

ANDROMEDA 3

by Graeme Poole

from ZX Collection, Winter 1984



If you think that you're the adventurous type,

just have a go at escaping from Andromeda 3!



[I added a bit of code at line 9500 to include a display of the exits]

[from each location, as they're not always given in the descriptions.]

[JimG                                                                ]



The time is 12:15 am in the year 3058 AD. You were on a routine flight

to all of the major planets in the Solar System. Suddenly, out of

nowhere, appeared five Space Fighters from Andromeda 3. Unfortunately

your instruments did not register them and you were taken completely

by surprise.



The fighters launched a full scale attack on your ship (for no

apparent reason) and your shipped was crippled beyond normal flight.

You did, however, have enough of the basic controls left working so

that you could crash land your spaceship on the vast planet of

Andromeda 3. Your ship was completely destroyed but you managed to

escape, alive and without injury.



By this time, the Andromedan fighters had landed and the pilots took

you to the leader of the planet. Before you had a chance to speak, the

pilots explained to the leader that you had launched the attack on

THEM. You of course denied this, but unfortunately, the leader did not

believe you. He ordered you to be taken into the depths of the planet,

where prisoners are left to rot in a large underground prison.



It is here in this prison cell that you are now sitting; you must try

to escape alive and report back to Earth notifying them of the

situation. This is of the utmost importance: you have heard two guards

talking in the guardroom, saying that the leader was going to report

the 'incident' to Earth and that full scale war was to be launched

between the two planets.



So you can see that the entire future of Earth depends on you... Good Luck!



Playing the Game



You move around the prison by choosing the direction you wish to go.

There are 10 possible directions you can try. They are as follows: N,

NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW, U and D. As you move around, you will be

given a description of your location along with a picture of what you

can see. On your travels you will find various objects in certain

rooms and you can either TAKE or GET these.



There are 28 different instructions you can use to talk to the

computer. They are: N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW, U, D, LIGHT, UNLOCK,

USE, OPEN, CROSS, JUMP, GET, TAKE, BRIBE, GIVE, LIST, SWIM, FEED,

FIRE, PUT, SHOOT, SHOW and EAT. There are 2 commands which will

probably be very useful to you, these are LIST and Z. If you type

LIST, you will be given a complete list of the objects you are

carrying, if you have any. Typing Z (the key with COPY on it) the

computer will copy the screen to the printer which you can then use to

create a map as you go along. This saves a lot of time if you want a

map with the pictures and detailed descriptions.



The program, unlike other adventures, does not restrict you to using

only two words like GET TORCH etc, but will allow a fair amount of

different variations of one sentence to make it more "human" and

friendly. For example, all the following sentences will result in the

same command being executed: JUMP PIT, JUMP THE PIT, JUMP OVER PIT,

JUMP OVER THE PIT, JUMP ACROSS THE PIT etc. There is only one location

in which you can be killed, and you are given plenty of warning about

this, so that you will not have to restart every 30 seconds or so.

There are over 70 locations to explore, but you may not have to

explore them all to escape from the prison, but then again you might.

There are lots of one way passages making the game more difficult, and

also beware of the twisting paths which can take you from one side of

the prison to the other in one move which can be very annoying.



The Program



The user defined graphics and all the variables used in the program

are created in lines 20 to 50. Lines 100 to 3650 contain all the

information for the 72 locations along with some special variables to

tell the computer where you are and what to do depending on what you

type in.



The main part of the program is from lines 9500 to 9930. This checks

the input and moves you from room to room or carries out specific

instructions like OPEN DOOR. It also checks that you have taken an

object before you try to use it, and if you try to take an object it

checks to see if the object is in the room. Most of the computer's

replies are held in lines 3700 to 4500 and each one is printed

depending on where you are and what you asked the computer to do.



Each of the room descriptions has a string variable called r$. This

string is used to hold the line numbers of the rooms in the 10

possible directions, and they are held in the order N, NE, E, SE, S,

SW, W, NW, U, D. For example, if r$="325010001250", then going North

would take you to line 3250, NE would go to 1000 and East would be

1250. If r$="170020500000", then North is 1700, NE is 2050 and East is

a wall. Walls are detected by 0000. Line numbers which are not 4

digits long, eg. 800 are written as 0800 etc.



Lines 9505, 9660, 9670 and 9680 convert the input into numbers and

pick out the relative set of numbers from r$. The user can convert

this program to make his own adventures quite easily by changing the

room descriptions, the relevant r$, and the objects used. The

adventure was originally written as an entirely text only game, but I

felt that the addition of some simple graphics, colour and sound added

more interest to the game.

