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March, 2011 Welcome! This is the Unatron download page. Unatron is a game for the Radio Shack Color Computer. It is essentially brand new code; it has never been released. You will find complete documentation, including 6809 assembly source listings. The executable is a .wav file. Download this and record it to a cassette tape. Then, load the cassette onto your Color Computer in the usual way:
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I wrote Unatron in 1982-83. I prepared it complete with documentation and source code and put it up for sale in a small advertisement in Hot Coco, a magazine dedicated to the Radio Shack Color Computer. I received a lot of interest and zero orders. The problem was that I put the wrong town name on the mailing address. I had the correct postal code. It was sort of forgiveable; I'd just moved into the area. As soon as I realized the error, I ran down to the post office. The clerk assured me that it wouldn't make a difference, but it did, apparently
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The concept of the game is that you are trying to cause fissions. Each round starts with a large "atom". Your character, a backward-facing angle bracket can corral and fission atoms by shooting out neutrons. The computer also shoots neutrons, so you are in competition for score. Every time you or the computer splits an atom, two new atoms are created along with more neutrons. These can cause chain reactions. Fissions create ever-smaller by-products until the last small atoms are consumed and the round is over. To make sure that you aren't complacent, there are a couple of other features that have no nuclear analogs. Particularly, mines are spontaneously created from time to time. These run after you, and if they make contact, terminate you. There is also a 'hole-eater' creature that bounces from place to place, consuming the walls in the set. The hole-eater guarantees that you can't hide from the mines forever. |
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To play, you'll need a color computer.... I think there must be an emulator or two out there as well.
- Executable
- This is an audio file containing the Unatron executable. Download this, copy to a cassette and load onto the Color Computer.
- Intro
- Cover pages, a description of Unatron and playing instructions
- Chapter 1 - Graphics
- A description of the graphics routines and libraries
- Chapter 2 - Characters
- Character pixel-drawing instructions
- Chapter 3 - Animation
- Movement, collision detection
- Chapter 4 - Data
- Organization of animation, scene and character data
- Chapter 5 - Modifications
- How to make changes to the program
- Appendix A - Shape table
- All the shapes (and anti-shapes) in a table
- Appendix B - Overlays
- Overlays
- Appendix C - Sample Program
- A short sample program using the graphics libraries and techniques.
- Source code, Part 1
- Unatron source code, main loop
- Source code, Part 2
- Subroutines and Data
In addition, I wrote a feature piece for Rainbow, August 1988 describing assembly language programming on the Color Computer and what I came to call the "Little Graphics Language", which was really just the components of Unatron, though perhaps more clearly explained.
You could make my day!
After 30 years, I'm still waiting to make a nickel on this effort. I'll take anything... just a token to say that the effort meant something to somebody. I'd be tickled to find a dollar in my account.
If that's too much, you could write and say hello -- dowd-at-atlantic.com.