millionaire manual

[+hloberg]

i have been trying to tear apart the game 'millionaire' on the Atari. It's a real good market simulator that has things like selling on margin etc... the game is written in BASIC but the has some references to assembler and the variable names are like A1,A2,A3 so a bit hard to follow. the reason I want to redo it is the game takes a ungawdly long time to start, almost 10-15 minutes while tables are being built. I'm trying to see if I can recompile the game in compiled TurboBASICXL to speed it. But I need the manual to test it as I can't remember has the game goes. so any one got a manual?

Note, I recent found a copy of Millionaire for the Apple II, also in BASIC. it is much better written and easier to follow but can't find a manual for that version or the DOS version either. 

[777ismyname]

@hloberg do you have a link to the correct atr/BASIC file? I’d like to check it out, too.

 

You probably already know this, but if you’re using Altirra you can put the virtual Atari into high gear by pressing F1  The old Atari running at 2000% is pretty fast  

Edited January 28, 2020 by 777ismyname

[+hloberg]

7 hours ago, 777ismyname said:

@hloberg do you have a link to the correct atr/BASIC file? I’d like to check it out, too.

 

You probably already know this, but if you’re using Altirra you can put the virtual Atari into high gear by pressing F1  The old Atari running at 2000% is pretty fast  

here are the files i have collected for the atari 8bit. also included are a couple of the BASIC text I have pulled out.

million.zip

[777ismyname]

18 minutes ago, hloberg said:

here are the files i have collected for the atari 8bit. also included are a couple of the BASIC text I have pulled out.

million.zip 160.49 kB · 1 download

Thank you, @hloberg! I will check this out this afternoon. 

[+Allan]

On 1/27/2020 at 3:54 PM, hloberg said:

i have been trying to tear apart the game 'millionaire' on the Atari. It's a real good market simulator that has things like selling on margin etc... the game is written in BASIC but the has some references to assembler and the variable names are like A1,A2,A3 so a bit hard to follow. the reason I want to redo it is the game takes a ungawdly long time to start, almost 10-15 minutes while tables are being built. I'm trying to see if I can recompile the game in compiled TurboBASICXL to speed it. But I need the manual to test it as I can't remember has the game goes. so any one got a manual?

Note, I recent found a copy of Millionaire for the Apple II, also in BASIC. it is much better written and easier to follow but can't find a manual for that version or the DOS version either. 

I am pretty sure I have the manual but it needs to be scanned. I will put it at the top of the list for scanning.

[777ismyname]

Wow, I thought your being a little hyperbolic about the time it took for the game to build the data files, @hlorberg. You definitely were not.

[+hloberg]

5 hours ago, 777ismyname said:

Wow, I thought your being a little hyperbolic about the time it took for the game to build the data files, @hlorberg. You definitely were not.

oddly enough the C64 and Apple II versions are about 1/2 that time to start and their BASICs aren't any faster. and that's with the screen turned off on the Atari. I did a quick look over the code but I can't figure out why it's so much slower.

[+hloberg]

I HAVE FINALLY FOUND THE MANUAL TO MILLIONAIRE (he says in all caps excitement)! It just appeared on archive.org. I have checked that site several times and haven't previously found it, so kudos to who ever up loaded it.

also have stripped the BASIC out of the Apple II version which is a little easier to trace (real variable names). now comes to see if I can reverse engineer this program to make it faster and better. it really was a good stock market simulation game, pity it was so poorly written.

PS Atarimania has the disk but no manual. I tried to upload it to the site but got a bounce back as bad email. if anyone knows how to upload this to Atarimania i'm sure they would appreciate it.  

Millionaire_Atari_Version_Blue_Chip_Software_text.pdf

[+gnusto]

I like the cut of your jib in looking to rewrite it, but in addition to 777 noting you can have Altirra blaze through it much faster, I'd also point out that *after* you have had Altirra do that, you can save the state of the virtual 8bit and always pick up from there. No initialization time after the first run (although not real hardware, of course).

Speaking of which ... at one point Phaeron even had a loader for Altirra saved states on real hardware, I wonder if that still exists (seems unlikely though, he's using a JSON/ZIP format now the 8 bit wouldn't want to parse for a load). Could save the problem nicely even on a real machine though.

[+hloberg]

'IF' I can reverse engineer it I'm going to compile it with a BASIC compiler. Even with Altirra or TBXL it's still takes way too much time to get running. OR, after looking at the code I might be able to speed it up with just a rewrite. For one thing the author seems to assume a 400 with 16k as min and reads everything from disk. I might be able to put a bunch of the stuff in DATA statements in the code which would speed it up a lot. I have also found other things I see that were just poor programming that might just speed it up. 

But my long term goal will be to port it to some of my other computers, the TI-99, MSX, CoCo, like I have done with the Mille Borne I got from the Atari 8-bit that I ported to the TI-99, CoCo and Atari MSBASIC (and working on an AppleII port). See my projects blog of the ports:

 

 

[+Allan]

That was me.

 

Here is a link to the scan.

 

https://archive.org/stream/bluechipjournal/Millionaire_Atari_Version_Blue_Chip_Software

 

Allan

 

[ivop]

On 9/11/2020 at 6:28 AM, gnusto said:

seems unlikely though, he's using a JSON/ZIP format now the 8 bit wouldn't want to parse for a load

Could be unzipped before fed to the Atari. JSON is about as simple to parse as it can get for a format with similar capabilties. I'm glad phaeron didn't use XML

 

[+hloberg]

Above DL has free memory????

been a year since I finally got the manuals for Millionaire and NOW just getting around to seriously reverse-engineering the program. reason for redoing is that it's sloooooow. it takes 15 minutes just to initialize for one. and if you try running under anything but plain Atari BASIC it blows up.   But, maybe, I may now know why. it uses about 1500 bytes just above the DL list around 39900 for a high speed sort. I didn't even knew that area was even usable? maybe that area is moved in other BASICs? Anyone know.

 

[+hloberg]

OK, I figured out a bunch of memory questions on my own on my on again off again over-hall of millionaire. after looking at program I have given up on my idea of using turbo BASIC XL and compiling it to speed of the 15 minute setup. next, i'm going to try some BASIC compiler. any suggestions of the best Atari BASIC compiler.