Basically Pawn was written first for QL, then the QL died a horrid death. The quickest way to get the game on other machines was to write a 68k QL emulator, which became the "game driver" for Magnetic Scrolls. The version of Pawn or any other Mag Scrolls game (pre Wonderland) basically was a 68k cpu emulator that ran QL compiled code on the pc/st/apple etc.
The first game released by Magnetic Scrolls was QL-Pawn, the originate
version 1.o of the later so popular The Pawn. QL-Pawn came on two
micro drives that were enclosed within a micro drive wallet that was badged
by Sinclair Research. A sleeve was also produced for the wallet along with
an instruction booklet containing a short narrative to introduce the
adventure. The game was text only, but it already had the powerful
parser which was one of the basics for the success of Magnetic Scrolls.
QL-Pawn also was the only Magnetic Scrolls game that was produced for
the ill fated QL.
All the ports of QL-Pawn, then called "The Pawn" had version numbers
2.0 or higher.
Released: 1985
Distributed by: Firebird / Rainbird
Story: Rob Steggles
Graphics: Geoff Quilley
Programming: ?
Packaging: There are two different packages known, which can
roughly be separated into "small banner" and "large
banner" cover. The small banner version seem to be the
early releases and are rarer than the large banner
packages.
Goodies authoring: A Tale of Kerovnia by Georgina Sinclair
Package contents: A tale of Kerovnia (there exist at least two versions
of this novella. The second issue states "Version II"
on the front page),
The Pawn Guide (platform dependent),
The Pawn Game play,
The Pawn poster,
Addendum,
Disc,
At least the early Atari ST versions contained
a "STOP PRESS" indicating a minor bug in the
online hint system (all ciphered answers must be
terminated with CO)
Platforms: Amiga, Apple2, Archimedes, Atari ST, Atari XL/XE,
Commodore 128/ 64, Macintosh, MS-Dos, Schneider CPC,
Sinclair QL, Spectrum 128K, Spectrum +3
Known versions: 1.0 (QL-Pawn)
2.0 (Atari ST)
2.2 (Amiga)
2.3 (Archimedes, Atari XL, C64, MS-DOS, Schneider CPC,
Spectrum 128k)
2.4 (Spectrum +3)
Version unknown: Macintosh
Addendum: The beautiful graphics were created with "Neochrome"
on Atari ST.
======
Major parts of the games were implemented with a tool called FRED. Mainly
Fred was a data entry tool which was used to store the descriptions of
objects, rooms and NPCs and describe the properties of each object (e.g.
weight, movable, burnable, container,...). Each object had a 14 byte
descriptor block. For The Pawn Fred 23 was used, the later games were
done with Fred 23junior, which were both developed by Hugh Steers. In
several games magazines (e.g. the german Happy Computer) FRED was
incorrectly denoted as a "language".
* Eventually this game code was compiled into an intermediate code called
ELTHAM (Extra Low Tech Highly Ambiguous Methodology or alternativly
Extra Low Tech Highly Ambiguous Metacode).
* The ELTHAM code implemented a subset of the 68000 machine code. It was
executed "natively" on ST, Amiga, QL, Macintosh and emulated on the
other systems. The virtual machine used up to 64k. On 8 bit machines
they used virtual memory mechanisms. On the C64 non-active pages were
held on the floppy disc. Only "read-only" pages were swapped.
Basically Pawn was written first for QL, then the QL died a horrid death. The quickest way to get the game on other machines was to write a 68k QL emulator, which became the "game driver" for Magnetic Scrolls. The version of Pawn or any other Mag Scrolls game (pre Wonderland) basically was a 68k cpu emulator that ran QL compiled code on the pc/st/apple etc.
The first game released by Magnetic Scrolls was QL-Pawn, the originate
version 1.o of the later so popular The Pawn. QL-Pawn came on two
micro drives that were enclosed within a micro drive wallet that was badged
by Sinclair Research. A sleeve was also produced for the wallet along with
an instruction booklet containing a short narrative to introduce the
adventure. The game was text only, but it already had the powerful
parser which was one of the basics for the success of Magnetic Scrolls.
QL-Pawn also was the only Magnetic Scrolls game that was produced for
the ill fated QL.
All the ports of QL-Pawn, then called "The Pawn" had version numbers
2.0 or higher.
Released: 1985
Distributed by: Firebird / Rainbird
Story: Rob Steggles
Graphics: Geoff Quilley
Programming: ?
Packaging: There are two different packages known, which can
roughly be separated into "small banner" and "large
banner" cover. The small banner version seem to be the
early releases and are rarer than the large banner
packages.
Goodies authoring: A Tale of Kerovnia by Georgina Sinclair
Package contents: A tale of Kerovnia (there exist at least two versions
of this novella. The second issue states "Version II"
on the front page),
The Pawn Guide (platform dependent),
The Pawn Game play,
The Pawn poster,
Addendum,
Disc,
At least the early Atari ST versions contained
a "STOP PRESS" indicating a minor bug in the
online hint system (all ciphered answers must be
terminated with CO)
Platforms: Amiga, Apple2, Archimedes, Atari ST, Atari XL/XE,
Commodore 128/ 64, Macintosh, MS-Dos, Schneider CPC,
Sinclair QL, Spectrum 128K, Spectrum +3
Known versions: 1.0 (QL-Pawn)
2.0 (Atari ST)
2.2 (Amiga)
2.3 (Archimedes, Atari XL, C64, MS-DOS, Schneider CPC,
Spectrum 128k)
2.4 (Spectrum +3)
Version unknown: Macintosh
Addendum: The beautiful graphics were created with "Neochrome"
on Atari ST.
======
Major parts of the games were implemented with a tool called FRED. Mainly
Fred was a data entry tool which was used to store the descriptions of
objects, rooms and NPCs and describe the properties of each object (e.g.
weight, movable, burnable, container,...). Each object had a 14 byte
descriptor block. For The Pawn Fred 23 was used, the later games were
done with Fred 23junior, which were both developed by Hugh Steers. In
several games magazines (e.g. the german Happy Computer) FRED was
incorrectly denoted as a "language".
* Eventually this game code was compiled into an intermediate code called
ELTHAM (Extra Low Tech Highly Ambiguous Methodology or alternativly
Extra Low Tech Highly Ambiguous Metacode).
* The ELTHAM code implemented a subset of the 68000 machine code. It was
executed "natively" on ST, Amiga, QL, Macintosh and emulated on the
other systems. The virtual machine used up to 64k. On 8 bit machines
they used virtual memory mechanisms. On the C64 non-active pages were
held on the floppy disc. Only "read-only" pages were swapped.
-- Stu --
-- Stu --