Over 4 years ago Pix started VecAkalabeth using the Vectrex32 BASIC cart.
He finished the project and VecAkalabeth can be played... although the newest version was not made
public yet - since the first versions of this will be part of a Kickstarter reward - so this is not
fully available yet (and a bid flickery for my taste.

40 Months ago another Vectrex Port was started - but apart from some videos and news feeds we never saw the
actual thing - and the author went on to other projects.

I must admit I never really played Akalabeth - I was a C64 guy not Apple. 
Akalabeth was before my time as it was conceived in 1979 (or even earlier), at that time I was busy with my Atari 2600.

My first "Ultima" to play was Ultima 3 and I loved it. 

The Vectrex is defenitly missing adventure titels... and for quite some time now I have been thinking 
of doing a port - without actually starting it - or earnestly looking at the code.

Different BASIC sources can be found online. As far as I know Richard Garriot made Akalabeth free some years ago.
This does not mean it is not copyrighted any more, but it means I feel rather confident that
making a port of a port of the original game (which is free) will not persecuted in any way.

During my "porting" I looked at different sources, the Original BASIC sources (Apple II), a ported GW BASIC and others.
For "my" port I chose to the language "C" instead of BASIC and as luck has it there was already a "C" port
done by Paul Robson. I only had to take his sources and compile it for the Vectrex.
(ehm, no it was not that easy... more on that later)

Anyway during my own adventure a totally new respect for Richard Garriot grew inside of me.
Akalabeth may be by todays standards a small game that nobody looks at twice - but in its own way it is a really, really cool software!

This game is from 1979! Where computers were no household item. Computers/and programming was absolut "nerd" country. There were virtually no
games/adventures/RPG available to the masses. RPG games were played at a table (or by students on a Mainframe computer).

And then came Akalabeth:
- it features a world map (randomly generated)
- it features dungeons with monsters and loot
- it featured different player characters (Mage and Fighter)
- it features a "home base" and a "quest giver"
- it has towns
- dungeons in "3d" grafic and a tild based world map
- and and and

And all that in not even 400 lines of tightly programmed BASIC.

Absolutely marvelous!!! 

And here I was proud to write some Vectrex programs... with years of experience... and a 17 year old freak in 1979 brought Akalabeth to life.

Absolutely marvelous!!! 

----



World Map:
* joystick to move around the map.

* Button 1 to see the inventory
* Button 2 to redisplay last message.
* Button 3 to ENTER (dungeon / town / castle)

Dungeon:
* UP move forward
* left right - turn left/right
* down turn 180 degrees

* Button 1 to see the inventory
* Button 2 to redisplay last message.
* Button 4 ATTACK


During attack:
Select your weapon by pressing (and keeping pressed):

no Button HANDS
Button 1 - RAPIER
Button 2 - AXE
Button 3 - BOW
Button 1 + Button 2 - SHIELD
Button 1 + Button 3 - AMULET

While keeping the above buttons PRESSED, also press button four to execute the attack.






PSHS U
Text print string routines
DRAW Line

keyboard input -> button mapping

substitiion for drawlines with vectorlists

No calculation for dungeons anymore, only a set of 12 tiles which are scale "inward"








 






