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Loadstar 248
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t.elevator music
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2022-08-26
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u
E L E V A T O R M U S I C
by Fender Tucker
Knees Calhoon. The name rolls
trippingly off the tongue like a
bowling ball off a stepladder.
Invariably it's followed by a scream
as if the ball had landed upon a
unshod metatarsal -- at least around
here at the Tower -- for Knees
Calhoon, my semi-mythical antagonist,
has locked me out of my penthouse
suite, reprogrammed the Tower's
elevator system, and now threatens to
turn LOADSTAR into a professional
wrestling magazine.
I knew I should have called up the
LOADSTAR SWAT team before opening my
door last week. If you remember,
Calhoon, who may or may not be a
time-travelling plagiarist, brought me
a couple of Jukeboxes and passed
himself off as a friend of LOADSTAR.
But I sensed that I didn't have to go
as far as Denmark to find something
rotten, and when he swooped into my
office that night, throwing me down
the elevator shaft, I knew that
Nostrodamus' infamous 'lost' quatrain
had come true.
When the Weasel takes the Tower
In the Year the Bush gets Burned
The Quail will run for Cover
And the Ladders will be Spurned.
It doesn't take an atomic cosmo-
tologist to see that Calhoon is the
Weasel and the Ladders are the
elevators of the LOADSTAR Tower, which
Calhoon has sabotaged so that I can't
get back into the penthouse. I'm not
sure who else is referred to in the
quatrain, but it's probably nobody
important.
The good news, dear LOADSTARites,
is that I think I've devised a way
that, with your help, Calhoon can be
rousted for good from the Tower. I
used all of my electronic and
computing skills to figure out what he
had done to the elevator system and
came up with this program, ELEVATOR
MUSIC. What we need to do is fill the
sixteen elevators with SWAT teamsters
and get them all up to the top four
floors of the Tower at one time.
Right now the sixteen elevators are on
the bottom floors.
The catch is that there are three
'rules' we have to follow in moving
the elevators.
(1) An elevator can only be moved up
a certain number of floors at a
time. This number is exactly the
number of elevators that occupy
the floor it's currently on. If
there are three elevators on a
floor, then any one of the
elevators can move up three, and
only three, floors.
(2) There are four different colors
of elevators, and four of each
color. You CANNOT have two
elevators of the same color on the
same floor.
(3) If an elevator is on a floor by
itself, it can only move if it is
NOT the highest elevator of its
color.
You will notice that elevators are
in four columns and can jump 'over'
other elevators. Like I said, Calhoon
really sabotaged the system. Each
column has one of each color in it.
There is no way for elevators to
change columns. You have to leapfrog
them up to the top of the Tower,
following the three rules. It doesn't
make any difference what order they're
in on the top four floors.
I've made the program error-proof
(famous last words) so that you can't
break the rules. As you move the white
cursor around with the CRSR keys, any
legal move will be shown to you by a
colored 'phantom' cursor in a higher
story. The choice you have to make is
which elevator to move when. Since
there are four elevators on each floor
to begin with, any of the elevators
can be moved up four floors.
Two elevators cannot occupy the
same column and floor at the same
time, obviously.
Oh yeah. I forgot about the most
despicable thing Calhoon has done.
He's spliced together enough Muzak (r)
to turn Lawrence Welk punk and is
piping it into the elevator shafts at
heavy metal volume. I had to suffer
through three solid days of it while
devising the program but luckily for
you I've added a feature that allows
you to toggle the schmaltz on and off.
Just press S.
There are a few more features I've
added. If you find you don't have any
more moves left and you're stuck on
some lower floors, you can press F1
and try again from scratch. This is
often the best thing to do.
If you make a bonehead move and
realize it right away, you can take
your move back by pressing F3. Only
one move at a time is allowed to be
taken back.
F5 will show you the current
LOADSTAR SWAT Teamsters, mighty heroes
who have gotten all sixteen elevators
up to the top four floors. If you can
do it, you can add your name to this
illustrious list. Thirty is the
maximum number of Teamsters allowed.
If you want to clear the list, just
scratch the file "swat team".
Press H to see a shorthand version
of the rules, or F to switch to the
standard font.
At the bottom of the screen at the
right the number of the top floors to
be retaken is shown. Each elevator
you move to one of the top four floors
increases this number by .25, so you
will need a total of 4 to win.
It's not important how many moves
it takes you to get the top four
floors taken, but the program counts
your moves anyway. Rousting Calhoon is
all that really matters.
All of the keypresses are listed
on the screen so you needn't remember
all this. Save your mental energy for
the task ahead of you. There are many,
many different ways to do it so I
haven't added a 'solution' key. I
think that it's a good idea to
concentrate on the top floor first,
then the floor below that. If you can
get those two completely filled, the
lowest two floors will be easy.
I never realized how cold it is
down here on the lower floors. Now I
know how Leona and the Donald felt.
Please help me regain my rightful
place in the penthouse. Anyone sending
me a videotape (VHS only) showing a
successful game from start to finish
will receive an autographed cassette
tape of THE DOGGEREL DAYS OF KNEES
CALHOON. Calhoon may be another
Hitler, but the guy sure did record
some nifty original tunes back in the
60's and 70's. If you balk at wasting
a whole videotape for a short game
sequence, feel free to fill up the
tape with any post-1980 movie rated
PG-13 or above.
Another way to get Calhoon's tape
is to be one of the first ten
LOADSTARites to send me a list of the
song titles of all twenty of the
songs, in order.
DISCLAIMER: How many times have I
harped about copyright infringement
against living, breathing and suing
songwriters, and here I go putting
twenty tunes in one program! Well, my
defense is that three measures do not
a lawsuit make.
[DAVE'S AFTER-SHAVE] Obviously,
Fender's offer has expired. But I
believe that no one in computing
history has created more wonderful,
logical challenges than the Eternal
Grand Mojo of LOADSTAR. If you do
succeed, drop me an email at
revdave6@rmi.net
I will find something nice to send
you!
DMM