CASA ::

The AI is a little confused about some of the aspects of this game, but I asked it to use a source code file to produce a playthrough of a game from start to finish, as if it was a short story from the point of view of the main character...

I stood in front of the mansion with my collar turned up ...

And, things like this are definitely useful...

Can you produce a breakdown of what changes the score flag, flag 30?

Flag 30 is the score accumulator, and in The Magician it is modified in very deliberate, theatrical beats. Every change is a clean ±10, and every scoring action corresponds to ...

I had it look at a Quill source file (produced with unPAWS).

It struggled to give a workable solution, in the game I chose, but what was produced would've helped someone solve it.

It seemed to do okay when I asked it to produce a list of what all the flags (the numbered variables) did...

example ...

There's no way I'm playing a Softel game, but the computer is marked on this map...
https://solutionarchive.com/file/id%2C23100/

I've added a batch of your solutions & maps from the past few years on Tipshop (focussing on ones we didn't already have material for). That's all that I'll personally be doing, so feel free to submit any additional ones in the usual way.

It was created with the PAW, so you can just load it into the 128K version of PAWs. Or use a decompressor such as unpaws or inpaws to extract all the text, code and database.

New material is added manually here, by volunteers. If people want to share resources they've also submitted elsewhere, then the easiest and best way is to do it is to use the submission form.

I'm happy that you'd like (and would give permission) for your solutions and maps included here. But it ...

Yes, that's exactly the response you are meant to see at that point. You pick up the key later on.

However, there is a slight typing error/some duplication in the solution, with the next bit that says "examine west, climb out, w, nw,
unlock door, break door,". Ignore than and just go to the "e, e ...

I had no issues going in the hardware store and buying the required items.

For the mirror. The solution says to pump the bellow until the temperature is high. You did not do this in your recording. You only pumped them once and the temperature still shows as low.

There are some random elements in this game. The sentry didn't fall asleep immediately for me, but once he did I was able to proceed to pick up the uniform.

Yes, you need to rub the ruby in The Haunting for the doorway in the wall to appear.

I notice on the blog in that second link that Scott details how he got approval to sell Jack Lockerby's games in Australia, something I was previously unaware of. [Or he previously told me and I just forgot... which is equally likely]

I'm fairly sure I've pointed you in the direction of The Classic Adventurer on another forum, which includes a full interview with Trevor in issue 1.
https://classicadventurer.co.uk/

CASA's (slightly older) interviews with Trevor are here...
https://solutionarchive.com/interview_trevor/
https ...

They are all in there as individual entries, but were only tagged in other forms, such as the TACL (Amiga) versions. (Probably because it may not have been clear which system was used to make the DOS editions)

I've now added Quill tags to the ones in the Nightmares from the Crypt collection.