Loadstar 128 34/q34.d81/t.tower golf

Text File | 2022-08-28 | 8KB | 177 lines

                            T O W E R   G O L F

                  Program by Marty Shank and Fender Tucker

                           Text by Fender Tucker


    Welcome to the world's finest indoor golf course -- The LOADSTAR TOWER
Golf and Racketeer Club. Ranging from the 121st through the 134th floors,
this paragon of white-collar decadence offers nine holes of Trumpian
splendor and ostentation. No expense has been spared -- from the rich
Corinthian sod of the fairways imported from Cordoba Spain, to the crystal
clear waters of the hazards, filled daily with Evian Water, imported in 1-
liter bottles from Kwikee-Mart of Bossier City Louisiana. Designed by Nobel
Prize-winning architect, Marty Shank of Attica OH, the course will test
your abilities to gauge angles and distances -- and at the same time, allow
you to have some fun.


 GETTING STARTED
 ---------------

    As you will find out, the course is designed for the 40-column screen,
so switch your monitor accordingly. You may use the keyboard or a joystick
in Port #2. If two or more play, you may use both. After a title screen and
short GREETINGS screen you are asked for the number of players. One to four
can play. Even if you are playing by yourself, you might find it fun to
play with two or more different "personas", perhaps using a distinctive but
different strategy for each?

    Then you enter each player's name, for scorekeeping purposes. The
person holding the course record score is memorialized on the input screen.
Until you beat him -- which you should easily -- my evil clone Knees
Calhoon holds the course record of 54.

    You are asked which hole you wish to start on. This is to allow you to
practice any of the holes at will. If you start with any hole OTHER THAN
#1, however, you will not be eligible for the course record. Your scores
will be kept on the scoreboard, but not considered for course record. To
beat that, you must start at hole #1.


 THE FAIRWAYS
 ------------

    You are looking at a bird's eye view of the hole, with your little
sprite guy at the tee box. The fairway is light green, the green and teebox
dark green, the bunkers brown and the rough black. There are three water
holes which have no rough, just blue water. The bottom two lines of the
screen display the hole number, the par for the hole, the distance from
teebox to pin, your name, the number of strokes so far for this hole (your
lie), and the distance from your ball to the pin.

    On the far right of the bottom part you'll see a shimmering "1 WOOD".
Use the keyboard CRSR keys or joystick UP/DOWN to cycle through the
options. The clubs are: 1 WOOD, 3 WOOD, 1 IRON, 3 IRON, 5 IRON, 7 IRON, 9
IRON, PITCHING WEDGE and SAND WEDGE. There are three other options: SCORES,
HELP and QUIT. SCORES simply shows you the scoreboard. HELP shows you two
screens that will help you determine the angle and the power of your
stroke. You definitely should check these two screens out before you try
your first shot. QUIT will immediately take you back to LOADSTAR 128. Don't
select that by accident!

    By the way, if you're new to golf, the SMALLER the number of the club,
the FARTHER the ball will go. The 1 WOOD is the most powerful club. The 1
IRON is more powerful than the 3 IRON. And the 9 IRON is more powerful than
the wedges.

    Once you've chosen your club (by pressing RETURN or FIRE), you are
asked to select the angle. Use the unSHIFTed CRSR keys or joystick UP/DOWN
to increment/decrement the angle number by 1. Use the SHIFTed CRSR keys or
joystick RIGHT/LEFT to increment the angle by 10. Angles range from 0 to
359 degrees with 0 being due east and 90 due north. The fastest way to
select the angle (especially for shots to the west) is to press numbers on
the number keypad. Imagine you're at 5. The eight numbers immediately
surrounding the 5 key are in the same direction as the angle -- 8 will
point you due north (or 90 degrees), 1 will point you SSW (or 225 degrees),
and so on. Using the number keypad is the fastest way to roughly select the
angle. Then use the joystick or CRSR keys to pick the exact angle you
want.

    After pressing RETURN or FIRE to select the angle, do the same thing
for the power, which ranges from 0 to 100. The number keypad doesn't work
for the power.

    When you press RETURN or FIRE for the power, your golfer guy will
stroke the ball and if you you've chosen your club, angle and power wisely,
the ball will fly on down the fairway, and it's the next player's turn to
select club, angle and power.

 NOTE: Unlike real golf, where the lowest scorer on a hole has "the honors"
of going first on the next hole, and where the "farthest from the pin"
plays first, in TOWER GOLF you simply take turns in order. No one goes to
the green until all of the players are on the green. If you land on the
green and there are other players still in the fairway or rough, you will
skip your turn until all are on the green.


 THE GREENS
 ----------

    When all are on the green, a new screen comes up, a zoom view of the
green and surrounding area. The "arrows" on the green show the direction of
the slope of the green at that point. A side view is shown on the right.
The thicker the arrow, the more the slope.

    At the bottom are displayed the green number, your name and the number
of strokes so far (lying). If you're "in the vicinity" of the green you'll
have the option of three clubs: the PITCHING WEDGE, the SAND WEDGE and the
PUTTER. If you are close enough to the green, or on it, you automatically
use the PUTTER.

    As in the fairway, select angle and power and take your shot. One big
difference between the fairway and the green is that on the green you are
not shown the distance. You must estimate and set the power accordingly. In
TOWER GOLF "going to school" on your opponents (in other words, learning
from their shots) is the best strategy. Just as in real golf, there are no
secrets about which club or angle you use.

    After each hole the scoreboard is displayed with the current standings.
Then you go to the next hole. When you finish Hole #9, if you started with
#1, you are considered for the course record. If you beat it, you are
congratulated and your name and score are saved to disk. Since there is a
lot of disk access in this program, always leave the disk in the drive you
booted the game from.


 COURSE RULES
 ------------

    When you shoot from the rough, your power is decreased by a certain
amount. Sometimes you can get a farther distance with a shorter club.

    When you shoot from a bunker, your power is cut even more. Using a high
power club from a bunker can cause quite erratic results. It's best to use
a club designed for a bunker -- probably. Everything is randomized in this
program. Just as in real life!

    Land in the water on one of the three water holes and ker-plunk! You've
lost a stroke.

    Your ball bounces more erratically in the rough and in the bunkers than
on the fairway or green.

    When you're on a green and you hit it far enough off the green, you
lose a stroke. In this program, once the green screen shows, there's no
going back to the fairway screen.


 THE TENTH HOLE
 --------------

    There is no tenth hole. This is just the name for the ending. You are
offered the options of playing another round (with new players and scoring)
or quitting to LOADSTAR 128.

    Marty Shank designed the course and wrote 90% of the program back in
1988. But because he used 37-block DOODLE screens for each hole it took up
so much disk space I hesitated to publish it. But recently I received a
submission from David Zammat of Summit NJ that had a routine for unpacking
and displaying ".shp" files to the 128 40-column screen. Just what I
needed! So I packed all 19 screens and started tweaking the program.
Several sessions later, we have TOWER GOLF. Admittedly it's not LEADERBOARD
GOLF, but it has a pleasant blend of luck and skill and for youngsters, a
great way to learn to estimate angles and distances.

    Thanks to Marty Shank and David Zammat for helping to make this game
publishable on LS 128. We hope to be able to build nine more holes soon.
Perhaps the $10,000