Author Topic: Laser Chess Computer Board Game in QB64  (Read 17046 times)

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Offline Donald Foster

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Laser Chess Computer Board Game in QB64
« on: February 28, 2018, 08:30:43 pm »
Laser Chess

 Laser Chess is a computer board game releasedin 1987.  Many different versions hasbeen released over the years in pc and real board game form with different pieces and different rules. This is my take on the original version.
 
The objectof the game is to either capture or destroy your enemy’s King. Most of the game is spent arranging mirrors to set up to fire your Laser. All the pieces the same 1 space up, down, right or left. Each turn consist of 2 moves.  a move consist of moving a pieces or rotating a piece or firing your laser. You can rotate a pieces and moves it to a new location in 1 turn counts as 2 moves. On a turn you also move 2 separate pieces or moves 1 piece twice. All pieces can be rotated except the King and the Hyper-cube.
 
Only the King and the Block can capture an enemy’s piece.All pieces can be captured except the Hypercube.  The Hypercube also can not be destroyed. The Hypercube  when placed onto another piece, it causes that piece to disappear and re-appear at a random vacant location on the board. The Hypercube can only be used once per turn. The Triangle Mirror deflects the beam 90 degrees. The Triangle Mirror can be destroyed if hit at 1 of the non-mirror sides. The Diagonal Mirror also deflect the beam 90 degrees, bu can not be destroyed. The Block has a mirror on 1 side and can be hit on the other 3 sides. Again, the Block can captures enemy pieces. Then Straight Mirror can not be destroyed. If the Straight Mirror or the Block is hit straight on, the beam is returned by to the source and the Laser that fired the beam is destroyed.
 
The center of the board is called the Hyper Square and isa fixed Hypercube. When a piece lands in the Hyper Square, that piece is transported to a random vacant  location.       

I used a code snippet by bplus to enlarge the size of the characters.

Donald
* Laser Chess.bas (Filesize: 36.87 KB, Downloads: 317)
* Laser Chess Rules.docx (Filesize: 49.68 KB, Downloads: 297)
Laser Chess Playing Screenshot.png
* Laser Chess Playing Screenshot.png (Filesize: 115.47 KB, Dimensions: 1032x767, Views: 494)

Offline SierraKen

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Re: Laser Chess Computer Board Game in QB64
« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2022, 11:38:16 pm »
This is an incredible oldie but a goodie. I remember making this game in 1987 from my COMPUTE! Magazine. We played it at my High School's Apple 2e computer lab. In fact, just recently I bought this COMPUTE! issue off eBay just for old times sake. I didn't know someone made it also on QB64. And I am surprised nobody has replied to it after 4 years. Trying it out right now and it's a little hard to learn how to move the pieces, but I bet I can figure it out. The cover of this magazine had a great graphically made picture of chess pieces shooting lasers at each other. I think this is only a 2-player game though but I find it to be interesting at least. The Apple version I made also had to use Machine Language code using a separate program that entered it in as you typed it from the magazine. So we spent hours typing in stuff like: AA AA AA AB AB 00 00 00..  lol
« Last Edit: February 23, 2022, 01:01:53 am by SierraKen »

Offline SierraKen

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Re: Laser Chess Computer Board Game in QB64
« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2022, 11:51:41 pm »
Here is the PDF version of the COMPUTE! magazine issue on Archive.org and a picture of the cover.

https://archive.org/details/1987-06-compute-magazine

Compute_Issue_085_1987_Jun_0000.jpg
* Compute_Issue_085_1987_Jun_0000.jpg (Filesize: 101.35 KB, Dimensions: 580x807, Views: 56)

Offline Donald Foster

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Re: Laser Chess Computer Board Game in QB64
« Reply #3 on: February 25, 2022, 01:54:31 am »
Hello,

I originally wrote this on the Tandy 2000 computer in GW-BASIC in the late 80's. I didn't know this game was posted in Compute! and never saw the original source code since I was using TRS-80 computers and I bought 80 Micro magazine. I had a friend who had a Tandy 1000SX and he had a copy of the game on disk. So' I wrote my own version for my computer. 

If you have any question on game play or controls let me know.

Donald