How long will you wait to open your parachute? Can you land on a moving target? Sky Diver has two games. In “Chicken?” you score more the longer you wait before opening the parachute, but open it too late and the landing is hard; open it too soon and you score nothing. In “Moving Target” you must land on a target moving at one of three speeds, with points again for waiting. There is a practice mode for each, and winds make steering harder.
The parachute opens with SPACE or the joystick button (Kempston on the Spectrum); Q steers left, P steers right and R ends a game or practice. The menu also has a target location option (random or middle) and on-screen instructions. Written by Kristian Boisvert, ©1987 Byte Power. The magazine gives the loading name as SKY; the tape header is SKY DIVER. Published on the Fall 1987 (Issue 8) tape of Byte Power.
Program Analysis
The game is a single 15,623-byte machine-code block at 49913, loaded and started by a short BASIC loader (CLEAR 49900, LOAD "SKY DIVER" CODE, PRINT USR 49913). The menu (1 practice jumps, 2 Chicken?, 3 practice moving target, 4 moving target, 5 instructions), the instruction pages and the score line are text inside the code.
Notable Techniques
- Line 40 sets
INK 7on white paper before loading, so the tape header message is invisible. - After the game the loader does
CLEAR 65535: NEW, removing itself from memory. - Byte Power backup guard: with
PEEK 23681=0the loader lists line 9999 instead of running.
Image Gallery
Note: Type-in program listings on this website use ZMAKEBAS notation for graphics characters.