InfernalKeith

I feel like I approached it the right way this time, at least, in that I built the main game loop with no bells and whistles, in two-player mode, then just played it a bunch myself. That approach showed me a few different strategies an AI could take, and also made me redesign a few elements of the game to remove some easy 'cheats' to winning. The game itself will be more compelling, and the AI will be 'smarter' and possibly have a few distinct options that the human player can choose from.

I delved into Clear For Action last night. It's a very impressive game! I feel like it would take me weeks to get the hang of all the variables and figure out how not to get my butt kicked. I'm not well versed in the war games and Avalon Hill titles that inspired it, though, so I'm coming at it as a real noob. It's a very intriguing game, though, and the level of complexity you managed to work into it is pretty impressive. This is the sort of project that makes me feel bad that more people aren't playing the games that get created (as was being discussed in that other thread). If nothing else, you also inspired me to get off my butt and work on the AI for my (much simpler) game I posted about a few weeks ago. Got some more hotel downtime this weekend and I'm looking forward to coding, and to playing Clear For Action some more.

This sounds awesome, Walid! I am embarrassed to say I haven't played Clear For Action yet. I am gonna rectify that tonight, I'm on the road for work and in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, North Dakota, so I'm glad to have found some entertainment for the evening.

I feel like everyone's more interested in creating than using. And I count myself among that number. I tend to get discouraged when I post about an XB game I'm working on and it generates little attention or activity, but there are many projects I don't give the proper attention to, either. It also doesn't help that we're an older bunch with real lives to lead, which can lead to long delays in projects. There's just not enough of us for there to be a core of obsessive coders that always have a steady stream of new projects coming out. Owen Brand and Howard ("The Codex") Kistler were real powerhouses of activity and enthusiasm, but we seem to have lost both of them. I have a lot of traveling and hotel downtime for work coming up, so I'm hoping that will give me some time to finish and release a few of these long-dormant projects of mine. Bottom line, I think ya just have to enjoy the parts of the community that you enjoy, and do the work you're doing as its own reward, and if anyone else is into it, that's just a nice bonus.

Some ropes are up-only and some are down-only, if I recall...

I go through obsessive bouts of playing this game. I've cleared 600,000 once or twice but never further than that. I'll try to post a new highscore today and take a picture.

I love the Commodore 64 version of this game and hate the TI version. I haven't loaded it in since I first got it because I was so disappointed in it. Looked worse than a type-in program from a magazine. And the theme music on the Commodore makes the game. Glad to have it in the archives but I would have been sad 'back in the day' if I'd spent money on it.

It's a turn-based, dice roll game, but there's a similar penalty. It takes three "turns" to take over an opponent's square or dig a hole, as opposed to merely one turn to annex an empty space. Keeping and clearing a path open is proving to be quite tricky. The balance between building your own 'bridge' across the board, and sabotaging your opponent's, will make or break whether the game is actually any fun or not. Looking good so far, I'm pleased with it. More later.

And an 8000x8000 Go board is mind-boggling to think about!

The black squares are impassible holes in the game board. They can't be repaired, as I have it set up now. And you can 'lock in' squares (the ones of darker color) so that they can't be switched over or modified. Thinking of adding more random board manipulation in addition to what the players do, but I want to see how the 'vehicle' traveling along the color paths works first. If anyone played the game 'Khe Sanh' by Not Polyoptics, there's a similar construct in that game, where your road can be bombed and you have to focus on repairing it, so that resupply trucks don't crash, which takes you away from searching for the enemy.

I like Go/Othello a lot, but for this game I am thinking more of completing 'circuits' from top to bottom of the playfield. I'm adding an element where every few turns, an object tries to move across your color squares from your side of the board to the other. If it can make it on an uninterrupted path, you win. There'll be some randomness to its travel pattern, so several paths may need to be created, while also sabotaging the same paths your opponent is trying to make across to your side. There may also be a time limit element added. I'm hoping to have some of the new bits finished tonight to test out and see how it plays.

Well, I built the game loop. It works. No AI yet, mainly because I don't know what the object of the game IS quite yet. I had the idea for how it worked, with only the vaguest idea on how to win. You can only take adjacent squares, you can lock down a square so it can't be modified, you can dig holes (or build walls, I'm still not sure which it is) to block your opponent's path, and you can even expend energy to take over some squares and change them to your color. But... why? I've sat and played with the game for hours now, playing both red and green. I've made patterns, racked up the 'score,' done offensive and defensive postures... with no idea what to make the endgame of the game. I've never designed a game's loop and mechanics without a clear idea of what the point is before. I've found it pretty interesting! I think I have it. There will be several ways to win. You'll be able to play red or green, and the AI for each will take a different approach. You'll also be able to set it to zero human players and let the two AI's battle it out. More tomorrow!

Just a couple screenshots of a simple Extended BASIC game I'm working on. Red and Green try to take over squares on the board and secure them, while digging holes to block their opponent and take over vulnerable squares. You can dig holes anywhere, but can only take over or attack squares adjacent to territory you already have. The main game loop is done, I'm working on some play-testing right now and deciding whether to add some additional goals to determine who wins. Also creating some crude AI for each side, so you can play against an offensive or defensive opponent, or let the computer control both players. More shots and possibly a listing tomorrow! Keith

Here is the first draft of my "Ant Wars" review. I will be adding more to it to include information on 2-player games, plus a lot of screenshots. I plan to host my blog offsite. Any feedback or suggestions are welcome. Thanks! ANT WARS Not Polyoptics, 1981 Reviewed 8/15/2014 by Keith Bergman Long before SimAnt, Not Polyoptics devised "Ant Wars," their own simulation of life in warring ant colonies. Red and black ants scurry (well, stagger at a painful BASIC crawl, anyway) toward each others' holes, forage for limited food, and engage in battles in this interesting, if somewhat frustrating, early strategy game. After a perfunctory title screen, a lawn is slowly drawn that encompasses the entire screen. There's no room left to display 'hit points,' how many turns have been taken, or other game stats, so Ant Wars relies on audio cues to convey much of the information players need. The red and black ants are randomly placed around the board, as are some morsels of food, and then round one begins. There are ten rounds, though I've never played a game that lasts through all ten. The idea is to either kill all the ants on the opposing team, or overrun their hole (hive? warren? bungalow?) with ants of your own. You have five 'moves' per ant, per round. Each move or attack takes up one move. If you enter your hole, your opponent's hole, or land atop a piece of food, that ant's turn ends. Each side starts out with seventeen ants, so things look and feel pretty chaotic at the beginning. Don't get too used to it -- with so many ants in close proximity, a lot of battles happen early on and many of those ants don't make it to round two or three. In addition, a spider randomly skulks around the board, indiscriminately taking out red and black ants and sometimes tilting the balance of power one way or another. The spider is optional -- and can be attacked and killed, at the cost of numerous ant lives. I'm not sure how taking on the spider alone would help at all, considering how weak it would leave your forces in the face of your enemy. Each ant has a certain amount of strength, or stamina, or hit points. This is indicated not with a number but with a tone (the ant's "bellow," as the instructions put it). When it's a particular ant's turn, it flashes on screen and the tone emitted indicates the ant's health. The lower the tone, the stronger the ant. Eating food restores some health to an ant, as does retreating back into one's own hole (though the health benefits of the latter seem very slow to accrue). When an ant moves onto an enemy ant, a battle begins. Each ant makes their "bellow" to indicate their level of health, then you hear the sounds again, reflecting each ant's health after that particular sortie. It takes a little getting used to, but soon you know what's going on, and the sound of a high-pitched ant "bellow" is enough to start you cursing. If an ant gets killed in battle it disappears, and there is no way to generate new ants in the game (the birds and the bees presumably being too big a challenge to fit into a 16K program). Battles are heavily weighted in favor of the attacker, and it can be frustrating to have a relatively healthy ant attacked and killed by a weaker, battle-damaged foe. Strategy comes into play when moving, so you don't put yourself within the enemy's easy reach -- each ant has five "moves," so moving right next to an opponent just gives them all five moves to try killing you when their turn comes around. Turns alternate from ant to ant, from side to side, so if one side has more ants on the battlefield, they'll sometimes get to move multiple ants in a row before the weaker opponent can do anything. If an ant makes it across the yard to your opponent's hole, it can enter and possibly win the game for your side. Once your ant enters the enemy hole, it is no longer in play for the rest of the game. The combined health of all the ants you've sent into that hole counts against the number of friendly ants who are inside your own ant hole on the other side of the lawn. This seems to be a big weakness of the game's AI for several reasons. For one, when the computer plays (always as the black ants), it never sends its own ants into its own hole. Some of the troops will hover around the home hole, protecting it from incursion, but none ever enter it and provide fortification. Thus, if you've got a few ants in your home base, and you get one or two red ants into the black hole, it's easy to win the game even if you're outnumbered and on the ropes. Also, the computer-controlled ants are decent at moving across the lawn and attacking you, but they're really bad at hole defense. There can be four or five surrounding the hole, and it's still easy to slip past them without being attacked and killed. On top of all that, it seems almost impossible for the black ants to win by entering the red ants' hole. In one game I played, four black ants had entered my anthill. I had maybe two red ants in there. I got one red ant across the board, and as soon as it went into the black ants' hole, the game ended with me as the winner - despite the fact that there were eight black ants to my two or three. Despite the major flaws in the game's AI, it's compelling to play, simply because it has AI at all -- this was an era when many games were released as two-player endeavors only. The computer's ants seem to all be at full strength when the game begins, as opposed to the red ants, some of whom are at death's door (with high-pitched bellows) from round one. It's engrossing to try to defend the home spot, move weaker ants out of harm's way, and send a force across the lawn to invade the black ants' hole, when your ranks are being decimated early on by a stronger enemy and that malicious spider. The usual caveats apply -- the execution of this game is slow as molasses, and the pacing is glacial. Those unfamiliar with keypresses in TI BASIC may be frustrated trying to hold down arrow keys to get their ants to move. The biggest letdown is that the flaws in the game's AI only really become apparent once you're a few games in, and really sold on the game. It's just too primitive to have a lot of staying power, but it's a great concept, well-executed for its time. This is the kind of game where a rewrite, perhaps taking advantage of 32K memory expansion and Extended BASIC, would address some of the AI issues and make this a real strategy powerhouse.

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Load tape Make sandwich Brew a pitcher of Kool-Aid Go pee Get yelled at for not doing homework Get books out and resolve to study after "a couple games" Go back to bedroom Realize it didn't register the last *ENTER* you pressed and it still says "PRESS CASSETTE PLAY...." Stare longingly at PEB picture in Triton catalog.

I agree that a lot of it wasn't great. The clunky slow Frogger and Donkey Kong clones ad nauseam, etc. I guess I just wondered if for a lot of people, NONE of these older games - regardless of how clever or well-written - could hold interest. If they're just too primitive to be worth more than a passing curiosity. I'll post a link when the blog is up, I hope to have the "Ant Wars" review completed in the next day or so.

I have always been interested in the older software made back in the 99/4A's heyday, the BASIC and XB games that people like Not-Polyoptics and Moonbeam Software created. I had a website for a short time with reviews of some of those old games, written more to keep their memory alive and maybe interest anyone looking for a more in-depth look at some of these moldy oldies. I'm restarting a blog to put up reviews and screenshots of some of these games. I've been playing Ant Wars and writing my thoughts about it. My son, who's 12 and into modern gaming, looks at these old, slow turn-based clunkers with disdain. Playing Ant Wars for him would be about as appealing as a trip to the dentist. I am finding that I actually enjoy the experience, though, as long as the game has some merit. Ant Wars is slow as molasses and the AI isn't that great, but it HAS AI, and I enjoy playing it. I've whiled away hours playing Ray Kazmer's "Maze of Grog" game and attempting to beat it. Sometimes99er made a comment once about the game "Diablo" being bad, but I like it too, as slow and ponderous as its pacing is. Does anyone else still find themselves playing these old games? Apart from the 'collector value' or the notion of preservation, or the hoarder aspect of having the most files or disks, does anyone else actually deal with the speed limitations and enjoy the experience? I'm going to do my reviews and put up my blog regardless, but I almost wonder if it's going to reach anyone.

Blasto is a replacement for Combat.

You don't have anyone who'll take delivery of one and ship it to you? It'd cost more to have it shipped twice, of course, but if it's the only option...

Didn't the BBC used to broadcast cassette tones over the airwaves for people to record and load into their computers? I can't imagine what some poor old duffer thought when he turned his radio on and heard that. Probably thought the war was back on. Obviously, anything we can get is good and whatever anyone actually steps up and does, I will be thankful for. I really enjoy the YouTube stuff I've seen so far. The user "NiceAndGames" does a lot of humorous game reviews, including a number of them for the TI 99/4A. He even reviewed the Pitfall! cartridge. I like his approach.

It seems to me that some kind of video series on YouTube would be more interesting than a podcast for classic computers and video games, given the visuals at hand. I'm not the biggest fan of podcasts though, by and large, as a lot of the ones I've heard seem to come off as rambly and unprofessional. I'd rather see a short, well-edited, thoughtful 'show' put together with screenshots, interviews, and photos than listen to someone gassing for an hour.

Never understood spouses who begrudge their other half some solo time for hobbies or projects, or even just music or TV shows that only one of them likes. I was a person before I was half of a couple. My wife thinks my interest in retro stuff is goofy, but she doesn't insist I come sit on the couch with her and watch movies instead of coding or playing games. The only time it causes any strife is when I get too much new stuff, or need a flat surface to sort and test things, and the dining room table gets buried for a few days....

My interactive fiction project was a dud. It was just a crappy idea and the further along I got the more I realized it sucked. I am working on a couple projects right now. I am trying to not post about stuff till it's really close to done, though. I've shared about "in progress" projects before and had them not get finished, and the 99/4A has suffered from enough "vaporware." I'm still mainly interested in writing in XB for "stock" systems at the moment, and I'm also getting into archiving and chronicling well-done old BASIC and XB games from the old days. Given the limited amount of TI time I have, and will have for the foreseeable future, the idea of me learning a new language seems like a non-starter when I have barely put my XB game ideas into action. I think these things wax and wane, especially given the small size of our community. We're always gonna be one attic discovery away from a new (or re-enthused old) 99/4A fan coming in and doing great things.

That was my issue, and the display seemed really crappy, too. I couldn't tell whether I was doing something wrong or it just looked that bad all the time. It's been quite a while since I tried to hook it all up. I've just started a sort and "excavation" of my cluttered-up basement room, so I'm hoping to have all my old systems up and running (or, for some of them, packed up and sold/traded) soon. I've been programming a lot lately in Classic99, and I enjoy the freedom and mobility, but I wanna get back to work on "real iron" again.