SAIGON.100 (C) Copyright 1987, 1991 by Max Pandaemonium All Rights Reserved. SAIGON is a strategic war game for one player and the computer. The player controls five army squads that can move around on a map. The computer controls from one to five guerilla squads per wave. The player's armies are able to kill any guerilla they come across -- the difficulty is in finding the enemy. THE MAP takes up the first seven lines of the screen; the eighth line is a status screen, informing the player of what the computer expects of him and what the current wave and turn number is. The map has various symbols on it to represent terrain: A blank space represents the jungle; a solid block represents the player's bunker; a crosshatched block represents brambles. Vietnamese villages are represented as stylized houses. Roads are fairly obvious to distinguish, and there is a helicopter bad towards the lower-right of the map. These are the symbols that are evident when starting up the game; also on the screen are five letters, A through E in reverse video, each representing one of the player's army squads. Other symbols that will appear later are: an asterisk to indicate terrain damaged by an enemy; a cross to represent defoliated terrain; an equal-to sign representing a truck; a not-equal-to sign representing truck debris, and an approximately-equal-to sign reprsenting chopper debris. A TURN consists of: the five army squads given their moves; about 50% of the time the enemy will move; about 10% of the time choppers will arrive; and about 2-5% of the time a truck will arrive. ARMY SQUADS are moved with the QWEASDZXC keys. Q represents a move to the upper-left; W up; E upper-right, and so on. S represents that the squad will remain at that square and clear any damage that may be there. Squads can only move one square per turn. Upon moving, if the squad should move onto the square that an enemy is occupying, the guerilla will be killed and a low, repetitive, machine-gun sound will issue. The USA gets two points for killing a guerilla. THE ENEMY moves roughly every other turn, and only moves one square. Enemies begin the game scattered on either side of the map -- either at the extreme left or the extreme right (though they may be in any vertical position). Enemies proceed in this way to the other side of the screen. If a guerilla should do this, the NVA scores 10 points. As a guerilla moves across the screen, he is invisible when in jungle terrain. When stepping on a defoliated square, damage, or chopper or truck debris, he will clear it (the square will become blank). If it is some other terrain, then the guerilla will destroy it (and gain 1 point) and try to escape. To escape, the guerilla departs from their linear motion and jumps from 0 to 2 squares up or down and from 0 to 2 squares left or right. If this chosen square should not be jungle, then the guerilla will either clear it or destroy it (and again score and try to escape) in turn. THE CHOPPERS will arrive one in approximately every ten turns. The arrival of a chopper is signified by a high beep and then a low beep. The player gets one to four choppers, depending on the state of the helicopter pad. The pad consists of four squares; if any of these squares are damaged then the chopper corresponding to that square does not arrive. Damaged pad squares can be repaired (and will again service a chopper) if the damage is cleared by an army and then is defoliated by a chopper. The player selects the position for the chopper to defoliate with the QWEASDZXC keys; press S to choose. The chopper then proceeds to that spot and will defoliate it when it gets there if and only if the square is jungle or cleared. If the chopper happens to fly over a guerilla before arriving to its square to defoliate, it will be shot down (a high pitch and then a low pitch will sound), and the NVA scores 3 points. If, on the other hand, a guerilla is located at the spot that the chopper has been sent to defoliate (and the spot is jungle or cleared), then the guerilla will be killed and the USA scores 2 points. THE TRUCK will arrive approximately every 20 turns. It will choose one of the four roads randomly, and then proceed from the edge of the map to the player's bunker. If it arrives successfully, then the USA scores 5 points. If, however, one or more of the road squares are damaged, then the truck will be destroyed and the NVA will scores the 5 points. THE END OF A WAVE happens when all of the guerillas have been destroyed. At this point, the scores of the two sides are shown and from one to five more guerillas are chosen and the game continues. THE END OF THE GAME occurs when either the USA or the NVA have more than 100 points. Whoever has the higher amount of points wins. SAIGON is based on a game on the Texas Instruments computer KHE-SAHN. Program and documentation written and copyrighted by Max Pandaemonium.