BRAINDEAD V1.3

Download: braindead.zip (zipped .prg)

Hey! Have you ever wanted your vic-20 to display really brain dead randomly generated messages? Oh, you're in luck! That is exactly what this program does. It's a CBM 8-bit version of my Amiga program: SimMail. Should run on any 8-bit Commodore. Minimum requirement: Vic-20 with 8K of expansion ram.

Note: I'm not responsible for any messages this program produces! ;-)

Includes

  • "BD-BRAINDEAD" - The original brain dead dialogue.
  • "BD-POESI" - Swedish poetry - my own favourite. (For computers with Swedish characterset).
  • "BD-STAR TREK" - Star Trek dialogue.
  • "BD-EXAMPLE" - Short example (look below).
  • "BD-EMPTY BRAIN" - No data, just the engine.

    News in V1.3

  • The next message is calculated while you are reading the last one. When it's time, it's printed all at once. This makes the program look faster.
  • When the next message is ready, you will see the timeout count down. By pressing a key, you will then get the next message right away.
  • By pressing "W", all the keywords from the data will be displayed and then the program will quit.
  • Auto-big-letters. If the text contains a ".", "!" or "?" then the next letter will automatically be big. For example "Yes! no!" will become "Yes! No!". This means you can have all your substitue words in lo-case and don't bother where in a sentence you put them. (Note that the example below still bothers about this when it shouldn't need to.)
  • Improved line breaks. (Can now break lines inside of substitutes).
  • New vocabularies: "Poesi" - Swedish poetry, (and Star Trek).

    Making your own vocabluray

    Load the included program "BD-EXAMPLE". It only contains a small example with a couple of words and two messages (plus an intro message). We will take a look at the vocabulary data here: 

    500 dataw,vic,c64,pc,amiga,horse,car,ear,diskdrive,dog,brain,slave,"CD",magazine,e
505 dataw,so,not,very,maybe,"{left}",e
506 dataw,"My","Your","The",e
510 dataw,nice,old,fast,slow,cool,good,bad,"sun-yellowed",blue,idiotic,stinking,e
520 datam,"<My> <vic> is <so> <nice>!",e
530 datam,"One <nice> <vic> for sale. It's in <nice> condition.",e
5000 data"end"

    There are a couple of special words:

  • "w" means you begin a new word definition.
  • "m" mean you state a message.
  • "e" means you end either a word definition or a message. Both messages and word definitions can span over several lines. A message can not be longer than 255 characters.
  • "end" means end of data.
  • "im" means intro message. It works exactly as a normal message except that it only is displayed once before the other messages.

    Now what the program does is to take one of the messages. Let's say this one: "One <nice> <vic> for sale. It's in <nice> condition.". Then it just replaces the words within the <>-brackets with one of the words in it's definition. And it does that for all of the <words> of course. That's it - Simple, but fun! So for example the first word <nice> will be replaced with one of nice, old, fast, slow, cool, good, bad, "sun-yellowed", blue, idiotic or stinking. The whole message could for example become: One blue vic for sale. It's in good condition.

    If you want to make your own data, load "BD-EMPTY BRAIN". It's the program engine without any data at all. It's your job to enter the data ;-)

    You also have to change the Vocabulary Data info: 
    44 print"---------------------{down}{down}":print"Vocabulary data:{down}"
45 print"Your Name 2006":print"(And some information":print"about it.)"
46 print"---------------------{down}{down}"
    So change line 45 there...

    It could happen that you have to change the DIM statements too: 
    38 DIMM$(8):REM MESSAGES                
39 DIMW$(11,22):REM (WORDS,SUBSTITUTES) 
40 DIMA(11):REM SUBSTITUTE COUNT
    If you have too much data, then just increase the numbers and it will work.

    Have fun! And be sure to send me your own versions!

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