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LarryDS -> RE: Original CAW for Apple II? (8/8/2007 6:12:13 AM)
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quote:
Hi bink, mjk428
Computer Ambush: Yes. On the old GEnie BBS, one of the Billings brothers said the designer, Ed Williger, liked SPI's Sniper. It was one of his favorite games and an inspiration for CA. He wanted a computer opponent to play against solitaire when he couldn't find anyone.
The more successful Computer Ambush was the 2nd edition from SSI (1982), which took fuller advantage of the Apple II's capabilities, re-developed by Larry Strawser (rules) & Kendall Whitesell (who did the coding). It had a very competent AI, in part because the playfield was limited and only the German side was run by the computer. This allowed Mr. Whitesell to script setups for the Germans, which made the scenarios quite challenging. IIRC, the first CA had a rather limited AI (which basically just moved the Germans towards you), since it was cartridge-tape based. I played a lot of that before I upgraded my Apple to a II-plus with a diskette drive - big bucks right out of college!
Hi Def Zep, bink, and mjk428,
This is Larry Strawser. I know its been a couple of months since the last reply to this thread, but I just became a member of MatrixGames. It is true that I wrote the rule book for CA 2nd edition, but I also did the coding. Ken Whitesell got me started on the project. He and I were in the Air Force stationed at Biloxi, Mississippi where we taught communications-computer programming. We coded most things in machine code (octal) in those days -- assembly language was a high order language for us! Ken bought an Apple II before I did and he was a big fan of CA, 1st ed. I tried the game on his computer, but was turned off by how LONG the "resolution phase" took (as others have noted, CA 1st ed. was interpreted BASIC). Ken apparently discussed this with SSI and Joel Billings asked if he wanted to write an assembly language version. Ken told me about it and we became "partners." Ken stayed with the project until about halfway through coding the "order entry" phase. Then I moved to Colorado and Ken decided he wasn't interested anymore. Thus, I had to purchase my own Apple II and I completed the project eventually -- but not fast enough to satisfy Joel! :-)
Ken left the Air Force a year or two later, but I made a career out of it and retired just two years ago. I've coded some fairly sophisticated programs (quantum mechanical computational chemistry, for example), but some of the routines I coded for CA 2nd edition are among the best coding I ever did. The necessity to squeeze everything in the resolution phase into 48K of memory required quite a few tricks. The line of sight (LOS) routine is probably the cleverest bit of coding I've ever done. The code had to be compact, but it also had to be FAST. That is, since the "command control" function depended on the LOS each soldier had to each of his squadron mates, the computational time exploded as an N to the N problem. I often found myself conducting a "trade space" between clock cycles and bytes of memory -- people don't code like that any more! By the way, the Apple version used the Apple DOS and the "Initialization Phase" was written in BASIC, but every part of the Atari version was written in Assembly and I wrote a primitive DOS specific for the game (the Atari version came out about a year after the Apple version, but that's another story).
Its gratifying to see that at least a few people still remember the game and liked playing it. Yes, the game certainly had an "AI" built in (and Ken had NOTHING to do with any of it), and NO, it was not recompiled! I can't even guess how HUGE the compiled code would have been (even if a compiler existed in the early 1980s that could have done the job), but I know it would have been too big. However, I will now admit, the computer was a tough opponent at the most challenging level, because it "cheated." That is, at that level, the computer opponent had all "10s" for capabilities, his weapons never jammed, never ran out of ammunition, and he could even "heal" over time -- something the human opponent could never do. Nevertheless, the computer played by all the other rules, so it could be beat -- but if you took an "average" squad into battle, it was a tough go.
I built quite a bit of "debug" code as I went along. I had to strip most of it out after the code was completed due to memory constraints, but I was able to leave in one tiny bit of code that displayed the "terrain multiplier" from one point to another (FSxxyyL) at the novice level -- I used this to make sure the LOS routine worked as it should, for example, as I streamlined the code both for speed and size.
In any event, I have often thought over the years of writing CA 3rd edition. I have already designed the opening scene. Remember that cheesy "tune" at the beginning of the game? The opening screen of CA 3rd edition would look exactly as the it did on the Apple version (a black and white line drawing), then that stupid "tune" would play, followed by a pause. Then the sound of a mortar round coming into the battle space would be heard. When it exploded, the screen would "split open" onto a 1,000,000-color, chaotic, three-dimensional battle field with "real" gun fire, grenades, screams, etc. Anyone interested? :-)
LarryDS
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