ANDROMEDA 3 by Graeme Poole from ZX Collection, Winter 1984 If you think that you're the adventurous type, just have a go at escaping from Andromeda 3! [I added a bit of code at line 9500 to include a display of the exits] [from each location, as they're not always given in the descriptions.] [JimG ] The time is 12:15 am in the year 3058 AD. You were on a routine flight to all of the major planets in the Solar System. Suddenly, out of nowhere, appeared five Space Fighters from Andromeda 3. Unfortunately your instruments did not register them and you were taken completely by surprise. The fighters launched a full scale attack on your ship (for no apparent reason) and your shipped was crippled beyond normal flight. You did, however, have enough of the basic controls left working so that you could crash land your spaceship on the vast planet of Andromeda 3. Your ship was completely destroyed but you managed to escape, alive and without injury. By this time, the Andromedan fighters had landed and the pilots took you to the leader of the planet. Before you had a chance to speak, the pilots explained to the leader that you had launched the attack on THEM. You of course denied this, but unfortunately, the leader did not believe you. He ordered you to be taken into the depths of the planet, where prisoners are left to rot in a large underground prison. It is here in this prison cell that you are now sitting; you must try to escape alive and report back to Earth notifying them of the situation. This is of the utmost importance: you have heard two guards talking in the guardroom, saying that the leader was going to report the 'incident' to Earth and that full scale war was to be launched between the two planets. So you can see that the entire future of Earth depends on you... Good Luck! Playing the Game You move around the prison by choosing the direction you wish to go. There are 10 possible directions you can try. They are as follows: N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW, U and D. As you move around, you will be given a description of your location along with a picture of what you can see. On your travels you will find various objects in certain rooms and you can either TAKE or GET these. There are 28 different instructions you can use to talk to the computer. They are: N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW, U, D, LIGHT, UNLOCK, USE, OPEN, CROSS, JUMP, GET, TAKE, BRIBE, GIVE, LIST, SWIM, FEED, FIRE, PUT, SHOOT, SHOW and EAT. There are 2 commands which will probably be very useful to you, these are LIST and Z. If you type LIST, you will be given a complete list of the objects you are carrying, if you have any. Typing Z (the key with COPY on it) the computer will copy the screen to the printer which you can then use to create a map as you go along. This saves a lot of time if you want a map with the pictures and detailed descriptions. The program, unlike other adventures, does not restrict you to using only two words like GET TORCH etc, but will allow a fair amount of different variations of one sentence to make it more "human" and friendly. For example, all the following sentences will result in the same command being executed: JUMP PIT, JUMP THE PIT, JUMP OVER PIT, JUMP OVER THE PIT, JUMP ACROSS THE PIT etc. There is only one location in which you can be killed, and you are given plenty of warning about this, so that you will not have to restart every 30 seconds or so. There are over 70 locations to explore, but you may not have to explore them all to escape from the prison, but then again you might. There are lots of one way passages making the game more difficult, and also beware of the twisting paths which can take you from one side of the prison to the other in one move which can be very annoying. The Program The user defined graphics and all the variables used in the program are created in lines 20 to 50. Lines 100 to 3650 contain all the information for the 72 locations along with some special variables to tell the computer where you are and what to do depending on what you type in. The main part of the program is from lines 9500 to 9930. This checks the input and moves you from room to room or carries out specific instructions like OPEN DOOR. It also checks that you have taken an object before you try to use it, and if you try to take an object it checks to see if the object is in the room. Most of the computer's replies are held in lines 3700 to 4500 and each one is printed depending on where you are and what you asked the computer to do. Each of the room descriptions has a string variable called r$. This string is used to hold the line numbers of the rooms in the 10 possible directions, and they are held in the order N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW, U, D. For example, if r$="325010001250", then going North would take you to line 3250, NE would go to 1000 and East would be 1250. If r$="170020500000", then North is 1700, NE is 2050 and East is a wall. Walls are detected by 0000. Line numbers which are not 4 digits long, eg. 800 are written as 0800 etc. Lines 9505, 9660, 9670 and 9680 convert the input into numbers and pick out the relative set of numbers from r$. The user can convert this program to make his own adventures quite easily by changing the room descriptions, the relevant r$, and the objects used. The adventure was originally written as an entirely text only game, but I felt that the addition of some simple graphics, colour and sound added more interest to the game.