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'\ ) ) . ) ) THE BEST OF ATARI®PROGRAMS for the Atari® Personal Microcomputers Edited by Fred Condo Copyright © 1983 SOFTSIDE PUBLICATIONS, INC. Milford, New Hampshire THE BEST OF ~5oft5i"ao~_ CONTENTS Introduction ...•......•...............•......... I Using The Best Of SoftSide ..•••.••.•.•..••..••.•. n Listing Conventions ............................ In Arcade Games Defense by Greg Schroeder ........................ 1 Quest by Brian Reynolds .......................... 8 Space Rescue by Matt Rutter ..................... 19 Maze Search by Dave Bohlke ..................... 24 Minigolf by Mitch Voth Atari Version by Rich Bouchard .................. 27 Board Games Flip-It by Michael Prescott Atari Version by Alan J. Zett. .................... 32 Battlefield by Joe Humphrey Atari Version by Jon R. Voskuil .................. 39 Games Of Chance Solitaire by Larry Williams Atari Version by Alan J. Zett ..................... 45 Gambler by Randy Hawkins Atari Version by Rich Bouchard .................. 51 Adventure Operation Sabotage by Ray Sato Atari Version by Rich Bouchard .................. 61 } I Simulations Leyte by Victor A. Vernon Ir. Atari Version by Alan I. Zett ..................... 71 Titan by William Morris and John Cope ............ 79 Word Game Word Search Puzzle Generator by David W. Durkee Atari Version by Jon R. Voskuil .................. 88 Music Fugue by William Morris and John Cope ........... 91 Flight of the Bumblebee by William Morris and John Cope ................. 94 Melody Dice by Gary Cage Atari Version by Rich Bouchard .................. 97 Music Programmer by John Rush Elkins .......... 104 Graphics Utility Character Generator by Alan J. Zett .............. 116 Practical Applications Random Access Database by Mark Pelczarski Atari Version by Paul Marentette ................ 121 Microtext 1.2 Word Processor by Jon R. Voskuil. ............................. 133 Appendix SWAT by Jon R. Voskuil Atari Version by Alan J. Zett .................... 139 Swat Tables ................................... 142 INTRODUCTION Over four years ago, when the microcomputer revolution was little more than a low rumble, SojtSide, "Your BASIC Software Magazine," published its first issue. In its early days, SojtSide supported only one machine, the now-venerable TRS-80® Model I. As the revolution gained momentum in the last years of the 1970's, SojtSide instituted a separate version of the magazine for the new Apple II® personal computer. The Apple added something novel to the microcomputerist's world - color! What could come next? In August of 1980, SojtSide initiated a new format. That issue was the first combined magazine for the TRS-80 and Apple with the addition of another new personal computer, the Atari® 400/800. SojtSide was now providing quality BASIC software for three computers at a price that made it a great bargain (and still does). SojtSide has always relied on program submissions from its readers. Few publications have a readership so intimately involved with its month-to-month features. As SojtSide grew and improved, so did you, our readers. You made BASIC do previously unimaginable things. Through SojtSide, the once-mute TRS-80 and Apple computers were given voices, and the Atari veritably sang. Though its main purpose has always been to provide the best entertain­ ment software in BASIC for the home computer user, SojtSide has ex­ plored every facet of personal computing. The book you now hold con­ tains utilities, space games, adventures, an information manager, a text editor, and more - in all, over twenty fully updated programs to amuse you and help you use your personal computer to greater advantage. In­ cluded are some of our most popular programs ever, Quest, Flip-It, and SWAT. Most of the programs have been fully documented by the authors, and are accompanied by annotated variable lists, to help you learn more about BASIC and the way the programs accomplish what they do. If you are a regular reader of SojtSide, these are familiar features. If you're new to us, welcome to The Best oj SojtSide. The Best OJ SojtSide •.••••••••••••.•••• I ) USING THE BEST OF SOFTSIDE You are now holding the Atari version of The Best of SoftSide. Also available are the Apple and TRS-80 versions. This book contains over twenty programs and their accompanying ex­ planatory articles and documentation selected from past issues of Soft­ Side magazine. Each program is introduced and expiained by the article, followed by a listing of the BASIC program itself. These listings were generated by an Atari computer just like yours, and appear in a 38-column format, the same as the Atari's screen display. One of the features of the Atari computer is its multiplicity of special graphics characters and inverse video. The graphics characters are usual­ ly control characters - that is, you type them by pressing a key while holding down the key marked CTRL. Inverse video is toggled on and off by the Atari logo key ()I\.'). These special characters are somewhat dif­ ficult to represent in a printed listing, so we have adopted some simple conventions to ease your typing. See the next page for examples and ex­ planations of these conventions. The greatest aid to your typing is SWAT, the Strategic Weapon Against Typos. This debugging program appears last in the book, and is followed by "SWATTables" for every program. The SWATarticle will explain how to use the program to locate and elimiate typographical er­ rors. Many of the programs in The Best of SoftSide originally appeared before the development of SWAT, and appear here with SWAT Tables for the first time. If typing doesn't sound like fun to you, be sure to see the special order form for the disk version of The Best of SoftSide elsewhere in this book. And now, we proudly present The Best of SoftSide. The Best Of SoftSide . •....•............ II PRINTED LINE LISTING CONVENTIONS Listed below is a short example of an Atari program listed according to SoftSide's standard conventions. The program, of course, is trivial, and doesn't even run; it is just a short example that should make our listing methods clear. 20 AI="ffiffiffiffimfffffgalllmmffiffim":REH Lower case cnaracters are control. 30 67$="ErlEIiY: ard":REH Lower case cha racters are control. 40 RI="t=-t":REM Control characters. In line 10, you see the right brace character, " } ". This represents the clear-screen character, whose ATASCII code is 125. You type this character by first pressing and releasing the ESC key, located in the up­ per left quadrant of your keyboard, then pressing SHIFT-CLEAR. On your Atari's screen, this will appear as an arrow that curves up and to the left. Go ahead and try this example on your computer. Let's go on to line 20. Notice the REM statement. It will be appended to the line in question, or it will occupy the immediately preceding line. Those lower-case characters represent the unprintable control (graphics) characters that your Atari can display. These are typed by pressing the appropriate letter key while you hold down the CTRL key. The string in line 20 begins with 5 CTRL-M's. Try it! In line 30, you can see the REM statement warning you about control characters. Also note the underlining. This represents characters to be typed in inverse video. You put your Atari in inverse video by pressing and releasing the Atari logo ()\,J key at the right end of the space bar. Pressing it again puts the computer back in the normal video mode. To type the string in line 30, you would press the Atari logo key before typ­ ing the first "E". Then you would type "ENEMY: ". Note that the space after the colon is underlined; you must type it in inverse, as well. Now you've come to the lower-case letters. The REM tells you that these are graphics (control) characters. The "a" isn't underlined, so you should type the CTRL-A that it represents in norma/video. The CTRL-R and CTRL-D are in inverse. Yes, even graphics characters can be either normal or inverse. The proper typing of inverse is important both to get­ ting a correct display on the screen and to generating proper SWAT tables. Finally, we come to line 40. The string here has cursor-control characters in it - the arrow keys. Normally, when you press CTRL and an arrow key, the cursor moves in the direction of the arrow. These movement codes can be put into programs, too, but they don't show up on a printer. Since the arrow keys have other characters on them, we can use them to represent the arrow keys, with an accompanying REM to warn you. You type these characters by pressing and releasing ESC, then pressing the appropriate arrow key while holding down CTRL. That's really all there is to it, so go ahead and delve into The Best of SoftSide. The Best Of SoftSide .•.•••••.•.••.•••• III I L;) } .. -~ - DEFENSE by Greg Schroeder Defense is an arcade-style game for Player #1's joystick is plugged into one or two players requiring an Atari socket #2, and player #2's joystick with 16K RAM (32K with disk) and plugged into socket #3. If you push the one joystick. joystick up or down, your ship will be raised or lowered. But don't go too far The object of Defense is to destroy down, because if you hit the ground, as many of the aliens that fly across the your ship will be destroyed. Push the moon's surface as possible, before joystick to the right and after about a your three fighter ships have been second, you will gain airspeed and the destroyed. ground will start to move. Pushing the When the game begins, you are given stick to the left will cause you a brief description of your situation to lose airspeed and the ground to and mission while the computer slow also. redefines the Atari character set.

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