ROMP


DEVELOPMENT HISTORY

Noticed a couple of videos of the game "Garden" on Youtube by a Bulgarian
programmer (hence the colors chosen for the title screen). See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUlxAPlKk08&feature=g-hist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=FgGUfwmAwYs&feature=endscreen

Concept was simple enough that it seemed possible to convert to MC-10 basic.

The concept, as I see it, is that the player's character is some yob romping 
around someone's garden, crushing the grass and picking the flowers.  In the
original, it is the garden's owner who is chasing the player, which is
conceivably why the owner avoids stomping on the grass, but only follows
the player's character along the pathways created by the player.  Due to the 
limitations of the MC-10 character set I decided to make the enemy a snapping
dog figure using the <=> characters.  Conceivably, in my version, the dogs
have been trained somehow not to stomp the grass, hence their tendency to
only follow the player's path.

Versions 1-8
Took a while to create an algorithm for the dogs' movement that was similar in
effect to the orginal and also challenging.

Basically the algorithm checks each time the dog reaches an intersection
with at least 3 passages leading off it.  Then it changes direction from the
current one, to one that tracks your character.  If it reaches any impasses
it chooses a new random direction and heads off.  There is a random selection
every 30 or so moves to simply change direction randomly or choose a new
direction based on tracking (either horizontal or vertical).

Version 9
Added the "bone" feature, which allows the player to create passages that
can be used to lure the dog into finding the bone "/".  When it does, the
player scores 250 points and that dog stops for good at the bone.  When
that happens, a new dog is released from the top left.  The player should
avoid the stationary dog, as touching it is deadly. Perhaps the player is
Homer Simpson (hee hee hee), and the owner of the garden as Mr. Burns 
(RELEASE THE HOUNDS!)

Version 10
Fixed the capture routine so that the dog gets to chew on you a bit before
the game ends (it deserves that much, after so much hard work).  Changed the
grammar of the end prompt from "Take another romp?" to "Go for another romp".
I was thinking of "take another walk", but I realized that in English the
normal phrase would be to say "go for a romp."  Added a randomize peek at
the begining of the program, so that it doesn't start the same way when
the program is run from a cold start.  Fixed the screen creation routine
so that a bone will appear for every new screen.

Jim Gerrie
Cape Breton Island--"Ciad Mile Failte!"
Nova Scotia, Canada
23 November 2012