the cutting room mirror

Jagged Alliance (DOS)

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Jagged Alliance is a turn-based combat tactics game wherein the player brings a team of up to eight mercenaries that can squabble among themselves and complain about poor treatment from the boss, with the objective of reclaiming control of an island required for a medicinal resource.

Development-Related Text#

The .EDT files contain the game's text, all ROT1-encoded and having a fixed record length that's usually 200 bytes each.

AIMQUOTE.EDT are answers to interview questions when trying to hire crew. Not all complaints are in use, with placeholders being similar as follows based on the member and their specific response to the interview:

 Member 1 Bug 1
 Member 1 Bug 2
 Member 1 Bug 3
 Member 1 Bug 4
 Member 1 Bug 5

BREQUOTE.EDT contains quotes by Brenda, and has 10 records that are completely blank without even any placeholder text, in addition to two records:

 Bug!!! Brequote - Quote 8
 BUG!!! Brequote - Quote 9

INVQUOTE.EDT contains inventory descriptions. The first item in the list:

 Nothing
 You are looking at absolutely nothing, zippo, abstract infinity, deep space, the great void. Do not look at it for too long, or you yourself will become nothing. You have been warned!!!!!

JACQUOTE.EDT gives an end-of-day report concerning the player's success for the day. Three quotes in the middle are explicitly tagged as bugs, and plenty of placeholders for Quotes 103-144, a second batch for Quote 185-198 and 200, and a message to record lines.

 BUG!!!! You had no men - shouldn't be able to get a good rating.
 BUG!!!! You had no men - shouldn't be able to get a excellent rating.
 BUG!!!!! You had no men - shouldn't be able to get an outstanding rating.
 Quote 103 - Negative Rating 
 Quote 104 - Fair Rating 
 Quote 105 - Positive Rating 
 Quote 185 
 RECORD QUOTE # 156 WITH THE FOLLOWING AMOUNTS: $1000, 3000, 5000, 8000. RECORD QUOTE # 172 WITH THE FOLLOWING AMOUNTS: $3000, 5000, 10000, 15000.

NATQUOTE.EDT has placeholders if there's no native guide quotes for a given sector:

 BUG!!! Sector 8 - No Native Quote.

PSTQUOTE.EDT has placeholders if a member can't possibly comment on one of post-day debriefing, with patterns similar to:

 Member 0 Bug 7p 
 Member 0 Bug 8p 
 Member 0 Bug 9p 
 Member 0 Bug 10p
 Member 0 Bug 11p
 Member 0 Bug 12p

QSTQUOTE.EDT contains quotes for quests, and generic placeholders for 28-39 and 80-100.

 Quote 28
 Quote 29

SIGQUOTE.EDT is a ROT1-encoded file giving sign texts in each sector, each allocated 200 bytes. Sectors without signs have text similar to the following:

 SECTOR 4 - SIGN TEXT MISSING!