Adventure Creation Kit - Source

The ACK source code (including the compiler) is now available. It is written in Turbo Pascal for DOS, mostly written when I was in high school in the late 80's/early 90's, and probably half of the code involves workarounds that deal either with the oddities of the compiler or the limitations of DOS. Much of the design also reflects 20 years of shoehorning in one unplanned feature after another into the engine. The rest exhibits my own ignorance, especially when I started this project, of how to program. If it's any consolation, I don't do this professionally.

I don't expect that anyone will do much of anything useful with this, and I would discourage anyone from trying to "port" it to another platform (although you're welcome to use any concepts, techniques, or data structures from the source code, if you can make any sense of them.)

To download the source code, please agree to the following:

I agree not to knock Chris upon the head, kill his cat, TP his home, or mock him in public (much) for how badly the code is organized, written, or commented.

I agree that anything recompiled from a modified version of this source code will remain free, open-source, and available to the ACK community.

I agree that this source code is not guaranteed to be functional, useful, comprehensible, or even in good taste (there might be some profane variable names)

I agree that this source code comes with no support, and that any questions that start with "How do I..." sent to the author may be answered with "I have no idea."

If I still haven't managed to talk you out of it:  
Version info will be indicated by the folder name within the ZIP file. Note that this package contains everything you need to compile the program files (.EXE and .OVR) but does not contain the various data files used by ACK; you'll need a working copy of ACK to drop your new program files into.

To compile: You will not need to download any separate compiler or libraries, just run DosBox, go to the ACKSRC folder, and run "MAKE all" (to compile everything) or "MAKE player" or "MAKE editors" (to compile just those modules). Note that DosBox is required, the compiler is from 1990 and locks up if run directly in Windows.

I highly recommend using the Notepad++ editor for working with the source code.