Subject: Vaders (game) version 2.1. Now supports SX and GX, plus sound! This note is to announce the free availability of my Vaders game, version 2.1, which now supports both the SX and GX, has sound, and a pause feature. Read on. Until recently, I was unable to distribute Vaders on the net because of a licensing agreement that I had signed with Sparcom, who currently includes Vaders as one of the games on their GAMES48 card. Well, I recently renegotiated with Sparcom so that I am now free to distribute Vaders to you all. I hope you enjoy it! Version 2.1 of Vaders, attached below, differs from the previously freely available version (v1.2) in that it now supports both the SX and GX, has a pause function (press [ENTER] to pause or unpause), and now has sound. The sound may be toggled on and off using the [+/-] key. Other than that, the game hasn't changed much since version 1.2. My greatest pleasure is that all the GX users out there on the net can now enjoy Vaders for free. In addition to the attached uuencoded binary file, I will freely make the source-code available to anyone who's interested, so all you budding ML programmers out there should feel free to mine whatever nuggets you can from my code (assuming there are any to mine). I've included a uuencoded copy of the library. If people would prefer a non-library version of the game, please send me mail and depending on how many requests I get I'll repost it as a normal program. I hope you enjoy playing Vaders as much as I enjoyed writing it. Regards, >>>Joe Ervin ervin@pinbot.enet.dec.com ************************************************************** INSTRUCTIONS To play Vaders, uudecode and download the attached binary file. This creates a library object on your HP48. Just store this to port 0 by doing 0 STO, and then power-cycle your calculator. The library should auto-attach to the HOME directory. In the library you will find "VADERS" which is the game, along with "ABOUT", which serves the usual function. Press "VADERS" to run Vaders. Simple. You are provided with the familiar missle base at the bottom of the screen, while "inter-galactic meanies" drop bombs on you from above and move down toward the surface of the planet. Your mission is to kill all of the "meanies" before they get too low. After you kill all the meanies, the game progresses to the next wave, where things generally get more difficult. The controls are as follows: [blue] = Move missle base left. [1] = Move missle base right. [spc] = Fire a missle at the meanies. [+/-] = Toggles the sound on and off. [ENTER] = Pauses/unpauses the game. [<=] = Quit the game. If a bomb dropped by a meanie hits the missle base, it explodes and you continue playing with the next available missle base. You are allowed five missle bases, and after the fifth missle base is destroyed the game ends (although Vaders waits for the quit button before returning to RPL environment). The objective is to kill meanies as fast as possible to prevent them from reaching the surface. If you allow the meanies to overwhelm you and reach the bottom of the screen, your missle base explodes spontaneously and the game ends, so blast away to save the earth! Please enjoy this game, and report any bugs or ideas for improvment to me, Joe Ervin, at "ervin@pinbot.enet.dec.com". Happy Blasting! >>>Joe Ervin