this was released as a full price product, by 2 bit systems. A friend had the disk version, I remember it in a green cover. this is just modded for firebird
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It was very useful tool to play adventure text-graph games. If there was some real problem getting too much time to solve some riddle, or to find a proper word, or action, etc. - it was enough to check disk containing a game with this program Sherlock to be ready for further journey. Great tool, very useful it was, I remember. I was changing many demos and programs, games, etc. - using this Sherlock. Wherever I saw some readable text, I was changing to my own characters and texts directly on the disk, then admiring my genial job as a pirate. Actually on the PC computers it's easier. It's enough to change whatever in files just using Notepad, or no matter of what kind the simplest text editors. Obvious. |
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I wrote a lot of papers on this program, both in high school and college.
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Thanks for dumping this! This program needs a ramdisk, so at least 128k. On a 64k machine it will generate an error message. |
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The Altirra emulator supports tablet input for this title, though you have to add it manually:
1. Input > Input Mappings...
2. Click Add... call it "Mouse -> Atari Tablet" or similar
3. Click Edit...
4. Add Controller... , choose Tablet (Atari touch tablet), OK
5. Axis 1 -> Edit... , Source : Mouse Pos X (pad)
6. Axis 2 -> Edit... , Source : Mouse Pos Y (pad)
7. You can map Left/Right/Up/Down to the arrow or WASD keys on your keyboard or leave them blank
8. The Stylus button was a button on the pen. It draws when the stylus is DOWN, and toggles the tool screen when stylus is UP.
I mapped the buttons on the pen & tablet as follows:
Stylus button -> Mouse LMB
Left tablet button -> Mouse X1B
Right tablet button -> Mouse X2B
Raise stylus -> Mouse RMB |
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Correction Mystery House was written for The Apple II Computer not the Atari. |
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Interesting tidbit about the VersaWriter. In 1980 Roberta Williams of Sierra On-Line used the VersaWriter to draw the digital images used in her first graphical adventure game “Mystery House “ for the Atari Computer.
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Hamsoft is a cartridge used with a Kantronics "The Interface" or "The Interface II". This was software for the Ham Radio community that allowed the Atari Computer to send and receive Morse code/ RTTY/ & ASCII code. |
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Russell Knight and myself coded all our games using the Mac65 cartridge. An essential piece of kit! |
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Wow - I remember programming in Action around 1986 or so. It was such a pleasure until I had programs that I just could not debug. Turns out some of the Action functions actually had bugs in them, so I had to rewrite certain subroutines. Took some of the fun out of it knowing those bugs (and perhaps others to be discovered) were hard coded in the cartridge. |
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