Haha...okay. Now, Baxter is classified in the same category as Hermes...A project which shows no visible end. Baxter now plays Othello and Checkers. It doesn’t play them very well, but then again, neither do I. (As in Solarian II, like father like program or something.) If you’ll note, this is still a development version...(NOT a beta!!! (x.x.xbx) Like the folks in the Mac Games forum on AOL think...haha...)
And the whole conglomeration fits with no external compression on an 800k disk!
The help screens are, however, internally compressed with Mike Darweesh’s CompRes, a great resource compression/decompression utility.
Coming Attractions: Connect Four.
Can anybody else think of a game played on a grid 8x8 or smaller besides Checkers, Othello, Chess, and Connect Four? Pente? Thanks.
Baxter was programmed under the influence of some very strange New Age music. So be forewarned.
So far, Baxter is pretty cool. There is, however, one known problem:
Baxter looks for an 8-bit or greater monitor to run on, and will refuse to run on anything else. However, it will run on a 8-bit greyscale monitor. It’s not supposed to. Does anybody know how to tell whether a monitor is in color or greyscale? Also, it seems to crash (with unimplemented trap) on some non-8-bit computers...But what do I care?
Oh...our memory leak has been fixed. As it turns out, it actually had nothing to do with sound, but resulted from me allocating memory for the cursor every time it was changed and never releasing it.
Baxter has also been expanded to support Balloon Help and Apple Events. It is now also MultiFinder-friendly. And it’s got a very cool help system.
Baxter is ShareWare. If you think it looks nifty, send $10 to:
Trevden Sherzell
130 North Country Road
Shoreham, NY, 11786-1722
Also, feel free to send me suggestions on this program, any other program of mine, or ideas for future programs to one of the addresses at the end of this file. Thanks.
PLEASE! If you find Baxter fun, can’t you spare $10? C’mon. I’ve done a lot of work on Baxter, and besides, you’re helping a 13-year-old (me) through life! And I have to pay my own America Online bill! :) (By the way, if you’re a kid, (younger than 14 or 15) feel free to use this program without having to pay me. I know your situation! :) The more response I get, the more incentive I’ll have to keep programming. (And finish this program...) If you have an idea for a neat program, send me mail!
If you are seriously interested in the continuation of this project, please tell me so. It’s encouraging to get mail, and even more encouraging to get money! :)
Version history:
1.0d5: Original release.
1.0d6: Added checkers, online help, balloon help, AppleEvents, reworked most of the interface, lotsa other stuff. Turned out to be pretty buggy. Luckily, it wasn’t widely released...
