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I've created this thread to contain all of my future Astrocade video overviews and reviews. Let's get started! Today, I made an overview video of Bally Artillery, a game for the Astrocade. I was browsing random issues of Creative Computing on archive.org on June 7, 2018 when I came across a game that I had never heard of before: Bally Artillery by John W. Rhodes. This game isn't to be confused with Artillery Duel by John Perkins. Both have the same idea, but they are completely different programs. Even though this game was published in August 1982, the author seems to imply in his write-up that it was written in late 1978 or early 1979, shortly after he got his Bally Arcade. You can view the Bally Artillery article with the type-in program, here: http://www.ballyalley.com/type-in_programs/basic/basic.html#BallyArtilleryBASICTypeIn Here are the authors notes from the Bally Artillery article: "In December of 1978 I was ready to buy my first computer system, but my requirements were not easy to meet. I wanted something that could handle arcade-quality games, had high- resolution graphics capability, color display, and Basic in PROM. "I was not satisfied with anything my local dealers had to show (no one I visited had a Compucolor. the Apple dealers were showing low-resolution only, and the Atari was only a rumor), but on the basis of the (somewhat premature) advertising for the keyboard/expansion unit. I decided to buy a Bally Professional Arcade. I could use Tiny Basic for a while, and turn it into a "real" machine in just a few short months. "It was just a few short months later that the local dealers began to show Compucolors and high-resolution Apples, and it seemed that the Bally expansion unit was more of a rumor than the Atari 800. I would visit the showrooms, see those beautiful full-size keyboards, watch people work in "real" Basic and be as green as the color monitors. "I particularly liked the artillery game that Compucolor called 'Shoot...' This game generates a random terrain display and wind factor and positions two artillery emplacements on the screen so that two opponents can take turns trying to obliterate each other. Eventually I resolved that I either had to buy a Compucolor or program this game on my Bally. I chose the latter. "This turned out to be quite a challenge with less than 2K of memory and integer-only Tiny Basic. But the Bally Basic is quite sound for game programming and easy to work with. The greatest difficulty was finding an integer sine routine, but after searching the magazines I found a routine to adapt to my purpose. I started out using a full ballistic equation, but soon found by experimentation that I could use an approximation. This eliminated an integer square-root routine and added speed in the bargain. "I spent approximately two months writing, debugging, and fine-tuning the program, but it was worth the effort. "A few months later I did buy the Compucolor and have been using it ever since. I'm well satisfied with it and use it for a variety of tasks. But my wife and I still enjoy the Bally for its games, especially the artillery game." The article also includes notes and an explanation of how the program works. I'm not sure how I overlooked it before now. Bally Artillery appeared in a major publication. How has it remained under the radar all of this time? Thanks to Lance Squire for typing in Bally Artillery last week. Since he put in the effort, I was able to give the game a try today. I made a video of the game that includes gameplay footage, an overview, and a BASIC listing. You can watch my video on YouTube, here: You can download the original 595MB MP4 video from archive.org: https://archive.org/details/BallyArtillerybyJohnRhodesforAstrocade When Lance get the kinks worked out in Artillery Duel and it's error-free, then I'll added this "AstroBASIC" game to BallyAlley.com. Enjoy! Adam
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Looking through the AA store homebrew games and hacks, I find it quite disappointing that there are so few reviews. Even top sellers often have less than 10. And quite some games have zero or only one (usually from Nathan) review. So what is stopping you people to post some reviews there? Just describe what you like and (IMO probably even more important) what not. About game play, difficulty, packaging, ... whatever! Anything that you want to say about the game and that might help other people to select from the constantly growing list of homebrews. It doesn't have to be very long and elaborated. A few sentences will do. As an example, here is a link to Scramble. Click on the 4th tab, enter your name, email and review. Then submit. Easy, isn't it? And everyone1 can do, you must not even have bought the game, just played it! So please, start posting NOW! Afterwards, please post here which game you reviewed. So that others can see the progress and to encourage other people to follow your example. Else, please tell us what is stopping you from reviewing. I am really interested. 1 You don't even have to own that cart as long as you have played the game enough to qualify. The review link works for everyone!
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