Death Star

[stefano]

* dstarz88 is a conversion of a TI86 game found with source on www.ticalc.org.
*
* The original program was written by Andrew Von Dollen who
* in turn based it on a HP game by Joe W.
*
* The source was widely used to test and develop z88dk.
*
* The aim of the game is to collect all the clear bubbles by
* running over them. You control either the dark bubble or
* the solid box. The dark bubble is used to collect the clear
* bubbles, and the solid box is used as a sort of movable wall.
*
* Both objects carry on moving until they hit something else
* (except for the dark bubble in the case of clear bubbles)
*
* * * * * * *
*
* The keys are defined in #define statements, and default thus:
*
* Up: Q
* Down: A
* Left: O
* Right: P
* Quit: G
* Retry: H
* Switch: M
*
* Switch changes between the dark bubble and the solid box.

[stefano]

This is the minimal implementation, based on the standard Sinclair graphics characters.

[stefano]

As above, but for the ZX80.. could someone test it and verify that a real machine will keep the video display stable ?

[stefano]

This one is a bit more tricky, but should work on all (or at least most) of the expansions based on RAM placed over the ROM locations such as Quicksilva or Dk'Tronics with an extra RAM chip and the many existing self-made kits.

While the program runs press (blindly) '0' to switch to the font placed in the default location, press '1' to '6' blindly to try other positions.

[stefano]

This version is for the DK'Tronics board without extra RAM chip.
Does anybody have such board, by the way ?

[sirmorris]

Sweet! I love this game. I made a hires version with high-score saving, joystick support and (very basic) sound effects for ZXpand. It's available in the games thread sticky. It's very cool to have the character-graphics versions too

[stefano]

True graphics, this version is for the WRX mod

[stefano]

This is based on the 64 lines WRX mode.
Code executions is faster due to the smaller display and smaller blocks help furtherly

[stefano]

Andy Rea's magic is now a standard library.
A mod very similar to the ones needed to redefine the character set is required.. On EightyOne you can try it by disabling the WRX mode and enabling the RAM page in the 8K-16K portion.
This mode is slower than the WRX but could permit some old machine already tweaked in the past to run this program with no extra hardware hassles. 8K of standard RAM should be enough (did an 8K expansion ever exist ?).

[stefano]

See above for details.
The memory usage is even smaller and the code gets fast enough.