Version 2.1 of H. Piper! for SUPER-CHIP follows below. DISCLAIMER: Since CHIP makes use of undocumented features of the HP48SX, anything can happen: loss of data, meltdown, etc. Therefore, I take no responsibility for any damage whatsoever that occurs. **************** H. Piper! ********************** OBJECT: ------- You are presented with a 6 row, 10 column grid and a preview panel of 5 pipes. A starting pipe will be placed on the grid and will in a few seconds start leaking. The object is to lay pipes on the grid to contain the leak as long as you can. If the water flows onto an empty grid site, onto the side of another pipe or border, that plumbing job is finished. If you did well enough, you may get another job. Otherwise the game is over. STARTING THE GAME: ----------------- Make sure you have the SCHIP program on the calculator. Press HPIPER to recall the program string to the stack. Then press SCHIP to start the game. HOW TO PLAY: ------------ On the bottom and right borders of the grid are grid pointers. The bottom pointer can be moved left with the (1) key and right with the (2) key. The side pointer can be moved up with the (9) key and down with the (6) key. (Note: this is identical to the movement keys for Syzygy by Roy Trevino) A crosshair is present on the grid sites the two paddles point to. Using the pointers, chose a grid site to place a pipe. The pipe to be placed is the one at the bottom of the preview column. Once a site is chosen, press the (7) or (4) key to place the pipe there. You can replace a pipe already at the grid site with a penalty of one point. You cannot replace a pipe that the water has already flown through. Trying to do this will make you lose the pipe you were trying to place and also penalize you one point. The two buttons used to place pipe differ in the way that the next pipe added at the top of the queue. Pressing (7) will choose a random new pipe to place at the top of the preview column and push the others down the queue. Pressing (4) will use the pipe currently displayed to the right of the grid as the new pipe to be placed at the top of the preview column. The pipes on the right cycle through all types in a set manner. When you have placed all the pipe you wish to for a particular job, you can press the (+) key to make the water flow *FAST*. You can still lay pipe if you realize you made a mistake, but hurry! KEY SUMMARY: Left (1) Right (2) Up (9) Down (6) Place (7) random Place (4) non-random Fast (+) Once a job is over, press (SPACE) to continue. There are twenty levels with increasing water flow speed. Level 20's speed is the same as that for *FAST*. If you manage to get through level 20, it repeats at that level till you fail. The starting speed with which the flow comes out of the initial pipe is slower than the usual flow, however this speed increases in level also. SCORING: -------- You receive 3 points for every pipe the water flows through. For the crossed pipes, flowing through them in both directions gives you 6 points. You are penalized 1 point for replacing or trying to replace a pipe already on the grid. The current job score is shown in upper right corner. The score can not go negative, so if the score is zero, you can replace pipes without penalty. Once a job is over, the program checks to see if every grid site was flown through. If so you earn a 100 point bonus. The score earned is added to the grand total and displayed on the screen shown after (SPACE) is pressed. If the game is over, the word OVER will be displayed above the score and the (SPACE) key can be pressed to exit. The total score will be written to user flags so that the user lang program SCORE can put the score on the stack. If over does not appear, press (SPACE) to go on to the next job. The points needed to go to the next job are obtained by the following formula: Points needed = 100 - (41 - 2 * level) therefore, you need 63 points to go to job 2 65 points to go to job 3 ... 99 points to go to job 20,21,.... The points needed for a level are shown below the bottom right corner of a grid. Note that this does not mean that play ends once that score is achieved. That score is only a minimum needed to have the opportunity to continue on another job. RESUME: ------- Between jobs (i.e. while at the dripping faucet wait screen) you can press the decimal (.) key to leave the game and go to the regular calculator mode. The total score and level you achieved will be stored in the user flags so that next time you start the game, you will resume the game as you left it. Do not run the SCORE program or you will lose the resumable state. If somehow the user flags get messed up by other programs you run after pausing, you can set them using the HPSET program. Put the desired score on level 2 and the game level you just completed on level 1. Once you get really good at the game, you can use this to bypass the first few really slow screens. For example, to start off on level 9, enter 0 then 8 and run HPSET. When you start the game, you will begin at level 10. RANDOMNESS: ---------- The starting pipe for the first level is still placed randomly. For subsequent levels, however, the starting pipe is located on the grid site you "leaked" on with the starting direction opposite of that you entered. If you leaked onto the border, then the starting pipe is placed on the site you leaked from. The first five pipes in the queue are selected randomly. OTHER REMARKS: ------------- -- The [ENTER] key will now work to restart the game as if it was just run for the first time. -- The movement keys can now be held down to move the crosshair long distances. -- Corner pieces are guaranteed for the first four pipes to get out of sticky situations with the starting pipe placement. TROUBLE SHOOTING: ---------------- Some people have reported assorted problems with getting the program to work. For those who can't get SCHIP to work with H. Piper, try turning off all alarms and date/clock displays. If you have Chipper, you might try compiling the source code yourself and see if you can get it to run from there. DEVELOPMENT NOTES: ----------------- Pipe Graphics -- As you will probably notice, a lack of color is a big problem in trying to sort out what you have laid out. Having 8x8 pipe bitmaps was a cornerstone of my design so enlarging them for better resolution would be difficult and probably restrict the grid size unduly. Randomness -- Just how random is S-CHIP's random generator? You will probably notice that the cross pipe comes up more often than the others. True. It is twice as likely to be chosen than any of the others. Another design fluke. However, being the one true symmetrical piece, it will be the most useful to get often. Program Size -- I've put a semi-rigid limit of 2K on the size of the program. Any improvement that will put it over that barrier just won't be worth it. (I will of course probably eat these words later.) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: ---------------- H. Piper! was written using the excellent compiler Chipper. I will make the source available if there is any interest. Be forewarned. I am a pretty sloppy coder. There is much room for improvement in efficiency. CHIP-48 is (C) Copyright 1990 Andreas Gustafsson. - Many, many thanks to the one who started it all. Chipper is (C) Copyright 1990 Christian Egeberg. - It is amazing that with such a great compiler as this, there are so few CHIP games out there. SUPER-CHIP is (C) Copyright 1991 Erik Bryntse - Never be satisfied with limitation. Happy plumbing!