8-Bit Software Online Conversion

                        Disc 1 Part 2 To: 999 (all members) From: K6N (Brian Raw) Subject: Amoeba Game. This is a reproduction of a board game I played in my youth. At the time it was sold as a game of the computer age but pre-dated any computer in the high street by at least 10 years. Anyhow, I rediscovered this game when staying at mothers recently and thought it ought to go easily onto a computer as it is essentially binary in nature. I * I I * I I * I I * I I * I I * I I** O **I I** O **I I * I I * I I * I I * I I * I I * I The playing board in the centre of the screen is made up of a 7*7 grid of blocks, the size of the small flashing square. These blocks can be turned into two positions. See the above representation. Press the SPACE BAR to turn the block to it's other position. At each side of the screen, each of the players 3 cards are displayed, in two orientations. Play the game by moving the small flashing square in the centre pattern on the screen around using the AZ,. keys. When the flashing square is over the part of the pattern that you want to turn, press the SPACE BAR. If this action then creates a copy in the centre grid of one of your cards, your score is increased by one and you get another turn. If this action does not create a copy of one of your cards in the centre grid, then the turn passes to the other player. Who's turn it is, is indicated by the ****** MOVE ****** at the top of the screen. The game ends when one of the players runs out of cards and the pack has gone. If using paddles then input is only accepted from the paddle who's go it is. What is left of the pack can be seen by pressing 'S'. The whole pack can be displayed in turn by pressing C. Individual cards may be seen by using P (I used this while designing each card). Q displays the binary pattern of both hands, normal and turned. The above is true only while using keys, not paddles. There are 44 cards and a blank card 0. More cards may be added by adding them to the DATA list at the beginning of the program then REN.0. To add this to the pack, change the number 44 in PROCshuffle to the new number of cards in the pack. With the original board game, you did not know what each others cards were. This added to the game, so to reproduce this, the second version prints out the cards. The game simply toggles the squares, so you must score for yourself as the computer has no knowledge of the cards you hold.  RIEMANNIAN. From L1M J.Looyenga This game is an oldie from the beginning of the PC. I found it worth making compatible for the BBC. The idea is very simple: Try to survive for 24 Stardates! Of course very easy .... or isn't it - search, buy and sell ??? Watch all very carefully and you'll know! Sometimes you'll have to press some keys; the rate with which the code disappears can be changed in line 1030; the rate with which the landing keys disappear can be changed in lines 2310, 2320. Have fun!  Push The Bale Solution. From: LIM (Janny Looyenga) Subject: Solutions ROBOL from BEEBUG 12 Issue 1, written by M. Bobrowski,(a well-known member), Reminded me of Push the Bale, Issue 22, written by Carl Wheat reminded me of Slider - a Basicode 3 program - written by some German boys, reminded me of Sokoban, the PC version... The same solution for all these games! Alas only 28 screens solved and maybe not always in the right form and in a simple way from crosses and circles. You only have to type the screen to be solved and to press Return. This solution was written in Basicode 3 by Louis Payne from England.  Phases of the Moon by D. Ambrose K7T There is a large and prestigious book entitled "Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing". The programs are written in Fortran but there is a supplementary book, which I have, containing the programs written in Basic. The Basic is Microsoft QuickBasic 4.5 and the first program, offered to illustrate the methods used, is one to calculate the phases of the moon. I adapted this to BBC Basic, and the program appears here as MOON. What we are aiming to do is compute the dates and times of new and full moons, together with the first and second quarters. Computations such as this require the date to be reduced to a single number: we must choose a particular instant as the starting point, and then count the days from that moment. For reasons that so far escape me astronomers have chosen midday at Greenwich on 1st January 4713 BC as the starting point for many calculations, and for any date the number of days since that day is known as the Julian Day number or Julian date. There was a problem in 1582 in that ten days were lost from the calendar when Pope Gregory decreed that the dates 5-14th October were abolished in order to correct the errors of the Julian calendar - hence the variable igreg% in PROCjulday and PROCcaldat. The program contains three Procedures. The first one, PROCjulday, converts the date offered in line 140 to the Julian date, the second, PROCflmoon, calculates the Julian dates of the phases during a period following that date, and the third, PROCcaldat, converts the Julian dates into calendar dates which are printed: if you have a diary that gives phases of the moon I think you will find the two agree. In fact the algorithm is approximate and the calculated time may be in error by up to 30 minutes from that given in the Astronomical Almanac so once in a blue moon, if the time of a phase is near midnight, we might find the program gives the wrong day. I leave it to the mathematically inclined to elucidate why the calculations do what we want and shall make no attempt myself to explain them. The remarks in lines 1040,1050 are quoted from the original program and I have been happy to accept the advice. I have not made the program interactive since I was only interested in converting Microsoft Basic to BBC Basic as an exercise and have no use for the result. The date from which the program operates is in line 140, and this may be amended if the phases for any other period are required.  To: 999 (all members) From: K6N (Brian Raw) Subject: 3to7 In response to several complaints about 8BS ADS being read by the 80 column reader, Chris decided to write a program that read a text file written in 80 columns but displayed after little fiddling in 40 columns with or without colour. I was fortunate enough to get a preview of it which was very good but a little slow as it was all in BASIC. Subsequently I offered to machine code the slower parts. While thinking on it, I realised that to use a buffer would be much quicker, so I have incorporated a 16K buffer rather than read directly from disc and also displayed the depth into the file in percentages as the 80 column reader does. Hope you like the resulting program.  To: 999 (all members) From: 3WU (Fred Price) Subject: G,Bs Xmas Turkey As Christmas is just here I looked to see if I had something to suit and I found this one.I have left it in it's own Geordie Dialect ( it's not Wearside I hasten to add ), so it will give you something to fathom out over Xmas but if you chicken out, then check the REM lines 510,516 or would you prefer them in English? Well friends all joking apart once again we come towards another years end and I would like to wish you all A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year So load up the printer and enjoy this little feast provided by our host Geordie Broon in -------- GBTURKEY -------- But watch out as he tends to be a little bit tightfisted. Fred  PRESS SPACE