THE STORY OF WESTFRONT
By: Paul Panks (dunric@yahoo.com)

Each winter, I think back to many years ago when I
wrote my first full-length program, Westfront. I don't
know why the winter sparks my nostalgia, but here's
the story: 

"Westfront" began as a humble, 16-room text adventure
on the Commodore 64. The premise was to explore the
landscape, solving puzzles, but this was later
expanded when the adventure game was migrated over to
the more advanced BASIC on the Commodore 128. Soon the
adventure boasted over 80 rooms and objects. 

The setting for Westfront was Norway, where the user
visited towns including Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and
Stavanger. A Flora Island was also included some ten
miles off the western coast of Bergen. A lighthouse
was placed on the island, helping to guide ships into
shore during evening hours. 

For fun, a Smurf Village was added to Westfront.
Smurfs such as Papa Smurf, Brainy Smurf, Handy Smurf
and Jokey Smurf populated Smurf Forest. Gargamel (and
his cat, Azriel) were also present in Gargamel's
Castle. Handy asks the player to bring Asriel's hide
back to him in order to make a "nice, cozy rug." The
player is then rewarded with several useful items and
tools. 

Locations within Westfront included a large Redwood
Forest, a small pond in a grassy meadow, a dying
forest, a large tree stump and two castles -- the last
of which, Shadow Castle, floated above the sky. 

If the player incanted a magic ring "under a pale blue
sky," he would be teleported straight to Shadow
Castle, where the evil wizard Mordimar lived. The
user's goal in the game was to defeat Mordimar. After
passing through a large courtyard near a fountain, the
player faced Mordimar in combat in his throne room. 

Climbing a certain tree in the Redwood Forest allowed
the player to visit a wise troll inside a small
thatched roof hut "high atop the forest." A crudely
made ladder, built into the tree, helped the user
climb up. Once inside, the troll gives the player a
magic ring and some "inside" knowledge on a curse
haunting the surrounding forest (undoubtedly placed
there by Mordimar). 

In Bergen, the user could take a boat over to Flora
Island in order to explore a large lighthouse. Inside
the lighthouse were several useful items. The rest of
the island was covered in dense vegetation. 

I added sprites to Westfront, incorporating a sprite
title -- WESTFRONT -- displayed above a scrolling
window below. Beneath that were 8 function key
commmands, including "GO NORTH", "INVENTORY" and
"MAP". 

If the user typed "map", a screen popped up, giving
the player the option of viewing either an interior or
exterior surface map. The interior map showed,
depending on the location, the interior of the current
room using Commodore keyboard graphics (a
low-resolution display). The exterior map, however,
showed a 3-dimensional, polygonal map of the
surrounding countryside. A flashing white dot
displayed the game player's current location. 

Several unique creatures populated the game: a large
Black Widow (inside the tree stump), a wise troll (in
a hut "high atop the forest"), a Shadow Warrior
(guarding Mordimar's throne) and even a large Mastadon
from a pre-historic era. 

Westfront was eventually lost, unfortunately, due to
the notorious "SAVE-WITH-REPLACE" bug in Commodore
DOS. This was confirmed when loading the program files
"WESTFRONT" and "BACKUP", where a "?DISK READ ERROR"
would occur about 190 blocks in (both files were 206
blocks long, or about 50.5KB of raw data). LISTing
either program displayed gibberish approximately
3/4ths of the way into the listing. Playing the
damaged files caused an "?UNDEFINED STATEMENT ERROR IN
3120", the result of which took place whenever I tried
to "EXAMINE BRAINY" in Smurf Forest. Although I could
"CLIMB TREE" to visit Brainy, the damaged program
listing wouldn't let me examine him. 

Another quirk resulted whenever I tried to run the
game twice. I inadvertently loaded the sprite title
"WESTFRONT" into locations 3584 through 4096 -- 4096
being the start of BASIC! Consequently, the program
would crash with a "?SYNTAX ERROR IN 0" due to a few
bytes being overwritten with sprite data (this was
easily fixed). 

Although I no longer have the original version of
Westfront, I did manage to recode much of the game
from an earlier version. But it still wasn't the same.
I still wish I had the original available, if only to
play it again (and fix some of the obvious bugs in the
program). 

Paul