V I D E O T R E K 8 8 B e g i n n e r' s G u i d e by Leon Baradat INTRODUCTION Video Trek 88 is an old text-based Star Trek game. These have a long history dating back to the early 1970s. Many people were first introduced to this type of game with David Ahl's Super Star Trek, published in Basic Computer Games (1978). Another famous version, written in Integer BASIC for the Apple II, was Apple Trek. The goal is to destroy all enemy ships on the board while avoiding obstacles (usually stars), and repairing and refueling at starbases. Most often the enemy ships were Klingons; some games also included Romulans, and some had more obscure enemies. Often, names were changed (e.g., "Klarnons" in Apple Trek, "Megaton cruisers" in Galaxy Trek) to avoid copyright infringement. Video Trek 88, published in 1982 by Windmill Software, took the genre to about the limit of what can be done with text-only graphics. It runs in real time (the clock ticks and enemies fire at you even if you just sit there), text animations occur in many places, and there are plenty of sound effects. Its real-time nature (most text games are strictly turn-based) plus its responsiveness (all commands were single characters, and it accepted commands immediately) gave Video Trek a snappier pace than others. For Christmas 1982 or '83, a friend gave me, shall we say, a homemade copy of the game. He also lent me the manual--which I didn't photocopy, much to my regret now. I spent many hours playing it on our computer, an original IBM PC. I rediscovered the game years later, but couldn't play it because it choked on a particular line of code. In April 2010 it finally occurred to me to apply my old BASIC programming knowledge to the offending code, and after that and a little subsequent debugging, the game now works in GWBASIC. Playing it again brought back my knowledge of the game, and reminded me that the controls aren't necessarily intuitive and that most people today won't know how to play it. And the manual seems to be lost to history; certainly I haven't been able to find it online. So I've written this short guide to the game; hope it helps. If you find any inaccuracies or would like to suggest changes or additions, please write me at dos11basic@yahoo.com. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- RUNNING THE GAME This is no mean feat on modern systems. Video Trek originally shipped on a 5ΒΌ" floppy disk that you had to boot from in order to play: it loaded automatically, and took you straight into the game. It ran in BASICA, which can't be used on modern machines because it relies on some ROM- resident stuff that was built into the IBM PC. The obvious solution is to run Video Trek in GWBASIC, BASICA's successor. Unfortunately in GWBASIC, the game errors out on certain lines of the original code. I've gone through and modified those lines so they don't kill the game any more. So here's how to get started. It's a good idea, first, to put the GWBASIC.EXE file somewhere close to your Video Trek folder, like inside it, or in the folder above it, or something. (Remember that DOS was limited to 8.3 filenames, so it won't properly handle a folder named "Video Trek 88". I named mine Trek88, and that works well.) On Windows machines, you can either run the game in DOSBox or use a third- party utility to slow your processor temporarily. In Mac or Linux, you'll need to use DOSBox. However you do it, you'll want to slow your processor to about 300-400 CPU cycles. Ctrl-Shift-F11 will slow your processor in DOSBox, and Ctrl-Shift-F12 will speed it up. - In Windows, if you're using a third-party utility, after slowing the processor simply double-click on the GWBASIC.EXE file, wherever it is. If you want to use DOSBox in Windows, there are some great GUI front ends like D-Fend Reloaded that will make it easier to get the game working, but you'll have to figure those out. - In Mac or Linux, or in Windows using DOSBox without a front end, mount the directory where GWBASIC is located (e.g., assuming a Linux user has a folder called DOS in his/her home directory, "mount d DOS" will mount the DOS directory as the d drive). Then enter the drive letter followed by a colon (e.g., "d:"), and enter "gwbasic". If at some point you need to navigate to a directory that doesn't conform to the 8.3 format (like if it contains spaces or is longer than 8 characters), use quotation marks around the directory name: e.g., cd "video trek". Once GWBASIC is running, navigate to the directory where Video Trek is located, using chdir (e.g.: CHDIR"trek88). Then enter LOAD"trek89, and enter RUN. Notice that end quotation marks are optional in BASIC, and BASIC is case-insensitive; it sees run and RUN as being the same. You can hit F3 to automatically type LOAD" for you, and you can hit F2 to automatically enter RUN for you. That saves a little typing on your part. If you should need to force the game to close at some point, hit Ctrl- Scroll Lock, not Ctrl-C. Enter "system" to close GWBASIC. Entering "exit" will close DOSBox. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ONCE THE GAME'S RUNNING The board consists of the usual 8x8 quadrant galaxy, each quadrant containing an 8x8 sector grid. On the left is your Galactic Chart showing the quadrants of the galaxy*. It shows the number of enemy vessels in each quadrant that's been mapped, and the location of starbases in mapped quadrants. More quadrants can be mapped by moving next to (or to the middle of some) unmapped quadrants and running a Long-Range scan. * Realistically speaking, this would be just a small part of the galaxy-- even in the Star Trek universe, the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, and everybody else occupy just a part of the Milky Way--but for purposes of the game, I guess it's ok to call it "the galaxy". To the right of the Galactic Chart is your Sector Map, showing the sectors of the quadrant you're in. On the far right is a display showing how much energy is in each of your ship's systems, how many torpedoes you have left, etc. It also shows how many enemies remain: Klingons on the left, Romulans on the right. The Klingon Commander, if there is one, is included in the Klingon count, if I remember right. Also on the far right it shows how many stardates you have before the game ends. Note that that figure is an estimate: it's fairly accurate, but the game can end a bit before or after the numbers run down. At the bottom is a space where your senior officers report to you. At the top right you see the alert status: RED if there are enemies in the current quadrant, Green if not. Many text Trek games showed status Yellow when there were enemies in adjacent quadrants but in yours. Video Trek doesn't do that. Unlike in many of the text-based Trek games, your energy reserve drains slowly even if you're not doing anything, in order to run life support and other shipboard systems. That's something to be aware of. The reserve is also used to replenish your warp drive, phasers, and other systems, and to power your shields when you're under attack. If you navigate past the edge of the map (either on the Galactic Chart or the Sector Map), you'll wrap around to the far side. Makes for a small universe, I suppose! Most Star Trek games stop you at the edge of the galaxy, and move you over to the next quadrant if you go past the edge of the short-range scan, but Video Trek 88 takes a simpler approach. Luckily it doesn't do the same with weaponry; your phasers and torpedoes don't bounce around until they hit something--like your ship. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMANDS Most text-based Trek games were written to be portable to any version of BASIC (every PC maker at the time had its own dialect) or were written for a version of BASIC that was fairly limited. However, Video Trek set out to take advantage of the capabilities of BASICA running on the then new and powerful 8088 processor. One of those advanced (for the time) capabilities was accepting single-button commands rather than waiting for the player to press the Enter key, which the more universal INPUT statement requires. So all the commands in Video Trek are single-character. Most of them are numbers, but a few are letters. The numbers are displayed along the right side of the screen, as well as letters representing the few non-numeric commands. 1 Long-Range Scan - Sweeps the quadrants around you and reveals how many enemies and starbases are located in each. 2 Short-Range Scan - Refreshes your view of what's in the current sector. Rarely used. 3 Computer - Used to replenish the energy in a given system (e.g., phasers). 4 Shields - Used to adjust shield strength. Higher strength gives better protection from damage, but drains more energy. It defaults to level 2, which I find is usually fine to leave alone. 5 Warp Drive - Used to move between quadrants. Unlike most early Trek games, which incorrectly used "Warp Factor" as a unit of distance (how many quadrants to move), here it's a unit of speed, as it should be. Traveling faster takes less time but uses more energy. Press the space bar to stop the ship, or a number 1-8 to change direction. Traveling at Warp 8 will sometimes send the Enterprise into a "time warp", which deposits the ship in a random quadrant. That's more common at higher levels, but can happen even at Trainee. 6 Impulse Drive - Used to move within quadrants. Like warp drive, impulse has a maximum speed of 8. Unlike warp, impulse uses power only when the drive is engaged, to start the ship or change direction. Moving five spaces in a straight line takes no more power than moving one space. Press the space bar to stop the ship, or a number 1-8 to change direction. (Changing direction does use energy.) Unfortunately, Impulse can't be used to move from one quadrant to the next. 7 Phasers - Your primary weapon, with a max power of 8. Effectiveness decreases with distance. If you fire at low power from far enough away, you may not damage your target at all. These are effective against Klingons and Romulans. 8 Photon Torpedoes - Effectiveness doesn't decrease with distance, but some enemies may move out of the way when they see one coming. These are effective against Klingons, Romulans, and the Klingon Commander. Oh, and stars. More on that later. A Antimatter Pods - Like torpedoes, their effectiveness doesn't decrease with distance, but they're far more powerful than torpedoes. In fact they'll destroy anything. Wait until they're at least a couple spaces away, then press any key to detonate. They destroy everything in a 1- sector radius around them, turning all 9 sectors into black holes. These weapons are entirely made up, as far as I can tell. They're great against powerful enemies, but also for the sheer convenience of taking out several ships at a time if they're clustered right. Warning: if your pods hit something, they'll bounce off in a random direction, possibly back at you. So make sure you detonate them when they're next to your target--don't wait for them to actually hit. And if they do start going the wrong way, be patient. Your enemies stop shooting while pods are floating around, and the pods won't detonate if they hit your ship either. R Repair Status, aka Damage Report. D Dock with Starbase. You have to be right next to a starbase to use this command. S Self-Destruct causes the engines to implode and puts the hurt on anyone in the quadrant. Unfortunately you won't be there to see the looks on their faces. You can abort self-destruct by pressing a key. PAUSE Unfortunately, there isn't a Pause command. To pause the game, press a command that needs parameters (e.g., warp, impulse, phasers). Then to resume the game, cancel by pressing the space bar. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ENEMIES Video Trek went in for a little more variation than most old-style Trek games, at least depending on your level of play. At Trainee and Ensign level, only Klingons appear; at Lieutenant and up, you encounter all enemy types. Also, at the low levels you run into just one per quadrant, while at higher levels you find a lot of quadrants with 2 or 3. Usually that means two Klingons and a Romulan, but not always--so be prepared. KLINGONS Klingons are your most common enemy. They sit there and shoot at you, but don't move around and aren't much of a threat. Move up right next to one and hit it with a full-power phaser blast--that always takes them out. Oddly, at levels above Trainee, a single torpedo hit won't destroy a Klingon ship, though it does damage it heavily. I say "oddly" because torpedoes are supposed to be more powerful than phasers, but I guess Klingons are resistant to them or something. ROMULANS Romulans are tougher than Klingons. They have more powerful and scarier- sounding weapons, and they move around. They sometimes move out of the way of incoming torpedoes, but they still aren't much of a threat. Two or three full-power phaser blasts at point blank range will smoke these guys, as will a couple of torpedo hits, usually. Of course you can mix and match phasers and torpedoes. THOLIANS (misspelled "Tholeans" in the original game) These are rare and not to be underestimated. They're always alone, so a Tholian quadrant will show a 1, and they often surprise you at a time when you're running around mopping up stray Klingons late in the game. You'll find yourself in the middle of the quadrant with the Tholian ship in the top left, and their commander demands you lower your shields as a sign of peace. If you comply, they'll destroy you. If you sit around too long, they will entrap you in the Tholian Web (a bad thing). If you engage them in combat, be aware that phasers and torpedoes are completely ineffective against Tholians in this game. Your best option is to just stay put and lob an antimatter pod their way. If you prefer the better part of valor, they won't prevent you warping out--and you don't have to destroy them, since they're neutrals. In my experience, there's never more than one per game. KLINGON COMMANDER The Klingon Commander is a tough S.O.B. who is sometimes found with other ships, but more often all by itself. At Admiral level it's even been known to pull you out of high warp and drag you off to its quadrant to engage you. When you meet, it demands your surrender, but of course there's no option to surrender...go figure. Like the Romulans, the Klingon Commander moves around, and it has even stronger, scarier-sounding weapons than they do. And like the Tholians, it's impervious to phaser fire. You can hit it with torpedoes, and four or so should destroy or disable it. If you disable the Commander, it stops moving around but keeps shooting, and now it's more dangerous than before because radiation (from outgassing?) destroys any more torpedoes you shoot at it. So you usually have to hit it with an antimatter pod anyway. Luckily, you never see more than one of these per game. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- OBSTACLES Most text-based Star Trek games have stars and starbases, but that's it. Video Trek 88 added a couple other items. Beware of running into them-- unlike Super Star Trek, Video Trek doesn't shut down your engines to prevent you accidentally killing yourself. Lower levels have fewer of these (except starbases) and higher levels have more: at Trainee your maps are full of empty space, while at Admiral you sometimes have to run an obstacle course to take a shot at someone. STARS It wouldn't be a text-based Trek game without stars scattered randomly about. I could swear I learned somewhere that stars are very far from one another, but apparently in the text Trek universe, you can travel between them in minutes at sublight speed. Shooting stars with torpedoes is dangerous--it makes them go nova. At lower levels that can be a fun way of taking out multiple enemies, or single enemies that are just off your direct firing path and not worth the time to move up next to them. At higher levels, though, it can turn into a supernova. If that happens, the whole quadrant goes up in smoke and if you don't have enough warp energy, you go up with it. And the higher the level, the more likely you are to be destroyed anyway, even if you do have enough warp power to escape. If you do escape, the quadrant will be marked "**" for the rest of the game, and if you go back there it'll cook your bacon. PLANETS WTH, planets scattered around randomly too? Stars were bad enough, but dozens of rogue planets? Yep, in Video Trek it happens all the time. Don't try to land on one; you'll burn up in the atmosphere. So will your torpedoes, realistically enough. But with no special abilities (like going nova, see above), planets are actually the least interesting of the game's obstacles. BLACK HOLES Black holes? Don't go in or you'll be destroyed, right? Well, in the popular imagination, black holes sometimes get confused with wormholes, and this game makes the same mistake. Yes, in Video Trek, black holes are wormholes, so if you enter one you'll be sent to a random quadrant. This does make them one of the few possible ways to get to a starbase if your warp drive is knocked out. Remember that you can create black holes by detonating an antimatter pod in your quadrant. STARBASES Ah, repair and refueling. Starbases show on the Long-Range Scan, so they're easy to keep track of. To repair and refuel, go to a quadrant with a starbase, move up next to it, and hit D. Don't run into it--your ship won't be harmed, but the starbase will be destroyed. And yes, like in other text Trek games a torpedo hit will destroy a starbase. In fact, starbases are incredibly fragile in Video Trek: the slightest hit, even a minimum-power phaser shot from maximum range--which won't even damage a Klingon--will obliterate a starbase. Incidentally, when you destroy one, the game makes an obscure reference to "the microdrone" escaping. I've never figured out what that was supposed to mean. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIRECTION Direction is a little goofy in this game. Some games, like Apple Trek, use the standard 360 degrees from geometry, with zero pointing to the right. Others, like Seabattle, used a nautical standard, where the directional points start with 1 at due north. But the designers of Video Trek seem to have just done what they felt like. Fortunately, whenever you need to select a direction, a diagram will display: 6 5 | 7 4 --+-- 8 3 | 1 2 LOSING POWER Don't let reserve power drop too low or your game will come to an early end. Also don't let your individual systems drop to zero. If your phasers run out completely, for instance, you won't be able to repower them until you dock at a starbase. And if your long-range scanners drop to one or zero, you'll lose all your information on the Galactic Chart and will have to remap everything. WINNING THE GAME You win, of course, by destroying all enemy ships on the board: Klingons, Romulans, and the Klingon Commander (if there is one). Tholians don't show in the enemy count and you don't have to destroy them. But, once you have cleared the board, to claim your victory you have to dock at a starbase. Don't get killed on your way back to base! Last updated May 7, 2010