Cyberworld (1983 C64 adventure by Progressive Peripherals)

Games for Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, Amiga, Apple ][ and the rest of the 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. Pleas for help, puzzles, bug reports etc.

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St. Deraj
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Cyberworld (1983 C64 adventure by Progressive Peripherals)

#1 Post by St. Deraj » Mon Feb 01, 2016 4:31 am

Cyberworld is an ancient memory from childhood that I just found a playable emulated version of. It's a fairly obscure old title, and aside from a few archived magazine advertisements, I found almost no mention of it online. There's a later release with the same title (from around 1990, I believe) that's also for the Commodore 64, but they're not at all related. The Cyberworld I'm referring to had a very rudimentary -but still quite ambitious for the time- 3D graphical world in which the player moves about during the adventure. It was (and is) quite buggy, probably suffering from a bit too much of the aforementioned ambition. As a result, I never got past the beginning as a kid, nor have I done any better so far as an adult. You start out as a prisoner on an alien ship, which you're supposed to escape. There were supposed to be several other diverse elements to the game afterward (like flying the ship you escape in), but again I've never seen more than the frustrating, yet intriguing first part. The main issue, then and now, is that you don't really know what exactly to do, nor how to interact with the environment. There's text input, but only "inventory" (of course) and "talk" yield any result. The former lists only a "transmitter" and the latter urges you to "be more specific," although nothing I've tried works... In addition to its two(!) floppy disks, the game came with a manual that seemed to exist mainly as an excuse for its large and colorful cover art. I have distinct memories of re-reading that manual (which was only a few pages long) over and over, hoping I'd somehow previously missed the part where they tell you how to accomplish anything! Unfortunately, both the manual and disks have been lost to the ages. While I doubt either would be of any practical use, the cover art really was kinda cool.

In any case, I apologize for writing so much without getting to the point. My main reasons for posting are:
A) To ask if anybody else remembers this game, and if so what their thoughts/memories of it are;
B) To inquire whether anybody else has played it recently enough to provide advice re. basic game mechanics, how to get past that first part, and whether it's even realistically playable given its limitations; and
C) To explore the very unlikely possibility that someone might have the aforementioned manual &/or be able to take/find a picture of the cover art, so I could see it again.

I realize that my brother and I may be the only ones in the world with any nostalgia for this game. Still, when I found this forum, it seemed like a place for those who care about such things, so I thought we might get lucky. If not, I'm still glad I discovered it, because these old adventure games were and are a huge part of me. It's very nice to see that so many others feel that way as well.

Thank you for taking the time to read my very long post. If anyone is curious to try Cyberworld, I've attached a zip with the two .d64 files now that I finally have them. I used C64 Forever to emulate and they worked just fine with it, so I'm sure the emulator of your choice would be able to as well. Cheers!
Cyberworld print ad (small version).jpg
A print ad for Cyberworld from an old issue of a computer programming magazine that I found archived online
Cyberworld print ad (small version).jpg (115.89 KiB) Viewed 1709 times
Attachments
Cyberworld (1983 C64 game).zip
Cyberworld (1983) Disks A & B in a zip file
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Alex
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Re: Cyberworld (1983 C64 adventure by Progressive Peripheral

#2 Post by Alex » Mon Feb 01, 2016 9:20 pm

Hi, First of all, welcome to the forum. Thank you for sharing this information with us. I never heard of this game before. However I gave it a brief look. The game ends when you've destroyed all enemies in the 3d lair and if I understood it correctly (I didn't play it, but I only gave a quick look at the program code), after you have defeated all the enemies in the lair you get the choice to retire or to start a new cyberworld (restarting a new lair). The game has a lot of random elements (especially the fights) which makes it difficult to survive the game to the end. It's more a rpg than a classic text adventure.

The other game in the ad "Gotmog's lair" is interesting also. Although horribly random and including several fights it's more a classic text adventure than a rpg.

St. Deraj
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Re: Cyberworld (1983 C64 adventure by Progressive Peripheral

#3 Post by St. Deraj » Tue Feb 02, 2016 6:16 am

Thanks for the quick reply, Alex! :thumb: You mentioned having looked at the game's code; something I hadn't thought of since I've never been very interested in the programming aspect, personally. Now that you mention it, though, looking at the code seems like a great idea. Perhaps it could provide answers to my gameplay difficulties.

Again, however, I'm quite ignorant on this subject. Could you (or anyone else who'd like to jump in) tell me how to get started looking into this sort of program code? I don't necessarily want to make a huge project out of it, but if it's possible to scan through something that's similar to a website's source code in order to find, for example, a list of commands that would work in the game's text input, that'd be something I could probably handle.

If anyone has a suggestion that'd help a computer-literate coding noob like myself to discover/learn this game's interface (so I'd finally know how to play it, exactly) by checking out the code, please share. Even just pointing me toward some entry-level resources (basic tools, information, etc.) would be much appreciated. If, on the other hand, looking at the code would NOT be a good way to figure out in-game commands, i.e. how to play, I'd like to know that as well. Basically just any thoughts from those with experience/expertise in this area would be great. Thanks all!

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Alex
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Re: Cyberworld (1983 C64 adventure by Progressive Peripheral

#4 Post by Alex » Tue Feb 02, 2016 10:06 pm

Did you read the manual on the first disk :
TO ENTER COMMAND MODE ..... HIT SPACE WHILE IN GAME THE CURSOR WILL BE ACTIVE
AT UPPER LEFT OF SCREEN WHILE IN THIS MODE

KEYS USED TO ACTIVATE ACTIONS WHILE IN COMMAND MODE THESE KEYS BELOW WILL BE
ACTIVE.

yOU NEED TO USE 2 LETTER COMMANDS HERE IS THE LIST!

2 KEY'S COMMAND ACTION TAKEN
EX.......................EXAMINE
FIRE BUTTON..............FIRES ÌASER IF IT IS FUNTIONABLE
FI.......................FIGHT YOUR OPPONENT (AGINST ROBOTS THIS IS USELESS)
TA.......................TAKE OBJECT/PICK UP OBJECT
DR.......................DROP AN OBJECT
IN.......................INVENTORY WHAT YOU ARE CARRING
GE.......................GET OBJECT SIMULAR TO THE TAKE COMMAND
SE.......................SEARCH AREA OR ROOM YOU ARE IN
RA.......................RAM SAVE GAME IN MEMORY
<-.......................EXIT AND SAVE YOUR POSITION TO DISK
fUNCTION KEYS THAT WORK IN COMMAND MODE
F1.......................REDRAW SCREEN & ADVANCE TIME (HURRY COMMAND)
F3.......................TOGGLE FROM MAP LOCATION TO GAME
F7.......................PAUSE COMMAND (FIRE OR SPACE TO RESTART GAME)

ALSO JOYSTICK IN PORT #1 TO USE AS DIRECTIONAL TRAVEL!

ENJOY YOUR GAME THIS IS AN LONG ENDURING ADVENTURE SO MAKE MAPS OF AREAS AS
YOU TRAVEL AND RAM SAVE QUITE OFTEN.
Looking at the program code in this case is quite easy, because the game was written in BASIC. For the c64 normally it starts by looking at each file on a diskimage using a utility like for instance D64 editor. If it's a basic program and it is not protected you can load the program and save the program code to a txt file. This works differently for each emulator and system. Sometimes BASIC games are very easy to understand, but sometimes they are coded using more advanced programming techniques which makes them harder to understand (you'll need binary knowledge or a little machine code knowledge), but then again the challenge becomes more interesting :) . If the program is protected it is more difficult, but often not impossible to retrieve the program code. If a game is not written in BASIC there are other programs to help. For instance GAC or PAW games have programs to understand the code. But even without these programs or even if a game is written in machine code it is not impossible to retrieve a lot of information from the program code. You'll only need lots of time and a good text editor like Ultra Edit compare.

I'll guess giving a good tutorial on how to do this would be rather long, but I'll hope the manual will get you a bit further. If not, just let me know.

Alastair
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Re: Cyberworld (1983 C64 adventure by Progressive Peripheral

#5 Post by Alastair » Sat Feb 06, 2016 12:35 am

Often-times opening a disc or cassette image in WordPad will reveal a game's verb list, as well as other details that may be of use.

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Alex
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Re: Cyberworld (1983 C64 adventure by Progressive Peripheral

#6 Post by Alex » Sat Feb 06, 2016 12:52 pm

These are the accepted verbs:

TAKE
GET
INVENTORY
DROP
SEARCH
EXAMINE
READ
THROW
SMASH
PROGRAM
PLAY
SAY
EAT
FIRE
HYPERSPACE
STOP

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Alex
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Re: Cyberworld (1983 C64 adventure by Progressive Peripheral

#7 Post by Alex » Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:39 pm

There are 20 rooms:
1 BRIDGE
2 'A' CORRIDOR
3 #1 LASER CONTROL
4 #2 LASER CONTROL
5 AUXILARY CONTROL
6 'B' CORRIDOR
7 SCIENCE STATION
8 'C' CORRIDOR
9 REPAIR CENTER
10 'D' CORRIDOR
11 COMPUTER CENTER
12 'E' CORRIDOR
13 AIRLOCK
14 ACCESSWAY
15 REACTOR ROOM
16 ENGINE ROOM
17 ION STORAGE
18 'F' CORRIDOR
19 DETENTION CELL
20 PODSHIP

You start in location 19

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Alex
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Re: Cyberworld (1983 C64 adventure by Progressive Peripheral

#8 Post by Alex » Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:41 pm

There are 26 objects:

1 TRANSMITTER 0
2 LASER 18
3 BLASTER 3
4 ARMOR 17
5 BUBBLECAR 8
6 BATON 5
7 MEDI-KIT 9
8 VISOR 16
9 ID BADGE 17
10 CRYSTALS 17
11 PORTACOMPUTER 11
12 BELT 9
13 TOOLKIT 9
14 CANISTER 17
15 SINIBOMB 20
16 MINIGENERATOR 7
17 MANUAL 11
18 GUIDEBOOK 7
19 SCHEMATICS 7
20 CIRCUITBOARD 9
21 LIGHTSABRE 4
22 TAPE 7
23 DISKETTE 7
24 SPACESUIT 13
25 COMMODORE 64 11
26 GOTHMOG'S LAIR 11

The numbers behind the objects are the locations where you can find the objects at the beginning of the game. Location 0 is your inventory.

I hope this will get you a bit further.

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