(This post about Gilsoft continues the story after Time-Line, so you should read about that game first.)
Three months after Time-Line started being offered, Tim Gilberts attended one of the legendary ZX Microfairs with his parents (Number 7, Alexandria Palace in London, June 4th).
Popular Computing Weekly, 9-15 June 1983.
As mentioned last time, his parents were quite supportive of his efforts to start a company; his father Howard was a telephone engineer who was always into electronics (building a TV Tennis game for his son as a birthday present) and he always had a “sideline” job (that is, he supported entrepreneurship).
The younger Tim’s experience with computers in school was originally quite minimal, with no access to hardware. Coding was done in the language CESIL (Computer Education in Schools Instruction Language) and sent to a central location for processing (most likely being returned later to the student with an error).
Students didn’t even use punch cards, they wrote on a “Coding Sheet” to be passed on to an operator. Reproduction from Ian Dunmore.
He had two maths teachers interested enough in computing (and displeased with the paper situation) that they wrangled not only a desktop…
Personal Computing World, October 1978. The 380Z also featured in Pete Cooke’s story, but he was on the teacher’s end.
…but a terminal that connected directly to the school’s mainframe.
CESIL was still being used in the classroom — it was part of the O-Levels — and Tim Gilberts was tasked with one of the teachers (Mr Danks) to make a CESIL interpreter, lending a TRS-80 for the purpose.
This was probably my first commission for software – unpaid of course.
This is why one of Gilsoft’s earliest products was not a game at all, but a CESIL interpreter.
From Spectrum Computing.
He was able to buy a ZX81 with money he saved, and being supportive of what looked to be a budding career, his father purchased him a ZX Spectrum right when it came out. (Tim was still in school at the time working on his A Levels.)
But back to that Microfair in June–
Tim with his mother Pam and his father Howard. Source.
This was actually their second public sales event, after a small one in Bristol (where they made “a small quantity of mail order sales”). Gilsoft was positioned at stand E2, right next to the company Bytewell (one local to Barry that Gilberts had written a game for). Unfortunately, sales did not pick up in London; while they made money, this was because they had their Spectrum hooked up to a DK’Tronics keyboard that attracted attention, so they walked across the hall to where DK’Tronics was selling the keyboards and bought a set in bulk at vendor-cost to resell at their own stand.
The total turnover on the day when we counted the cash in our caravan in the Alexandra Palace carpark was some £1200 pounds with only a very small percentage from the sale of software. Disappointing as this was the production costs were low, the artwork for the cassette inlays being the most expensive items” but, they were not very advanced at the start.
This would change by their next Microfair, around Christmas, when it would be Gilsoft’s software attracting attention.
For now, we aren’t quite that far, as while Yeandle had made an adventure, Tim Gilberts wanted to try his hand at one too. He used the same database setup that Yeandle had made. This wasn’t just based on his interest but also on marketing savvy.
You must remember from the early industry people just wrote anything and threw it at the wall. [We] commonly called the magazines in advertising [to] see what sold. Adventure games seemed to be selling so I wrote one.
His game was called Diamond Trail.
Just before its long awaited premiere, the priceless Sinclive Diamond was stolen from the Jewel room of Spectraisia’s Capital, Microdrivia.
You must restore it in as short a time as possible, before the public begins to doubt its existence. Also bring the fake back to headquarters.
Unlike Time-Line, there are multiple ports, as after the initial Spectrum-only game it was moved to the actual Quill system, and from there taken to other machines. In fact, I was unable to find a non-Quill version of the game (I tried eight different versions) so I just went with it.
From the Commodore Plus/4 version.
This game takes multiple cues from Time-Line, both in a technical and design sense, but I think it came out stronger in the end just from having a more coherent setting (with some clearer British-urban-satire applied with a dose of Wales).
Our base of operations is an apparently abandoned secret police base. It is so secret that nobody is around and it’s possible (likely even, given a few circumstances) to be arrested for stealing. Maybe we’re one of the Slow Horses.
The secret police HQ also has an “armoury” with a long knife and an “office” with a bag. Neither seem to be helpful at first (the bag I never found helpful at all; maybe it increases inventory capacity somehow but I didn’t get it to work). Where the knife’s failure as an armoury-tool becomes clearly apparent is going east from the HQ, where you get immediately ambushed by a man with a gun. Once this starts, the man keeps shooting at you until you die.
I am in a seedy back road which goes SOUTH. Doors open to the EAST and WEST.
A man appears and takes a shot at me, he missed!
I was puzzled trying to USE KNIFE and KILL MAN with no effect, but I finally came across THROW KNIFE.
>throw knife
The Knife skims past his head & falls to the ground.I’m hungry!
A man appears and takes a shot at me, he missed!
Done Crowther/Woods style this might just involve throwing the knife enough times and getting lucky with RNG, but the knife will never hit. You instead need to use a different weapon instead entirely.
You might also notice the “I’m hungry!” Just like Time-Line, there’s an almost immediate and deadly hunger timer. It took me a while before I could resolve it, for reasons I’ll go into shortly.
Heading west from HQ thankfully is bullet-free, as you are described as on the east side of a busy road. Trying to enter the road was deadly.
The death does the word cut-off just like both Reed’s article and Time-Line.
Avoiding that for the moment, heading north leads to a “large junk shop” with a “small purse” where you can open it and find a one-pound note. I do not know why taking it doesn’t count as stealing.
I am inside a large junk shop.
The exit is SOUTH.
I can also see:-
A small purse.>get purse
OK.>open purse
I am inside a large junk shop.
The exit is SOUTH.
I can also see:-
A £1.00 NOTE.
Just south there is a cathedral with a ladder outside, and a collection plate inside with a 50p coin. If you take the 50p coin and just walk off your game is over.
You need to instead drop the note first, and then you are safe. The police are watching that closely (but can’t help with a bloke shooting at you, apparently, or do anything other than flail their arms around when it comes to a stolen jewel).
The ladder incidentally feels a bit like the one from Time-Line; in that game, you could try CLIMB LADDER but the game would say you check and there’s nothing up there. In this case, CLIMB LADDER is the actual right thing to do, as in the same area as an entrance to an Underground Tube Station there’s a ledge described as up high.
Try to go down into the station and you will be asked for a ticket. We’ll get that later.
The key is useful for when you go a bit farther south to a “small museum”. The museum has an old lamp and a locked door. You can go around a back alley to CLIMB DUSTBINS and find a back room with a “laser cutter”, then use the key from the ledge to get back into the small museum via the back way. The reason to do this (other than snagging the cutter) is that if you try to take the old lamp away you’ll get busted for stealing again.
So after getting the lamp you just go back out the back window and then you’ll be safe. (Maybe it’s all those surveillance cameras London is known for … except they weren’t known for that yet in 1983. Thatcher something something?)
All this time there’s been “you’re hungry” messages and I admit being stuck a while. I also tried running past the shooting man to explore past a little; there’s a travel office with a ticket (but no way to pay for it, neither the note nor 50p coin work) and a closed/sealed manhole going the other way.
Exploring while cheerfully ignoring impending doom. The number of turns it takes to die is entirely random. The shooter can appear anywhere on the map. I originally thought maybe there was a way to get him run over by traffic.
What broke the case was my thinking, oddly enough, of a hint given in the prior game.
The hint here is complete nonsense in Time-Line, but of course maybe LOOKing both ways is the right way to approach the road?
sigh
This is one of those makes-sense-in-the-text-universe only puzzles, since of course normally you’d see the crossing. CROSS CROSSING will safely move to the west side of the road.
This alleviates the hunger issue as there is a deli with a vending machine that accepts the 50p coin from the cathedral; you can get a hamburger and then not worry about hunger thereafter.
Also about is the tower with the missing jewel (there’s a fake one you need to take back to HQ, as per the instructions) and while trying to go back there’s a fire hydrant that sprays acidic water on you which is a problem unless you’re wearing a mackintosh that happens to be lying around near the tower.
This seems to be random rather than timed so I think you could get lucky rather than wearing the raincoat.
Finally — and I admit I missed an exit for a while so it took me a moment to find it — you can go west from the hydrant to find a library which has a book (logical) and a gun (???).
The book gives directions on using the laser cutter from back at the museum (“twiddle” the knobs). With the gun, you can shoot down the person who has been after you…
…leaving the way open to bust open the drain cover with the laser cutter.
>twiddle knobs
I am in a Cul-de-Sac, The exit is NORTH.
There are some NEW WEEDS here.
I can also see:-
A drain cover with a neat round
hole cut in it.
This leads down to a maze, again invoking the spirit (and some of the literal code-base) of Time-Line.
One of the rooms has the sound of water falling which indicates this is the one spot in the maze you should use “down” (as opposed to N/S/E/W) — this is exactly analogous to the “draft” in the Time-Line maze which indicated it was possible to go up.
Going down reveals a “credit card” in the sewer; moving along farther reveals the secret hideout of the jewel thieves, although they’ve already left.
You don’t ever apprehend them; you’re just trying to get the diamond back.
From the hideout you can go into the tower the “back way”; this will be handy later. For now, let’s use the credit card and try the train ticket.
Random cheeky red herring, just like Time-Line.
The trick here is to simply WAIT TRAIN again and get on the second train, not the first one.
The inside of the “lost property office” has a crate. If you have the knife from the start of the game (the one useless as a weapon) you can use it to open the crate and get the diamond.
I am in a lost property office.
It seems deserted. The platform is to the WEST.
I can also see:-
A real diamond.
Some splintered wood.
Now winning is just a matter of returning the real diamond to the tower, although if you try to do it from the front, you get arrested for stealing! (…..??…..) You need to instead sneak through the sewers and drop it off where the fake diamond was.
I am in the Jewel Room, a spiral staircase leads DOWN.
I can also see:-
A real diamond.I’m ready for your instructions.
>d
I am inside a room at the base of the tower. A spiral staircase goes UP, and an open door leads to the NORTH.
I can also see:-
A sign which says;
“Tower closed to PUBLIC”
Now you can walk back to the HQ and victory.
I have no interest in optimizing.
The action to Time-Line boiled down to eating food, finding pliers and a key, cutting a fence, using the key, and using a battery to get home; in a story-sense, not terribly exciting. The action here was a bit cryptic (why does nobody care someone is shooting at us all over London? why all the arrests for stealing even when we are returning a diamond?) but still more compelling to deal with, and even though the puzzles were straightforward the game was still substantial enough to get through I didn’t feel like it was cut short.
Via Spectrum Computing.
I’m curious how many of the design elements from the first two games keep holding in later Quill ones. I’ll be pausing the Quill story for now; we’ll eventually return to the first game that was actually written directly with the Quill (rather than ported). For now: Some rare adventures or at least adventure-adjacent games, including one that isn’t archived anywhere and I had to type up.
Renga in Blue 