Star Trek

Full title	Star Trek
Year of release	2020
Publisher	Bokje
Producer / Author(s)	Bokje
Memory	19k
Type	Game
Cost :	PD
Download	Star Trek [CRC32 F083516B] Distribution Permission Allowed | Group 1

Instructions

Star Trek for the Jupiter Ace

Version 0.9

Introduction

Use “LOAD sttr.tap” to load the game, using the Ace ROM with Vdrive support, or for example in the EightyOne emulator.

Enter “STARTREK” to start your mission.

If the Enterprise is in danger, you will be notified.

VLIST shows the commands that you can give. You get a nice random list of words, just like with Forth ;-)

See COMMANDS below for a short description, or type

HELP <command> for online help for each command.

The "Yackety-Yak" speechboard is supported and used in some occasions.

Commands

GO: to fly through the galaxy
SRSCAN: to scan the current quadrant and get environment info
LRSCAN: to scan the current and neighbouring quadrants, to look for Klingons and Starbases
FIRE: to fire phasers at Klingons
TORPEDO: to launch a torpedo
SHIELDS: to raise shields to protect the Enterprise
DAMAGES: to get a damage report on the Enterprise’s devices
LOG: to view the recorded LRSCANs
STATUS: to view the status of the game
DIRS: to calculate directions and distances to Klingons
VERSION: to get information on the current software
HELP: to get help on any of these commands

Hints

A first command may be SHIELDS; otherwise you’ll find the Enterprise soon be destroyed.
The whole Forth universe is still at your disposal. So you could for example do

: SC SRSCAN ;

to save typing. Keep in mind though that there are a lot of short words already defined. Some Cheats
To start with a galaxy you know (set to zero for random): <number> GLX ! To get a Starbase in sector 1,1: STARBASE 1 1 IJ QRS C!

To destroy Klingon 1 in the quadrant:
0 KLINGON.DESTROYED

to fire at Klingons without getting hit:
1000 KLINGONS.HIT

Background

The original game is described here: . It seems the source is freely available, and is included to compare the implementations. It seemed like a nice idea to convert this BASIC program to Forth. But it was much harder than expected! Some calculations in the code took a long time to get right, and perhaps some are still not correct ;-) The ALOAD command makes it easier to load a program with separate modules, but the order of loading the modules is highly critical. Many, if not almost all, Ace Forth features were used in this port. REDEFINE was not, but it could perhaps have been used in a module to redefine a word with a complete definition for a dummy word in an earlier loaded module.

Some interesting new words are:

SC@ - to get a signed byte
HELP - utility to display the first comment in a word definition
SAY - to say sentences with the speechboard
As a final note, this port is hopefully an inspiration to code more in Forth!

Screen shots