The Sinclair QL Forum

Dracula is a horror text adventure I've ported to the QL. Originally written by Elizabeth Arkush in 1984, it's been ported to SuperBASIC and slightly enhanced. You are in Dracula's mansion, searching for the fabled and aptly named Blood Ruby. Beware of bats, werewolves and of course Dracula himself.

Only two things can slay Dracula - a silver bullet, or a wooden stake through the heart.

Things to keep in mind while playing:

• there are many secret doors in the mansion you have to discover how to open
  Dracula leaves a trail of bloody footprints wherever he walks
  Dracula can turn into a bat and can bite necks in that condition
  ordinary bats may be harmless (may be…)

I've added game SAVE and LOAD state commands so that you can pause a game and resume it later if you wish.

Please read the DRACULA_txt instructions file first.

Should you decide you are stuck and need a little help, I've added the following files:

MAP_TXT - a text map of the mansion.
HINTS_TXT - a few fairly cryptic hints here and there in the adventure.
SOLUTION_TXT - a step by step solution to resort to when completely stuck.

Good luck. You may need it when up against Dracula!

Download free from https://dilwyn.theqlforum.com/games/adv ... index.html

Great, I'll wait until there's a thunderstorm in the next few days and turn the lights down; that will set the right mood.

Just add some creepy, spooky music Ralf...

dilwyn wrote: Wed Sep 10, 2025 4:49 pm Dracula is a horror text adventure I've ported to the QL. Originally written by Elizabeth Arkush in 1984, it's been ported to SuperBASIC and slightly enhanced.

Great! Thanks for posting this Dilwyn, I look forward to trying it.

I've just finished slaying the vampire in The Curse of Rabenstein (available for virtually every computer apart from QL ) so hopefully I'm fully prepared

Cheers,
Alan

dilwyn wrote: Wed Sep 10, 2025 5:59 pm Just add some creepy, spooky music Ralf...

Thats a good idea!

I have an LP of the german series "Aktenzeichen XY ungelöst" (similar to "Crimewatch UK"), with the suspense music of the film cases. That's a nice scare .

Great job Dilwyn.
So, just between us, we could call this port "DraQLa"

Cristian wrote: Fri Sep 12, 2025 7:31 pm Great job Dilwyn.
So, just between us, we could call this port "DraQLa"

Drat, I didn't think of that

Small update to this program to fix a couple of issues reported by Marcos Cruz.

1. Removed the "Please type in CAPITALS ONLY" message (not needed).

2. Corrected the FootPRINT #0 and FingerPRINT #0 errors in the text displayed.

Looks like Marcos, err, really got his teeth into this game...

dilwyn wrote: Fri Sep 12, 2025 11:44 pm Looks like Marcos, err, really got his teeth into this game...

Yes... Well, I examined the code in order to estimate its possible conversion to other programming and human languages, as an exercise, because the game is nice and simple (no surprise, been written by a teenager in 1984). Your conversion structured the code as far as possible without having to rewrite it completely in order to remove the last trace of spaguetti... Such old unstructured and undocumented programs, full of jumps and single-letter variables, usually are difficult to understand. I'll let you know if I find any other issue.