Original Sneech Source Code
The original Sneech was written in AMOS Pro, a type of BASIC geared towards rapid game development. I has planned to run some conversion processes over the original source code to extract at least some functions that could be reused. I hoped, at least I could recover some basic algorithms, and some long forgotten game rules, or scoring systems, that would make a port easier.
Unfortunately I’ve not really managed to extract much at all. I’ve copied some timings out, score values, some snake characteristics, player starting points, and some sample frequencies. but thats about it!
The problem back then was, even though I was trained to write wonderful structured, and formatted code, the system i was working on just didn’t make that easy or viable. I coded 100% of Sneech on an old portable TV screen. The screen mode was 320×256, so as to save my eyes from too much work, I tried to keep the source code tight, to reduce scrolling about!
I was also working on an Amiga with just 1Mb of ram (and floppy disks only!), but I was targeting minimum-spec as an Amiga A500′s with 512MB of ram. The most annoying thing about the AMOS language was the interpreted nature of it meant the cleaner your code was, the more ram it took up when running! I used to find all sorts of ways to make the source code uglier, and the memory requirement lower! (note: the compiler didn’t change this at all.) The use of short variable names like TL for tail, LTH for length, and so on, also kept the footprint lower. This was probably the last time I ever used GOTO in program, that’s how bad it was!
I thought I would take this chance to present to you the whole source code, unedited, with all the comments still missing (comments also caused runtime memory bloat so were of course not used!)
Here is the original AMOS source in text format: sneechpro.txt
Also, a version partially converted to C with some automated script I created. don’t expect it to look any less ugly: sneechpro-hybrid.txt
You can see from the source code that the very first lines I wrote were on the 14th of September 1994. So, lets see if the first iPhone version will get released before the 15th anniversary!
(I don’t expect anyone to do anything with the source code, but feel free to modify it if you like. I might be able to find the original set of data banks, if needed. Just let me know if you want it! )
Hah! I stil have cold sweats at the thought of coding in AMOS, I remember using Blitz when I was younger too…
Ta for giving us access to the source too
I worked with AMOS for about 5 years, and Blitz for 2 (my only blitz project was a game called ‘Foundation’.)
However, I can’t follow much of that code any more. I’ve been working in C++ for too long! It’s funny how you can be so in tune with the syntax of a language and then years later it looks so alien