Conversion of Ouranos! (Weather War) from PET (VIC +16K)

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:04 am

HERE's another game from the PET era, converted for ral-clan and all who are fond of simple but fun games.

I have no written instructions for it, but it's easy to understand as you play; you can choose between different kind of weather attacks to the enemy's house, and eventually destroy it. If you choose "Q" the game is over and the computer says who's the winner, basing on percentages of damage. Choose carefully the angle ("charge") of your attack, or you will end up with your own house destroyed!

For two human players: call a friend and have fun

.
To play: VIC +16K

LOAD"*",8
RUN
(40 column mode starts, then)
LOAD"OURANOS!",8
RUN

Note for Mayhem

: REM statements at the beginning of the prg say

1 rem ouranos copyright (c) 1980 kathy higby
2 rem 4026 w. el caminito
3 rem phoenix,az 85021
4 :
5 rem cursor #21, june-july 1980
6 rem box 550, goleta, ca. 93017
7 rem lines 61000-65000 (c) 1980 cursor magazine
8 :
10 rem as of 28jul80

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 12:32 pm

OH BOY! Thank you SO MUCH for this port.

PS: I did try the nuclear reactor port, and noticed the 40 column emulator is suited for a PAL display. Can you recommend one for a NTSC display (I am assuming your port works with any 40 column emulator)?

I may attempt to get this to work with a VIC-20 40/80 column video card, as well.

NOTE: from the little playing I have done recently, you have to account for the direction of the wind in planning your attacks. Also, I think you have to use negative values to direct your weather in one direction, and positive values for the other (use the minus sign for negative values).

formater · Post by **formater** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:00 pm

And here http://rapidshare.com/files/201671789/Ouranos_.zip.html the NTSC and PAL 1 part PRG's for Mayhem's Gamebase

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:39 pm

Thanks formater, your help is precious as usual.

@Ral-clan: I did realize that you have to use also negative values... And to take the wind direction into account. I would have said it was not my cup of tea, but I really like this game!

Pedro Lambrini · Post by **Pedro Lambrini** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:47 pm

Sounds quite original. Pity I have nobody to play this with...

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:58 pm

orion70 wrote:Thanks formater, your help is precious as usual.

@Ral-clan: I did realize that you have to use also negative values... And to take the wind direction into account. I would have said it was not my cup of tea, but I really like this game!

Yes, it's quite an original game (well, sort of a bit like Artillery with an original twist). So thanks again for your work.

Have you had any more luck with "Dungeon"?

PaulQ · Post by **PaulQ** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 3:17 pm

Awesome. I remember this game very well on our school Commodore PETs. If only you did this port 27 years ago...

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 7:30 pm

I think I found a bug.

When an "ACT OF NATURE" happens, the screen scrolls up one line and that messes up the whole game for the rest of the duration of play.

This was testing the single filed NTSC version on a real VIC.

I'll try to duplicate it in VICE in order to get a screenshot. Here it is:

The weather attacks even start to damage the borders of the screen.

Also, is rain supposed to be British Pound sign when travelling toward the right hand side of the screen (I can't remember if it was like that in the original PET version).

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 1:55 am

ral-clan wrote:I think I found a bug.

When an "ACT OF NATURE" happens, the screen scrolls up one line and that messes up the whole game for the rest of the duration of play.

This was testing the single filed NTSC version on a real VIC.

Ops, I'm sorry about this. I play-tested the two-files PAL version only, and I'm pretty sure this scrolling never happens. Could it be something related to the NTSC version only? Can you play it on a real PAL VIC? (I'm moving from my old house here, and all my VICs are packed in the garage

). If this happens also in PAL, I'll try to understand where's the problem.

ral-clan wrote:Also, is rain supposed to be British Pound sign when travelling toward the right hand side of the screen (I can't remember if it was like that in the original PET version).

No, it was not in the original PET version, as it was slash (/) toward the left, and backslash (\) to the right, but the VIC has no backslash, so I used something similar to raindrops for this (er...) non-photorealistic rendering

.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 2:00 am

The PET has backslash? Or do you think of the two graphical symbols on Shift+M and Shift+N?

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 2:11 am

I forgot about them! Yes of course, it was graphic chars... Anyway, on the VIC they look bad because they form continuous lines, so I'd prefer to keep them as they are. As an example, that's how they would look compared to the chars currently used:

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 7:01 am

Unfortunately, I have no real PAL VIC to test for this bug, but I can probably test it in VICE's PAL mode and see if the bug occurs.

It would be great if you could fix this bug in the NTSC version, as it is pretty unplayable after the bug happens.

I will have a look at the code and see if I can see where the carriage return, or whatever, is occuring - but my programming skills are not very strong so I can't promise I'll find anything!

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 7:54 am

Maybe I missed something, but why are there two versions of this program? Is it due to positioning of the 40 column emulated screen? If so, perhaps the emulator should be modified to be PAL/NTSC independent.

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 8:18 am

Yes, if you use FAT40 (the 40 col software) on NTSC machines (or VICE in NTSC mode), the screen is completely off-center.
It would be nice if someone could modify it to become independent from the TV standard.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 9:41 am

I would REALLY appreciate a PAL-NTSC independent version of FAT-40. I plan to make a whole disk of 40 column programs (mostly Orion70's games so far), and it doesn't make sense to have a whole bunch of large single-filed NTSC versions - all of which contain duplicate FAT-40 NTSC code in them.

Formater: would it be possible for you to release just the NSTC'd version of FAT-40 that you put into all the single-filed versions of Orion70's games?