The Project
How do you convert an 8 bit adventure game originally written for the ZX 81 to a new framework such as ASP.NET MVC?
Obviously you need to know the game and having played Inca Curse as a kid helps. Still, that was a long time ago and it would be helpful to be able to play the original game again to make sure the web version works in a similar way.
Luckily we can still play the ZX Spectrum version online inside a Java ZX Spectrum simulator. The game can be found here (requires Java).
It's also possible to download the 'tape image'. This is the binary file that was loaded from cassette tape into the computer and it contains all text and code that makes the game work the way it does.
Using a simple text editor such as notepad we can look at the tape image. It looks like this:
We can see snippets of text and some 'funny' characters which are computer instructions that don't translate well into text. There are location descriptions and some commands.
We can also see the sort of responses we get. Pretty exciting stuff! I feel like a code breaker already.
Now our task becomes much simpler. What we need to do now is to capture the important data, locations, items, commands and responses, store them in an array or database and write the code that connects it all.
Next - Data Structures