Thursday 11 November 2021

"Capture" by Mac Oglesby

This is a puzzle/board game by Mac Oglesby. I converted it from Commodore PET source to TRS-80 MC-10 Micro Color BASIC. The source can be found on the Internet Archive as a book scan of PET Games and Recreations from 1981:


The version from PET Games and Recreations that I primarily worked from was dated from 1980, but there is an older version published in the People's Computer Magazine July/Aug 1977, but dated in the source to 1976.  I also used a version from Recreational Computing magazine dated 1979, that I picked up somewhere along the line and printed out and had stuck in a binder. I decided to convert the 1980 version because it was the latest and it had a computer player option.  However, it did still allow for two human players to play.  It seems like Oglesby kept tweaking the program along the way.  The 1980 version was similar to the 1979 version (both had 2-player ability) except for a modified input routine at 10000 that didn't require users to hit Return to confirm their selections.  The 1977 version seems to have been only for 2 players and wasn't written specifically for the PET. The grid dimension were smaller and it didn't use an special graphic characters.

Mac Oglesby was a very prolific programmer, who contributed games to the early 101 BASIC Classic games collection by David Ahl and to other type-in game publications. Here's a brief list of some of of his type-in games from Moby Games:

Cross-Country Balloon Trip (1978), Capture (1976), Exagon (1976), Planets (1976), Pounce (1976), Sinners (1976), Survivor (1976), Watchman (1976), Dodgem (1975), Motie (1975), Rescue (1975) Square (1975) and Frogs (1974).

I have also converted his Frogs game. I hope to convert some more because not all of them seem to be widely available on the Net. I have found one PET software repository, which lists Sinners among its collection. But I can't seem to find any others, so I am not sure how easy it is to find working copies of Oglesby's games on the Web, which is sad because he seems like a pretty significant early contributor to the home computing revolution and the type-in game phenomenon. Perhaps this is because most of his games are of the logic puzzle variety, which can be a little annoying to most folks. Capture, however, is a game where you try to pick the letters with the most blocks around them, in order to capture the most letters and blocks by the end of the game. So it is kind of a spatial recognition/strategy game. It's rather unique, and quite entertaining.

The source of my port of CAPTURE can be found here: https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/tree/master/quicktype/Board%20Games/Capture
The earliest numbered file version, of course, represents the rough text capture from the digital scan from the PET book.

The game can be played here: http://faculty.cbu.ca/jgerrie/MC10/Educational.html

Or here under the Educational Game category:

Saturday 6 November 2021

"Mystery Mania" from Compute! December 1987

Mystery Mania David Leithauser was published in Compute! Magazine December 1987. It creates logic puzzles with a murder mystery theme to them; 32000 variations with five levels of play to choose from. I've added a graphic title screen and made a few changes to make it more Sherlock Holmes like. For example, when you win, the level your win is recognized by being awarded different levels of the Order of the British Empire.


The game can be played at my GameJolt page:

Just select "Play Our Educational Game."  Then select MYSTMANI and type RUN in the main emulator window.  Thanks to Mike Tinnes for letting me use his emulator.

The source code can be viewed on my Github here:

Just look for the highest numbered listing for the latest most debugged version.

Tuesday 2 November 2021

Retrochallenge 2021: Star Lanes

Star Trader was a BASIC game written by Dave Kaufman and published by the "People's Computer Company" in 1974 or possibly earlier.  I have written elsewhere about the challenges I had converting this game to run on the MC-10.  Kaufman's game is the forerunner of the vast array of open world space exploration and trading games, such as the Trade Wars series.

According to some sources on the Net, Star Trader was "copied" and "modified" into a different game called Star Lanes some time by the late 70s or early 80s.  Some Star Lanes games use the filename TRADE.BAS while others use LANES.BAS or some variation of either these.


However, I have ported the source code for both games to Micro Color Basic and played them, and I find the contention that
Star Lanes is a "variation" of Kaufmann's Star Traders to be ludicrous.  The two games are completely different in both code and conception.

In Star Lanes, players take turns building outposts, creating companies, and purchasing stock. It is a grid based game in which you select locations on the grid to slowly form "lanes" between star systems and outposts.  These lanes are owned by different companies, that you can buy stock in, and by selecting the companies that are most likely to merge, when their lanes intersect, you can make huge returns on your investments. The fundamental dynamic is to construct interconnected trading routes.


Star Trader, on the other hand is played on a star map where players can travel directly between different star systems. Players travel about buying and selling six types of merchandise: uranium, metals, gems, software, heavy equipment, and medicine. They have to plan their routes and stops while considering efficiency of routing and the likelihood of the needs and likely sale goods of the different planet types located in each star system. You can occasionally be hit by random events, such as space pirates.  The fundamental dynamic is to be an effective travelling salesperson, which includes haggling effectively when both purchasing and selling goods.


I think that the use of the term "trade" in the filenames of these two games and the fact that they are set in space is all that really connects them. The vague recollections of playing various "interstellar space trading" BASIC games has allowed them to become interconnected in people's minds. I am not sure who wrote
Star Lanes, but I have come across a number of variations, including one for the TRS-80 Color Computer that have A.I. built into it so that you can play against the computer. I didn't convert that one because I wanted to get a very early version of the program running, and the Altair was one of the first 8-bit hobby computers, so I figured that it must be a pretty early variation.  However, no original author's name is mentioned in the documentation.  Just these remarks

REM ***** STAR LANES *****
REM MODIFIED BY S J SINGER
REM FOR ALTAIR BASIC 4.0

I also have some source that states:

REM - MODIFIED FOR THE MICROBEE BY JOHN ZAITSEFF, 1988

As I mentioned, I also have uncovered a TRS-80 Coco version with these remarks and title page code:

1 ' Coco Version enhancements over  original PC version.
2 ' 1. Marked display of players possible move locations.  2. Computer added as a player.         (Using the advanced heuristic programming technique called RND numbers).
3 ' 
4 ' I intend to improve the computers  playing ability in the near future,     but it may be a while before I have time.
5 '
6 ' I hope you enjoy playing the game.

2510 V=10: CT$="-:*  Original PC version by  *:-": GOSUB 2290
2520 V=12: CT$="John Bernauer": GOSUB 2290: V=14: CT$="Malcom  Higgins": GOSUB 2290: V=16: CT$="Brian Irvine": GOSUB 2290:V=18:CT$="-:*  Coco III Version by  *:-":GOSUB 2290
2530 V=20:CT$="Martyn Phillips":GOSUB 2290

Not sure if John Bernauer, Malcolm Higgins (I've added a "l" to his name), Brian Irvine are the original authors, or simply folks who converted the game to PC.  A search of the Net doesn't turn up anything definitive. This is the only functioning link that I could find, but it doesn't actually seem to reference the names.

So I am not completely sure who to attribute authorship to for this game. For the time being, I will use the names mentioned in the Coco source code: J Bernauer, M Higgins, B Irvine.  But if anyone could shed more light, I would really appreciate it.

Anyway, this is the last project I mentioned in my description of my Retrochallenge for Fall 2021. It's a little late, I know.  I've already made my excuses in prior posts. Thanks again to the other Retrochallengers, and to the folks organizing again this year.


P.S. 

Here is the link to my Github with the various source code files for the different versions of the program Star Lanes that I reference in this post:

Here is a link to the source for Star Traders by Kaufman. Feel free to compare them. They seem to be completely different programs