Manager

Manager is a turn-based business simulation game in which the player runs a radio manufacturing company, making decisions each week about hiring, production targets, and pricing. The game tracks capital, stock, workforce, wages, selling price, and production capacity, and exposes the player to random events including union pay demands, storm flood damage, and supplier price rises. Sales volume is influenced by a cumulative price-increase resistance factor stored in variable z, which grows each time the player raises the selling price. The bankruptcy check at line 750 tests whether the combined value of capital plus stock has fallen to zero or below, while a million-dollar net worth triggers a winning condition. Starting values for most key variables are randomized to give each playthrough a different economic environment.

Modified from THE TIMEX SINCLAIR 2068 EXPLORED by Tim Hartnell.

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Program Analysis

Program Structure

The program is organized as a collection of subroutines dispatched from a tight main loop beginning at line 40. Each iteration of the loop increments the week counter, then calls subroutines for display, personnel management, production, and sales before deducting the weekly payroll from capital and looping back.

1. 1300 – Title/intro screen (called once at startup)
2. 1160 – Variable initialization (also called on winning condition reset)
3. 720 – Factory report printout (called multiple times per loop)
4. 980 – Hire/fire workforce management
5. 860 – Set production target and manufacture radios
6. 600 – Sales report and income calculation
7. 150 – Random unpredictable events
8. 1110 – Bankruptcy handler (jumped to, not called)
9. 140 – Sound effect (beeps), used throughout as a shared audio subroutine

Main Loop

Lines 40–130 form the central game loop. After all subroutine phases complete, line 120 deducts wage*workforce from capital, then GO TO 40 restarts the cycle. There is no explicit exit from the loop; play ends only through bankruptcy or the million-dollar win condition.

Variable Initialization

All key game variables are randomized at lines 1170–1280, giving each game a unique starting state. A guard at line 1210 prevents the cost of production from exceeding the selling price at the start of the game by looping back to re-roll those values. The sales resistance variable z is initialized to 1 and only ever increases.

Variable	Description	Initial Range
capital	Available cash ($)	500–999
stock	Unsold radios	100–149
sellprice	Retail price per radio ($)	10–14
cost	Manufacturing cost per radio ($)	2–6 (capped below sellprice)
workforce	Number of employees	7–16
wage	Weekly wage per employee ($)	12–(12+5*sellprice−1)
produce	Radios produced per person per week	5–10
z	Cumulative price-rise resistance factor	1

Random Events (Lines 150–590)

The unpredictables subroutine tests three independent random thresholds to determine which events fire in a given week. Each event is gated by a separate RND check, so multiple events can occur in the same week.

• Union pay rise (line 170): 55% chance; raises wage by a random 1–7%.
• Storm flood (line 270): 15% chance; destroys up to half the current stock.
• Supplier price rise (line 360): 70% chance; increases cost by a random amount derived from cost/7.
• Price increase opportunity (line 480): fires if RND >= 0.65 or make >= sellprice; the player can voluntarily raise sellprice by any percentage, accumulating it into z.

Sales Resistance Mechanic

Variable z accumulates each percentage price increase the player applies (line 550: LET z=z+a). In the production subroutine at line 910, actual output is reduced by a factor based on z: LET make=make-INT(RND*make/5*(z/100)). This means raising prices repeatedly causes increasing production shortfall as a proxy for reduced demand, creating a meaningful trade-off between revenue per unit and actual units available to sell.

Production Subroutine (Lines 860–970)

The player inputs a desired production quantity. Two guards enforce physical limits: line 880 checks that make*cost does not exceed available capital, and line 890 checks that make does not exceed produce*workforce. The sales resistance adjustment at line 910 then stochastically reduces the final output before it is added to stock and the cost is deducted from capital.

Workforce Management (Lines 980–1100)

The player is first asked how many people to hire (line 990); a positive entry is accepted directly. If the hire input is zero or negative, the player is then prompted to fire staff (line 1030). A union interference mechanic at line 1060 randomly reduces the number actually fired: LET a=INT(RND*a+1), so the player can never guarantee firing more than one person, as the random reduction can shrink the value to 1 regardless of the input.

Win and Loss Conditions

The display subroutine at line 750 checks capital+stock (stock is treated as a raw count, not a monetary value) against zero for the bankruptcy condition, and against 999999 for the million-dollar win. The bankruptcy branch at line 1110 prints the number of weeks survived and then executes RUN, restarting the program entirely. The win condition at line 760 branches directly to the variable initialization subroutine at line 1160, effectively starting a new game without the title screen.

Notable BASIC Idioms and Techniques

• PAUSE NOT PI (lines 1150, 1320) evaluates NOT PI as 0, making PAUSE 0 — an indefinite pause until a key is pressed. This is an efficient keypress-wait idiom.
• PAUSE VAL "100" and similar constructs throughout use VAL on a string literal as a memory-saving technique to store the numeric argument more compactly.
• INK PI (lines 580, 1080) exploits the fact that PI truncates to 3 when used as a color index, selecting INK 3 (magenta) without using the digit.
• PAPER PI (line 640) similarly selects PAPER 3.
• The shared audio subroutine at line 140 uses two BEEP calls with RND*50 for randomized pitch, then returns — usable mid-event for dramatic effect.
• Line 910’s production penalty formula combines RND with the accumulated z factor to create a smoothly scaling stochastic output reduction.

Bugs and Anomalies

• Sales quantity never computed: The sales subroutine at line 600 prints and deducts a variable a (lines 670–700) that is never assigned a sales quantity within this subroutine. The value of a at this point is whatever it was last set to — most likely from the unpredictables subroutine (e.g., the storm flood damage amount or price rise percentage). This means sales figures are effectively meaningless or coincidental each week.
• Stock bankruptcy check: Line 750 uses capital+stock where stock is a unit count, not a dollar value, making the bankruptcy threshold inconsistent with the million-dollar check which similarly sums incompatible units. A more correct check would use capital+stock*sellprice.
• Negative hire input: The hire prompt at line 990 accepts negative values, which would silently reduce the workforce without going through the union interference mechanic at line 1060.
• Supplier price rise formula (line 400): The loop guard IF a<.01 THEN GO TO 400 re-rolls only the random component but recalculates using the current (possibly already-increased) cost, which is correct in intent but could loop many times if cost is very small.