See also "Zombieland", rule #2.
I mostly did test on Virtual T but also tested on my actual 200.
There is a setting on Virtual T for the clock speed, which can be made
faster. Maybe you made it faster for Outpost? :P
PPS For those who aren't "in the know", z=48 was the original setting. This
meant the aliens were displayed as ASCII 49, 50, 51 ("1", "2", "3"). With
z=167 they are shown as three extended charset values. :)
On Sun, Feb 8, 2026 at 12:45 PM B 9 <[email protected]> wrote:
> I hope you do keep the bug in place. The game works better with the
> challenge it gives. You just need to add some lore behind it,
>
> *“Okay, Cadet, first rule is, Always shoot twice when you see an alien:
> Once to kill him and the second for his avenging ghost.”*
>
> *“Aww... don't scare the lad with that old starwife's tale. I'm telling
> you it's not ghosts. Them aliens got some sorta tech for cloaking or
> somesuch, wherewith one can hides behind the other. You can see 'em
> shimmer, if you look at 'em outta the corner o' your eye.”*
>
> *“Whatever the case, the important point is this: Never trust a dead alien
> to stay good and dead.”*
>
> —b9
>
> P.S. Was the game designed for Virtual-T? Maybe I compiled it wrong, but
> Virtual-T seems to run almost twice as fast as my actual Tandy 200. For
> example, a FOR loop counting to 10,000 takes 32 seconds on my Tandy 200,
> but only 17 seconds on Virtual T.
>
> P.P.S. For extra fun, I've been playing OCTOSIEGE with `z=167` in line 0.
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2026 at 7:00 AM David Plass <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> The overlapping aliens is a "known bug". I'm not sure I'll be able to fix
>> it, and keep the code within the 10 lines/120 chars per line limitation of
>> the BASIC 10-liner contest (https://www.homeputerium.de)
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 6, 2026 at 12:37 AM B 9 <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> Sweet! Great job on making another “Surprisingly Entertaining!”︎™︎ game!
>>> That was a clever way to decode the eight way input. Plus, you finally gave
>>> me a good reason to use the NUM key! I’d never tried it before and
>>> didn’t even know if it locked down or not. (It does, thank goodness.)
>>>
>>> At first I didn’t like that while a bullet was moving, pressing keys
>>> didn’t seem to do anything, but once I figured out that you can bundle up a
>>> bunch of shots in the keyboard buffer, I loved it. I don’t think I could
>>> see playing the game any other way now. I also noticed that sometimes two
>>> aliens will overlap and you can see them flashing between their different
>>> types. I'm not sure if that's a bug or a feature, but it definitely makes
>>> the game harder. I think the only thing that would make it better would be
>>> if the Tandy 200 had a tactile bump on the center of the number pad so I
>>> don’t keep hitting the wrong numbers and getting eaten by aliens!
>>>
>>> —b9
>>>
>>> P.S. Speaking of the NUM key, what do folks here think about NUM+GRPH?
>>> Has it ever been useful to you? I wonder if that TSR could be customized to
>>> do something else, like a hexadecimal converter.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 6:45 PM David Plass <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Announcing yet another 10-line BASIC game: OCTOSIEGE! It's a fast-based
>>>> video game for the T200 inspired by Space Invaders, Robotron 2048 and
>>>> Tempest.
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/dplassgit/games/tree/trunk/t100/octo
>>>>
>>>> "Defend the center from the invading aliens! You can fire from the
>>>> center in all 8 directions using the numeric keypad. An alien can take up
>>>> to 3 hits before it dies - but watch out - if any of them reach you in the
>>>> middle they'll decrease your shields!
>>>>
>>>> You only get TWO smartbombs, which kills all aliens instantly. Use them
>>>> wisely!"
>>>>
>>>> For Tandy 200 only.
>>>>
>>>> As always, bugs/comments/feedback welcome.
>>>>
>>>
