Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack And The Beanstalk - Colin Carruthers & Ronald Sellar


(Your Computer-July 84-Page 100)





COLIN CARRUTHERS AND RONALD SELLAR GIVE CLIMBING LESSONS.





In this adventure games based on Jack and the Beanstalk you play the


role of our intrepid hero Jack; your aim is to recover the three


treasures held by the evil Giant who lives in a strange land up in the


clouds.





The program uses a mixture of text and graphics to represent the


locations and objects you find on your travels. Owners of the Currah


MicroSpeech unit will be able to hear the Giant's thundering voice.





Each location is represented by its own subroutines where all the


associated variables are set. These include a location description


string, a Help message, and pointers to surrounding locations.





Commands are also handled by individual subroutines. These routines


check various flags and later those affected by the command. Table 2


gives a complete list of available command verbs.





Objects are split into two groups - Those which can be picked up and


carried and those which can only be examined. Portable objects have a


graphic representation which appears after Look and Inventory


commands. Associated with each of these objects are three levels of


description, for example: "bag", "money bag" and "a cloth bag full of


gold coins". The first two forms are those that can be used in


commands like Get Bag or Get Money Bag. The third is the response


given by the program to the Examine command.





Some special commands are also implemented. These include: Save, Load,


Inventory, Recap and Quit.





First type in listing 1. This creates 64 user-defined graphic


characters which are used in the graphic representation of the


portable objects. When this runs without an error message, save the


resulting code either to tape by typing GO TO 9990 or to Microdrive


cartridge by typing GO TO 9995





Now type in the main program, listing 2. What you do now depends on


whether you are using a Microdrive or tape. With a Microdrive simply type


GO TO 9995


having inserted the cartridge with the UDG code already on it. With


tape it is now necessary to re-load the UDG code saved by listing 1.


Do this by typing


GO TO 9990


This will load the code and then Save/Verify both the Basic program and the


code automatically.





TABLE 1. VARIABLES:





l Array of flags and object locations.


m$ Short descriptions of objects.


o$ Standard descriptions of objects.


d$ Verbose description of objects.


e$ Fixed objects that can be examined.


e Location of fixed objects.


set Current location.


l$ Current location description.


h$ Current help message.


up,do,no,so,ea,we Pointers to surrounding locations


i No. of objects carried.


i$,a$,b$ Input line, command and parameter.


max Maximum number of portable objects.


found,sp Assorted flags.


n,m General for/next control variables.


keys,s$ Currah MicroSpeech variables.





TABLE 2. PROGRAM BREAKDOWN:





10 Initialisation


20 Main Loop


500 Command Decode


600 Input routine


700 Prints graphical representation of object n


1000 Location subroutines


3000 Get/Take


3200 Unlock


3400 Examine


3600 Inventory


3800 Open


4000 Wear


4100 Remove


4200 Oil/Lubricate


4300 Dig


4400 Tie


4500 Drop


5000 Break/Smash


5400 Light/Strike


5600 Save


5800 Load


6000 Eat


6200 Drink


6400 Sleep


6600 Caught by Giant


6700 Chop


7000 Main Initialisation


8000 Titles


9000 Game Over


9990 Tape/Microdrive Program save





TYPE: Adventure








This info file was typed by Michael Bruhn








Correction from YC Sep'84, page 33


----------------------------------


In the July issue the following two lines were left out of listing 1


for the Spectrum Beanstalk program:


1300 DATA 64,255,192,255,64,63,0,0


1500 DATA 1,3,7,14,28,56,112,32