Probe Lander - a BASIC language game

 Probe Lander or plander is a project I longed wanted to do. I received my first computer in 1983 for Christmas. It was a ZX Spectrum made by Sinclair Research. I learned BASIC on that machine and learned a lot about games. My friends had various other machines. One of my friends had a lunar lander game. I later found out that the lunar lander game was first created on mainframes and the one I first played was a dim reflection of that first lander game. But later, I met a man who had a pocket computer and he had a lander game on it that only showed numbers. I played it and it was so intriguing in its simplicity and yet complexity of gaming.

I attempted to make my own lander game but to no avail. I failed every time. For years I kept trying on and off. Until it finally dawned on me how to make the game. How I wanted to make it. It would be a turned based game. That's a big departure from the traditional game as that was a live game. My game was also going to be only numbers. So no graphics. So how to keep the users engaged? There was a small story behind it. You are sitting in Mission Control and you are guiding the probe to the moon looking at telemetry. And the timing seems right with the several lunar probes recently sent to the moon irl. 

by EC Holm

I was going to write the game in BASIC, and I did. But the plan was more ambitious. In the retro computer world, BASIC was the one way you could port a program from one computer to another with relative ease. So, I plan to port the game to a total of 6 systems: ZX Spectrum, ZX81, Commodore 64, Vic 20, QB64, and Bywater BASIC. QB64 is native to MS Windows and By Water BASIC is native to Linux. The others are retro computers but of course they have their own emulators available. 

I'm going to supply the game for free as binary files but also I will supply the BASIC code so it can also be a type-in. Now, a type-in game was a game that often came in computer magazines back in the day. They often came with a description and instructions on how to play in the magazine as well along with some art. This was an amusing and encouraging way to help kids learn BASIC and also how to create games.

This project is a long time coming for me personally and it fulfills one of my childhood dreams albeit a small one. But it feels nice to be able to do it. It also feels nice that this idea and concept came together and finally realized. Thanks for reading.