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The Compute! program is an interesting puzzle game. The program is very simple, but elegant. I have seen images for it for many years on the Net as I have scoured for Basic code. Finally, I decided to make a version for the MC-10, Coco and Dragon. The graphic characters are a little different, but I hope the game play is much like the original.
Translating the BASICODE program "De Tijdmachine" to English English was not as hard as other efforts I have made at translating text adventures from other languages, such as the Hungarian A Hös Lovag. Dutch translates in a pretty straightforwardl way into English. Still, there were, as always, a few idiomatic phrases that Google couldn't translate that I had to figure out.
It was interesting finding out about the BASICODE standard, which was used to create programs and then to broadcast them using radio signals for distribution. Gareth Pitchford sent me a link to a neat page with a UK perspective on BASICODE: https://nosher.net/archives/computers/comm_008-acorn. And another one with the Dutch perspective on this interesting early attempt at a universal inter-computer information exchange format: https://www.hobbyscoop.nl/the-history-of-basicode/?fbclid=IwAR2jXPPZQDNev_C5f7Z3XCgxzmIJEyAGa_QgdgrMNathRdNbLD5M0ga4ikk. Unfortunately, I had to strip out all the extra (unused) subroutines at the beginning of the program that were part of this standard. I also had to renumber the lines to save space, which also disrupted the standard, since it had specially assigned ranges of line number for putting its subroutines, and other standard parts of programs.
I have played the games through using walkthroughs, so they should be bug free. That being said, Miyagami Noriko from the Coco Facebook group played through Dogstar and discovered that the misspelled word "HEROS" appeared in the win message, which I have now corrected. She pointed out that this misspelling was in the original Softside magazine source and that I had corrected the "Hamberger" spelling mistake that could also be found in that source. She also pointed out a missing message about the Graffiti in the Bathroom. So thanks to Miyagami for her feedback.
It was interesting finding out about the BASICODE standard, which was used to create programs and then to broadcast them using radio signals for distribution. Gareth Pitchford sent me a link to a neat page with a UK perspective on BASICODE: https://nosher.net/archives/computers/comm_008-acorn. And another one with the Dutch perspective on this interesting early attempt at a universal inter-computer information exchange format: https://www.hobbyscoop.nl/the-history-of-basicode/?fbclid=IwAR2jXPPZQDNev_C5f7Z3XCgxzmIJEyAGa_QgdgrMNathRdNbLD5M0ga4ikk. Unfortunately, I had to strip out all the extra (unused) subroutines at the beginning of the program that were part of this standard. I also had to renumber the lines to save space, which also disrupted the standard, since it had specially assigned ranges of line number for putting its subroutines, and other standard parts of programs.
I have played the games through using walkthroughs, so they should be bug free. That being said, Miyagami Noriko from the Coco Facebook group played through Dogstar and discovered that the misspelled word "HEROS" appeared in the win message, which I have now corrected. She pointed out that this misspelling was in the original Softside magazine source and that I had corrected the "Hamberger" spelling mistake that could also be found in that source. She also pointed out a missing message about the Graffiti in the Bathroom. So thanks to Miyagami for her feedback.
Hope everyone is doing well in the face of Covid-19. Perhaps these programs will help folks while away some of the hours as we all try to do our part.
| The program can be found here: On JGGAMES14.DSK of my Coco compilation: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7oFL ... TN0a2Q1bGc TIMEMACH.CAS, DOGSTAR.CAS, BUNNY.CAS, and FLAGSTON.CAS are on my Dragon Compilation: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7oFL ... klURW9DNTQ |
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