Sea Battle, Star Trek 3 - TCS Games - Moria

[CommanderRaven]

Hi Everyone,

Some of you know me from my work on my Moria update in FB. I while ago I released a update to another classic game from the 70's, Sea Battle. Sea Battle was released in the David Ahl books, and Creative Computing magazine around 1979.

Sea Battle 2, is on my site for download. http://games.tcshouston.net. It includes the original game too, in it's full TEXT glory!

Sea Battle is a sub board game. It is not a sub simulator. So it's not meant to be an acccurate sub sim in any way. As long as you rmemeber it as a simple board game, the game is fun to play.

I've also canned my Star Trek 2 project, and started on my Star Trek 3 poject. I'm not working on this much more until I get Moria RC1 out the door. But I've posted a few new screen shots of the first new content I've added in two years...

I hope to have a release of my Star Trek game next year, the 40th anniversary of when the game originally came out in 1972.

And Moria Beta 4a will be released on Sunday. Only thing added, a lot of creature sounds!

Have fun everyone!

[Destructosoft]

I loved those games back when they were in the yellow and red books. Seabattle (or "Underwater Pie Lob" as the anti-violence advocate David Ahl put it) was a great first game for me to convert to what was then an unfamiliar QBasic with mysterious Get and Put commands.

As for Star Trek, the one from the yellow book was "Super Star Trek", which Wikipedia says actually hails from 1974 though the original game goes back to 1971. I never bothered making it for QBasic because I wasn't sure how I was going to approach the graphics, mostly regarding determining direction facing. Also I had another space war game in progress.

Love your efforts to preserve these classics (and Moria). I'm sure everyone appreciates not having to convert them to FB now.

Edit: I just noticed you intend one day to convert "Star Wars Electronic Battle Command". That's awesome! The 4x4 grid was so mesmerizing back in the day, as were the sfx with randomizing click-clack noise and warning klaxons. Too bad games are more sophisticated now and 4x4 is not adequate to represent a galaxy any more IMO. Truly this would be fun to relive.

[CommanderRaven]

REM *** STAR TREK: BY MIKE MAYFIELD, CENTERLINE ENGINEERING
REM ***
REM *** TOTAL INTERACTION GAME - ORIG. 20 OCT 1972

I can't say for sure, but my oringial source code has these REM statements it.

I really need to see if my old Star Wars battle command still works. In theory it should. I've been collecting pictures of the command buttons. And been trying to find the game manual.

But what I like about the old game is there was a time GAMEPLAY was more important the "look". Early RPG's like Wasteland, had a lot more heart than the newer games.

I'm actually surprised, and a little scared, that no one has made a simultation of the old Star Wars Battle command. Makes me wonder if Kenner (or what's left of them) or Lucas just have great lawyers....

But I'll probably do that in the next year or so. Should not be much in the programming department. But if my original game is dead, it will be a lot harder...

[1000101]

Man, I loved Super Star Trek on the CoCo (RadioShack Colour Computer). I did a modified version (from the same book as you reference on tour site) which used the CoCo's colour text graphics sets (different colors for ASCII graphics were coded into the character set itself).

Good times.

[sir_mud]

I've got an old BASIC book that has an old Star Trek variant named Star Warp. It's just like the old graphical ST games but is entirely text based.

I did type it all into QB at some point and it ran fine even though it's more in the GW style. I don't really want to type it all in again right now but I will if the mood strikes me. I'm guessing it will need a little translation for even -lang qb as it makes heavy use of ON GOTO and is a prime example of spaghetti code. But then again, it's from a pre-procedures BASIC so what do you want.

[CommanderRaven]

Wow, I have forgotten Star Warp. I remember that game! I had, and may still have that book somewhere. It's been a while since I saw it. I have another TRS-80 book, white cover, with the oddest Star Trek game in it. I might throw that out there more as a joke!

My Star Trek game is really a combination of many many many star trek games. From Trek 80 on the Sol (1975) pre PC running on 8008 CPU, Invasion Force on the PC was a 75% port of the Trek 80. They left out 25% of the game. Mike's game of course. Plus ideas from many other places and many ideas of my own.

Mike Mayfield's game is in there, but at last check I've added almost 1 meg of new code. But the core is still his game.

I'll be damn, just looked at my bookshelf, and found the book! WOW I remember playing that hell out of that Star Warp game. It would be pretty simple to do a port of it. It's funny, the spine of my book is broken in two places. The Standard version, and at the TRS-80 version. I remember really liking that game. It had angles that made sense, mutiple shields banks. Different phaser and torpedo banks. The programmer really went all out on that one.

Thanks for reminding me of a classic sitting just 6 feet from me... I wonder if I can find the source code in a test file somewhere... hmmm

[Dr_D]

I've got an old BASIC book that has an old Star Trek variant named Star Warp. It's just like the old graphical ST games but is entirely text based.

I did type it all into QB at some point and it ran fine even though it's more in the GW style. I don't really want to type it all in again right now but I will if the mood strikes me. I'm guessing it will need a little translation for even -lang qb as it makes heavy use of ON GOTO and is a prime example of spaghetti code. But then again, it's from a pre-procedures BASIC so what do you want.

Just have Summer read it to you as you type this time. :p

EDIT:
By the way... I found these. Are they close to what you're after?

http://www.network54.com/Forum/190883/m ... 0/Startrek

http://www.rhinocerus.net/forum/lang-ba ... -game.html

[CommanderRaven]

The first one, is not it for sure. But I'll have to take a peek at to see. I have an idea of doing landing party missison. This might be helpful.

The second one is variation of the Star Trek code I used as the core of my Star Trek game. Essentially, it's the same game, with a graphic front end.

But thanks for the help. I had a few hours free time today. So I started working on a conversion of Space Warp.

Working on Moria really changed my programming style. And when I release my version of Star Warp. It will look like the same game, but it will a completely different modules, subs, functions code. Completely different under the hood.

I won't have any more time to work on it until next week. But once i'm done with it, I'll do a minor upgrade, to add a primative game interface, and steal sounds from my Star Trek game.

I'll release my full source code if anyone wants to tinker with it....

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Wow, I really enjoyed your update on Sea Battle. Played a full game on easy just now. Gonna try with the hard mode for my review for FBGD. Awesome work on it! It really shows how an update on such old classic should be done, and why the updates can be beneficial.

I only disliked the slow sonar refresh. I think the game could work with a much faster refresh of the sonar screen. Especially because it happens even if I abort a command and not even execute it.

[Dr_D]

Wow, I really enjoyed your update on Sea Battle. Played a full game on easy just now. Gonna try with the hard mode for my review for FBGD. Awesome work on it! It really shows how an update on such old classic should be done, and why the updates can be beneficial.

I only disliked the slow sonar refresh. I think the game could work with a much faster refresh of the sonar screen. Especially because it happens even if I abort a command and not even execute it.

I agree with Lachie here, for once. :p Seriously though... it was actually pretty fun. Nice job.

[CommanderRaven]

Thanks for the comments on Sea Battle. Yeah I was still not 100% happy with the sonar speed. It has to do with sleep 1. Sleep 1 is too long. But that is as low as you can go with the sleep command.

I made my own sleep command recently for my Star Trek 3 game. Essentially sleep .5 or sleep .25 would really help Sea Battle sonar refresh.

I'll have to tinker with it later on.

Sea Battle was quite fun back in the TEXT day. So a simple update was a lot of fun to do. I just wish I could do some simple animations to replace the simple pictures I have in the game. It would much cooler to have a short animation of a sub firing a torpedo, or launching a missle. And my sea monster is cheesy!

I have finished my initial conversion/rewrite of Star Warp from Ken Tranton (mentioned above). After I get RC1 for Moria done, I'll release a Star Warp 2.0 with a graphic engine. Should only take a few days to do. I can steal tons of code, graphics, and sound from my existing Star Trek game.

And I've also released Moria Beta 4a, Creature Sound Update 1 tonight as well.

As always, have fun everyone....

[CommanderRaven]

I've got an old BASIC book that has an old Star Trek variant named Star Warp. It's just like the old graphical ST games but is entirely text based.

I did type it all into QB at some point and it ran fine even though it's more in the GW style. I don't really want to type it all in again right now but I will if the mood strikes me. I'm guessing it will need a little translation for even -lang qb as it makes heavy use of ON GOTO and is a prime example of spaghetti code. But then again, it's from a pre-procedures BASIC so what do you want.

I just released a TEXT version of this game on my site. Plus full source. I completely rewrote it using structured programming style. Might have a bug or two. Check it out since you have the original book too, if you find any bugs let me know!

[CommanderRaven]

I only disliked the slow sonar refresh. I think the game could work with a much faster refresh of the sonar screen. Especially because it happens even if I abort a command and not even execute it.

I agree with Lachie here, for once. :p Seriously though... it was actually pretty fun. Nice job.

I'm releasing a minor update to Sea Battle. I took my timer code from Star Trek and used in Sea Battle to speed up the Passive Sonar refresh. I did not change the active sonar Ping speed. Although I can speed up or slow that one down too. I tell you that Active sonar code was one pain the ass to write... Actually probably the hardest piece of code in the whole game...

I'm release the update tonight....

[lilialeonard]

Really fun game and also highly addictive. Sea battle 2 apknite reminds me of when I was a child and used to play you sunk my battleship game and here it is in digital form.