Loadstar 128 #19/q19.d81/t.blotto

Text File | 1990-01-01 | 6.8 KB | 145 lines

                                  B L O T T O

                  Featuring the LS 128 #19 BLOTTO CONTEST!!!

                               by Fender Tucker


     BLOTTO is the first of what I hope is a long string of word games for
the C-128.  It uses a file called "dictionary 9400" which is a collection of
four- and five-letter words, as well as some ML tools for accessing the
words.  Jeff Jones wrote the ML, which is detailed in Zero Page on this
issue.  If you've ever thought about writing a word game on computer, read
Zero Page!  It's easier than ever, thanks to "dictionary 9400".

     BLOTTO is a simple game to play, but will challenge your vocabulary.
It works on any drive you boot it up on.  The Menu has four options:

     START A NEW BLOTTO
     PLAY AN OLD BLOTTO
        INSTRUCTIONS
     RETURN TO LOADSTAR

The last two are self-explanatory.  The first time you try BLOTTO choose the
first option.  You go to the game screen where there is a 15 x 6 grid of big
letters with a white, blank row between the third and fourth rows.  The idea
is to move the purple cursor (which stays on the blank row) to a column and
scroll the letters in that column up or down, placing a letter in the white
row.  Once you get a five-letter word displayed in the white row, press
RETURN and if it's a real word (according to the dictionary) the letters are
removed from the grid and the word is listed in the green box on the right
of the screen.

NOTE: BLOTTO works with keyboard or joystick in Port #2.  The FIREBUTTON
works just like a RETURN.  If you encounter a (y/n) question, pressing the
FIREBUTTON registers a "no" response, so you'll need to press the Y key on
the keyboard to answer "yes".

     As soon as you choose option One, you're asked if you want to save the
grid as a "Tournament".  A Tournament is simply a game which hasn't been
played yet.  If you answer "yes" the grid is saved with a "trn.00." prefix
and BLOTTO continues.  This way you can challenge other players to beat your
score for that Tournament.

     The options for the game screen are:

 Help - same as instructions.

 Quit - takes you to the Menu.  Make sure you save your game first if you
        want to keep it!

 Load - brings up a file requestor of all of the BLOTTO games on the disk,
        Tournaments as well as saved games.  This will wipe out the game in
        progress, so save your current game first if you want to keep it.
        Press the ESC key to leave the file requestor without loading
        anything.  A BLOTTO game takes up 2 to 4 blocks.  Leave your BLOTTO
        disk in the drive at all times.

 Save - asks you for a prefix for the game file.  You only have three
        letters so I recommend using your initials.

 Toggle Sound - toggles the sound on and off.

NOTE: Filenames all follow this format:

  Tournament Game - "trn.00.zzzzzzzzz" where the z's represent the first
    nine letters of the top row of the grid.

  Saved Game - "xxx.yy.zzzzzzzzz" where the x's are your initials, the y's
    the number of words in the green box at the time of saving, and the z's
    the first nine letters in the top row of the grid.

     The words you find MUST be five letters long.  The letters must be in
order, left to right, but they do NOT have to be adjacent to each other.  I
haven't worked out any strategy other than trying to use letters in the
outer columns first, and trying to come up with words that have only one
vowel -- at least at the beginning.

YET ANOTHER NOTE: If the word you find isn't in the dictionary, you get a
message that asks "Accept it anyway? (y/n)".  It's up to you to decide if
the dictionary is wrong.  I admit that I left a couple of normal words out
of the dictionary when I pared it down -- "fable" for example.  Upgrades of
the dictionary will have an improved list of words, and maybe even a way for
you to add words to the dictionary.  In general, plurals made by adding "s"
to four-letter words aren't found in the dictionary.  It's up to you to
allow them or not.

     I "weighted" the letters so that vowels and common letters like T, N,
L, R, H and S show up more often than Z, X, V, Q and J.  Even still, I find
that I run out of vowels before I run out of consonants.

     You can put a word back in the grid if you change your mind.  Notice
that when you move the purple cursor off the grid to the right or left, it
goes to the green box (if there are any words in the green box).  Move the
cursor up or down in the green box and press RETURN on the word you want to
put back in the grid.  The letters will go back in the same rows from where
they came.

     There are all sorts of ways that this program could be upgraded but I
wanted to get it out to show how simple it is to use "dictionary 9400".  One
of the biggest advantages of a computer is its ability to do fast searches
of data.  People expect a computer program to be able to tell if a
five-letter combination is truly a word, and now your C-128 can.  I'm
looking forward to getting some incredibly clever word puzzles from the
incredibly clever programmers out there.  Be sure to read Zero Page on this
issue and who knows?  Maybe you'll be that incredibly clever programmer?

     By the way, how do you like the big letters?  As a fontmaniac I found
it pretty easy to implement them.  Feel free to borrow the font ("blotto
font") and the BASIC lines that define them (line 890 and lines 2540-2810).
When you want to print a big letter, just print b$(letter number).  For
instance, b$(1) is A and b$(26) is Z.  You'll need to use two fonts since
this font doesn't have normal characters (except reversed upper case
letters).  In lines 2540-2810 the rr(x) part of the line concerns the
"weighting" of the letters.  You probably won't need this if you use the big
font in your program.

     You may change the colors of the background tile, menu boxes and
instructions by changing the variables in line 12.  "cf" is color of
foreground; "cb" is color of background; and "cs" is color of the shadow.
To save your choice of colors, make sure you run BLOTTO first, break out of
it with RUN-STOP/RESTORE, then enter GOTO 10000.  Do not GOTO 10000 unless
CONTROL80 is installed.  You can tell by checking to make sure that line 70
says "fcopy14336,0,0", not "( 14336,0,0".

     As always, I used Jon Mattson's CONTROL80 (from LS 128 #10) to set up
the fonts and the VDC chip.  I never write an 80-column program without
CONTROL80.

     Here are some of the SYSes I used in the program:

 sys51328 - switch to upper/lower case font.  Same as ?chr$(14)
 sys51348 - switch to uppercase/graphics font.  Same as ?chr$(142)
 sys52684,0,35 - blank the screen
 sys52684,100,35 - bring back the screen
 sys52591 - turn cursor off
 sys52639 - turn cursor on

     Read all about the BLOTTO CONTEST in the file following this on the
disk.  You may win some valuable software!

FT

                    **** R - Run    RETURN - Menu ****