The Sinclair QL Forum

I have just come across the game Catchjack written in SuperBASIC, by Joan Pratt in 1992.

I don't know the copyright status on this, but believe it was owned by someone that recently passed away. I am checking with the family that sold me the items.

It is quite a neat little game whereby you have to use an identikit to identify a suspect.

I will upload it if I can verify the author!

Sounds interesting! Any screenshots?

Actually I have found 3 versions of the game, there is one version (Catchjack) said to be (c) Joan Pratt and two versions (Identity and Identify) said to be (c) Ernst

Looking at the disks, there are Quill documents with letters under both the names Joan and Ernst so it does look as though all this belonged to them at some stage.

Maybe they were thinking of sending it into QL World (didn't that fold around 1992?)

The game is based in London 1888, so presumably it is based on catching Jack the Ripper.

Anyway screenshots

I have now received a response from the family to confirm that Joan and Ernst have both passed away and that they feel Joan would have been really pleased to know that the game had been made available for public access.

I have therefore attached a zip file containing all 3 versions - Dilwyn, could you please add this to the QL Homepage for download.

RWAP wrote:I have therefore attached a zip file containing all 3 versions - Dilwyn, could you please add this to the QL Homepage for download.

Done, thanks.
Dilwyn

Top work Rich and thanks to their family for allowing access. It's quite a nifty little game with a great idea and the graphics are put to good use as well. My first score was poor but I did better on the next go. I looked but did not observe!

I can't quite work out if there is any difference between the three versions....

Well look what I found when perusing my magazine covers!

:update:

Having got out the relevant magazine I looked up the program listing, these are the findings:

The listing Catch Jack is in the PROGS section
As far as I can ascertain the listings are identical to the one that boots up from the file except
there are two additional lines at 7000 a procedure SA for saving the file (no end def), and the REM lines for spacing using '=' are much longer in the listing than they are in the program
Jose Carlos de Prada is the name associated with the listing, it doesn't specifically say 'written by' or just 'by Jose Carlos de Prada' as it has done in previous 'Prog' listings in other issues of the magazine.

There is no indication if anyone else wrote the program, there is nothing in the rem statements to indicate wrote wrote it, so Jose may be the programmer or he may be the editor of the Prog section. The next 8 issues did not contain any Prog sections or addendum or errata so it is difficult to say who actually is the writer of the program Catch Jack.

Ah - who is the author for the program though?