REVIEW

AT 1,26; "ADVANCED SPACE SCARPER SIMULATOR"

Reviewer: ZX-8100
Developer: Steve McCrea
Genre: Astrophysics
Platform: Spectrum 48K
Language: BASIC

In an effort to save valuable bytes of memory Steve McCrea has had to cut short the epic backstory which explains exactly who, or what, you're scarpering from in this game. Obviously I assumed at first, as will most, that we were scarpering (Through space - Ed) from the little cyan spaceships but then I got to thinking; were we really?!

You see the "Advanced... Simulator" part of the game's title began to suggest that we were actually sitting in some elaborate Virtual Reality training system, in Dunstable, and that none of this was real!

With the very fabric of my own existence unravelling around me I ran screaming into the street - a bit like in Total Recall - and I couldn't help but think that if Steve had just worked in a little clarity, with couple of lines of B-Movie/Sci-Fi drivel, all of this could've been avoided.

So what we've got here is a "rotate the ship, apply some thrust and avoid flying into the space debris" sort of game where the goal is to get from one side of the screen to the other and escape through the little red cross thingy (Wormhole, maybe? Ed.)

No one actually appears to be chasing you and there's no time limit so you should be able to take your time, using small bursts of thrust and careful ship orientation, to edge your way through the galactic debris field with ease.

In the background, however, is a simple but constant Space Invaders-esque 16-note beeper tune which, for some reason, I find completely menacing and and I've convinced myself gets faster and faster, creating more and more tension.

As a result, despite the complete lack of actual danger, I find myself imposing imaginary time limits on getting to the exit. This, in turn, forces me to thrust hard (Oo-er missus!) and attempt to brake by spinning the ship around 180 which, inevitably, leads to me crashing into anything and everything with alarming frequency.

Now would be a good time to mention the wonderfully cheap explosion effect which is implemented using the DRAW command and results in some rudimentary colour clash! I was also able to cause a "B Integer Out of Range" error by running for the screen border at full pelt - so bonus points for both!

If you do manage to make it across the screen then it's on to the next level where, along with a random change in border colour, you're set to do exactly the same thing again. On each subsequent level the number of space debris objects increases* which makes manoeuvring in between them more and more difficult.

My 'high score' is level 5 and I reckon it'd be impossible by around level 20 for regular humans.

Just for fun I changed line 135 to LET l=100 and it took over a minute to draw (and overdraw) the 430 space debris objects that you'd be facing by then. Here's a screenshot of that 'theoretical' level 100 - good luck with that!

* Using the formula 30 + (4*level) - which no doubt took Steve several tweaks to get just right!

In summary I found Advanced Space Scarper Simulator to be frustrating and addictive in equal amounts. I don't think it'll stand much of a chance once Elite: Dangerous comes out but, until then, I may end up having a few more goes.

Code Jump

When I first loaded this up I was suprised by the 15-20 seconds between the end of loading and the title screen appearing (during which time there was no indication anything in particular was happening) so, being the curious type, I had a deeper look into the code.

Steve loads 32768 bytes of data into address 30720 at the beginning of the program and I did wonder if he was filling memory with nonsense in an effort to make the load time as long as possible - perhaps for a cheap laugh?

I commented out line 30 (which loads said code) and, while the game appeared to run without issue, it took me a second to realise the ship itself had vanished (and LOAD "ship"CODE didn't give you a clue? - Tech Ed.)

Using BASin's Graphic/Sprite Editor I was finally able to see what was going on - 3/4 of RAM filled with frames and frames of the ship graphic at incremental angles and positions.

I can only assume that BASIC PLOT and DRAW commands didn't get the look and/or the speed he was going for, however, it's this kind of blue sky thinking that separates the men from the boys when it comes to truly crap games programming. Utterly brilliant work, Steve!

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