Help me find the error in this typed-in 800 game.

[emuxer0]

Hi. I hope someone can help me. I typed-in this game I found in the

Digital ANALOG project; it worked, however in the version of the game in which the Atari has to guess your number, I have an error I can't fix. I have attached a ZIP file with both the ATR disk image and the BAS file. The listing and descriptioin of this game are at this address http://www.cyberroach.com/analog/an04/comp3.htm

comp3.zip

[emkay]

Well in line 35 the program tries to put a command to the printer. But I don't know the reason for this.

REM the line and the program is working.... without printing ?!?

[Nukey Shay]

Actually, line 95 does the same thing (twice). Sending out LPRINT statements when the documentation says that info should be going to the screen (re: "all possible choices"). But even when changing these to PRINT #6 statements (which at first seems to work), you are going to run into another nasty error at line 215 when variable G cannot be collected correctly. This must be related to line 40's INPUT statement...which tries to gather from channel #1 (which has no corresponding OPEN command). My guess is that they published a correction in the Bugs&Bytes column in a following issue.

 

Changes:

Change LPRINT commands to PRINT #6 commands in lines 35 and 95, and the INPUT #1 command in line 40 to INPUT #6. The program will still display the computer's guess incorrectly and crash when you press the firebutton...but we're getting closer on this one

[Nukey Shay]

OK...I think I have the gist of this...

 

corrections:

35 PRINT #6; CHR$(27); "E"

40 TRAP 100 : INPUT A$ : A=LEN(A$) : FOR I=1 TO A

95 TRAP 100 : PRINT #6; A$(77,114) : PRINT #6; A$(115) : GOTO 40

 

Getting close with this one

 

I'm still unsure what the INPUT command is supposed to be doing (I'm thinking that it is supposed to be grabbing a value from the screen...but the fixes above won't do this. Must have been a missing line in the original program (that showed what line #1 was supposed to be assigned to)

[Nukey Shay]

Hmm...I still can't figure out what the INPUT command is supposed to be doing, OR the PRINT statements on 95...but when I took those out, it seemed to work

 

So in addition to the updated line #'s 35 and 40 above, just change line 95 to read :

95 TRAP 100

 

Is this working? Looks so.

[emuxer0]

It seems to be working correctly now. Thank you VERY much.

 

I also found those lines that called the printer and was the first thing that I removed. I think the original listing must have some typos. I hope somebody with an ANALOG magazine collection can find those corrections to know what those LPRINT commands were for if they were not a mistake in the first place.