Deep in caverns under Arcadia, fuel cannisters of semi-matter ore to power the city's defensive shield have been cached away against the day when the aliens would return. Composed of mixed-charge matter, hyke (as it is called) is easily persuaded to annihilate itself in the manner of matter-antimatter reactions, but is more easily stored.
Now that the attack has begun, brave volunteer retrievers must don helipacks, fly down into the caves and bring up the ore, so that Arcadia may not fall.
R.O.T.O. is a game of coodination, reflexes, timing and a hint of strategy that should keep you going for a while before Arcadia can claim victory.
Plug in your Action! cartridge and type in Listing 1. Action! is forgiving about case, spacing and line divisions, so you need not slavishly follow the format of the listing (which is compressed somewhat for purposes of publication).
SAVE it before attempting to RUN it! If you try to run R.O.T.O. from memory, the source code will be overwritten and ruined, causing much gnashing of teeth. Because R.O.T.O. is so large, it must be compiled off of disk or cassette.
Go have lunch while the source code's being saved (about fifteen minutes). Come back, clear memory with the SHIFT CLEAR, and enter the monitor with the CTRL-M command.
Rewind the tape containing the R.O.T.O. source code, press PLAY, type in R "C:" and RETURN. Have some more lunch. The computer is rereading the source code, compiling il as it does. When it's finished compiling, the game will automatically start.
In the future, you may play R.O.T.O. by inserting the tape containing the source code into the recorder and typing the R "C:" command.
<pic>
Cannisters of hyke are scattered about the caves. They look like the fuel intake, except that they're glowing. Pick up these cannisters by touching them, then return to the intake and touch it. This advances your score and charges the shield in accordance with however many cannisters you've deposited.
Each cannister is worth fifty points. Returning ore also refuels your helipack. Picking up more than ten cannisters before depositing them will cause their magnetic fields to interact with explosive results.
Your man moves up, down, left, right and diagonally in all directions, although he moves downwards faster than up. Moving against the screen's border will scroll more caverns into view, although you'll automatically stop at the far ends of the caves.
Don't run into a wall, or you'll lose a helipack. Watch your fuel. too. Running out will produce the expected effect.
Your retriever is also equipped with a molecular debonding device to facilitate going through rock. Press the fire button to let off a shot. The debonder will vaporize any chunk of rock you fire on. but you will lose a point for even' piece of the caves you eliminate (because you're reducing their structural integrity).
Unfortunately, the debonder will also affect a fuel cannister. Rupturing the magnetic bottle containing the hyke will produce a large explosion and prevent anyone else from retrieving fuel.
Also, attacks from the alien fleet will shake the caves periodically, causing rocks to break loose from the ceiling. Shooting rocks is worth one point each (for cleaning up). Don't run into them, and be careful that the tremors don't send you into a wall.
Pressing any key while a game is in progress will pause it. Press another key to resume play. If you want to begin again, press START.
If you play well and retrieve enough cannisters to top 1000 points, the shield will have stayed up long enough for reinforcements to arrive—and the city will be saved.
On the other hand, if you wreck while hauling cannisters, you could deplete the ore supply so that victory is impossible.
Remember which portions of the caverns you've mined out, and definitely recall the way back to the fuel intake. The cave network is generated randomly each game, so expect variety.
R.O.T.O. may end in five ways:
I shudder to think what I would have gone through using a conventional assembler. Even when the source code became too large to co-reside with the object code, I could compile off of my Axlon RAMDisk with little loss of development time.
The author would appreciate any letters of business offers, extravagant praise, or, failing that, constructive commept. Have fun and save Arcadia!
; R.O.T.O. by Mike Stortz
SET $000E=$4000
SET $0491=$4000
DEFINE bytes="64",lines="80",
rock="194",pmb_page="128",
cb_page="128",cb_adr=""32768",
dl_page="136",dl_adr="34816"
misc_page="137",misc_adr="35072",
sc_page="140",sc_adr="35840"
BYTE
rtclok=$14,atract=$4D,lmargin=$52,
rowcrs=$54,dindex=$57,sdmctl=$22F,
gprior=$26F,crsinh=$2F0,
ch=$2FC,gractl=$D01D,
hitclr=$D0lE,consol=$D0lF,
audctl=$D208,skstat=$D20F,
pmbase=$D407,wsync=$D40A,
vcount=$D40B,nmien=$D40E,
chbas=$2F4,chbase=$D409,
hscrol=$D404,vscrol=$D405,
pcolr0=$2C0,pcolrl=$2C1,
pcolr2=$2C2,pcolr3=$2C3,
colpm0=$D012,colpm1=$D013,
colpm2-$D014,colpm3=$D015,
colr0=$2C4,colr1=$2C5,
colr2=$2C6,colr3=$2C7,
colr4=$2C8,
colpf0=$D016,colpf1=$D017,
colpf2=$D018,colpf3=$D019,
colpf4=$D01A
BYTE ARRAY hposp=$D000,mxpf=$D000,
hposm=$D004,pxpf=$D004
CARD colcrs=$55,savmsc=$58,
vdslst=$200,sdslst=$230,
txtmsc=$294
BYTE i,j,k,l,cx,cy,x,y,xs,xsm,ys,joy,
phase,mc,face,flag,bak,fore,
fuel,packs,enable,whine,
carried,end,cans,fallc,shake,
shakec
BYTE ARRAY logo=
[85 85 88 88 88 88 85 85
128 96 88 88 88 88 96 128
0 5 21 88 88 88 88 88
0 128 96 88 88 88 88 88
8 149 149 2 2 2 2 2
8 85 85 88 86 88 86 88
2 9 37 37 37 37 37 37
88 84 37 37 37 37 37 37
85 89 88 88 86 88 8 8 128 96 88 88 88 88 88 1
88 88 88 88 88 88 21 5
88 88 88 88 88 88 96 128
2222222 66
86 86 88 88 88 88 86 88 37 37 37 37 37 9 2 64 37 37 37 37 37 84 88 81 ,