In the 1970's I wrote my first original computer game on a 30-bit one's complement machine with an analog 3D vector display. It was a moon lander, crude but entertaining. For some reason, recently seeing a map of the interstate highway system gave me the idea for this program, my second game. It was interesting to implement (using a compiler from 2001), but you might find it to be more of a puzzle than a game. Lose enough times and you'll stumble upon the Easter egg (literally).
drive.google.com/file/d/1uRQ-... is the Windows 32-bit executable, drive.google.com/file/d/1rKvh... is the same executable but zipped, and drive.google.com/file/d/1FA3O... is the Delphi 6 source code. A minimum 1920 x 1080 display is required. InterStellarChicken is at • Introducing Interstell...
Here's the transcript for this video:
HighwayChicken starts as a map of the United States, showing a selection of connected cities. Click on a city to make it your home base. You and a built-in artificial intelligent opponent will each be assigned 9 motorcycles, 9 cars, and 9 trucks, randomly placed on the map. The opponent will also choose a home base.
The object is to navigate your yellow vehicles to the opponent's home base before the opponent's blue vehicles reach your home base. Click on a yellow vehicle to choose the route it will take. As you select one of the vehicle's neighboring cities, a green line will mark the route. When you OK the route, your vehicle will turn green to indicate it is moving. Each time you route a yellow vehicle, the opponent will also route a blue vehicle.
When choosing a route, a checkbox lets you automatically extend the route all the way to the opponent's home base. A vehicle reaching a home base is considered finished and removed from the map. Another checkbox lets you automatically move all the yellow vehicles at once.
As shown in a help screen, the four combinations of the two checkboxes let you move one vehicle to a neighboring city, or move one vehicle to the opponent home base, or move all vehicles to a neighboring city, or move all vehicles to the opponent home base. You can click any green moving vehicle and then stop it or adjust the list of cities on its route.
Any two vehicles that collide will suffer damage and possible complete destruction and removal, as shown in a help screen. To win the game, you must get four green check marks in the final dialog, indicating you had fewer crashes, fewer destroyed vehicles, more vehicles finishing by reaching the target home base, and a quicker elapsed time than the opponent.
The number of motorcycles, cars, and trucks is adjustable for each game. The speed of the game can be changed at any time using one of five settings from slowest to fastest.
2 апр 2022
