The remaining fixes turned out to be something I could knock off in what was left of my lunch break. I tested it all last night, fixed a couple of other bugs I found and did a complete playthrough of the game. Having played through it, I changed my mind about the hit point reward when you leave a dungeon and put them back how it was. The game is definitely beatable anyway so I’m calling it done for now. I may revisit it at some point but I reckon I’ve achieved what I wanted when I set out. I’ll fix issues if anyone reports anything but right now I’m dubious as to whether anyone else will ever even play it. You can grab this latest version is at https://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/Vecalabeth.rar as before.
Aside from a Vectrex, you’ll clearly need a Vectrex32 to run it which isn’t cheap and my port certainly isn’t worth that asking price on its own. It undoubtedly makes writing Vectrex games way, way easier than it would be otherwise so if you ever fancied creating a game of your own I’d certainly recommend picking one up. The BASIC variant it uses is still primitive but it’s no doubt a joyful experience compared to the alternative. I had quite a few issues with bugs when I first bought it but the updates since then have improved things no end. My overriding complaint is still the lack of emulation so that I have to load and run my code on real hardware all the time. Aside from the inconvenience, it seems like unnecessary wear and tear on an ever more valuable system. To compensate, I’ve been doing this oldschool and writing the code in a text editor (usually during my lunch) and then only running it when I’ve made decent progress. This isn’t how I prefer to code but it forces me into it.
If anyone does play Vecalabeth, please let me know how you get on. I think it’s a decent approximation of the original but I could do with some other opinions.

I uploaded a new version of Vecalabeth yesterday (https://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/Vecalabeth.rar) with some bug fixes and gameplay tweaks.

This version improves the flickering and more importantly fixes a good number of game-breaking bugs. I’ve played this one far enough to complete about half the quests on the easiest level without noticing any major problems. There are a few bugs I’m aware of which for my benefit as much as anyone else are:-

• I still haven’t fixed invisible passages showing up from certain angles.
• If you kill a carrion creeper the text goes off the screen
• Monsters don’t attack you if you are stood on something (ladder/chest)
• The menus are still a little fiddly – I may not do too much with these as it wasn’t really an issue when playing.
• You will keep being told a quest is completed every time you kill the appropriate monster
• Lucky number selection starts at 0 instead of 1

I went back and played the original Akalabeth again as a basis for comparison. There are clearly different versions of this as the usual Apple II version does not quite match the source code I’ve got or the code analysis. I was fairly certain I remembered it playing differently but it’s been years so I needed to go back and make sure. As such I’ve made some changes to make my version a bit more playable and bring it more in line with the later version:-

• I’ve altered the dungeon generation to include empty blocks in the grid. Believe it or not, this would never happen with the original dungeon generator and it makes the dungeons much more open and playable. It is still possible in my latest version to not have paths through the dungeon but far less likely.
• I’ve doubled the number of hit points awarded when exiting the dungeon. This feels much closer to the original to me and a whole lot fairer on the player.
• On the earlier version, all the monsters for that level didn’t always spawn on each level. I’ve altered it so they are always on there somewhere. Best find a dead end to fight off the onslaught on those lower levels…
• I’ve made traps about half as likely to be generated. They were a nightmare on the original version.

Another major difference in the later Akalabeth is the persistence of dungeon levels. i.e. they are the same when you go back. This didn’t happen on the original and I’m tempted to leave this alone on the Vectrex. I don’t have enough memory to store more than the one level at a time – I could try to save them to the cartridge but I’m going to leave as is at least for now. The random levels offer an easy way to compensate for potential dead ends if nothing else.

There are no doubt other little differences but this felt very close to playing the Akalabeth I remember at any rate. The current plan is to fix the bugs in the first list, play through the whole game to see if I can finish it and then if nothing else shows up, call it a beta and see if anyone else ever actually plays it. None of that will take too long so I should be done in the next few days.