| Posted By
Luca
on 2024-06-05
09:45:43
 |  Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
 Carmine Migliaccio, your friendly neighborhood TSM, is now back on the converting scene for the third time, once again under the assent of the whole crew working at Ready64.
La Casa is the third in the row, continuing the series of text adventures converted from ZX Spectrum which were created by Gian Battista Aicardi. This one was first released in the 47th issue of Load'n Run magazine, which was published in March 1988, and for us Plus/4 adventurers it follows Bronx and Excalibur. So you already know the deal: hires, slightly animated graphics, an 80-column character set, and is available in both Italian and English. "La Casa" (translated: "The House") calls back the Italian title of the (in?)famous movie series Evil Dead signed by Sam Raimi. Considering that there hadn't been some sort of inspiration from it, would sound like quite an unlikely assertion!
TSM has finally revealed his work plan: although the adventures written by Gian Battista Aicardi can be counted in 17, he's aiming to convert the best selection of four games overall. Now that three are out, we only have to wait for the fourth and last. Which will be? Which would you prefer?
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2024-06-05
09:45:43
| Re: Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
Nice conversion! At first I thought it even has Plus/4 enhanced graphics, but it's just that the colors look quite different. (On the Spectrum, the reds are super saturated, while ours are more pastel.)
The parser has some oddities: "examine sofa" (first item in the first room) says "You can't" instead of something like "You see nothing special". Examine is the right verb though, examining other stuff will produce proper results. "GET" doesn't work though, it also says "You can't", one must use "TAKE" instead.
Looks like TSM did the English translation as well? That's commendable effort! A few minor issues, e.g. "On the ashes you notice some footprints" should be "*In* the ashes", but otherwise it's fine - without it, most of us won't be able to play 
It's worth checking out for the graphics at least
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Posted By
orion70
on 2024-06-06
06:04:28
| Re: Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
Yep, I agree, and add my personal thanks to TSM
Also, as an Italian, I am happy and proud that in the end we'll have four wonderful adventures *with partially animated graphics* in our language, available for the 264 series. I have never played them before on the Speccy, so I wouldn't be able to indicate a preference for the last one of the series.
Thanks a lot again Carmine!
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Posted By
TSM_Carmine
on 2024-06-07
11:24:45
| Re: Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
Hello and thanks for the kind words. I was expecting some mistakes in the English text and I'll gladly update all the games with corrections, so let me know what you find. Also the glitch in the bedroom must absolutely go! 
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2024-06-07
13:06:07
 | Re: Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
Nice release, I like the graphics! @Luca where is the list of games to chose from?
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2024-06-07
13:26:55
| Re: Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
That's a good question, do you have a link to the 17 originals somewhere?
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2024-06-08
15:38:48
| Re: Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
Thank you for the list! I looked through them, they are all pretty short, so it's difficult to pick, but maybe either Alien or Goblins would be my vote.
Were the source codes published in the magazines? That seems mind boggling... I would assume the graphics alone would take up a lot of space (and hence a lot of typing).
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Posted By
TSM_Carmine
on 2024-06-09
11:07:31
| Re: Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
The magazines came with cassette tapes.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2024-06-22
16:28:38
 | Re: Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
Actually these gfx adventure games is a kind of "holy grail" for me.
The 80 column wide WELL READIBLE text proved that I was right: this could have been done from the very beginning without HW modification. Sure, it should be hires, and slower than a normal text, but the acceptable speed and the fact it is 80 column, makes is super cool! (the Soft80 methods in the past were pretty slow, except the Cool News4). I tried it with OpenGL driver + CRT mode, and still readible. I do not know, how well it looks on a real CRT TV, but if it is readible on that too, I have a huge questionmark WHY some companies developed 80 column HW cards or the C64? There should have been a standard 80 column fontset and a SW library. They could even integrate it into the C64 and +4 ROM.
The gfx also look pretty well made. Sharp and very well drawn. Generally speaking it looks great and stylish.
The parser: well the mentioned LIST does not work, as our version is compressed, so we do not have the list of English command words. I was also lost, I tried EXAMINE, LOOK, GET, HELP, but I got the message Csabo mentioned, so I was a little lost what to do. OPEN did not work too, or maybe those doors should not open, who knows There is a gun on the wall in front of you, and you cannot do anything, even not listed. Strange... This would be the first thing to take in a haunted mansion
So the nice (animated?) gfx and the 80 column makes it super cool game, but the parser game me a headache how to proceed with the adventure.
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Posted By
TSM_Carmine
on 2024-06-22
18:39:11
| Re: Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
@MMS As a rule of thumb for these games, try to examine everything that is listed in the description of the location and the location itself. If the item is not important, the game will just say "you can't". More often than not, the game won't give you such clues as "you need a key" or "you can't do this yet". In order to advance, you have to type the exact expected sentence with the needed objects in your possession, having done what was needed beforehand. Sometimes, there are multiple sentences that will work for the same action; I added some of these "synonyms" myself. "V" or "vocabulary" should give you a list of verbs.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2024-06-23
07:31:58
| Re: Good Things Come in Three...Houses: La Casa
@TSM_Carmine
Thank you for the hints. I will try again.
Alien looks super cool
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