Starion

Starion

Дэвид Уэбб

Окончательный патч

Версия Starion в STARIONP.TAP – это вторая опубликованная версия игры, выпущенная для исправления (большинства) ошибок в первой версии, плюс я также включил патч для исправления ошибки в разделе OBERAMMERGAU, которая приводила к краху игры. Это исправление не вошло в финальный релиз и было доступно только по запросу из Melbourne House в виде печатного листа исправлений. Эта версия с финальным патчем – единственная версия Starion, которую можно завершить (я уверен в этом, поскольку это одна из немногих игр на Спектруме, которую мне удалось закончить). Архив .ZIP также содержит запись SSD, которую я составил для Starion, включающую полные инструкции и мое полное решение для игры.

Еще один прекрасный продукт от: Jim Grimwood (jimg@globalnet.co.uk)

Ферма “Мертвая собака”, Хатфилд, Англия

Дом базы данных SPOT (Spectrum Oracle on Trumpton) и неофициального архива Your Spectrum (YRUA?) по адресу http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jimg.

Запустите Starion и играйте. Эта игра-стрелялка, опубликованная в Великобритании в 1985 году командой Melbourne House, которую написал David M. Webb.

Multidimensional simulator of travel in space and time with 243 zones. You are about to become the pilot of the S.S. Stardate – the world’s first time ship. Your mission is to fix the damage caused to the space-time continuum by evil aliens from other worlds. You will need reflexes, analytical abilities, endurance, and a keen sense of adventure. As you succeed in the game, you will improve your piloting skills and advance through the career ladder from a beginner to the supreme commander. Your goal is to reach the “Event Zero,” the first event at the beginning of time, in order to become the creator of everything that follows.

Starion

Melbourne House

1. Introduction

Starion is a multi-dimensional 243-zone space-time travel simulation requiring reflex skills, analytical powers, stamina and a keen sense of adventure.

The game utilises the most advanced vector graphics system ever developed for a home computer and will run on any 48K ZX Spectrum or Spectrum+. Control may be either the keyboard or any popular joystick. The ZX printer may also be used for making copies of the screen.

2. Loading instructions

1. Place the cassette in your player making sure that it is rewound to the start and that the EAR socket of your Spectrum or Spectrum+ is connected to that of the tape player, as detailed in the spectrum manual.

2. Enter the command Load”STARION” or just Load”” then press the ENTER key.

3. Start the tape player. The game will load automatically.

4. In case of difficulty alter the volume level and consult your Spectrum manual.

3. Scenario

The year is 2010 and your name is Starion. Fresh out of Space Academy, you have been selected as their brightest pupil to pilot the world’s first timeship, the S.S. Stardate. Your mission: to boldly go back in time and correct the devastation wrought in the Space-Time continuum by evil aliens from all the other worlds that have achieved time travel before you.

As you progress through the game, your ability as a pilot increases. You are rewarded with promotion through the ranks from Novice to Supreme Commander. If and when you finally reach ‘Event Zero’ before the beginning of time (event one), then you become the earliest thing to exist and must by default assume the ultimate title of CREATOR of all that follows.

4. Controls

The main controls for your ship are as follows:

I – Bank left

P – Bank right

W – Dive

C – Climb

E – Accelerate

Q – Decelerate

N – Fire Laser

In addition the following controls might be useful:

T – Target sights on/off

S – Sound on/off

Z – Copy screen to ZX Printer

H – Pause/Continue

R – Status report

CAPS+SPACE – Abort game

Keys are redefinable or you can use a joystick.

5. The nature of space-time

The space-time continuum is constructed of 3 ‘time blocks’ and each time block is a 3×3 array of ‘time grids’. Each time grid is a 3×3 arrangement of time zones. Taking into account the 3 dimensions of space itself, there are thus 243 time zones in 8 dimensions.

Each time zone represents the state of the observable universe during a given year in Earth history. The timetravelling aliens have wrought havoc on your past by removing items of historical significance from their correct time zone to one of the eight neighbouring time-zones in the local time grid, by means of their heavily-armed timeships.

6. This is what you do

To save the universe from chaotic collapse you must proceed as follows … Engage and destroy the enemy ship in your time zone by space to space combat. The dead alien’s cargo will materialise in the form of an alphabetical letter. Collect this letter by coming to a complete halt in its centre. It will be stowed in your hold and attacks will continue until you have destroyed the enemy fleet and collected all the letters.

The on-ship computer will now ask you to unscramble the letters to identify the original cargo dislodged in time by the enemy. Having done this, you must locate the entrance to a time warp and fly into it. The time-grid will be displayed. Now decide which of the eight neighbouring time zones is the year in which your cargo belongs.

The jump is made and you appear in a new time-zone. Your first task is to land on earth (fly straight into it) and see if your cargo will solve the historical problem. If you have the correct cargo, then it will be ejected, your oxygen and fuel will be replenished and you may do battle with a new breed of enemy for the next item.

If you have jumped to the wrong time zone, then you will still have to destroy enough ships, mines and enemy missiles to liberate sufficient energy to create a new time warp, but no enemy cargo will appear. Only then will you be able to escape, still carrying the same cargo.

Once you have corrected history in all nine zones in the time-grid, the time warp formed after the next battle will take you to one of the eight neighbouring time-grids in the current time-block. You must take the first letter of each of the nine items you have moved and unscramble THESE to form a password, which, when entered into the flight computer will convince it that you are capable of inter-grid time travel.

Having completed all nine time-grids in the current block, you must unscramble the initial letters of the nine grid passwords to form the password for inter-block time travel down the next time warp. At this stage just one third of history has been corrected.

When all three time blocks (and hence all 27 time-grids and all 243 time zones) have been corrected, you will have three inter-block passwords. Take the first and last letters of each, unscramble them, and you will have the six letter master password which will permit exit from the space-time continuum.

You will then yourself become event zero, and have achieved the title of:

CREATOR

7. Rankings

Your achievements for mankind are rewarded with ascending rank as follows:

Achievements:                    Rank:
None                             Novice
One complete time zone           Chronotourist
Line of 3 time zones             Trizoner
One complete time-grid           Grid Master
Line of 3 time grids             Triple Grid Master
One complete time block          Space Admiral
Two complete blocks              Supreme Commander
Three blocks and Event Zero      CREATOR

8. Instruments

Looking from left to right at your instrument panel, you will see: the speedometer, measuring the magnitude of your velocity. Next, the hull thermometer. This registers higher at high speeds, and the hull is also heated by excessive laser fire.

Next there is a display of the letters in your cargo hold, followed by the essential biplanar scanners, which provide all-round detection.

The first (X-Z) scanner gives a view around you in the horizontal plane in which you are flying. You are in the centre and flying ‘up’ the screen, so an enemy a long way to your left and behind would be in the bottom-left corner of the display.

The second (Y-Z) scanner lets you know how far above or below you the enemy is, by providing a view around you in the vertical plane, in which you are flying at centre towards the right. Thus an enemy ahead and above would be towards the top-right corner of the scanner.

Enemies are indicated by plus (+) signs, their missiles and mines by dots (.), while everything else is indicated with minus(-)signs. With practice you will become skilful enough to locate anything anywhere in 3-D space just by glancing at the scanners.

Adjacent to the scanners you will see a set of pitch/yaw/roll indicators, and above them a calendar giving the year of the current time-zone. The final two gauges give your fuel (hydrox) and oxygen levels, and below them you will find a display of the remaining hulls on your ship.

Your ship is a multi-hulled vessel, and impacts with mines, rocks and missiles will increase the outer hull temperature. The more potent weapons will destroy a hull completely.

9. Playing tips

As with most arcade games, your ability to control the S.S. Stardate, your combat skills, and your sense of position will improve with practice. Rocks, binary rocks and other space debris will not be destroyed by laser fire, so you must avoid them.

As your historical knowledge grows, you will soon be able to take the fastest route around each time-grid, in nine steps, thereby gaining points for conserved fuel and oxygen. You will also gain points for destroying enemy ships, mines and missiles.

10. About david webb

Starion was the result of over nine months of intensive part-time programming by David Webb, a nineteen year-old undergraduate in Mathematics at Exeter College, Oxford. He is also the author of two books on the ZX Spectrum; “Supercharge Your Spectrum”, a collection of machine language routines for basic programmers, and “Advanced Spectrum Machine Language”, for experienced machine language programmers. Both were published by Melbourne House.

[Cassette inlay from Jim Grimwood <jimg@globalnet.co.uk> and Simon Rooney]

Information

The original release of the game was impossible to complete. You were supposed to be able to refuel your ship by either:

a) landing on a planet; or

b) reaching a sufficiently high score to get a new ship.

Option a) didn’t work, and option b) was impossibly high – so you couldn’t make much progress.

A subsequent release fixed these bugs but left in another one which wouldn’t be found until right near the end, as one of the anagram solutions used 12 letters (OBERAMMERGAU), one more than the maximum the program could handle, so it crashed when it was entered. Melbourne House provided a patch to fix that. This patch is only useful with the final release of the game (after the other bugs had been fixed).

Starion fix

10  CLEAR 65471
20  LET BASE=65472
30  LET CHK=0
40  FOR A=0 TO 51
50  READ B
60  POKE BASE+A,B
70  LET CHK=CHK+B
80  NEXT A
90  IF CHK <> 5408 THEN PRINT "DATA WRONG. CHECK LINES 130-200": STOP
100  PRINT "PLAY STARION TAPE FROM START"
110  LOAD "" CODE
120  RANDOMIZE USR BASE
125  REM
130  DATA 221,33,0,64,17,208,191
140  DATA 62,255,55,49,0,0,205
150  DATA 86,5,33,47,169,52,17
160  DATA 54,169,33,233,255,1,5
170  DATA 0,237,176,14,6,17,79
180  DATA 200,237,176,195,67,128
190  DATA 200,65,195,79,200,54
200  DATA 61,35,16,251,201

Now type RUN. If you get a “DATA WRONG” message then check the numbers in lines 130-200 until they are correct. Otherwise you will be asked to put the Starion tape in your player and play it as normal. The game will then be loaded and altered, ready to play.

Sources

cassette inlay (controls/instructions)

Melbourne House 1985 (fix)

Starion

by David Webb

The final patch

The version of Starion in STARIONP.TAP is the second published version of the game, released to fix (most) of the bugs in the first version, plus I’ve also included the patch to fix the error in the OBERAMMERGAU section which caused the game to crash. This fix was not in the final release and was only made available on request from Melbourne House as a printed correction sheet. This version with the final patch is the only version of Starion which can be completed (I’m sure of this as this is one of the few Spectrum games I actually managed to finish). The .ZIP archive also includes the SSD entry I compiled for Starion, which includes full instructions and my full solution for the game.

Another Fine Product from: Jim Grimwood (jimg@globalnet.co.uk)

Dead Dog Farm, Hatfield, England

Home of the SPOT Database (Spectrum Oracle on Trumpton) and the Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive (YRUA?) at http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jimg