I can understand that! The orders should start shipping very soon! There was a delay because my publisher accidentally sent the wrong content to the printer. Otherwise you probably would already have your box! Anyway, it's worth the wait! Cheers!
Stefan Vogt
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There is a transcript in the game's archive that shows the complete solution to reach the good ending. So in case you're stuck again in the future, you might get some "inspiration" there.
Have you already checked the car on the forecourt and visited the dovecote on the manor grounds? Cora basically gave you a hint to go there.
Oh wow, you really missed something if you didn't know New Model Army. Basically the soundtrack of my youth :)
And thank you very much for the kind words. I am glad you enjoyed the game! Yes, the 415 points issue is one I am already aware of. I indeed counted wrong when I defined the MAX_SCORE value in my code, silly me! Will be fixed in the upcoming release 12, which also introduces a little hint system that gives you a nudge into the right direction after reaching the bad or neutral ending :)
I currently have no plans to translate the game to German unfortunately. It would be a pretty massive task since there is lots of content in Ghosts, but also the PunyInform library would need a full translation. I won't say it won't happen but at this point it is rather not likely as it would be serious work to do so.
Thanks a lot, means the world to me to see people enjoying the game! Ok, let me give you a nudge in the right direction :)
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
Reaching the bad ending is pretty easy to achieve. If you decide to let Cora go with Rosie, you will reach the bad ending regardless of what you do afterwards. The route to reach the good or even the neutral ending is closed at this point.
You actually need two do two consecutive things at the ritual in a timed event for the good ending. When you get the hint that you can now intervene the ritual, and based on your experience with the neutral ending this is certainly what you want to do, the first thing that needs to be done will be something that causes distraction and that buys you another turn where you can do the final thing that leads to the good ending. For the distraction part you might want to examine something that you took with you from the manor. Something which you maybe thought it has no more use. Something that actually says it might be effective in certain situations when you examine it.
But it is not only about that because there is a small cascade of events including another riddle to solve that will ultimately lead to an item which is needed to reach the good ending. I don't want to spoil the whole thing for you but try this: In Part II, when going back to the manor after you've spoken to Ysabella, get the things she advises to and do what she asks you to do in the dungeon. When Rosie asks you to take Cora with her, reject. Before heading back to the ritual, visit the Dovecote. You might stumble upon someone you didn't expect to meet there. The rest is up to you, because otherwise there would be no fun in it.
If you're really stuck again after this: there is a transscript in the game archive you've downloaded here. The transscript is a complete playthrough of the game that showcases how one can reach the good ending.
I see. I think we need to remember the things we did back in the day. You wouldn't have saved on your original game disk and when the game was not running properly, the first thing you did was deactivating the fastloader :) I think the only fastloader I know that literally works well with anything you throw at it is JiffyDOS. Will add something to the readme :)
I am not able to replicate this unfortunately. The game uses Ozmoo, a very advanced Z-machine interpreter. It generally is recommended to not use the game disk for saving but using a separate disk instead. I had a chat with Fredrik about it, one of the creators of Ozmoo. He downloaded the Ghosts disk and tested it and this is what he replied.
There are 96 blocks free on the disk. A save takes 44 blocks. I tried saving two times and it worked great. The third time... not so great. The save file is broken, and if you restore it you get random weirdness. To save space, Ozmoo doesn't catch disk errors, so no error message is printed when the disk gets full. And once you've done this, you have a broken file on the disk and may want to validate the disk - this will remove the protection from the story data sectors, and the next time you save the game you'll break the disk beyond repair. You could ask them for a screenshot showing the directory of the disk.
So... rule number one would be: use a separate disk :D
Could you maybe send us a screenshot from the directory as requested by Fredrik? So we get a better understanding of what goes on.
That would rule out all the machines not CoCo3, I am not sure if this is the right way to approach the matter, especially since the Z-machine interpreter sources are published now. Someone modified the Atari 8-bit interpreter as well, which lacked z5 for a long time. I am also not sure how many people in the CoCo world actually run Fuzix. Let's say there are options. If someone is able to help me getting the game running with a reasonable target audience on CoCo machines, and with reasonable I mean making it work for most of the CoCo users, I'd be more than happy.
"Image fragmented" is an issue with your SD card and not with the actual disk image of Ghosts. See here https://github.com/MEGA65/mega65-core/blob/master/docs/using.md and search for "fragmented". :)
The Mega65 disk image I provide in the archive is generated with Ozmoo as well. To make sure that no corrupted file crept into the archive I provide here, I downloaded the ZIP file this morning and ran the image with no issues on my Mega65 DevKit.
Thanks in regards to the typo. I've fixed it and it will be included with the next release.
Breaks my heart to say no at this point. But that has nothing to do with the computers itself. I chose to go for the Z-machine version 5 with Ghosts, or XZIP as Infocom used to call it, purely to create better and bigger games and work around the many limitations that come with z3. The CoCo is unfortunately one of the very few computers still out there where no Z-machine version 5 interpreter is available. But I know you're good connected and the CoCo community is super big... the sources of the Infocom interpreters have recently been published. If someone on the CoCo Discord for example is capable to make the interpreter work with z5, I'd be more than happy to add CoCo to the list of supported systems https://github.com/erkyrath/infocom-zcode-terps
The game is unfortunately way too big for a 48k machine. You could play this on a 128k Speccy, but only if you own a divIDE or divMMC device with esxDOS. Bob Fossil ported ZXZVM to esxDOS. So in case you do have a device like The Future was 8-bit's divMMC Future for example, just drop the ghosts.z5 file on the card and then launch it via ZXZVM. Here is some information about it and how to set it up https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6169
Nope, I am still working on it. I tend to say now it's done when it's done but you could try my brand new game The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor if you like to 8bitgames.itch.io/ghosts
Sorry for the late reply, I must have missed this somehow. Yes, there is an option when you bundle a Z-machine game with Ozmoo on the C64 to add a loading screen, so rendering of the graphics actually happens while the interpreter and the story file is being loaded. In other words it is not part of the Z-machine and is displayed before the Z-machine takes over.
Yes, the Hibernated sequels will be written in PunyInform. I don't think I'll give The Curse of Rabenstein an Inform treatment, but I recently laid out some ideas for a Rabenstein sequel that definitely will be made with Puny. And I have, very recently finished a new game "The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor" (going to be released soon) which is written in Infocom's advanced Z-machine format (Z5), also with Puny as a library.
Here is a reference for setting up Fuse with a divMMC environment http://board.esxdos.org/viewtopic.php?id=240
As I wrote already in the readme, if you scroll up you can see it under "requirements", the ZX Spectrum version is intended to run on real hardware with a divMMC device. You have to put all the files from the archive onto the SD card of the divMMC device. It loads the pictures from the SD while executing the .TAP file. If you really want to play Rabenstein with emulation, Fuse at least allows simulating a divMMC environment. There are quite a few tutorials out in the wild that explain how you can do that. Hope this helps!