Asteroid Miner by Dan Gerhards

Files

Installing

1. Copy all these files into the folder that has fmslogo.exe in it. (If you want to put them somewhere else, you will have to modify a shortcut appropriately.)
2. If you have fmslogo.exe in a directory other than the default, C:\Program Files\FMSLogo, change the properties of the shortcut to point at the right directory.
3. Put the appropriate shortcut wherever you want, and use it to start the game.
4. The first time you play, press "I" or use the mouse to expand the menu and read the instructions.

GNU/Linux and Wine

I've tested FMSLogo-6.33.0 under wine-1.7.40 on Fedora Core 20 and it works well enough to play the game! One thing will have to be changed: the program sets the font to Times New Roman, which probably didn't come with your Linux distro. This will cause the game to seem to lock up while it prints out a list of fonts you do have. Either install the Times New Roman font, or change the program to use a font you have. You will also have to create your own shortcut. I made a shortcut that launches "wine /opt/fmslogo.exe -h 660 -w 924 -f -l AM.lgo". You can use whatever you want for width and height, -w and -h, as long as the width is 1.4 times the height.

Where Asteroid Miner Came From

In college I took a class called Computer Science in Education. The class was to teach Logo to teachers so they could use it in their classrooms. I was a programmer from way back, so when it came time to create a final project, I showed off a little and wrote this. Later, when I was, in fact, teaching a Logo class, I brought it in to show what Logo is capable of. I also got interested in it again, so I added more levels and animation affects.

The game is obviously nothing new, but for the curious, I ripped off the ideas from Asteroids and an old Macintosh game called Crystal Quest. It was originally going to be just an Asteroids clone, but the fastest computer on campus was a Pentium 100MHz, and it couldn't run the game smoothly with more than one object moving at a time. Logo is a lot of things, but "fast" isn't one of them!

Technical Details

Since Logo is not fast, very old computers may not run it smoothly. If the game is too slow, there is a set of constants in the initMain procedure that can be uncommented to speed it up by dropping the frame rate.

The game works on a Dvorak keyboard layout as well as QWERTY. To move the ship, just use H, T, and N instead of J, K, and L. (If you don't know what the Dvorak layout is, look it up on the Internet.)

The source code isn't well commented because I wrote it with a deadline (for a class project), and I never originally intended to release it. If you have a burning question about something, you can email me.

FMSLogo provides some nonstandard commands for dealing with the timer and keyboard, so the program will probably not work with other interpreters. I don't plan on porting it either, but you can!

Contacting Me

Find my email address on my web site on http://spacemandan.net.

If you like Asteroid Miner, let me know. I would also be interested in hearing if you manage to beat my high score of 33,595!

License

Asteroid Miner is free, and it must stay that way. You are allowed to change it and make your own versions, but please keep my name on the title screen, and keep this file with the program if you give it away. Maybe the new title screen could say, "Original Code by Dan Gerhards--Modified by Me." If you make some significant changes, please send me a copy!

The sound effect for getting a gem was dedicated to the public domain by KP and downloaded from soundbible.com as Power-Up-KP-1879176533.wav.

The sound effect for the exploding ship was dedicated to the public domain by kibblesbob and downloaded from soundbible.com as Flashbang-Kibblesbob-899170896.wav.

The sound effect for when a level is complete was dedicated to the public domain and downloaded from soundbible.com as Comet-SoundBible.com-1256431940.wav.

Last modified 2015-04-19