Ken, in BASIC did the graphics really have the necessary speed? I would
have thought you'd need the scrolling to be in assembly language and
then maybe direct lcd-driver programming.
I'd sure be interested in seeing Moon Buggy.
Philip
On 1/08/2021 5:22 am, Ken Pettit wrote:
I actually wrote a BASIC 10-liner game similar to this in 2018 that I
never released. It is called Moon Buggy, and you basically have a
mood buggy that says in one place while the "moon terrain" scrolls
underneath. The goal is to jump as many moon craters as possible. If
expanded to be more than 10 lines, it could even be extended to add
moon rocks that need to be shot with the forward lasers.
The only thing really missing from the game is every so often it
should pop up one of those annoying commercials you have to watch with
web based games. Guess I could add that and then release it :)
Ken
On 7/30/21 8:10 AM, Scott McDonnell wrote:
For a side scroller, a good place to start would probably be the
simple game that google had made (need to find a link) that ran in a
web browser. Your character is just running and you jump over
hurdles. Technically your character is just in one place while the
hurdles scroll right to left. That would get some of the mechanics
down and only needs a couple of keys to operate and only a jump key
while playing. Once the mechanics are nailed down, lots of things
could be derived from it.
For an adventure game, I was thinking about the function keys working
as the verbs that could maybe change from room to room, or maybe even
context to context. Like you choose Open and then the menu changes to
things that can be opened in the scene. It would need to be designed
carefully to make good use of the limited screen. The screen would
lend itself well to a panoramic type scene (but very simple, of
course.) I haven’t really worked this out yet beyond my imagination.
One day!
Only 240x64 of screen real estate, so it would need require a lot of
creativity.
*From: *[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent: *Friday, July 30, 2021 8:23 AM
*To: *[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject: *Re: [M100] Dungeon Warrior - Game...
There was an interesting article on writing adventure games written
by Greg Hassett for Creative Computing. I did a search and found
it at
http://archive.retro.co.za/archive/adventure/CreativeComputing-HowToWriteAnAdventure.pdf
<http://archive.retro.co.za/archive/adventure/CreativeComputing-HowToWriteAnAdventure.pdf>.
The text adventure games by him, Scott Adams and later Infocom are a
game category by themselves. I always looked upon these more as a
puzzle then as a game per se in that once you solve them they are
solved and there is not much point of playing them anymore. That
has never been much of a problem for me since I was not that
successful at solving the darn things. I still enjoyed playing
them. I have yet to attempt writing one.
The games I worked with tended to be more strategy games where a
random number generator algorithm replaces the dice toss of similar
board games.
It is fun to get back into BASIC programming again. An adventure
game with some animation sounds like fun. I’m having trouble
envisioning the side scroller. I’d be interested in how that would
be implemented. It’s given me an idea or two that I might
investigate further.
Lloyd
*From:* M100 <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Scott
McDonnell
*Sent:* Thursday, July 29, 2021 8:27 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [M100] Dungeon Warrior - Game...
I am definitely interested in checking this out. I have been wanting
to understand game programming on the M100.
Unfortunately I have not had the time to try it yet so I had no
comments to give except thank you for sharing it with us!
Someday, I want to attempt an adventure game with some animation for
the small screen of the M100. A side scroller would also fit well
with the screen layout.
-------- Original message --------
From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Date: 7/29/21 4:56 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: [M100] Dungeon Warrior - Game...
I had tried sending this out last week but there was no comments. I
shared it separately with another member of this group and he said he
did not receive it. So, maybe it did not go out. Here it is again
but without the screenshot.
I rehosted another game to the TRS-80 Model 100 and NEC
PC-8201. This is another game I had written some 40 years
ago. It is called Dungeon Warrior.
I spent some time documenting this game, its history and it’s
features in the pdf file. Even if you don’t play the game, you
might find the pdf document interesting in that it references
another game (Wizard War) I developed with Fred Saberhagen (a
prolific science fiction/fantasy writer).
The files can be found at
https://github.com/LEJ-Projects/Dungeon-Warrior-for-NEC-PC-8201-or-TRS-80-Model-100/tree/main
<https://github.com/LEJ-Projects/Dungeon-Warrior-for-NEC-PC-8201-or-TRS-80-Model-100/tree/main>
Besides testing it on both the TRS-80 and NEC, I also tested it
on the emulator at https://bitchin100.com/CloudT
<https://bitchin100.com/CloudT>.
To run it on the emulator, do the following:
Copy the text from DNGWAR,ba.txt and paste into the Add Plain
Text input area.
Click Add Plain Text button to put the file into the virtual tape
queue. It will ask you for a file name. Type, DNGWAR.
Click on Model T display, BASIC and then press Enter to go into
BASIC.
Type CLOAD. You should see, “Found: DNGWAR”.
Wait until you see, OK.
Type Run
Again, I really appreciate CloudT. (Thanks again to John R.
Hogerhuis.) This enables me to share the program with those who
do not have one of these old laptops.
Let me know if you have any comments or questions.
Lloyd
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
