CRAZY BALLOONS

by D Mearns

from ZX Computing Feb/Mar.1986



ASTRO BALLOONS



A crazy game from D. Mearns of studious Oxon!





Whilst out in your hot air balloon one Sunday afternoon, you

accidentally drift out of the Earth's atmosphere and through

a passing black hole into another solar system. You land on

the planet Garthrog where the emperor tells you that to get

back through the black hole you will need a good supply of

Ainthor crystals. However, the crystal field is guarded by

several asteroid belts. There is only one way through each

asteroid belt, and even if you succeed you must have ten

gold bars to pay the gatekeepers at points along the way.

The emperor gives you ten to start off with, but after that

you must pick up the ten on your way. The emperor then has

your balloon refuelled with a special gas which will leave

toxic fumes behind. If you double back on yourself you will

die instantly.



You may wonder why stars have been used as the asteroids

instead of User Defined Graphics. This is because SCREEN$ -

which I have used to detect collisions - cannot recognize

UDGs. Stars looked the most realistic out of the Sinclair

character set.



Another set of instructions is given in the program, along

with a choice of sound or not, and the skill level. This

ranges from 0 (incredibly tedious) to 9 (impossibly fast).

Being a hot air balloon there are no brakes. This means,

that once you have started going in a certain direction you

will keep going (regardless of whether or not you are

pressing that key) in that direction until another direction

key is pressed. The keys to use are given in the program.

Good luck!





Notes



For those of you who are interested, I have provided a brief

breakdown of the program plus a list of the variables used

(see figure 1).





Figure 1. Variables and line breakdown.



20-90      Print balloon and check for win. INKEY$.

           (Stages 1 to 3).

100-410    Move balloon and check for crash.

           (Stages 1 to 3).

2000-2330  Print random maze for stage 4.

2500-2560  Print balloon. INKEY$. (Stage 4).

2600-2910  Move balloon and check for crash. (Stage 4).

3000-3010  Check for win. (Stage 4).

3700-3750  End of stage routine.

3800-3820  Crash routine.

8000-8080  Print instructions.

9000-9070  Initialisation procedures.

9100-9220  Print maze. (Stages 1 to 3).

9998-9999  User Defined Graphics.



a       reserved for random numbers.

d       direction travelling in.

f,g     reserved for FOR ... NEXT loops.

gold    number of gold bars collected.

pa      skill level.

pause   amount of time to pause in between moves of the balloon.

sc      score.

screen  stage (1 to 4).

x,y     X and Y co-ordinate of balloon.





[NOTE: The program does not reset the balloon's position after each stage,]

[so it is necessary to go back to the start and then back to the finish to]

[complete the 2nd and 3rd stages. I don't know if this was intentional or ]

[not. As the printed listing was set to start on stage 4, maybe not ...   ]

[JimG.                                                                    ]





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