An arcade game written in 1993 for the BBC Microcomputer.
UPDATE for 2021 - a remastered version is now available. Check out the repo for more details.
The game is available to play online, via the Javascript BBC Micro Emulator jsBeeb:
Androidz was written over a period of about two months from July to August 1993. I cobbled the code together from a variety of other type in game listings published over the years - my primary method of learning how to code at the time. A bit like Github, Codepen etc, but in paper form, and less shiny shiny.
Written for the BBC Micro, the game is written predominantly in BBC Basic, with a very minor element of 6502 assembly language for faster plotting of the player character. The game runs in four colour MODE 5, which is a low resolution (640 x 256 pixel) display which used 10k of the BBC Micro's memory.
The game itself was published in the magazine Acorn Computing, one of the major BBC Micro/Acorn publications of the early 1990s. I was paid £25 for the game, and is apparently copyrighted to the then publishers Europress. Whoever owns the magazine archive would have jurisdiction. I've therefore not included a licence in this repo for the time being.
There are three main files, one to display instructions, setup sounds and UI graphics, one for the game code itself, and a final short piece of code to show you a report of your performance in the game.
Closer examination of the code will reveal a number of GOTOs throughout, which mean the line numbering must be retained. Also, the use of the DATA statement has meant further use of specific line numbers via the RESTORE command.
You will also notice that the actual game listing appears more compressed than the other two listings, this was done to reduce memory. I do recall that an attempt to make the code cleaner resulted in error messages concerning lack of memory, so I had to dispense with code readability.
I've added the code here so that it is easier to browse for historical purposes.
If you wish to build your own disc image of the game, you'll need Beebasm installed on your computer. If you are using Visual Studio Code, then you can use the Task feature to build an image via Ctrl-Shift-B. This will assemble the contents of the src folder, and create the Android.ssd image, for use in your machine, or emulator of choice.