By Eric Jansing & Bob Meyers, Jr. — originally published in COMPUTE!’s Gazette Volume 1, Issue 1
This VIC-20 translation of a popular Commodore PET program shows how screen compatibility problems can be overcome. It requires an 8K memory expansion. We’ve also added a version for the Commodore 64.
“Word Hunt” is a great game that appeared in the March 1982 issue of COMPUTE!, the Gazette‘s companion magazine. The game was written perfectly except for one thing – it couldn’t be RUN on a VIC without some problems. I put the game on the PET and liked it so much that I decided to translate it for the VIC.
After days of problems, I was ready to give up completely until I met Bob Meyers. He too had a VIC. I told him about the game and he agreed that it would be a good project. Bob’s solution was to use a VIC 8K expander.
Screen Compatibility
The expander gave us enough memory, but it didn’t solve the screen compatibility problem. The original program was written for a 40-column screen; VIC’s screen is 22 columns wide. In the end, we took out a few words and abbreviated some others to make the program compatible with the VIC’s screen.
In the original program, the puzzle was placed on the screen by a subroutine (line 1700). The variable G determined where the puzzle board was located. That is mainly what is changed. Also, in line 260 of the original program, the FOR-NEXT statement caused the variable Q to overflow. It now reads: 260 X 9 = 0: FOR Y = 1 TO X.
When you RUN Word Hunt, you get a catchy title with lots of color. The computer then asks you the skill level, 1 being easy and 5 being hard. Then the computer asks you to input ten words. When the computer finishes the puzzle, you’re asked to press any key and the game begins.
The computer writes the puzzle on the screen and displays the word you must hunt for. Then you are asked the starting location of the word (ROW,COLUMN), and the computer will ask you the direction. The direction box is located at the bottom left of the screen. To answer the direction, just look at the word and match its direction at the bottom.
If you are correct, the computer will respond “yes” and give you points. The number of points you get is determined by the time you took to answer.
See program listings on page 122.