Saturday, 11 April 2020

RetroChallenge April 2020: Mazies and Crazies Working on MC-10

I've got the program basically working now in both the TRS-80 Model 1 version and for the TRS-80 MC-10. I think these might be the only working versions of this program available on the Net.  At least to the best of my knowledge. I've searched pretty intensively.


I will send the TRS-80 code to  Ira Goldklang's TRS-80 Revived Site when I am a little more satisfied that I have got all the bugs out.  Still haven't managed to play to the point of getting both bow and arrows to test arrow shooting.  I have spent most of my time tweaking the maps in the MC-10 version, since the shrinking from 64 to 32 character wide screen messed up the plotting of some of the walls and doorways for a few rooms.  Basically these rooms:
28,58,88
24,54,84
6,36,66
29,89,59
20,50,80
and
4,34,64
There is a lot of repetition, so these triplets represent the same room layout, but different places in the 90 room dungeon. I think I've checked every room string for typos now.  Lots of number checking for lots of lines of code from the scan I was working from.  It runs faster on the MC-10.  And I have used key rollover PEEKing, rather than INKEY$ so the movement is smoother in the MC-10 version.  Also added a help screen at the beginning.

Next step more play testing to check fighting and scoring.  I think the goal is simply to play for high score. If you restart, items will be left where you died, but it will be a score penalty for the next round.  One neat feature is if you pick up the bomb you can drop it in the path of monster and lure them onto it, which will blow them up.  Lots of neat little features to discover. It's an interesting program, so I'm a little perplexed as to why copies don't seem to be abundant.  Perhaps I've missed something obvious.  Here's a link to the scan:https://archive.org/stream/Writing_BASIC_Adventure_Programs_for_the_TRS-80_1982_Frank_DaCosta/Writing_BASIC_Adventure_Programs_for_the_TRS-80_1982_Frank_DaCosta_djvu.txt


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