Topologika
A UK publisher of early microcomputer IF and educational software from the late 1980s, run by Brian and Maddy Kerslake. Had strong links to the Phoenix adventure writers, with many published titles having Phoenix heritage (particularly after original publisher Acornsoft decided not to release further adventure games).
Games
Note: many of these were originally written on the Phoenix mainframe in the early 80s and ported for commercial release by Topologika. Dates refer to the commercial release date.
The Doom Trilogy
- Countdown to Doom (Peter Killworth; 1987)
- Return to Doom (Peter Killworth; 1988)
- Last Days of Doom (Peter Killworth; 1990)
Others
- Giantkiller (Peter Killworth; 1987)
- Philosopher's Quest (Peter Killworth; 1987)
- Acheton (David Seal, Jonathan Thackray and Jonathan Partington; 1987)
- Kingdom of Hamil (Jonathan Partington; 1987)
- Monsters of Murdac (Jonathan Thackray and Jonathan Partington; 1989)
- Avon (Jonathan Thackray and Jonathan Partington; 1989)
- Herazin (Steve Tinney, Alex Ship and Jonathan Thackray; written 1980)
- Spy Snatcher (Jonathan Thackray, Jonathan Partington and Peter Killworth); after 1985)
Engine
While many of Topologika's games were closely derived from the Phoenix games, they were not implemented in the same system used on the Phoenix mainframe (latterly known as T/SAL), but a different compiler/interpreter system; neither this system nor the corresponding game source code has become public. (The resulting compiled data files in the shipped games were portable between at least some of the target systems. Possibly the same system was used for the Acornsoft release of Acheton.)
Peter Killworth in 2004 describes how he
converted the game [Quondam] from the Seal-Thackray Cambridge compiler to the Seal-Thackray Acorn compiler (not an easy task!)
and in 1999 wrote:
Can I just clear up a misapprehension. Though the original compiler worked on the IBM mainframe, the later - completely rewritten - compiler, using a threaded FORTH-like language called SHOVEL, ran/runs on all Acorn machines to my knowledge, and it's those versions which Topologika sells/used to sell.
Jon Thackray in 2020 also described the later (Topologika) language as higher-level than T/SAL:
the first [system] [T/SAL] was a bit like an autocode with skip instructions and things like that; whereas the later one was much more like a sort of very basic ALGOL-like language with if/then/elses and loops and what-have-you
and provided names for the language/tooling:
- SHOVEL: "Structured Handling of Versatile Explorations Language"
- SPADE: "Structured Programming Aid for Dungeon Excavation"
Links
- Topologika continues at the time of writing as a publisher of educational software.
- topologika.co.uk (archive), previous website.
- topolgka.demon.co.uk (archive), even older website (1990s through 2001).
- Manuals for the Topologika games in HTML format. (Also at the IF Archive.)
- Worked tagged Topologika - at IFDB.
- Blog post by Jimmy Maher on The Digital Antiquarian, 12-Jun-2015.
- Topologika at if-legends.org.
- r*if newsgroup threads:
- [Announce] DOS versions of Topologika games on rec.games.int-fiction (Gunther Schmidl, 18-Oct-1999) - Brian Kerslake officially withdraws Topologika's commercial interest in its adventure games; DOS versions uploaded to the IF Archive.
- [ANNOUNCE] Topologika games manuals on rec.games.int-fiction (Gunther Schmidl, 02-Dec-1999) - uploaded scans of the manuals for those games.
- [ANNOUNCE] Topologika manuals, HTML on rec.games.int-fiction (Gunther Schmidl, 13-Mar-2000) - HTML conversions of those manuals.