Public Domain Programs for the Sinclair QL

Some of that software, including several adventures and games, has been released as commercial programs, with the consent of the original copyright holders. We are also converting these games and adventures to low cost shareware for Windows based PCs.

We are however pleased to be able to supply various public domain programs in which we have had a small part. We have tested these various programs on a wide variety of Sinclair QL setups and have modified them where necessary to ensure that they will run on modern systems. If you find that any of the programs which are supplied do not run on your computer, please do not hesitate to contact us, as we are only too pleased to help.

We are glad to add any other public domain software which is similar to that listed, particularly more adventure games. If you wish to order any of these items on disk, then we are happy to oblige at a cost of £2 per disk.

The following downloads are available:

Adventure Disk 1

Starburst - a graphical adventure - fly a spaceship through a maze of caverns avoiding the enemy ships and missiles. Use the cursor keys to fly around, <SPACE> to fire - CTRL and ESC keys alter the angle of fire. QPC Users need to use QPC_QLSCREMU 8 and SLUG 12.
Fantasia Adventure - a massive text only adventure that as far as we know, no-one has ever completed. Unfortunately not QPC compatible (does anyone still have the source code).
Ye-Classical Type Adventure - A classic text only adventure by the popular author, Alan Pemberton, full of his renowned sense of humour.
Adventure Playtime - Another text only adventure by Alan Pemberton.
The Lost Tombs of Ornac - A fairly simple text only adventure - author unknown.
Starplod - A graphics based adventure by Alan Pemberton - Unfortunately not QPC compatible (does anyone still have the source code).
Underground Adventure - A well-written text only adventure - by Marianne van Loenen.
Farce - A small comical text only adventure - author unknown.

Adventure Disk 2

Digitaya - a text only adventure in BASIC, try to find the elucid Digitaya - needs some improvement.
Haunted House - text only adventure - explore a haunted house - compiled, with source code.
Treasure Hunt - text only adventure originally supplied with the QL, now compiled. No source code at moment.

Dreamlands

This is a large text only adventure with lots of twists and turns, by Jean-Yves Rouffiac - Download the latest version via the Sinclair QL Homepage.

Voyage of the Beano

An engrossing large text adventure by Alan Pemberton with graphics for most locations. You play the part of a ship's captain ordered to sail to the New World and collect as much gold as possible - look out for the pirates who will try to beat you to the treasure. QPC users use QPC_QLSCREMU 4 to run the program.

Adventure Utilities

This includes various utilities to assist with creating adventures. The following utilities are included:

Convert adventures written in Quill (by Gilsoft) to SuperBASIC (allows graphics to be added) - this can be used to overcome the difficulties with running Quilled adventures on later operating systems.

Read text in adventures written with Quill (allows you to cheat!!)

Redefine windows used by adventures written with Quill

Improved save/restore function for adventures written with Adventure Creation Tool (ACT) by Digital Precision

View/Print ACT message files

Create command file to assemble pictures under ACT and also create a scratch data disk

Damon Chaplin Games

These games are currently not compatible with SMSQ/E.

Spook - a good implementation of the original Pacman game.

Pudge - a variation on the Boulderdash game - fast and furious

Speedfreaks - a desk-top car racing game over various tracks - can accommodate more than one player

Assault & Battery - a good shoot 'em up game.

A quick guide to playing Pudge is available as an Adobe Acrobat file.

The Source Code for these programs is now available as follows :

Spook

Speedfreaks

Assault & Battery

Pudge

To download - right click and choose save as, then use Winzip or similar to unzip the files to your PC (they are in tgz format)

Psion Xchange v3.90L

Main Psion Xchange Program

This is one package which combines all four Psion business programs originally supplied with the Sinclair QL, namely Psion Archive (a programmable database program), Psion Abacus (a powerful spreadsheet program), Psion Easel (a program to create graphs and pie charts - this version supports 3D graphs) and Psion Quill (a word processor - this version supports programmable function keys). The TSL programming language also forms part of this program, which allows you to write scripts to control the use of all 4 programs. Psion Xchange is much improved over the original versions of the four separate programs and a real benefit to the Sinclair QL. We are however, able to supply microdrive versions of the latest Psion software (the four independent programs) if you are you looking for this. Contact us for details.

Psion Xchange Documentation

Recommended Public Domain sites

The Sinclair QL Homepage
Thierry Godefroy Library
Jonathon Hudson's Site
The Sinclair QL download page