Commander X16

When I started this, I had only three requirements:

- Use SCREEN 7 (the bizarre 22x23 text mode of the VIC-20)
- Only control input is the MOUSE WHEEL
- Use BASLOAD (since we're still testing it out)

There aren't many TEXT MODE based games that make use of a MOUSE WHEEL. My only prior example was a simple fishing game. The only clever thing in that was that I used trig(sine) functions to make it look like the "fish" was moving around (my daughter was in a "math is useless" phase at the time, so I wanted to show a sort of interesting thing trig could be used for). Here's a video of what that looked like for anyone interested:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqYOSKbUIJU>

So I had intended to expand upon that theme, which is why I wanted to do something with SCREEN 7, or any mode with more rows than columns (to get more vertical "below the water" space to work with). Someday, I'd like to replicate or port over the Apple][ "fishies" aquarium simulator to the X16 - but with proper colorful sprites (maybe with palette tricks to make them shine).


Well - after a few evenings of goofing around, this ended up morphing into a LOWER DECKS themed game. It's a cartoon that is a kind of parody of Star Trek - I think the series has an interesting main premise, in that it does take a lot of people "behind the scenes" to really make all the "main actors" look good (true in any organization, business, society in general). So the series goes through all the mundane things that "lower deck" crew have to do.

I was thinking this could be a series of "episodes" with different kinds of mini-games, developed over time. But I can't get too fancy, because of my "can only use the mouse wheel to play" requirement. Maybe this is a new genre of 8-bit gaming!? On the iPhone I recall a "tossing paper into the trashcan" game that essentially just had a 1-input control (with challenges like dealing with a blowing fan).

This is a PREVIEW, still IN-WORK. But it may be an interesting capability-demonstration of a few things BASIC can be made to do on the X16 these days.






Try It Now!

You can press SPACE to simulate "going to the next mission" (which plays a different audio track)

The actual game-rules are still in-work, this is mostly just an interface concept. But basically you match the power levels to what the mission needs.

For me, zsm setatten is having issues - the main BG seems too loud, so trying to resolve that. And that's what demos like this are for, to actually make use of things like BASLOAD, then Blitz, ZSMkit, and put things together to see what works.

Online emulator has been updated to R45! So TryItNow is working.

This game requires a mouse wheel. Not sure if mobile devices can replicate/model that, we'll see!

Some of the game play is now working, but the "win state" (related to conduits) is still IN WORK.

REVISED from -VB to -VB2 to correct a couple little things ("guy" gives a little help on 0th mission, and can scroll from any column instead of just inside the puzzle box).

Source code is in the zip if anyone interested to take a peek.

I tried it. Very nice concept!

Thanks, yeah I had absolutely no real plan when it started - it sort of just formed on the fly (I mean after deciding to punt on the fishing game idea).

One thing I've learned is how hard it is to convey instructions in 22x23 text resolution, haha! I may need to accept using multiple scenes, or do a scrolling text.

One earlier concept on this was a "transporter minigame" (you know in the old Star Trek how the transport operator has his hands on those levers to do the transportation). That's where the face came from initially, you'd have to move the levers at a right speed within a time limit, then the "face" would get teleported -- based on how well you did, the face might come out differently on the other side ^.^

Maybe "Episode 2" might come back to that idea.

Game is playable end to end, so moving over to Downloads

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