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When I got my first computer, for Christmas in 1990, it had a few games loaded on it, one of which was called "EGATrek", a version of the classic "Star Trek" game written in BASIC in 1970, updated to have EGA graphics! I was considering making a Let's Play of it, at least for historical reasons, but once I fired up and started playing, I realized that it was an interesting game in its own right, as well as being an important part of gaming history. "Star Trek", which came out in various forms, was originally written for BASIC by fan in 1970. It originally used ASCII characters to represent the Enterprise, Stars, and Klingons. It was a menu based game where the player had to enter commands to pilot the Enterprise through space, in the form of an 8*8 grid that was broken down into subgrids. The connection with Star Trek was somewhat nebulous: although it uses the terminology, it is kind of a generic space war game. It was included in many early books of BASIC programs, and was heavily modified. The version I started playing in sixth grade was a shareware version with EGA graphics, but with almost all of the same gameplay. It was probably the first strategy computer game I played, and 25 years later, it still has interesting strategy behind it, with a few basic rules allowing the game to generate some variety.  Here is our title screen! Pretty exciting, isn't it?  This is our display, showing several different panels. In the upper left we see the Enterprise, in the 8*8 grid of that sector, which is empty of enemies but does have a few stars. To the right of that we see our energy levels, our torpedoes, the date, and the amount of Klingons remaining.  I've put up shields, turning myself yellow, done a long range scan, generated a chart, and hailed any available star bases. I've also raised my warp speed: since the game gives you a score based on a kill a day ratio, it does pay to go fast, although that also uses up energy. Now it is time to ride into battle.  I move to another quadrant to find a red Klingon commander and two normal Klingon ships. There is some danger right now, but I still have lots of energy and torpedoes.  I fired three torpedoes. This destroyed one ship and damaged the other two.  I finished one off with phasers. Phasers use your main energy, so you want to be somewhat conservative with using them.  I won that battle, but now in another quadrant, a Klingon fires a Plasma Bolt. These are one of the few ways they can seriously hurt you with your shields up: it also does a flashing animation that was very impressive in 1990.  Shields and impulse engines damaged! Uh oh! At least my life support is still going strong.  The Star Base in 7-3 is under attack: there are a few star bases scattered about, and they are the only place I can refuel and get new torpedoes. Usually in the first few minutes of the game, one of them will be attacked, and the player has to protect them before they are destroyed.  Here I am, docked at a base. At least, I am hopefully docked: when I am, the base's shields protect me. Otherwise, I might be in trouble with these three ships attacking me.  My shields and impulse engines are still damaged, though.  I am not sure what happened here, but it doesn't look good. It looks like I protected the Star Base, but now I am being attacked again.  See that Life Support grid? That is bad news. Notice that my Warp is only at 3.8: this is a bad combo, when the engines and life support get damaged at the same time, because it is often impossible to get to a star base before the life support runs out.  I lost the game: I haven't played this game in a few years, and I forgot that its challenge wasn't trivial. So, I started a second game, and this is what happened (I skipped some of the steps here since I've already demonstrated the basic gameplay):   I am stuck here: the enemy base is between me and my own base, I am out of energy, and all my torpedo tubes are damaged.  Now my short range scanner AND my life support are out. Uh oh.  Only one step left: initiate self-destruct! Well, I guess third time is a charm, right?  There is a Romulan ship in this quadrant. I don't need to destroy it, so I will just ignore it.  I find a Starbase under attack, and I am stuck with no weapons! Luckily I can fix them while docked at the Starbase. If I didn't have that Starbase, I would be in trouble.  When my computer systems get damaged, I have to navigate this way.  While I was fixing my weapons at this Starbase, another Starbase was destroyed.  But I went on to win the game!  With a score of 1732! Which is pretty good. Although this game is a strategy game, it is more of a resource-management game than anything else. The basic idea is to move through the galaxy as quickly as possible, while trying to minimize the risk of a battle that will case major damage, which leads to either losing time or being destroyed. Quite a bit of the game is based on luck: whether the game starts you off close to a Starbase, for example. Although the basic gameplay is just to fly around and kill stuff, each game feels slightly different. Also, when I played this game, it was probably the first strategy game I played. I had a Nintendo before I had a home computer, but the Nintendo games were obviously much more kinetic. This was the first game that made me think of deployment of resources, something that would get much more involved when I started playing Civilization and its ilk a few years later.
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Mar 22, 2015 05:27
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| # ? May 11, 2024 21:13 |
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Why did you blur out the name and address there?
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Mar 22, 2015 09:30
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That was an interesting little thing to show off. Two questions: What do the numbers in the top right chart mean? Are you planning to do anything else with this thread or is it done now?
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Mar 22, 2015 09:41
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Tiggum posted:Why did you blur out the name and address there? Well, it was probably unnecessary because this is 25 years old, but this was done as a piece of shareware by a single person. The address was a street address.
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Mar 22, 2015 21:54
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Carbon dioxide posted:That was an interesting little thing to show off. For each quadrant, the long range scanner/chart gives you the number of stars, the number of bases, and the number of Klingons. Solid yellow 9's mean a quadrant has a supernova and can't be entered (normally). There isn't a whole lot else I can do as far as gameplay, although I could try to find an optimal strategy. I kind of did this thread more for historical interest than because the gameplay is that involving.
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Mar 22, 2015 21:56
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| # ? May 11, 2024 21:13 |
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Alright. It's completely up to you, of course, but maybe you could use this thread to show off some other old BASIC games, if that's your thing?
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Mar 22, 2015 22:27
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