Bally Artillery
By John W. Rhodes
Creative Computing, August 1982, Pages 191-192.


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From: Adam Trionfo
To: ballyalley@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 7, 2018 6:39 PM
Subject: Added "Bally Artillery" from Creative Computing Magazine

I was browsing random issues of "Creative Computing this afternoon when I came across a game that I had never heard of before today: "Bally Artillery" by John W. Rhodes.  This game isn't to be confused with "Artillery Duel" by John Perkins.  Both have the same idea, but they are completely different programs.

Even though this game was published in August 1982, the author seems to imply in his write-up that it was written in late 1978 or early 1979, shortly after he got his Bally Arcade.  This program isn't digitally archived as a WAV file (and likely won't ever be found on tape), so you'll have to type this one into BASIC in order to play it.  You can view the "Bally Artillery" article with the type-in program, here:

http://www.ballyalley.com/type-in_programs/basic/basic.html#BallyArtilleryBASICTypeIn

Here are the authors notes from the "Bally Artillery" article:

"In December of 1978 I was ready to buy my first computer system, but my requirements were not easy to meet. I wanted something that could handle arcade-quality games, had high- resolution graphics capability, color display, and Basic in PROM.

"I was not satisfied with anything my local dealers had to show (no one I visited had a Compucolor. the Apple dealers were showing low-resolution only, and the Atari was only a rumor), but on the basis of the (somewhat premature) advertising for the keyboard/expansion unit. I decided to buy a Bally Professional Arcade. I could use Tiny Basic for a while, and turn it into a “real" machine in just a few short months.

"It was just a few short months later that the local dealers began to show Compucolors and high-resolution Apples, and it seemed that the Bally expansion unit was more of a rumor than the Atari 800. I would visit the showrooms, see those beautiful full-size keyboards, watch people work in “real" Basic and be as green as the color monitors.

"I particularly liked the artillery game that Compucolor called 'Shoot...' This game generates a random terrain display and wind factor and positions two artillery emplacements on the screen so that two opponents can take turns trying to obliterate each other. Eventually I resolved that I either had to buy a Compucolor or program this game on my Bally. I chose the latter.

"This turned out to be quite a challenge with less than 2K of memory and integer-only Tiny Basic. But the Bally Basic is quite sound for game programming and easy to work with. The greatest difficulty was finding an integer sine routine, but after searching the magazines I found a routine to adapt to my purpose. I started out using a full ballistic equation, but soon found by experimentation that I could use an approximation. This eliminated an integer square-root routine and added speed in the bargain.

"I spent approximately two months writing, debugging, and fine-tuning the program, but it was worth the effort.

"A few months later I did buy the Compucolor and have been using it ever since. I'm well satisfied with it and use it for a variety of tasks. But my wife and I still enjoy the Bally for its games, especially the artillery game."

The article also includes notes and an explanation of how the program works.

I'm not sure how I overlooked it before now.  "Bally Artillery" appeared in a major publication.  How has it remained under the radar all of this time?

Enjoy!

Adam

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Lance Squire typed this program into "AstroBASIC."  It works to some degree, but has some issues.  The program was originally added to the Bally Alley Yahoo group, here:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ballyalley/files/WIP/

Here are the descriptions from the Yahoo group website:

Bally_ArtilleryE3.wav - John Rhodes "Artillery" with edits by Ken Lill. Fully working version! 864 KB. glankonian. Jun 28.

Bally_ArtilleryE3.bml - digital version - 21 KB. glankonian. Jun 28.

Bally_ArtilleryE3RAW.wav - Raw save of Edited Artillery. Suggested Edits by Ken Lill.  - 1932 KB. glankonian. Jun 28.

Bally Artillery (John W Rhodes).wav - Digitally cleaned version - 863 KB. glankonian. Jun 15.

Bally Artillery (John W Rhodes).bml - Binary file converted from Raw WAV - 21 KB. glankonian. Jun 15

Bally Artillery (John W Rhodes) RAW.wav - RAW save from AstroBASIC. 2126 KB. glankonian. Jun 13

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From: 'Lance F. Squire' lance@glankonian.com
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2018 723 AM
To:  ballyalley@yahoogroups.com
Subject Re Added Bally Artillery from Creative Computing Magazine
 
I have uploaded both the .bml and clean .wav to my WIP directory in the
Files section of this group.

I commented out line 400 trying to get it to work right.

In this version of Artillery you get to keep trying until you hit your
opponent. Only then dies it switch sides and let your opponent try.

I'll have to try putting 400 back and see if it changes play or just
stops working again...

Lance

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To: ballyalley@yahoogroups.com
From: lance@glankonian.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2018 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: [ballyalley] Added Bally Artillery Video Overview; was: Re: Added "Bally Artillery" from Creative Computing Magazine
 
Uploaded latest version with many edits suggested by Ken Lill.

With line 400 it now properly swaps sides, instead of waiting until
player one kills you to give player 2 a turn.

Sadly, I've still got something messed-up in there, as now player two
shoots in the same direction as player one.

I haven't yet figured out why, as all the IF statements look right...

Give it a try, maybe someone else can figure it out before me. :)

Lance
