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Loadstar 128 40
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q40.d81
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t.elephant walk
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2022-08-28
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3KB
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64 lines
E L E P H A N T W A L K
Program by the Anonymous Sprite Wrangler
Text by Knees Calhoon
NOTE: This program runs in 40 columns.
Howard Halasz, a loyal LOADSTARite from Houston TX, sent me this PD
40-column demo and asked that I consider it for publication on LOADSTAR
128. It's a simple demo done in BASIC 128 7.0 that makes the most out of
the sprite commands, commands that in BASIC 2.0 for the C-64 would be all
POKEs. There is no mention of the author's name anywhere in the PD program,
which is too bad, because he/she sure did a lot of good, hard work to make
the animation lifelike and beautiful.
I call it a demo because it is not interactive -- once you boot it up,
it loads some support files and then shows a minute-long scene from the
savannas of Africa. Once the scene is over the screen blanks for a few
seconds then shows again. During the blanking you can press Q to quit to
LOADSTAR if there's a LOADSTAR 128 disk in the current drive.
Check out the code to see what all is involved in getting multiple
sprites to move around the screen. Someone, perhaps the Wrangler, crunched
the code by running it through a program that re-links the lines of the
program, allowing for lines that are much longer than is ordinarily allowed
by the BASIC editor. This made the program somewhat difficult to edit,
which may be what the Wrangler had in mind. To make it even more difficult,
he renumbered the program to start with line 0 and increment by 1.
This meant that I had to renumber the program first, then when that
worked, re-enter the first five or six lines which had BLOAD commands in
them. Because he didn't specify the drive number in his BLOAD commands, the
program defaults to drive 8. But now, since I added u(dv) to all BLOAD
commands, the program runs from any drive, not just drive 8.
NOTE: To me the DRIVE 8 bug for Commodore computers is the equivalent of
the Y2K bug for behemoth computers. Why any programmer in the 1990s would
presume that everyone has only one drive (drive 8) is beyond me. With
drives going for $25 or less, I can't see why anyone would be content with
one drive for their system. Please, programmers, before sending LOADSTAR
your program for possible publication, make sure it runs just fine from any
drive, not just 8. Of course, since the Wrangler didn't send me this
program, he's off the hook.
Ordinarily I'm not a fan of do-nothing programs, especially those in
the 40-column mode for the C-128, but this one is especially well done. If
the author of the program sees it on LOADSTAR and lets me know who he is,
I'll pass the word on. The Sprite Wrangler is an artist as well as a
programmer. By the way, I assume that he took the title for the demo from
the 1954 film by William Dieterle, Elephant Walk, starring Peter Finch and
an amazingly nubile Elizabeth Taylor. In the film, Pete and Liz find out
why it's a bad idea to build a mansion on an old elephants' walking trail.
They never forget and they don't really care if humans call the place
"home". In Africa, elephants rule.
On LOADSTAR 128, too.
\\\\\ R - Run RETURN - Menu \\\\\