Date   : Fri, 01 Mar 1996 09:59:24 +0000 (GMT)
From   : amh15@... (Alan Hart)
Subject: Re: Planetoid/Snapper problems

> > ;I believe this has been discussed before on the previous mailing list, 
> > ;but I couldn't find a solution to the problem: Snapper doesn't work! 
> > ;Apparently this is due to &FE60 not producing values it should--what 
> > ;should it do? Should there be random values on PB (as I have now) or 
> > s;teady values?
> 
> I have absolutely no idea why either Snapper or Planetoids should be 
> looking at this location! On most machines, I would imagine that nothing 
> is connected to the user port, giving the behaviour described above. With 
> something connected, the result of reading and writing could be pretty 
> much anything, and would be a bad idea, as for all the program knows, it 
> could be messing up some piece of hardware.

I'm sure I've said this here before, but when I ran Snapper on a BBC Micro 
fitted with a concept keyboard in the user port, it ran very, very fast. 
When I unplugged the keyboard the game would return to normal speed. 

Strange but true.

On a related point, if you like the extra features of snapper v2 but not 
the graphics ("silly little men", I believe someone said), it's quite easy
to hack the graphics out of v1. Just *load the program onto a mode 2 screen
and define a text window below it. Write some BASIC to advance a sort of
cursor through it until you're on the graphics. That gives you the address
of the graphics. A few quick *save and *loads later and you have new
snapper with old graphics.

Alan

Alan Hart - Cambridge University, UK - http://hydra.phy.cam.ac.uk/alan/