ACME, inc. (10 liner)

ACME, inc (10 liner) is a  game written in ugBASIC and that runs on various 8-bit home computers like ATARI 400/800/XL/XE, TRS-80 COLOR COMPUTER 1/2 and OLIVETTI PRODEST PC128.

The aim of the game is to make the coyote run for as long as possible, avoiding the barrels that roll towards him. The more barrels you avoid, the higher the score. It is a self-competiting game, and it is designed for one player.

Click here to read the instructions on how to play.

This game joins the "BASIC10Liner" competition 2024.

Since it joined this competition, the game itself is modest in size, and the given source code respects strong constraints on the length of each line (category: EXTREME-256) and it does not rely on third party libraries. 

The source code is available on this repository.

The game has been reviewed on BrewOtaku #002.

HOW MUCH HAS ugBASIC HELPED?

This cross-platform game would not have been possible without using ugBASIC: it is an isomorphic language and it has cross compilers that works on Linux and Windows, that directly converts high level algorithms into the assembly equivalent for the given CPU / computer.

Developing for multiple platforms requires very little effort because the source does not have to be adapted or, like this case, it can be adapter limited to the hardware dependent aspects. With a single source code you can obtain programs for multiple retro computers, even very different from each other. Moreover, each target can have a dedicated optimizer, which allows to achieve very interesting results while leaving the BASIC code fully readable.