TINY PILOT HURKLE NOTES -- by Dave Hassler

   This classic game runs under 6800 Tiny PILOT by Nicholas Vrtis as
augmented by Bob Applegate in 1980. The game takes advantage of Bob's
integer number input routines.  I translated it from Microsoft BASIC
The game is just 1.5K, and while PILOT was never intended as a language
in which to play math-oriented games, this one runs quite well.

   The only significant modification I made was to change the number
of attempts to find the hurkle from five to four. I'm almost positive
that the original author -- Bob Albrecht of People's Computer
Company fame -- allowed an extra "shot" for the small children who
would play this game in the mid 1970s. An "established" formula for
such grid-based games is to allow INT(log2(x)) shots, plus 1,
where x is the length of a side of a sqaure or cube. For a 10x10
square, that should be four shots: 2x2x2=8, +1 to the exponent. For
a square of 100 units, it should be seven.
   I knew nothing of logarithms before working on another old BASIC
program recently, so I count it a "win" to have learned something
while having fun with my 6802/SBC hobby (I was in non-technical areas
almost all of my working life).

REMARKS

   That's about it. While Tiny PILOT (or any PILOT, for that matter)
was *never* intended to be a number-cruncher by any stretch of the
imagination, with Bob Applegate's integer input and a random number
generator, Tiny PILOT is capable of some interesting games. I had to
learn how to divide and do a less-than comparison with only simple
addition, subtraction, and a direct comparison, which was fun.  :^)
   There is a division subroutine at label *K to get a 0-9 number from
the 0-85 pseudo random number generator. Obviously, with the upper
limit being 85, there's a little weight added to the high end, but
not much. There are two less-than comparisons, which start just before
labels *R and *S.
   I hope you find these explorations useful. While PILOT's major
strength is that it's a superb dialog engine, Tiny PILOT is still
capable of some entertaining games.

Have fun! -- DHH, 22 Feb 2024

