TERKON

[billcarr2005]

Saw this on Facebook (Acorn Computer and BBC Micro Enthusiasts)
The instructions helped me enough to manage to finish the first level!

If the original author (of the game and/or FB post) would rather it not be here, I'll delete the post - although it is out in the public domain now

[Michael Brown]

Wow!
Great find.
I see the image says "EDIT". Has the game been edited to work, or has any protection been removed. I take it this is the disc copy and not a tape to disc copy.

Mick.

[billcarr2005]

I see the image says "EDIT". Has the game been edited to work, or has any protection been removed. I take it this is the disc copy and not a tape to disc copy.

Mick.

Edited to be compatible with standard BBC / DFS, since the LEVELS are loaded via OSGBPB which was (and still is) using &1300 as transient storage and overwriting code.
Since the game was unpublished / WIP there was no protection. I believe, based on the way the LEVELS are accessed that this version at least would be disc only.

[Michael Brown]

Thanks Bill,

BTW, if you type CHAIN"LOADER" the game gives a bad program when trying to load the levels, but is OK if you EXEC "!BOOT" which just chains "LOADER" - odd!
I can see from the files and their lengths that no hidden code is stored on the disc.
Any ideas why this is?

Mick.

[0xC0DE]

See original announcement on Twitter/X:
https://twitter.com/DrRhys/status/1744815814857970088

Also, I found it was easy to get it to work on the Electron:
In LOADER (BASIC program): remove line 40 and change line 220 to RESTORE 251. I tested this in Elkulator where PAGE=&E00 even when using DFS (which may be crucial here)

[billcarr2005]

Thanks Bill,

BTW, if you type CHAIN"LOADER" the game gives a bad program when trying to load the levels, but is OK if you EXEC "!BOOT" which just chains "LOADER" - odd!
I can see from the files and their lengths that no hidden code is stored on the disc.
Any ideas why this is?

Mick.

I believe it's because !BOOT isn't open, so doesn't have a file handle (correct terminology) occupying 1200-12FF, therefore 1200-12FF is getting corrupted instead of 1300-13FF - I've attached a fixed version which should solve that problem - of course if multiple files were open then it's likely to crash
I've added a *FX119 into LOADER, which should prevent any further issues!
Is it more usual to have hidden code on a disc than not?

Also, I found it was easy to get it to work on the Electron:
In LOADER (BASIC program): remove line 40 and change line 220 to RESTORE 251. I tested this in Elkulator where PAGE=&E00 even when using DFS (which may be crucial here)

I thought it was odd that the game binary was being modified in 2 out of 2 cases, rather than having 1 "default" case and the other which required the modifications!

[rhysjj]

People talking about TERKON! Fantastic, and thanks so much to 0xCODE and Bill for their efforts in getting it running on the Model B and Electron.

I'm a friend, since uni days, of Julian Mander who programmed Terkon - we originally bonded partly due to us both being teenage Electron owners! So it was originally coded on an Electron with, it seems, a disc interface that allowed PAGE to be set at &0E00 (0xCODE tells me the Slogger interface does that). No tape version as far as I'm aware - the game was sent round to various software houses, of which Superior showed the most interest, but it seems they wanted something more bankable. Julian vaguely recalls Richard Hanson implying to him that Superior had lost money on a game they'd released just previous to this - possibly Pipeline, due to the Piper Alpha oil-rig disaster happening shortly after its launch?

Anyway, here's the Terkon archive, including the letter sent to Superior, walkthroughs for some levels and even some suggested ad copy:
https://newydd.net/terkon

How are people getting on with the game itself?