
BUG
by Tony Cotterill
from Sinclair Answers #1 (1984)

HUNGRY HERMAN

Herman can't tell a flower from a weed - but knows how to avoid the
insecticide - in our arcade game.


Herman is a bug - a hungry bug with an insatiable appetite for flora.
In our arcade game listing you must guide Herman round the flower
patch, chomping the blooms and avoiding the insecticides - no mean
feat as it turns out.

Herman never stands still, but saunters round the flower beds working
his way through the blooms, guided by the left and right arrow keys,
which will turn him in that direction. Be warned - they keys turn him
to his right or left, not yours. If Herman manages to eat all the
flowers in one patch, then he moves on to a neighbouring patch, which
has more obstacles than the first. Despite being written in Basic, the
action is fast and quite addictive.

In the listing given, note that each line is terminated with a number
in angled brackets (for example <123>). Do not type this into the
Spectrum because this number is the checksum. If you first type in the
Checksum program listed in this issue on page 60, you can then check
the numbers produced by your own typing against the listing of Herman
(Fig.1 below). This should all but eliminate those infuriating typing
errors that so often kill a program. This is our pilot project for the
Checksum program, a first for computer magazines, and our future
Spectrum listings will all include these special numbers after each
line of Basic.

One more quick point about the listing: whenever a single letter
appears in a print statement (for example, "A"), then this is probably
a graphics character in the program. When you are typing it in, first
press CAPS SHIFT and the GRAPHICS keys simultaneously, then the
letter, then CAPS SHIFT and GRAPHICS again. The line numbers where
these occur are: 1120, 1620, 3000, 3020, 4510, 4560, 4610, 5000, 5200,
6040, 6110, 6200, 6270, 7020, 7200 and 9750. The checksum should help
you get these graphics symbols right.

Hopefully, Herman will turn out to be a bug you don't mind having in
your Spectrum.


--
Another Fine Product transcribed by:
Jim Grimwood (jimg@globalnet.co.uk), Weardale, England
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