Silk Dust
Introduction
Silk Dust is a text adventure game running on many vintage platforms. It is the third chapter of a series of games, after Two Days to the Race and The Queen's Footsteps.
| Platform | Notes | L/S |
|---|---|---|
| Commodore VIC20+32K | D64 image | X |
| Commodore 64 | D64 image | X |
| Commodore 128 | D64 image | X |
| Commodore Plus/4 | D64 image | X |
| Commodore PET (>32K, 40 or 80 col) | prg files | X |
| Commodore Amiga | .adf disk image | X |
| MSDOS | EXE files | X |
| Zx Spectrum (48k & Plus3) | TAP and DSK files | X (disk) |
| Zx Spectrum (48k) | .wav files (62 MB) | |
| RC2014 | Intel ihx files for hexload tool. | |
| Olivetti M20 | .img disk image (only parts 1, 2) | X |
| CP/M | .com files | X |
| Macintosh 68k | Disk image | X |
| MSX 1.0 | .cas and .wav files | |
| Atari 800 (48K) | .xex files Atari | X |
| Atari ST | .tos file Atari and a .st disk image | |
| CPC 6128 | .dsk disk image | X |
| Apple II (48K) | .dsk self-booting disk image | |
| Cambridge Z88 | BBC BASIC-wrapped machine language | X |
Table 1: All versions of Silk Dust, download them and play them without moderation. No evil in-app purchase there! L/S means that the version can load and save the game.
Fig. 1: The Amiga splash screen, screenshot from my PAL Amiga 500 on a Trinitron PVM CRT screen.
Fig. 2: The Commodore 64 splash screen
Fig. 3: Playing the game on the Commodore 64
Awards
The gameplay
Today is April 19, 1907. You, Emilia Vittorini, arrived yesterday in Varenna, on the shore of the beautiful Lake Como. You are hosted at the magnificent Villa Briccorosso; Princess Lucilla Briccorosso is preparing the Silk Road Race, a 10,000km rally raid between Cairo in Egypt and Peking in China, to be done by car.
You represent ITA, founded by your father, the company that built the car the Princess just bought to use during the rally. The car is supposed to be delivered today. Your role will be to assist the delivery and make sure everything is perfectly functional.
If you are interested in what is historical and what is invented in the game, have a look at this article.
An interactive fiction game is based on commands typed in a relatively natural language. Here are some hints:
look: describe again the location where the player is present
examine object: describe the specified object
north or n or go to north: moves to the north, if possible. Other directions are s, e, w, up, down.
The command bye allows to exit from the game and restart well... it restarts it. You can take objects that you "notice" and you can have a list of carried objects with inventory.
You can finish the game without using the verb use. On this, SD is similar on many classic text adventure games. If you are stuck somewhere and you notice you absolutely want to use something, try to reformulate your sentence with another verb.
The following abbreviations are available:
- l for look
- x or ex for examine
- i or inve or inven for inventory
The game is divided in four parts. When you complete one of them, you will get a code that allows to immediately jump to the beginning of the next part. Write down that to resume the game in the future. Passwords are important. On some platforms, you can save and load the game (use save and load commands).
Let me know about typos, errors and bugs in the game!
Fig. 4: Loading Silk Dust on the Commodore VIC-20
Hall of fame
- Alberto Z. (beta testing)
- Chris Carter (beta testing)
- George Nakos (beta testing)
- Colin Bell (beta testing)
- Benedikt Weiß (beta testing)
- André Luna Leão (beta testing)
- Vincent Lung
- Gianluca Girelli
- R-Tape
Music!
After finishing working on the adventure, I was still inspired by the atmosphere of the game and the character of the protagonist, Emilia Vittorini. I decided to write some music. This page is dedicated to it.
If you want a preview, you can stream the tracks for free on my Soundcloud page:
The downloadable version contains the bonus track Turin Suite (not available on Soundcloud) for piano and a full orchestra. Moreover, you can download the whole soundtrack (37 minutes) in AIFF 16 bit 44.1 kHz or in high quality 24 bit 192 kHz FLAC. All information here:
Acknowledgments
This game would probably not be playable without the help of Chris Carter, who proofread and spotted many bugs and weird things in the very first versions. I would like to thank Benedikt Weiß, who kindly provided a lot of suggestions for improvements.
George Nakos wrote the necessary interface code to port the game on the Atari ST, converted the splash picture and reported a large number of bugs on the first versions of Silk Dust.
I would also like to thank Hugo Labrande for the proofreading and remarks.
Plus de trucs comme ça, s'il vous plaît !
Si vous avez aimé ce programme, jetez un coup d'oeil aux autres petits logiciels que j'ai fait pour des ordinateurs anciens !
|
The Queen's Footsteps (En, 2019-2020) pour C64, Plus4, VIC-20+24KB, MS-DOS... |
|
Two Days to the Race (En/It, 2018-2019) pour C64, Plus4, VIC-20+24KB, MS-DOS |
|
La pyramide d'Innuh (En/It, 2011-2018) pour C64, C128, Plus4, VIC-20, ZX Spectrum |
|
Alien Invasion: un jeu pour VIC-20 écrit en 2018 |
|
Cavern Explorer, un autre jeu moderne pour VIC-20 (2018) |
|
Labyrinthe 3D pour le Commodore 64 (2017) |
Log
April 29, 2023: Work on soundtrack is finished! Added the link to the Itch download page
March 17, 2023: Added game music: Mediterranean Sun
February 17, 2023: Added game music: Varenna Suite
January 27, 2023: Added game music: Intermezzo
January 11, 2023: Added game music: Steam Pressure
December 13, 2022: Added game music: Emilia's Theme
November 20, 2022: Added game music: St. Michael (Lauda Sion)
November 1, 2022: Added game music: The Dynamene
October 20, 2022: Added game music: The Ride
October 1, 2022: Added game music: Villa Briccorosso
September 29, 2022: Added game music: Augusto's Theme
September 25, 2022: updated C128 version with a splash screen. Packed the ZXSpectrum 3+ in a single disk image with a loader. Updated game version to 1.0.1
May 5, 2022: Added the .wav version inside the MSX archive. Added a .st disk image in the Atari ST archive.
May 1st, 2022: Added the .wav version as an option for the ZX Spectrum.
December 28, 2021: Tweaked the Atari 8-bit version so that the disk image allows to boot the system.
June 6, 2021: Added the Cambridge Z88 port.
June 5, 2021: Version 1.0 is available for all platforms.
January 30, 2021: Versions for CPC and Apple II are available, a lot of tweaks.
January 13, 2021: The game is complete and a first version of part 3 is published.
October 20, 2020: Version 0.1.3 for Amiga.
September 19, 2020: Page for beta testers with some versions of the first part of the game, v 0.1.
September 26, 2020: Update first part of the game to v 0.1.1.
-------- Copyright (C) 2020-2023 Davide Bucci davbucci at tiscali dot it