Killer 'thello is a game for the Atari 8-bit (that's Atari Classic to you, stranger) that I wrote for Antic back in 1988. The game WAS accepted for publication but due to some very strange circumstances was never published (first they mislaid it, then when they found it again, they thought it was for the ST...). Regardless of its history, it is an amusing little number; even though it's more fun to watch than actually play. Since it would be a shame to completely waste a perfectly good 8-bit program, I'm releasing it as post-ware. If you like it, send me a post-card. Here's the address... Snail Mail Mark T. Price (sg) 2144 Loma Drive Hermosa Beach, CA. 90254 E-Mail mark@godzilla.Quotron.COM The original documentation follows. This information is also given in ATASCII in the file THELLO.DOC. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Killer 'thello By Mark T. Price Like chess, Othello is a thinking man's game. Like chess, it has an enormous number of possibilities that must be weighed before each move. Like chess, every piece on the board must be taken into consideration. Like chess, moves must be planned ahead and your opponent must be second-guessed. And, like chess, all hell breaks loose when you tell the players that they don't have to take turns. Killer 'thello is a computer adaptation of the classic board game Othello (also known as Reversi) where just that happens. Like Killer Chess from the February 1988 Antic, each player moves as fast as he or she can to overwhelm their opponent with speed as well as cunning. It should be noted that Greg "Assembly is EVIL" Knauss had absolutely nothing to do with the design or writing of this game, although he wishes he did. TYPING IT IN Go ahead, I dare you. MAKING SELECTIONS When the title screen for 'thello appears, you can select human or computer control for each player and you may also set the number of players on each team. That's right, Killer 'thello is played with teams. Up to four on each side, with a maximum of five players total. Notice that the word "White" in the upper left hand corner of the screen is highlighted. This means that all selections made will affect the White team. To make selections for the Black team, press the space bar. This toggles the highlit team between Black and White. The game defaults to two human players, one on the White team, and one on the Black. To add a human player to the current team, press the SELECT key. The number next to each '+' cursor indicates the joystick that will control that player. The number of human players in the game is limited to four due to the avail- ability of joystick ports. If you try to play with more than two humans on an XL or XE, players 1 and 3 will be controlled by joy- stick 1 and players 2 and 4 will be controlled by joystick 2. To add a computer player to the current team, press the OPTION key. A 'C' will be placed next to the new cursor indic- ating that this is a computer player. The number next to the 'C' is the level of that computer player. Press the numbers 1 to 9 to change this. One is the equivalent of a beginning Killer 'thello player, and nine should easily defeat the most exper- ienced. Since only five cursors can appear on the screen at any time, you will not be able to select, for instance, four humans if you already have two computer players. To remove players, simply press the respective key; SELECT for human, OPTION for computer until all the players of that type are gone from that side. Then, add back the number you want (remembering that the space bar will toggle you between the Black and White teams). The game will not let you remove all of the players from a team. PLAYING THE GAME Pressing the START key will begin the game. The game will give the person who does this a chance to get ready by printing "READY . . . SET . . . GO!" on the screen. Each team starts out with two disks already laid out on the board. Moves in the game lay disks on the board. In order for a move to be valid, there must be some number of the opposing team's disks between the new disk and one of your old ones. There can be no empty space in this line, but the lines can be either horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. When this is done, all of the opponent's pieces in between your new and old disks are flipped to your color. To make a move, move your cursor to a valid spot using the joystick and press the trigger. If the move you attempted to make is not valid, your cursor will be returned to the "Penalty Box" where you started the game. This can be very costly in terms of time, so be careful! The computer players begin to move as soon as the game is started and never make illegal moves. The score in the game is the number of disks of your color. It is shown with the numbers in the upper left and lower right hand portions of the screen. The game ends when all of the spaces on the board are filled or neither team can make any legal moves. Whichever team has the highest score wins (Stunning new concept in computer games). After a short while the title screen will reappear and you may play again. ANOTHER ONE? So, there it is, Killer 'thello. Can Killer 'nopoly be far behind? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A couple of comments: Greg "maddog" Knauss (Author of Killer Chess) DID think this was a pretty neat program, but he hated the method I used to set up the players (I really don't like it much either, but I couldn't think of a simpler method. It was a BITCH to get it working right too). Can Killer 'nopoly be far behind? You bet it can. REALLY far... P.S.: There's a bug in the code that doesn't check to see if you're on the playing area when you try to make a move. It doesn't crash, but it results in some strange moves when you do it. If you're especially industrious, you can try to fix it. The Mac/65 source to the game is included in the archive.