FIRE! On the Commodore PET. My first hack

[FlyingPenguin]

Heh. Found this video today. Brought back memories. This game forced me to learn 6502 assembly language programming.

I bought this game for my new Commodore PET back in 1979. Played it a bit. Found it fun but a bit boring. The fire only happened in the first building on the left. How much fun would it be if it spread to the other buildings?

Like all PET games, it was written in BASIC, but in order to draw the (relatively) fast flames, the fire animation was done in native 6502 assembly language. I found a disassembler and figured out how the code worked, and modified it so it would spread to the other buildings, and amped up the veracity of the flames. Eventually I coded it so that if the fire reached the fire station on the right, it was game over. I even modded it so that the fire could reach the roof, and if you weren't careful, would set the helicopter on fire. Instead of game over, the copter would crash into the building, spreading even more fire, and you got a new chopper.

God I miss the simple fun of hacking games back then. Another game I modded was the classic Star Trek BASIC game (I added assembler code to create animated phasers and photon torpedoes, and a popup long range scanner window).

Fun times.

[Losbot]

That brings back some crazy memories.