Thanks! Yes, making the AI drive reasonably well was the most challenging part in making this game. You may have noticed that it doesn't drive randomly, and almost has human level performance. With a bad AI driver, there would be no game, really. And many TRON games fall short here, since random driving doesn't cut it. It has to maintain an internal representation that I am calling a "distance map" which is used to guide the AI driver. Updating this constantly during game play and making sure that the game still runs at a reasonably fast pace wasn't easy, given the performance limitations of pure BASIC.
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Hello...
Wow! Many years ago....thanks for explaining. May I ask one more question? "VIC 20 BASIC V2" is in the description of the following game. Is "VIC 20 BASIC V2" also a BASIC language of the same computer? Thanks.
https://itch.io/jam/jam-for-all-basic-dialects/rate/975324
Each of the 80s home computers (Commodore 64, VIC 20, Amstrad CPC, Atari, TI 99/4a) came with their own dialect of BASIC. Many were incompatible. Bill Gates and Paul Allen had their fingers in many of them and sold interpreters to these companies. Some wouldn't accept Bill Gates famous "royalties" and would rather write their own BASIC. Later on, the MSX Home Computer Standard was established and they all had the same Microsoft MSX Basic (hundred of different MSX machines, all compatible). The game you are referring to is for the VIC 20 (Commodore BASIC). So its different, and without porting / adjusting it, it won't run on machines that are not CBM BASIC (Commodore, VIC 20, ...)