Post by hydrophilic on Jul 6, 2014 12:25:02 GMT
A blast from the past! I tried using both of my 1571's to recover this game from an old floppy disk, but was never able to get 100%... however did manage to recover about 95% and then I patched it to work.
There are tracks missing from the game, so there are only 7 tracks now (was 9). The "last" track, strating at line 7000 needed to be partially rebuilt. Strangely, the last track in this "miracle recovery" version starts on line 2200. Bizarre, but that is how it was originally written...
Hopefully this will inspire some people; it demonstrates several BASIC commands like BLOAD, GRAPHIC, DRAW, PAINT, SPRSAV, MOVSPR, SPRITE, BUMP, JOY...
It is SO NOT OPTIMAL... I wrote this about 20 years ago (just a high-school punk). In other words, there are about 1000 and 1 ways you can improved it.
Anyway, how to play: RUN"*" ,Un (the Un is only needed if not disk unit 8). This will do the initialize code (load sprites and high scores), then give you the main game menu (see screen shot 1).
Next you want to have joystick plugged into port 2. Use the joystick UP/DOWN to select options (if desired) like car color and/or starting level. Once your happy, select 'BEGIN RACE" and press fire.
The new track is drawn on screen. You should hear some "start the race" beeps and you are off! Well, you have to put in a little effort... press UP on the joystick to accelerate, DOWN on the joystick to brake, LEFT and RIGHT steers your car (see screen shot 2).
After a track is finished, various statistics are shown in the bottom half of the screen while BASIC is busy drawing the next track (see screen shot 3).
7 fabulous (or not) tracks in all. Testing this in VICE, all I can say is you really, really, REALLY need a joystick... trying to use VICE keyboard emulation of joystick royally stinks! As you can see from the screen shot, I was only able to squeek in at the bottom of the high-score list.
Oh yeah, it saves high scores, in case that isn't obvious by now.
Credits are also due to Jason Ringstaff who helped develope the original version (Grand Prix Auto I) which is lost in the sands of time. He was mainly a concept guy and I did most of the programming. But still, this wouldn't be here without him!
There are tracks missing from the game, so there are only 7 tracks now (was 9). The "last" track, strating at line 7000 needed to be partially rebuilt. Strangely, the last track in this "miracle recovery" version starts on line 2200. Bizarre, but that is how it was originally written...
Hopefully this will inspire some people; it demonstrates several BASIC commands like BLOAD, GRAPHIC, DRAW, PAINT, SPRSAV, MOVSPR, SPRITE, BUMP, JOY...
It is SO NOT OPTIMAL... I wrote this about 20 years ago (just a high-school punk). In other words, there are about 1000 and 1 ways you can improved it.
Anyway, how to play: RUN"*" ,Un (the Un is only needed if not disk unit 8). This will do the initialize code (load sprites and high scores), then give you the main game menu (see screen shot 1).
Next you want to have joystick plugged into port 2. Use the joystick UP/DOWN to select options (if desired) like car color and/or starting level. Once your happy, select 'BEGIN RACE" and press fire.
The new track is drawn on screen. You should hear some "start the race" beeps and you are off! Well, you have to put in a little effort... press UP on the joystick to accelerate, DOWN on the joystick to brake, LEFT and RIGHT steers your car (see screen shot 2).
After a track is finished, various statistics are shown in the bottom half of the screen while BASIC is busy drawing the next track (see screen shot 3).
7 fabulous (or not) tracks in all. Testing this in VICE, all I can say is you really, really, REALLY need a joystick... trying to use VICE keyboard emulation of joystick royally stinks! As you can see from the screen shot, I was only able to squeek in at the bottom of the high-score list.
Oh yeah, it saves high scores, in case that isn't obvious by now.
Credits are also due to Jason Ringstaff who helped develope the original version (Grand Prix Auto I) which is lost in the sands of time. He was mainly a concept guy and I did most of the programming. But still, this wouldn't be here without him!
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