.... old text game? [= Vampire's castle adventure]

mordi05 · Post by **mordi05** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:34 am

I'm looking for a game that I remember almost nothing about :-|

It is a good old text game. Where you type commands like "go north", "look" etc. And all game info is displayed as text as well.

I remember it being about "you", the main character, searhing through a castle for an evil vampire. Trying to get to him before he wakes up I think. Each time you type a command, you advance the clock towards his awakening.

I also remember that the furthest I ever got in this game was paddleing along in a boat, and comming up on a curtain that was nailed to a wall. I never got past this curtain.

I think I played this around 1988-1990. I guess one would have to have played it and remember it himself to be able to point me in the right direction.

Anyone?

mordi05 · Post by **mordi05** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:16 am

I found an old post here talking about what seems to be the same game, but then it is claimed that it's name is Dracula in London.

This is NOT the game I am looking for as DiL has graphics. My lost game has no graphics, not even ASCII. Just some sweet text and your own imagination.

Post by **dosraider** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 11:30 am

mordi05 wrote:This is NOT the game I am looking for as DiL has graphics.

That's good news, isn't it? We are pleased to know that fact.
One to scratch, another 2,314,235,451 to look at and you"ll have your game.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 11:39 am

I'm sorry if I offended someone. That was not my intetntion. I made that post because the description in that topic is really similar to mine, and I did not want people to think that I couldn't be bothered to make a simple search before I posted.

I do not expect anyone to go out of their way to help me if they do not want to. Also, I try to be polite when I post on forums. It was not my intention to come off as neither demanding nor inpolite.

Post by **dosraider** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:49 pm

Naaaaaaaaaaa, you didn't offend anyone, really not.

But you see, being in a castle searching a vampire, now, there are tons of such games......, what's more a full text based one.

What could be helpfull to find it isn't what game is not, but more some precise description, eventually mapnames, name of that vampire, characters name, .... such things.

Also I'm afraid that around 1988-1990 isn't very helpfull, as it was usual in those days that almost every beginning programmer tried the genre and released one of more such games via the BBS'es. 99% of those are lost forever.

None even tried to archive those games, it would simply be impossible.

You can find an extremely short list on Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_based_games
That list covers maybe 0,01% of the txt based games ever released.

mordi05 · Post by **mordi05** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:03 pm

I know, I know. The problem is of course that I don't remember anything else about the game. I was 7-8 years old at the time, and English is/was not my first language. So I guess it is only natural not to remember many details.

I've been searching on and off for this game for some time with little results, so I don't think it was a big comercial hit either.

To sum up: I don't expect to see it again, but is really the only DOS game from my early days that I don't know the name of. So it's a long shot.

I'll keep looking though, thanks for the link.

Post by **emmzee** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:11 pm

Maybe?

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/vampi ... tId,72989/

If so you can apparently get it here:

http://www.soulsphere.org/downloads/

If it's a .BAS file in there, you'll also need a copy of GW-BASIC or BASICA to run that, which in turn will likely have to be run using <a href="http://www.dosbox.com">DOSBox</a>.

Otherwise, you can search around www.ifarchive.org or www.mobygames.com but your chances of randomly finding it would be slim at best ...

Post by **dosraider** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:21 pm

*Me, curious, as always ....*
If is that Vampire's castle adventure, there are two files in the download, a vampire.bas and a vampire.exe.
The exe runs directly in XP ànd in dosbox.

mordi05 · Post by **mordi05** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 2:05 pm

Wow.
What can I say guys. That is it! That has to be it. I haven't played very far yet, but I am 99% sure. I am truely impressed. I have searched a lot for this game in the past. Of course when a google search doesn't yield results and I don't know the title to search other sites, I find myself at a loss.

If anyone can mark the topic title as solved, with the game title it would be nice. I don't think I can do it as I made the topic before registering.

Thank you for your help, guys.
This site seems great by the way.

Post by **dosraider** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 2:19 pm

Sometimes I think emmzee must be 65 or so ....

vlad · Post by **vlad** » Tue May 13, 2008 9:02 am

Yay I know this game too !

I even finished it at the time, I was quite proud. As english is not my 1st language too, I've learned a lot with this game.

Shame you say 99% if those games are lost. I'm desperately looking for another gwbasic text adventure where you crash on the moon

Post by **dosraider** » Wed May 14, 2008 4:42 am

Splitted and continues in Game Help, Hints and Tips .......
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11372

Medic · Post by **Medic** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 4:58 pm

I have been looking for this game for a while also, the Download link doesn't go to the right location to download the file. Does anyone else have this anywhere?

Post by **emmzee** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 8:53 pm

Looks like its been removed from its original download location, but you can get it here:

http://www.dosgames.com/vampire.zip

Enjoy!

(Note: As above, you may need DOSBox to play this.)

Medic · Post by **Medic** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 8:21 am

Excellent, Thanks, I tried it out and it just as awesome as I remember. Time to get all nostalgic.

Post by **dosraider** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:41 am

Medic wrote:Time to get all nostalgic.

Join the club.

financeguy · Post by **financeguy** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 1:11 pm

Sorry, just had to comment on this old post.

I've been looking for exactly the same game. I had even hit a roadblock at the same exact spot. Can't wait to try the .exe and give it another round.

Thanks!!!

creekfish · Post by **creekfish** » Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:17 am

Not sure if anyone will be monitoring this old thread or not, but I ported this old MS-DOS game to java not long ago:

https://github.com/creekfish/JavaVampire

If you download it, you can run it from the "bin" directory as follows:

java -cp . game.control.Console vampire

Must have Java installed, of course. No fancy installer, as this is a very low budget operation.

If you find bugs, please post in the issues on the github site. I'm going to try to do some fun stuff with this in the near future, like play it over web, IM, etc. This was on the of first BASIC programs I had access to as a kid, and I remember it fondly. I wanted to develop a simple text game framework just for kicks, grabbed the old basic code from the web, and in a couple weekends of work had this going.

Cheers,
Fish

ilboso · Post by **ilboso** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 5:01 am

Hi all!

I'm resuming this thread just to present a little website I've put together:

http://vampirebas.altervista.org

You can find some downloads (including a modified version of the game) and a complete walkthrough.

Hope you'll like it!

=)

tienkhoanguyen · Post by **tienkhoanguyen** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 7:12 pm

ilboso wrote:Hi all!

I'm resuming this thread just to present a little website I've put together:

http://vampirebas.altervista.org

You can find some downloads (including a modified version of the game) and a complete walkthrough.

Hope you'll like it!

=)

I used to play at least one textbase game. I got really into it when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure there are a few people at least who likes your stuff. I am too old to be reading so much anymores. I just like to talk now more than study haha

DOS Games Discussion

.... old text game? [= Vampire's castle adventure]

.... old text game? [= Vampire's castle adventure]

Great find!