Details. What did you do and what errors did appear?

Mirek

You go into the elevator and hit the space bar on the top room. Then your in ol' smokes room. Hit the space bar a couple times to wake him up and you get a BASIC (I assume BASIC) error.

I went into the elevator, but there was no space bar? Unless you mean the two steel bars that run along each wall? All I see is buttons for floor 1-9, entrance, and the basement?

I did go to the top floor, but there was no smoke room? Unless you mean the sauna, but that is more like a steam room?

space bar on the keyboard 🤣

Keyboard? There is no keyboard in the elevator in my building. Just a handful of buttons and posters with adverts from the local cinema. Really!!

I think he means he pressed the Space Bar key on his PC's keyboard. Don't know what this key does on the game, though. 😁

If you try the game from the underdogs when you play the game it says to press the spacebar to choose a room and the arrow keys for up an down should move the elevator but none of it seems to work properly.
I have no idea how it should work though. I'll try in in Windows Shell to see if it works or not.

/Ieremiou

🤣 you need to use the numpad arrow keys to move the elevator and other things in the game.
/Ieremiou

Right. That's how to play the game. Now go into the top room and wake the old man up. As soon as you do you get an error and the game crashes.

I'm confused. This game is listed as playable yet it can't be played.

I can't find a single person to get it working.

?????

Hmm, I wonder if somebody broke the game when they dumped it or something.
It's coded in Basic and you can open it and edit the program I believe.
I was able to even get it to play in Windows XP but it crashed at the old man as well with the same error.
That EXE program is a version of GW-BASIC. Maybe there needs to be some debugging or something. Lol

/Ieremiou

EDIT:
If you run "BASICA.EXE"
The "LOAD "ELEV.BAS""
Then "LIST 5800"
This is the offending line for what reason I'm not sure. It something with syntax both say.

Here's what it says

5800 P=8:GOSUB 5280:LOCATE 1,9:FOR XX= 1 TO LEN(B$):A$=MID$(B$,XX,1):IF A$=";" THEN A$="":GOSUB 5818:FOR TIMER= 1 TO 2400:NEXT:LOCATE 1,6:PRINT"30 SPACEBAR SPACES";:FOR TIMER= 1 TO 150:NEXT:LOCATE 1,9

Yup that 5800 line get's it everytime. I just think they should not display this program a playable.

Note: I get this error even on the version I copy myself from 5.25. I'm surpise the disk has lasted this long. Not many of my others have.

JEmlay wrote:

Yup that 5800 line get's it everytime. I just think they should not display this program a playable.

May be a bug in the game (it is strange that it happens in both WXP and in DOSBOX - as I understood from previous), may be a bug in DOSBOX.
The compatibility database is made by users. We have possibility to edit it, but we absolutely cannot guarantee that it is completely correct... Not enough people/time/ enthusiasm to play hundreds of DOS games. 😀

Mirek

The DB - That's understandable.

It's not a bug in the game though. I much enjoyed this game as a child. Now that I'm a big child I wish to enjoy it some more 😁

Still an issue in .65

Oh I wish I wish I wish. 😀

As long as there is no proof that this game actually works (in that
version) it can be assumed to be a game bug/corruption that will
never vanish just with dosbox version increases.

That would clearly be a biased assumption. Who told you this game never worked?

I already proved this to myself a while ago. I loaded DOS 3.2 on an old 286. The game worked fine.

As I stated in my first post, something with v.63 allowed the game to progress a little further then previous versions. If improving DOSBOX improves the stability of the game then a better non-biased assumption would be the problem lies with the app that is not 100% yet.

EDIT:
I also don't understand how after all this time and discussion the DB still shows it as playable???

> I already proved this to myself a while ago.

That's what i wanted to hear. I assume it is exactly the same version
you tried on the old PC and with dosbox.

I don't see any way to debug this game from the dosbox side,
if somebody knows a good lot about programming in gwbasic
he might be able to spot the bug.

This is a bug in the game that is quite easily fixed.

It doesn't show on older, slower computers and won't show up at certain cycle settings. The problem is indeed in the line shown:

15800 P=8:GOSUB 5280:LOCATE 1,9:FOR XX= 1 TO LEN(B$):A$=MID$(B$,XX,1):IF A$=";" THEN A$="":GOSUB 5818:FOR TIMER= 1 TO 2400:NEXT:LOCATE 1,6:PRINT"30 SPACEBAR SPACES";:FOR TIMER= 1 TO 150:NEXT:LOCATE 1,9

The variable "TIMER" cannot be used. It is a BASIC reserved word and the TIMER statement is used to set up a timer (go figure...)

To fix it:

• Go into DOSBox and give the following commands:
  BASICA
  LOAD "ELEV.BAS
  LIST 5800
  (now edit the line to replace both occurrences of "TIMER" by "XXTMRXX" and press ENTER while the cursor is on that line)
  (repeat the above for line 4490. ie: type LIST 4490, edit the line, press enter)
  SAVE "ELEV.BAS
  SYSTEM

(You could also start BASICA from Windows Explorer, of course, but I like DOSBox)

Then, you can run the game as is was intended. No guarantees that this programming bug doesn't occur elsewhere in the game in other files.