Dimension Wizards
The gods have adjourned after casting the warring colonies of black and white soldiers into a state of suspended animation and scattering them across 20 different dimensions. You and your opponent-wizards both-must press your joystick buttons to begin teleporting soldiers from your own colony hack into a more familiar dimension.
Type in Listing 1, DIMWIZ.BAS, check it with TYPO II and SAVE a copy before you RUN it. If you have trouble typing the special characters in lines that appear throughout the program, don't type them in. Instead, type in Listing 2, check it with TYPO II and SAVE a copy.
When you RUN Listing 2, it creates these hard-to-type lines and stores them in a file called LINES.LST. To merge the two programs, disk users LOAD "D:.BAS" and then ENTER "D:LINES.LST" Be sure to SAVE the completed program before you RUN it.
Wizard 1 is the white cursor, Wizard 2 is the black. Two joysticks are required. After both buttons have been pressed, a sound will indicate teleportation to another dimension.
The site of a previous battle will appear onscreen, with one to four dead warriors from each colony and four to nine "frozen" soldiers.
Vital statistics for Wizard 1 are displayed at the top of the screen. The same information categories are displayed at the bottom of the screen for Wizard 2. These include the score, remaining strength of the wizard, the number of lives each must save and the current "charge" of your lightning bolt which you'll fire against your opponent, hoping to nail him for 50 points.
Each wizard must try to touch his soldiers, whether they're dead or just frozen, thus returning them to their own dimension. Touching a dead warrior gives you 15 points and touching a live one gives you 30.
TRICKS FOR WIZARDS
After all the soldiers of one color have been returned to their home
dimension, their wizard teleports to the battlefield in the next of the
20 dimensions. The other wizard must follow soon if he doesn't want to
lose more men to the enemy.
Reaching your men isn't easy. Standing in your way are members of the
opposing colony, frozen in place. You've got to move them out of the way,
but the tremendous power of your touch will kill them. The problem here
is that this decreases the number of lives your opponent must save. But
at least you get 15 points- the war still goes on back in your home dimension,
and every enemy you kill helps toward your goal of winning.
back into a
more familiar
dimension.
Your opponent might not appreciate your wanton slaughter of his men, so he may get back at you by firing lightning bolts. A hit gives your opponent 50 points and decreases strength on both sides. However, even though your wizard can float above the obstacles, your lightning bolts can't pass through-so your opponent can hide behind the obstacles.
BOLTS OF DEATH
By touching a Pedestal of Power or a Shrine of Strength, you can increase
(by twos) your lightning bolt charge to 9 and your strength to 99. This
can help you prolong the game. Or you can bring a quick end to the game
by firing extra-strength lightning bolts.
But after each bolt is fired, your charge drops back to 1, so try not to accumulate and waste Pedestals of Power unless you're deliberately preventing your opponent from using them.
When you reduce your opponent's strength to zero, the game is over.
The number of teleportations is tallied up, and whoever teleported the
most is the winner. So even if you kill your opponent, you could still
lose.
Bernard Cozier is the first Antic author from Trinidad, West Indies.
Listing 1:DIMWIZ.BAS Download
Listing 2: LINES.BAS(not needed)