The Sinclair QL Forum

I like the history and stories behind QL hard/software and this one, unlike most, was pretty well documented so after I was lucky enough to acquire a copy I explored the interweb and this is a summary including pics of items that are not to be found on the internet (the manual and an actual cartridge). I will eventually scan the manual and make a pdf of it. The Dark Side of the Moon was the only game ever produced by Jaspar Taylor and David Colyer. Jaspar (aged 14 at the time) did the programming and David checked that the actual game made sense to play, dealt with the financial side and offered support for the product. It took them two years to perfect (1984 – 1986) with many a late-night programming session into the wee small hours. It cost them a lot of nerves and £5,500 (up to 1986) to get made and to advertise. And just as it was finished, the QL was dropped by Amstrad!

After disappointing sales of just 60 copies for the 12 months up to late 1987 and in the hopes of getting some kind of promotion, they sent a copy to Richard Alexander, editor of QL Adventurer’s Forum magazine. They may have wished they hadn’t, as Richard didn’t find the finished product very well polished and there were elements of the game that were not clear, including one very important thing that was not made clear in the instruction booklet concerning capital letters:

“you may find yourself confronted by a command parser that totally ignores every command you type in. Why? Because you have to type everything in capitals, that's why. And does the manual tell you this, does it hell.”

Subsequent issues of QLAF contained other references to DSM, usually involving it being slated by Richard and also someone who wrote-in to slate it, and then David in response, admirably trying to put the record straight and to help out by offering hints at game play.

They hoped for at least 1,000 sales, but in the end, after reducing it to just £10 for a time, they only managed to sell 160 copies. By 1989 David Colyer’s spirits were dampened:

“I have already bored enough friends and family with the stories of our trials and tribulations during 2 years of preparing this game that I'm now rather drained on the subject.”

And:

“Unfortunately, by the time we were finished, Smith's and Boots were no longer stocking QL software, so the possibility of sales through those outlets was cut off. To get a discount on printing costs of the manuals and colour insert for the cartridge packs, we ordered 2,000 copies to be printed. So far, after over 2 years on the market, we have only sold 160 games worldwide...”

“We tried to give value for money but formed the opinion that there just weren't that many QL users interested in Text Adventure Games. Plus thinking back, we may have made the game too hard, as people tend to lose interest if they can't solve problems and get on to the next bit. I don't know of anyone as yet, who has even reached Phase 3 ...”

My own notes:

The manual is indeed a bit confusing regarding the CAPITAL LETTERS requirement, but I found that my version (perhaps it was an improved version) only produces capital letters when typing, regardless of the CAPS shift status. This appears to have been done by a 'POKE 163976,255' early in the program.

If the QL it is to run on has PM or FB ROM a message appears telling the user to return their QL to Sinclair! It works with AH, JM, JSU and MG ROMs – anything other than the those mentioned produces the error “NEW ROM-CONTACT ME THROUGH QL WORLD”.

Both original cartridges are protected, and copies thereof will only run with the original ‘key’ cartridge in mdv2_. Looking at the SuperBasic programs though, I think even I could crack it! Mind you, that’s with modern tech to examine the files, I’m sure it would have been harder in the day.

The passwords for the different phases are also within the SuperBasic files!

Other protection includes SuperBasic progs that start with ‘RUN’ with no line number and then ‘POKE_L 163900,0’ which disables the keyboard.

RWAP sells an improved version of The Dark Side of the Moon.
(if you see this Rich, I emailed the other day re some bits)

Interesting story, thanks for sharing!

Thank you MK. I don't have the patience for text adventures. I can understand the appeal though and I suspect once you were familiar with the correct phrases and general game-play they probably made more sense and could take up a lot of people's time.

Seems like I was one of the original 60 purchasers then. I rather liked the game, but I don't recall getting very far. I still have the original box and cartridges but I doubt they'd be readable now.

A great write up, thank you.

re QL Adventurer's Forum magazine - I remember long conversations (by letter) with Rich Alexander about his plans for CGH Services (including my game which he published, Dreamlands). I think I still have some of those letters actually. Invariably written on the back of other letters, he was never one to waste a shred of paper.

Sparrowhawk wrote:Seems like I was one of the original 60 purchasers then. I rather liked the game, but I don't recall getting very far. I still have the original box and cartridges but I doubt they'd be readable now.

A great write up, thank you.

re QL Adventurer's Forum magazine - I remember long conversations (by letter) with Rich Alexander about his plans for CGH Services (including my game which he published, Dreamlands). I think I still have some of those letters actually. Invariably written on the back of other letters, he was never one to waste a shred of paper.

Mine were fine after re-felting. Looks like they'd seen little use and stored properly (by chance). And a great insight. How many of your 'Dreamlands' did you manage to sell in the end?

I have to admit, Dark Side of the Moon is hard!

If you want to enjoy text adventuring, I can wholeheartedly recommend the ones by Alan Pemberton, plus Dreamlands, and of course, Return to Eden

My name probably appeared in QL Adventurers Forum nearly as many times as Richard Alexander - when I was at university, there were often letters between us in every post delivery (even when we had 2 a day)

RWAP wrote:there were often letters between us in every post delivery (even when we had 2 a day)

Yes, you did crop up frequently!

2 posts a day, I remember that. If you were expecting something and it didn't come, it had a 2nd chance in the 2nd post!

I did manage to progress through about 6 screens in Zkul. Maybe one day I will dedicate more time to a QL adventure.

Chr$ wrote:How many of your 'Dreamlands' did you manage to sell in the end?

I think it was about 100 copies all told. Which to a uni student at Leeds where beer at the Long Bar (iirc) was about £1/pint, that was quite a handsome reward for playing with the QL rather than writing another essay on industrial economics...

Rich (RWAP, not CGH!) reviewed it in QL World and was very kind. I still owe you a drink for that.

I did once meet somebody at a ZX microfair (or some low key computer show anyway) in London who boasted that he'd pirated it until I told him I was the author at which point he sidled away very sheepishly, so there were at least a few bootleg copies doing the rounds too

QLAF was such a fun magazine to be involved with, even in such a minor role as I was. And I think that the QL with it's great BASIC, 85 column display and 128K base memory was a great machine for writing text adventures.

Hi
My name’s Dave Colyer and Jasper Taylor and I devised this game, Dark Side of the Moon, back in 1985. I’m quite surprised there’s still some life in the game we made back in 1985-86!
Jasper aged 14 at the time, was staying at my wife and my house in Gloucester, while his home was being sold and he had a Sinclair QL bought for him. We started playing a couple of Text Adventures from Talent, namely ‘Skull’ and ‘West’, which we both enjoyed and I got hooked on these games and went so far as to spend £399 on a Sinclair QL.
After we’d solved these two games, we decided to try and make our own, as Jasper was pretty hot on programming and I remember he used to take over the computer lessons at his school, as he knew more than the teacher.
I remember, one night, we’d been working till 5.00 a.m in the morning, when a French student, who was lodging with us, popped his head round the study door to say ‘Goodnight’, at the same time as pulling out the plug of our extension wires connected to our PC’s and we lost about 5 hours of work!
However, it took us about 2 years to finish the game, among other things and decided to go the whole hog.
We took a trip to a trip to a factory in Telford to get the microdrives manufactured and were taken out for a nice meal, after we’d made an order of approx. 2000 cartridges, plus packaging. Then we found an artist to do the covers for us, over a coffee in a Travel Lodge in Gloucester.
When we had the items ready for sale, we invested about £900 on a back page of the QL magazine, for one issue and later attended an exhibition in London, where we sold about 4 copies!
We’d quite enjoyed the process of making and testing the game and while not copying the two already on sale, we adopted the kind of puzzles, maze and scenarios to try and add a few more features, such as having several friendly characters who moved about the game on their own, while being able to carry various objects for us. The setting was on the Moon, so all the characters had to wear helmets etc and travelled about in a moon buggy, before gaining entry to the captured moonbase and overpowering aliens etc.
The maze was in the shape of the letters ’QL’ , but it wasn’t necessary to go by the map, as long as you had patience to visit every part of the maze to find a tube of golden greasepaint-to be used as a disguise later on.
We had some fun adding a bit of humour, with an annoying fly randomly turning up, in the confines of the space ship, plus a gun that fired arrows across the screen.

I admit the game may have been a bit difficult, but we tried to keep it logical and possible to solve, from one Phase to another, plus give value for money. As far as I know, no-one has completed the game, although I used to get regular letters from a doctor in New York, asking for hints, when he got stuck.
We never made enough to cover all our work and expenses and Jasper gave up computing, after the discouraging experience, maybe a great loss to the computer fraternity!



Regards Dave Colyer (retired!)

colyerdave4 wrote:Hi
My name’s Dave Colyer and Jasper Taylor and I devised this game, Dark Side of the Moon, back in 1985. I’m quite surprised there’s still some life in the game we made back in 1985-86!
Jasper aged 14 at the time, was staying at my wife and my house in Gloucester, while his home was being sold and he had a Sinclair QL bought for him. We started playing a couple of Text Adventures from Talent, namely ‘Skull’ and ‘West’, which we both enjoyed and I got hooked on these games and went so far as to spend £399 on a Sinclair QL.
After we’d solved these two games, we decided to try and make our own, as Jasper was pretty hot on programming and I remember he used to take over the computer lessons at his school, as he knew more than the teacher.
I remember, one night, we’d been working till 5.00 a.m in the morning, when a French student, who was lodging with us, popped his head round the study door to say ‘Goodnight’, at the same time as pulling out the plug of our extension wires connected to our PC’s and we lost about 5 hours of work!
However, it took us about 2 years to finish the game, among other things and decided to go the whole hog.
We took a trip to a trip to a factory in Telford to get the microdrives manufactured and were taken out for a nice meal, after we’d made an order of approx. 2000 cartridges, plus packaging. Then we found an artist to do the covers for us, over a coffee in a Travel Lodge in Gloucester.
When we had the items ready for sale, we invested about £900 on a back page of the QL magazine, for one issue and later attended an exhibition in London, where we sold about 4 copies!
We’d quite enjoyed the process of making and testing the game and while not copying the two already on sale, we adopted the kind of puzzles, maze and scenarios to try and add a few more features, such as having several friendly characters who moved about the game on their own, while being able to carry various objects for us. The setting was on the Moon, so all the characters had to wear helmets etc and travelled about in a moon buggy, before gaining entry to the captured moonbase and overpowering aliens etc.
The maze was in the shape of the letters ’QL’ , but it wasn’t necessary to go by the map, as long as you had patience to visit every part of the maze to find a tube of golden greasepaint-to be used as a disguise later on.
We had some fun adding a bit of humour, with an annoying fly randomly turning up, in the confines of the space ship, plus a gun that fired arrows across the screen.

I admit the game may have been a bit difficult, but we tried to keep it logical and possible to solve, from one Phase to another, plus give value for money. As far as I know, no-one has completed the game, although I used to get regular letters from a doctor in New York, asking for hints, when he got stuck.
We never made enough to cover all our work and expenses and Jasper gave up computing, after the discouraging experience, maybe a great loss to the computer fraternity!



Regards Dave Colyer (retired!)

Wonderful to see your post!