6/1/1982 The Mysterious LetterI was generally pleased with your review of Cropduster, but there are a few things that I think I should say about the game. You mentioned that running into power lines at 3000 feet was annoying, raising the possibility that a few bugs had found their way into the program. Rest assured that we dust each disk for bugs before we send it out. These are not bugs that you mention, but rather they are features. Uriah has asked me to note that he wrote Cropduster not only in C0B0L=13, but also in such languages as Fortran, Basic, APL, Pascal, and Forth. In fact, every single one of Cropduster's two hundred interlocking programs is written in a different language. This was the result of a bet that eventually turned out to be very costly for Uriah's brother, Irving M. Stukk. After the 183rd program, Uriah ran out of programming languages to use. So he invented a few of his own, and took it upon himself to write interpreters and compilers for each one of them. One of these languages is CDSEL, an acronym for Crop Duster Spraying Effects Language.
This language is primarily of value for determining the effects of chemical spraying on crops in the Midwest. Possible uses for this language include a hi-res arcade-like business simulation, a businesslike hi-res arcade simulation, a simulation of a hi-res arcade business, and an example of a specialized programming language. YAPL is an acronym for Yet Another Programming Language. This may be the ultimate language for people who don't like structured languages. It does nearly everything tiny Basic does, except more slowly. Examples of statements peculiar to this language are the If/Then/Maybe statement for programmers who don't like their programs to be too predictable, and the forget statement, which is obviously the opposite of the rem statement. Actually, we haven't found a use for either of these constructs yet, but Uriah is rather proud of the fact that no other language has them. The lawsuit against our company has made our operations difficult and has caused us to delay our plan of opening Cropdusterland, a theme amusement park (to be located in Summit, SD) for at least a few decades. We have, however, a plan that we hope will recoup much of the losses we may suffer from this lawsuit. We are suing ourselves, claiming that our game, Cropduster, is a direct steal from our game, Cropduster. In case the opposition hires a lawyer who has taken some law courses, or in the event that our plan fails for any other reason, we have made other plans. As long as we are being sued, Uriah suggested, why not make it worth the opposition's while. (We won't deign to mention the name of this belligerent arcade game manufacturer.) To this end, we are planning to release, over the next few months. Battle-area, Meteoroids. Missile Commander, Blue Baron, Warring Lords, and Centipede Wars. All of these feature, if only briefly, hi-res cows. To induce a few other arcade manufacturers to join in the fun, we are also developing Pac-Person, Cosmic Stargate Defender, Galacticans, and Spacedout Invaders. Also in the works are a few games that we feel incorporate revolutionary new concepts in computer gaming. One of the ones we will be proudest to release is Software Pirate. This game is similar, at least in appearance, to several games put out by Automated Simulations a few years back. The player starts out by buying an Apple computer. With this computer and his few remaining dollars, he ventures into the dungeons of Realworld. There he meets other Apple owners who, he hopes, he can persuade to exchange software with him, he then searches for the various bit and nibble copy programs hidden around the dungeon. He must also beware of the agents of Kilobaud the Green, who seek to turn him in for Kilobaud's Reward. The eventual object of the game is to get out of the dungeon with as much pirated software as possible. However, the real game on the disk is the disk itself. The owner of the disk is challenged to produce a working copy of the disk using any method he desires. The first person to mail a pirated, working copy of Software Pirate to us will win one hundred dollars, and a full time job as Slipshod's software protection specialist. Thank you for your time. May your harvest be bug-free and your programs the same. George Spelvin and Uriah R. Stukk, Slipshod Software, SD - V2N10 Comments are closed.
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