with old retro computers. It is a small webshop that I run myself and I also try to get some more information about retro computers and electronics. Shipments are only made to countries within the European Union.
Retro computing parts webshop

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Emulators

MK14 emulator

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

This page is about my MK14 emulator for Microsoft Windows. The the INS8060, also called the SC/MP processor was the first real processor I studied when I was 13 years old, but at that time I did not have much money,so I could not afford to buy a real computer board. I read all I could about the SC/MP processor and I would draw the internal of the processor on a big piece of paper, with the RAM / ROM / keyboard and display as registers and I would have a lot of small zero and one papers to simulate the flow of the bits and bytes in the (paper) circuit. Looking back this was ridiculous, but this is the way I learned computer design and binary logic. The SC/MP is my first processor and nowadays you cannot get the processor anymore (at least not at a reasonable price), but there are emulators in software and hardware that are still available. After building two PIC14 boards I decided to also write a MK14 emulator for Microsoft Windows. I dedicate this program to Karen Orton (R.I.P.) who left us the amazing PIC14 hardware emulator. Regards, Hein Pragt.

Copyright

I respect copyright and I will not distribute illegal software. But this program includes the MK14 rom, and the zip file includes some old programs and documents that still might be copyrighted. BUT in my opinion the copyright was from 40 to 45 years ago, these products have not been on the market for a lot of years and I think that no one would not care if someone was using a 40 year old file on their own Windows 10 machines. I do not ask any money for this package and the main goal is to keep the old spirit alive. If anyone can identify him or herself as a legal copyright owner and has problems with the distribution I will remove that content. But I seriously believe there is no one to object to distributing these old artifacts as freeware. My program itself is closed source but freeware.

What is inside this MK14 emulator

This emulator of the MK14 has full memory expansion on 200H, 800H and B00H and the first 0x200 bytes contain the second version of the MK14 rom. The on screen keys work as they should do, you can also us the keys on your keyboard, the mapping of the command keys is on top of the key.

You can load programs in hex format using the top menu, the last digits of the filename is the starting address. Press reset or abort then enter the address and push the go button. You can also save the memory to a hex file, the first option only saves the original memory 0xf00 to 0xfff, the second option saves the entire ram from 0200 to 0fff. The instructions are cycle precise and the MK14 emulator runs on the same speed as an original MK14 would, so it can be slow sometimes, but its real.

This is a so called portable program, you do not need to install it. Just download the zip file and unpack it on an logical location on your disk. I have all my portable application in a top directory “portapps”. There is a win62 and a win32 version of the MK14 emulator, both are digitally signed for your safety. There is also a directory containing a lot of example programs I collected, with sourcecode and hex files. The is also a documentation directory that contains the original MK14 manual and some SC/MP programming manuals and datasheet.

Download

Here you can download the latest version if this MK14 emulator. This download is a zip file containing a portable x64 (and a x32 version) Windows exe programs, and a directory with example programs. It use a portable program, just unpack it somewhere on the disk and start it by clicking it. This program is digitally signed with my own code certificate and it is trusted by Microsoft windows.

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.01 of MK14 emulator (2023)

Version 1.01
- First (beta release) version, the program has been testen by myself on my hardware.

Retro computing webshop

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Emulators

MPF-1 emulator

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

The Micro-Professor MPF-1 was introduced by Multitech in 1981 and it was Multitech’s first computer product and probably one of the world’s longest selling single board computers. Multitech changed its name to Acer in 1987. The MPF-1 was based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor and designed specifically to teach the fundamentals of machine code and assembly language. The MPF-1 doesn’t look like a standard microcomputer board, it comes in a plastic book that folds out into two parts, along with two audio cassettes and a training manual. When closed, the MPF-1 can be placed on a bookshelf for easy storage which made it more attractive as it was easy to store. There are still quite a few MPF-1 boards for sale and you see them regularly on auction and marketplace websites. I haven’t owned an MPF-1 myself, but I’ve read a lot about it and secretly hoped I could get one someday. In the end I wrote a full implementation of an MPF-1 emulator including the old keyboard and seven segment displays. Regards, Hein Pragt.

Copyright

I respect copyright and I will not distribute illegal software. But this program includes the MPF-1 rom, and the zip file includes some old programs and documents that still might be copyrighted. BUT in my opinion the copyright was from 40 to 45 years ago, these products have not been on the market for a lot of years and I think that no one would not care if someone was using a 40 year old file on their own Windows 10 machines. I do not ask any money for this package and the main goal is to keep the old spirit alive. If anyone can identify him or herself as a legal copyright owner and has problems with the distribution I will remove that content. But I seriously believe there is no one to object to distributing these old artifacts as freeware. My program itself is closed source but freeware.

What is inside this MPF-1 emulator

This MPF-1 emulator emulates a standard MPF-1b, but the rom is in the subdirectory and you could replace it if you like. It uses the old display that is also emulated and the on screen keyboard acts like the original keyboard of the MPF-1. In this version there is no sound support, I will add this in the future. Its has full memory expansion and emulates all the hardware components.

You can load and save programs in hex or binary format using the top menu. Press the go button to execute the program. When loading and saving the program will prompt for start and end adressed, this will require some knowledge of the memory map of the MPF-1 board.

This is a so called portable program, you do not need to install it. Just download the zip file and unpack it on an logical location on your disk. I have all my portable application in a top directory “portapps”. There is a win64 and a win32 version of the emulator, both are digitally signed for your safety. There is also a directory containing the rom and example programs I collected, with sourcecode and hex files.

Download

Here you can download the latest version if this MPF-1 emulator. This download is a zip file containing a portable x64 (and a x32 version) Windows exe programs, and a directory with example programs. It use a portable program, just unpack it somewhere on the disk and start it by clicking it. This program is digitally signed with my own code certificate and it is trusted by Microsoft windows.

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.01 of MPF-1 emulator (2023)

Version 1.01
- First (beta release) version, the program has been testen by myself on my hardware.

Retro computing webshop

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Emulators

TRS80 emulator

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

The Trs80 model 1 level II was my first computer in 1978 and I have worked on it for many years. I upgraded it to 64 Kb ram by piggybacking the ram chips and I did the lowercase modification. My TRS80 had some extra buttons on the backside for the modifications I did, but I never owned a expansion unit and I never had disks. It was a 64 kb TRS80, with lowercase mod and a joystick interface and a cassette player / recorder for loading and saving programs. I wrote a lot of programs in these days, in Basic and assembler. My TRS80 machine broke and was stored in the basement and on one of my moves to another house it got lost. I still write programs for the Z80 and I have written a good emulator and programming IDE with CP/M emulation and so the idea for building a virtual TRS80 was born. There are several good emulators, but mostly not in a true Window (most of them are console applications) and most of them emulate an awful lot including the cassette and disks (even with the original sound) and the waiting for a program to load for more then 10 minutes. These are the true FULL emulators that emulate the old hardware including all the faults. These programs mostly do not include roms and they have a lot of settings, I used them but the lot of settings and the painful loading was annoying to me. I like simple and easy to use portable programs that can be used out of the box. And so this TRS80 emulator was born, it is a easy to use emulator that will give you the experience of using the old machine, but with modern loading speed and cassette tapes on the PC storage. On this page I will tell you what it is, what it can do and also what it cannot do. Regards, Hein Pragt.

Copyright

I respect copyright and I will not distribute illegal software. But this program includes the model I and III roms, and the zip file includes a lot of cassette tapes of old programs that still might be copyrighted. BUT in my opinion the copyright was from 40 to 45 years ago, these products have not been on the market for a lot of years and I think that for instance Microsoft would not care if someone was using a 40 year old basic interpreter on their own Windows 10 machines. As for the tape software, I feel the same, I do not ask any money for this package and the main goal is to keep the old spirit alive. I anyone can identify him or herself as a legal copyright owner and has problems with the distribution I will remove that content. But I seriously believe there is no one to object to distributing these old artifacts as freeware. My program itself is closed source but freeware.

What is inside this emulator

This emulator is exactly like my own old TRS80 computer with one added extension and that is the Model II roms.

Emulates: TRS 80 Model I level 1 and level 2 and the Model III computer;
Basic: Level 1 (4k ROM) / Level II (12k ROM) / Model III (14k ROM);
Keyboard: 53 keys emulated by the PC keyboard;
CPU: Zilog Z80 / 1.77 MHz, the speed is recalculated to match the old hardware;
RAM: 64 kb;
VRAM: 1 kb;
Textmode: 32 x 16 of 64 x 16;
Graphics: 128 x 48 pixels, screen is resizable;
Color: Black and white on green with screen;
Sound: Emulated on PC hardware from the cassette port;
I/O: Emulation of the Joystick on thge arrow keys of the PC and the spacebar;
OS: No disk and no DOS.

Keyboard mapping

The keyboard of the TRS80 had a different layout than modern keyboards, I chose to map all the keys and special characters of the PC keyboard to the corresponding key of the TRS80. There is one key that is not in a PC keyboard and that is the BREAK key, this key is mapped to the END key of the PC keyboard. The cursor keys are mapped to emulate several joystick extensions on the TRS80, on most games that used the joystick, the cursor keys and spacebar will work fine.

Casette I/O

One of the things that was annoying in the old days was the waiting for a program to load. This could easily take up 5 to 10 minutes and most of the emulators use the internal old rom routines to read cassette tape files. Even first loading a tape, then type cload and then press play on the virtual cassette recorder. It is like he original experience but I did not like that. So I patched the roms to reroute the CLOAD and CSAVE to my own Windows routines that can load and save in a few seconds and even can read (and write) several cassette formats. A basic CAS file will auto-run, I find that convenient, and Ascii based basic fille will not auto-run. You can also load and save with the menu on top of the window. But you could load a basic file in Ascii and save it to a CAS file. There are only a few settings, like selecting a machine and resetting a machine. Maybe in the future I will expand this a little, but never too much.

Download

Here you can download the latest version if this TRS80 emulator. This download is a zip file containing a portable x64 (and a x32 version) Windows exe programs, some directories with programs in .BAS and .CAS format. It us a portable program, just unpack it somewhere on the disk and start it by clicking it. This program is digitally signed with my own code certificate and it is trusted by Microsoft windows.

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.00 of hmp_trs80_emulator (2022)

Version 1.00
- First (beta release) version, the program has been testen by myself on my hardware.

Links to information, documentation and tips

A very extensive description with schematics of the TRS80 Model I level II computer.
Sams ComputerFacts – Model I (1985)(Howard Sams)(pdf)

The well-known technical reference manual that Tandy sold and which was very poorly available.
Radio Shack TRS-80 Micro Computer Technical Reference Handbook 2nd

This is the technical reference manual of the TRS80 expansion interface.
Expansion Interface Service Manual (19xx)(Radio Shack)(pdf)

Wikipedia’s page about the TRS80 model 1.
TRS80 wikipedia page

A very complete page with information about the TRS80 model 1.
www.trs-80.org/model-1.

Another very complete page with information about the TRS80 model 1
oldcomputers.net/trs80i

A nice page about bringing a TRS80 Model 1 computer back to life.
classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2015-03-13-trs-80-model1-L1-fix

A site with a lot of information about all TRS80 computers (Ira Goldklang).
Ira Goldklang’s TRS-80 Revived Site (Engels)

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Game development

Adventure interpreter

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

In 1980 I started playing games on my TRS-80 computer and my favorite games were adventure games and especially the adventure games from Adventure International. During that time I also wrote my own adventure game in basic based on an article by Scott Adams (the man behind Adventure International) (www.msadams.com) about his adventure interpreter. Years later I came into contact with Scott and a friendship developed and even now I still have regular contact with my American friend. In 1997 I adapted the scottfree version of the adventure interpreter and I improved it and added missing features. I wrote a windowed version for Microsoft Windows (Visual C) and this version is released on a CD with a large collection of old Adventure games in America. In 2005 I made a new version and in 2013 I also made a new improved version with a new user interface. Now it is 2023 and I have written some emulators and for the adventure games I went back to basic. No more MS Windows multiple windows, but just an old terminal screen just like the way it used to work in 1980. Version 4.0.1 of my adventure interpreter is back to the basic. Sometimes it is nice to get a taste of the very old atmosphere of the old text adventure games.

Download Scott Adams adventure interpreter 4.0.1.

Download link: AdvInt401.zip

*) The zip file contains a x64 and x32 version of the program and all the Scott Adams game file and some extra game file from other authors.

This program is a so called portable program, you do not need to install it. Just download the zip file and extract it in a directory on your disk. I have all my portable programs in a root directory “portapps”. There is a x64 and x32 executable, both files are digitally signed with a coding certficate for your safety and to be trusted by Windows defender and virusscanners. If you find as bug or have a remark, I like to receive feedback to improve this program.

Version 4.0.1

In this version the user interface has completely changed to a terminal emulation like the old personal computer screens.
There is no Spanish translation in this new version, the old Spanish version is still available.
I renamed all the adventure dat files and added some more from my archive.
There is no longer a dropdonw of the verbs and nouns, but there is a Hint command in the top menu that will show them.

I hope you will enjoy playing this old games, just like the old times. Regards, Hein Pragt

Older versions

I deleted some things in the new version, there is no Spanish version anymore, there is no dropdown of verbs and nouns, but there is a hint command in the top menu that will show all verbs and nouns. For people who like the old interface I still have the older versions on this page as well.

Download Scott Adams adventure interpreter 3.0.6.

Download link: AdvInt306.zip

In this version 3.0.6 the game flags are reset when loading a game, and the typed command is put into the message window. Also there is a English and a Spanish version in the zip file.
In version (3.0.4) 2018 you can stretch the main window to make the inventory field wider.
In version (3.0.3) 2014 I fixed a bug in loading a saved game and a bug that prevented one action to be executed.
The previous version (3.0.2) 2013 was the Windows XP verdion. The current versdion works fine on Windows 10.

With this interpreter program you can play the old text adventures of Scott Adams (Adventure International) on your Windows PC. Fourteen original adventure games are included in the same zip file.

The latest version has a greatly improved (English) user interface, buttons for the most used commands, a separate inventory window and dropdown lists with all commands and objects. This makes it easier to play as sometimes the old games were more “guess the right words”. This version of the program makes it easier to play these old adventure games with a modern user interface. I made this version “just for fun” because sometimes programmers just have to make something fun without any commercial interest just because “it’s fun!”. I hope you will also enjoy this program and the old adventure games.
Regards, {-Hein Pragt}

Download Scott Adams game interpreter older versions.

Link: advent201.zip
This ia an older version (2.01) 2005 of the windows95 / 98 / NT / 2000 / XP version of the Scott Adams adventure interpreter.

Link: advent105.zip
This is a very old version (1.05) 1997 of the windows95 / 98 / NT / 2000 / XP version of the Scott Adams adventure interpreter.

Scott Adams adventure games dat files.

Link: advents.zip
This zip file contains all data files from Scott Adams’ text adventure games, you can also visit Scott’s homepage Adams himself (www.msadams.com) where you can also play more recent adventure games.

Games in this zip file:

#1 Adventureland (1978)
#2 Pirate’s Adventure
#3 Mission Impossible (1979)
#5 The Count (1981)
#6 Strange Odyssey
#7 Mystery Fun House
#8 Pyramid of Doom
#9 Ghost Town
#10 Savage Island, part 1
#11 Savage Island, part 2
#13 Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle (1984)
#14 Return to Pirate’s Island

About Scott Adams.

Scott Adams wrote the first commercial text adventure game for the personal computer. He wrote Adventureland fot the TRS-80 computer in BASIC. Scott based his play on Colossal Caves, written by Will Crowther and Don Woods on one DEC PDP-10. Scott Adams started a company called Adventure International in 1978 and between 1978 and 1984 he wrote fourteen text adventure games for the TRS-80, Atari, Apple II, C64, Sorcerer, TI and CP / M computers. All games used the same two word command parsers with which the games could play the game. GO EAST, GET SNEAKERS and SAY YOHO were well-known commands.

Scott Adams started selling the Adventureland game by placing a small ad in a computer magazine and turning on the game sell cassette tapes. One of his first sales was fifty copies to the then well-known Radio Shack company in Chicago. In December 1980, Byte magazine wrote an article about Scott Adams’ adventure games and its peak period Adventure International company had a turnover of 3 million dollars. They also signed a major contract with Marvel Comics all known action figures to release an adventure game.

But when the first dip came in the video games market in the mid-80s, Adventure International unfortunately went bankrupt and all licences of the games went to the bank that held them for years. At the end of the last century, Scott got the rights to his old games back and made them freely available to play. He did retain the copyright on these games. Scott Adams now lives in Wisconsin and has worked for years as a senior programmer for Avista Inc. He is now retired, enjoying life and still working on computer games.

Text adventures.

The origins of the text adventure genre began in 1976 with the game “Colossal Cave Adventure”. This game was created by the American programmer and amateur caver William Crowther. In this game, the player has to explore a huge subterranean labyrinth, search for hidden treasures and fight with dwarves and dragons. All this was just represented by text on the screen with a description of the environment and the objects at that location. The game was controlled by two word commands such as “go east”, “get ax” and “open door”. In the great labyrinth of Adventure you can quickly get lost, you have to defeat dragons and a dwarf throws an ax at you, your treasures are regularly stolen by a pirate who then hides them elsewhere and where you have to use magic to get where you want.

Due to their simplicity, the text adventures became the first commercial games for home computers. Legendary Developers of text adventures are Scott Adams and the company Infocom founded in 1979 by students at MIT with titles like “Zork”, “Planetfall” and “Deadline”. Unfortunately, in the 80s, the text adventure fell victim to the increasing processing capacity of computers and graphics games made their appearance. Text adventures were replaced with graphics adventures as well and they were called point and click adventures. Well-known developers of these adventure games were Sierra On-Line with the famous Roberta Williams as the creator of beautiful adventures such as King Quest and Space Quest series and Leisure Suit Larry. But there was also Lucasarts with Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island and Indiana Jones who are exceptional due to their graphic design, sound and humor. In the mid-90s, the genre changed slightly again with adventure games full of puzzles such as The Seventh Guest and the legendary Myst and Riven.

But even nowadays people are still interested in text adventures because it can be played as a kind of interactive book. The player must form his own image of the world in the adventure himself and must be very creative in order to use the right path and find your way through the adventure with the right objects. Some experience with the genre of game will help, if you know that you have to pick things up and drop them again, a “locked door” requires a “key” that you can probably find somewhere else you can play the games faster and enjoy them more. New text adventures are still being created by a small group of people but there are also people that are interested in the old games. This is also because these games often excel in one good story and smart puzzles while modern games are often better graphically but less good in a good story.

Walkthrough Scott Adams Pirate Adventure.

There are two “treasures” in Pirate Adventure:

Gold Dubleons
Rare Stamps

Flat in London	GET CRACKERS, GET SNEAKERS, GET RUM, GO STAIRS
Alcove	GET BOOK (“There’s a strange sound”), GO PASSAGE
Secret Passageway	GO EAST
Musty attic	GET TORCH, GET DUFFEL, EXAMINE DUFFEL, OPEN DUFFEL, DROP DUFFEL, GET MATCHES, GO WEST
Secret Passageway	GO WEST
Alcove	READ BOOK, GO WINDOW
Outside open window on ledge	SAY YOHO
Sandy beach	DROP SNEAKERS, DROP BOOK, GO EAST
Meadow	GO SHACK, GIVE RUM, WAIT (for Pirate to take rum), GO WEST, GO EAST
Foot of a cave	GO PATH
Top of a hill	GO CRACK
Dark location	LIGHT TORCH
Large cavern	GO SHED
Tool shed	GET HAMMER, GET WINGS, GO NORTH, GO CRACK
Top of a hill	UNLIGHT TORCH, GO DOWN, GO WEST, GO WEST
Sandy beach	DROP WINGS, DROP TORCH, DROP MATCHES, DROP SACK, GET BOOK, GET SNEAKERS, SAY YOHO
Outside open window on ledge	GO WINDOW
Alcove	GO PASSAGE
Secret passageway	GO EAST
Musty attic	GET BOTTLE, GO WEST, GO WEST, GO DOWN
Flat in London	GET NAILS (The rug is nailed down!), GET RUG, DROP RUG, GET KEYS, GO STAIRS
Alcove	GO WINDOW
Outside open window on ledge	SAY YOHO
Sandy beach	DROP BOOK, DROP HAMMER, DROP SNEAKERS, DROP NAILS, GET WINGS, GO LAGOON
Shallow lagoon	WAIT (For tide to come in), GO NORTH
Ocean	GET WATER, GET FISH, GO SOUTH
Shallow lagoon	GO SOUTH
Sandy beach	DROP WINGS, GET TORCH, GET MATCHES, GO EAST
Meadow	GO EAST
Foot of a cave	LIGHT TORCH, GO CAVE
Maze of caves	GO DOWN
Pit	THROW FISH, DROP BOTTLE, UNLOCK DOOR, GO HALL
Long hallway	GO EAST
Large cavern	GO SHED
Tool shed	GET SHOVEL, GO NORTH
Large cavern	GET LUMBER, GET SAILS, GO WEST
Long hallway	GO PIT
Pit	GO UP
Maze of caves	GO WEST
Foot of a cave	UNLIGHT TORCH, GO WEST
Meadow	GO WEST
Sandy beach	DROP LUMBER, DROP SAILS, DROP TORCH, DROP MATCHES, GET SACK, GO EAST, GO SHACK
Grass shack	UNLOCK CHEST, LOOK CHEST, GET PLANS, LOOK CHEST, GET MAP, GET PARROT, GO WEST, GO WEST
Sandy beach	DROP KEYS, WAIT (For the tides to change)
Shallow lagoon	GO LAGOON, DIG ANCHOR, GET ANCHOR, GO SOUTH
Sandy beach	DROP ANCHOR, BUILD SHIP, DROP PLANS, GET SNEAKERS, GET BOOK, SAY YOHO
Outside open window on ledge	GO WINDOW, GO PASSAGE, GO EAST
Musty attic	WAKE PIRATE, GO WEST, GO WEST, GO WINDOW, SAY YOHO
Sandy beach	DROP BOOK, DROP SNEAKERS, GO SHIP
Aboard pirate ship	SET SAIL (You may need to WAIT for the tide to come in!), GO BEACH
Treasure Island	DIG, WAIT (Pirate grabs rum), GO SOUTH
Spooky graveyard	GO EAST
Large barren field	PACE 30, DIG, GET BOX, DROP SHOVEL, GO MONASTERY
Deserted monastery	DROP PARROT, GET DUBLEONS, GO WEST, GO WEST
Spooky graveyard	WAKE PIRATE, GO NORTH
Treasure Island	GO SHIP
Aboard pirate ship	SET SAIL, GO BEACH
Sandy beach	GET HAMMER, OPEN BOX, GET STAMPS, DROP HAMMER, DROP BOX, GET BOOK, GET SNEAKERS, SAY YOHO
Outside open window on ledge	GO WINDOW, GO DOWN
Flat in London	DROP DUBLEONS, DROP STAMPS, SCORE

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The Amerwold Inheritance game

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

Welcome on the homepage of the Windows ™ single room adventure game The Amerwold Inheritance. After the events in Amerwold Woods one of the brothers inherited the big house of the other brother. His brother was autistic but also a brilliant programmer and he earned a lot of money with his software. He bought this big house, far away of the busy world and together with some friends he turned the attic into a big escape room. You are exploring the house and find yourself trapped om the second floor at the stairs to the attic. It seems that the only wat to get out again is solving alle the puzzles that are spread around the several rooms of the attic.

The game contains a lot of puzzles of all types and all puzzles could work in real life. The attic is also the workshop that he used to create all the puzzles. There is no special knowledge needed, alle the knowledge you will need to solve the puzzles is available in the game. It will take several hours to solve all the puzzles and the progress is automatically stored every time you leave the game. The puzzles are not extremely hard but also not too easy. Puzzles require logic thinking and for some puzzles you will have to collect clues.

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As there is almost no money to be earned as game developer, I stopped programming games and concentrate on other progams and tools that do make some money. As of now all games are free to download.

https://heinpragt.itch.io/the-amerwold-inheritance

Amerwold woods

This game is a sequel to the Windows ™ first person walking simulator game Amerwold woods. This game is a walking simulator, an exploration game that tells an interactive story to the player. In this game you can freely move around the whole game, even go through bushes, walk beside the paths, the whole wood is accessible beside some areas that are clearly bordered with fences or bushes too thick to walk through. The idea is that you get to know the main character and try to understand what has happened. The story leans heavily on the fact that the main character is an autistic young man. I really hope that you will enjoy this game, I have been working on this game for almost two years.

https://heinpragt.itch.io/the-amerwold-inheritance

Games

Bon Vivant

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

Welcome on the homepage of the Windows ™ first person 3D adventuregame Bon Vivant – the tale of a mysterious guesthouse. This is the first big game I wrote using the Unity game engine. The current release is 2.21, in the second release all the Dutch translations were gone and voiceover was added and in the third upgrade the graphics were improved and some extra puzzles have been added. The storyline is still the same, I hope you enjoy this game, the puzzles are not that hard (although there is one that is more complex) and the exploring of the big house is fun. Regards, Hein Pragt.

Bon Vivant point and click 3D adventuregame

This free walking point and click 3D adventuregame takes place in an abandoned and boarded-up guest house in a forest somewhere in the middle of the Netherlands. Ten years ago a drama took place in the guest house and since then it has been abandoned and boarded up. In the nearby village it is said that mysterious things still happen around the old guest house and children are told that they absolutely can not go there. You wanted to examine the story on your holiday trip but your partner did not want you to go. Now a year later you lost your job, your partner and as a rebellious act you are planning to investigate the mysterious guest house to discover what has happened.

You have to solve obstacles that you encounter in this guest house and gradually you learn more and more about the eccentric old residents, their relationships and problems and the dramatic event that happened ten years ago. One of the features of the game is that all the puzzles and problems you have to solve are really possible, the game tries to be realistic in everything and not to break the atmosphere and zeitgeist.

The game is a first person adventuregame, which means that you look through the eyes of the player. In the game you have a flashlight in the left hand and the possibility to carry one large object in your right hand. So when you take a new large object, the old object will fall and remain there. You can bring several small items in your backpack, this makes the game realistic to play. The game has voice over and has background sounds and sounds that objects make within the game. The game can be played in semi-random order, but in order to be able to continue on certain points, you must have done a number of things. An attempt has been made to make the illusion that you are really walking around as realistic as possible. The game does not have a hint system, you sometimes get an indication as if it was an idea that occurred in your own thoughts.

Download

Download: https://heinpragt.itch.io/bon-vivant

Download

Download: https://heinpragt.itch.io/bon-vivant

Games

Amerwold woods game

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

Welcome on the homepage of the Windows ™ first person adventure game / walking simulator game Amerwold woods. A walking simulator is usually an exploration game that tells an interactive story to the player and in some way it is also an adventure game. In this game you can freely move around the whole game, even go trough bushes, walk beside the paths, the whole huge wood is accessible beside some areas that are clearly bordered with fences or bushes too thick to walk through. There is also not a straight line for the story, the order of all the fragments is determined by the way the player walks through the woods. Only some scenes are scripted, like the end scene but the idea is that you get to know the main character and try to understand what has happened. The story of this game leans heavily on the fact that the main character is an autistic young man. I really hope that you will enjoy this game, I have been working on this game for almost two years. Regards, Hein Pragt.

Download: https://heinpragt.itch.io/amerwold-woods

The main character of this adventure game / walking simulator is an autistic young man that returns to the woods where his parents had a cabin and where he spent his entire youth with his brother, father and mother during weekends and holidays. In the beginning it seems that he is back in the woods to escape the world around him, the world that is not so friendly to autistic people. As he walks through the woods old memories appear but also recent memories come to mind. There is also a raven that seems to be following him, he does not quite understand why, but in the end it all becomes clear. The player guides the young man trough the woods and also tries to understand the stories.

The forest in this adventure game is very large with a lot of areas and a lot of small lakes and small rivers and the player must travel all the paths and roads. It is possible to run, but then you will probably not enjoy the beautiful landscapes. There is a lake with and island, a secret set of caves, animated animals and sounds that matches the surroundings. The only thing the player has to do, is to memories the paths and roads and navigate the main character through the woods while listening to different parts of the story or the thoughts of the young man. In some cases the player needs to click on items to activate them, but that is minimal. The game also has a few abandoned buildings to explore, that all played a role in the life of the main character.

This adventure game is also about autism, I am a little autistic myself but as I have High-Functioning Autism it is not so clear to everyone. It was not clear to me also for a long time. A lot of my own experiences can be found in the stories of the main character, but in a different way, everyone with autism is unique and there is not one clear definition of autism. But in this case it fits well in the story and I hop that the player will be helpful and understanding towards the main character of this game. People with autism might understand the main character of thjis game better and share some of his experiences.

The game is developed in the Unity game engine with a lot of C# code, it took me about two years to develop and the idea of the game changed with the knowledge I gained on game development and knowledge of the Unity game engine. The game is completely in the English language and all the voices are generated by Speechelo. The game also has subtitles that cannot be turned off. The music is taken from an old piano concert and changed into loops using Audacity. The game as a Windows installer that is digitally signed and also the game executable is digitally signed for the security of the customer. The game menu has a lot of settings for screen quality, sound and game control and the game can be played fullscreen but also inside a window. I prefer full screen because it get you fully into the game.

Download page

Download: https://heinpragt.itch.io/amerwold-woods

New games

I am currently not working on any new game, the time, money and effort that I have spend on my previous games has resulted in almost no earning, I also write other software that does make some money, so I will spend my time on that.

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