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Uno for the Atari 8-bit in Atari Microsoft BASIC


hloberg

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Uno for the Atari 8-bit in Atari Microsoft BASIC

 I wrote for the Atari 8-bit in Atari Microsoft BASIC. But I did later translate the program to the TI-99 (see Games/Mygame section).

Not a lot of people knew Microsoft wrote a BASIC for the Atari 8-bit line. Fact is Atari Microsoft BASIC was going to be 'the' BASIC for the Atait 8-bit line. The only thing that stopped from being the de-facto BASIC for the Atari was that Atari had a requirement that the BASIC had to fit in a 8k cartridge. Microsoft couldn't ever get their BASIC below 12k and so Atari went with a company, which would later be called OSS, that could make a BASIC that could fit. Anyhow, a little while after the introduction of the 800 Atari released the Atari Microsoft BASIC first on disk then in a cartridge format (it still didn't all fit in 8k though).

Unfortunately Atari Microsoft BASIC never caught on for various reasons such as the cost, lack of compatibility with standard Atari BASIC, it consumes more memory than Atari BASIC and a need to have either the disk or cart to run any MSBASIC software.

Setting aside the above flaws the actual software is rather nice. It's much more standard to other BASICs then Atari BASIC , It's faster than standard Atari BASIC and has a lot more commands then standard Atari BASIC even ability to set up integer or real variables.

the Uno game is simple as I just wanted to have a demonstrator for MS BASIC. You play against 3 computer opponents.
the game is in graphics 1 with the a little P/M graphics for the Discard card.
to play:
bottom 4 lines are the letters for your cards segregated by color; red, yellow, green and blue. last line is Spl which is the change color cards.
the types of cards beside the colors are 0-9 D=draw 2, S=skip and R=reverse. under Spl are C=change color and F=draw 4.
when the human plays you choose Sort, Play and Take. Sort just sorts your cards. Take will take a card from the pile. Play will play 1 of your cards.
in Play you type the card you want to play by following the prompts.
the game plays a standard game of Uno except;
Uno call is automatic and has 1 in 9 chance of 'forgetting to call' penalty which is also automatic.
when you Take a card you can not play it even if the card is playable till the next round.

So I wrote an Uno game in Atari Microsoft BASIC just to see what it could do and was pleasantly surprised. Here is game I wrote download from the Atariage site (you will need an Atariage account to download) .

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