Looking for Fish! and Myth by Magnetic Scrolls.

[dettus]

Hello.
Do either one of you guys know where I can find the Amstrad CPC version of "Fish!" or "Myth" by Magnetic Scrolls?

Thomas

[Gryzor]

Hm.... from https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Talk:Magnetic_Scrolls :

The Magnetic Scrolls Memorial [1] lists the Amstrad CPC as platform for the never sold but given away free game Myth -- Ythcal 18:36, 14 August 2006 (CEST)

The Balrog mentioned in his adventure column in issue 55 of Amstrad Action that "unfortunately, Magnetic Scrolls never converted Myth to the CPC" (search for Round up of Adventure Clubs, then read the section entitled Confidential).

Fish! Isn't featured either??

[zeropolis79]

Think Magnetic Scrolls turned anti-CPC at that time as Myth and Fish came out on the Speccy and C64 although Speccy Myth was a recent discovery after being missing for so long.

[Nich]

Hello.
Do either one of you guys know where I can find the Amstrad CPC version of "Fish!" or "Myth" by Magnetic Scrolls?

Fish! wasn't released for the CPC, and I very much doubt that Myth was either.

I agree with @zeropolis79's opinion that Magnetic Scrolls were increasingly anti-CPC by the time Fish! was released. There's an interview with Anita Sinclair in issue 3 of The Classic Adventurer magazine where she says that the Amstrad versions of the adventures were "a total waste of time [...] but we had to do them". I played (and reviewed) Corruption recently and a lot of the graphics are very poorly converted, and it made me think that Magnetic Scrolls just didn't care about their quality on the CPC.

Could it be possible to backport Fish! and Myth to the CPC using the C64 graphics as a base?

[dettus]

Yes. There is a way:


Magnetic Scrolls wrote their games was by creating an Interpreter which was running the game code.


The interpreter was ported to different platforms and the game code had to be designed only once.


In addition to this, the pictures were stored in a way which was efficient for the platform.




I detailed the process in this document: https://www.dettus.net/dMagnetic/dMagnetic_datastructures.pdf


So writing the interpreter for the Amstrad would be an option. Or porting dMagnetic to it.



I was wondering if there are "proper" releases for this platform.

[zeropolis79]

Fish! wasn't released for the CPC, and I very much doubt that Myth was either.

I agree with @zeropolis79's opinion that Magnetic Scrolls were increasingly anti-CPC by the time Fish! was released. There's an interview with Anita Sinclair in issue 3 of The Classic Adventurer magazine where she says that the Amstrad versions of the adventures were "a total waste of time [...] but we had to do them". I played (and reviewed) Corruption recently and a lot of the graphics are very poorly converted, and it made me think that Magnetic Scrolls just didn't care about their quality on the CPC.

Could it be possible to backport Fish! and Myth to the CPC using the C64 graphics as a base?

I concure - if the MS interpretor was ported to the CPC, then Fish and Myth could come across. The raw files for use in an interpretor are avaliable online


The graphics on Pawn, Guild of Thieves and Jinxter were good but by Corruption, they were a bit of a let down.


Fish! was previewed in AA but I'm not sure if The Pilgrim saw a CPC version and Myth was mentioned in Amscene. Magnetic Scrolls were also mentioned post-Corruption in the newspagers regarding releases of guide books and the fact MS were looking for a new publisher following Microprose's takeover of Firebird (although both companies wanted to do business).

[dettus]

if the MS interpretor was ported to the CPC, then Fish and Myth could come across.

Yes. It was ported.
If you REALLY want to backport Fish! here's what I would recommend:

Start with Corruption. It uses the exact same VM interpreter as rhe other two.
Look at the document I mentioned earlier to understand the Files, their roles and their scrambling schemes.

Then take the CODE section from the C64 release and split it into two files: CORR1 and CORR6. Scramble them.
Take the STRING section from the C64. Anything after the Huffman tree goes into CORR2, everything before that into CORR3. (Again: see the document)

By this point, the game is playable.

To port the pictures, you have the reencode them from the C64 version and store them as CORR4, CORR5, and CORR7.


STRAIGHTFORWARD!!!

[dettus]

Better yet: Take the pictures from the EGA version within the Magnetic Scrolls Collection V1. They are the same, pixelwise. But it might be easier to convert the RGB palette to Amstrads colours.

[zeropolis79]

I'm sure there are some talented guys in the community who can do this..