Dickie's Den by Quickbeam

[daelectron]

Just picked this up from an eBay auction. I have made a recording of the game (It seems to be missing from the archives) which loads fine on the real Dragon. However, it looks like it's copy-protected as it crashes out in xRoar after the instructions page.

Here is a link to it:

www.acornelectron.co.uk/Dickies_Den.zip

Perhaps someone can convert it into cas? It's quite a large file at the current moment - not sure if the game is recorded twice on the cassette.

[zephyr]

The zip archive is corrupt (WinRAR reports: unexpected end of archive).

[daelectron]

Heh heh, it's fine. You're too quick, the upload hadn't finished. It's a big file man. It's all up there now.

[zephyr]

Its a bad recording like the previous game you uploaded. I doubt it can be recovered easily (if at all) from this recording.

[daelectron]

Hmmm, but all the recordings come from different sources - i.e. stereos, walkmans or the older cassette recorders. Might have to give up trying to archive these things, it seems that the original media has mostly given up the ghost by now.

[sixxie]

How are you recording it though? Are you being careful to avoid clipping etc.? The waveform for this one looks somewhat clipped, but isn't full scale so that probably happened earlier in the chain - probably on the playback device.

It won't load into a real Dragon either - though it did get past the loading screen. Separating out the channel that contained actual data helped a little, but not enough.

I've not scanned through the waveform in any detail, so I've not seen if there are any complete dropouts.

[Alastair]

Try recording in mono only and switch off all instances of automatic volume boost that may be in the recording train. Also, if possible, use line-in rather than a microphone socket on your recording computer.

[daelectron]

Hooray! After a whole morning, SUCCESS!!!

I ended up using the Acorn Computers tape recorder that I used with my BBC Micro; this has tone controls as well as volume. Finally seem to have positive results with each set almost completely in the middle.

I have replaced the download with a working version. I'll add the cover scan and some screenshots in a moment.

Not a brilliant game unfortunately but not bad either.

[daelectron]

Darn it, wanted to add the instructions as a .txt file but ".txt is not allowed". What?

Well, here they are then:

Dickie's Den
============

Game Objective
--------------
Poor old Dickie is in trouble again. The builders have been scared off by the ghouls and ghosts which inhabit the many rooms of his new den.

Your task is to help Dickie collect the materials necessary to complete his dream home.


Background
----------
After winning the pool, Dickie decides to buy himself a mansion. Dickie's new dream home is old and in need of renovation. Unfortunately, the builders ran off with some of his money claiming that they had seen ghosts in some of the rooms.

All that needs to be finished is a wall.

The builders have left parts of the wall scattered about the different rooms. All Dickie has to do is pick up all the pieces of wall and build it himself. He has forgotten about the ghosts though. If he touches one he gets vapourised.

He can only get vapourised six times. He can avoid the ghosts by jumping over them.


Winning The Game
----------------
When Dickie has collected all the pieces of wall he has to go to the room with the safe in it.


Game Controls
-------------
You control Dickie with a joystick plugged into the right hand port. Press the fire button to jump.

Move horizontally to climb and descend the stairs.

P - Pause/Restart, Q - Quit, S - Sound On/Off


Loading
-------
CLOADM (ENTER)

[zephyr]

Hooray! After a whole morning, SUCCESS!!!

Well done. Here is the convered cas file.