Author:

• Name: Anthony C Howe
  Location: CA - Canada

Award: Most likely to invade

To build:

    make all

To use:

    # Press TAB to aim:       Cycles through target choices before firing
    # Press ENTRY to Fire:    Kill lowest matching invader
    # Press ^C to quit early

    ./prog

Try:

    ./try.sh

Alternate code:

For an ASCII only version:

    diff -w prog.c prog.alt.c

Alternate build:

    make alt

Alternate use:

    # Press TAB to aim:       Cycles through target choices before firing
    # Press ENTRY to Fire:    Kill lowest matching invader
    # Press ^C to quit early

    ./prog.alt

Judges’ remarks:

How long can you evade the invasion?

This entry is one of the smaller games we have seen. What helps it to be smaller than it would have to be years ago?

A fun challenge

Create an alternative form of prog.c (i.e., prog.alt.c) that is slightly harder to play by allowing the closest invader to be killed. Compensate slightly for that difficulty increase by allowing the shift TAB key to cycle in the opposite direction of the TAB key.

The above fun challenge is still open. See the “Fun challenge Info” section for details.

Author’s remarks:

Overview

August 1980 Casio released the MG-880 calculator with a music keyboard and Space Invaders like game. The device was extremely popular with kids at the time (oh hum). In 2018 Casio released the SL-880 calculator that revived the game. This entry implements a variant of that game for the command line, something you can play at your desk, in the office, when you need a brief distraction from coding (or judging the IOCCC).

Building

Simply type make to build. These macros can be customised:

• PACE easy = 2, normal = 3, hard = 4

There is a smaller second version, prog.alt.c, that is ASCII only and more closely resembles the original game visually. Simply type make prog.alt.

What’s Interesting

• Small code, small UI.

• Its a game! Games are always interesting.

• See game documentation prog.html.

Primary files

• prog.c - entry source code
• Makefile - entry Makefile
• prog.alt.c - alternate source code
• prog.orig.c - original source code
• prog.html - game documentation
• try.alt.sh - script to try alternate code
• try.sh - script to try entry

Secondary files

• 2025_howe.tar.bz2 - download entry tarball
• README.md - markdown source for this web page
• .entry.json - entry summary and manifest in JSON
• .gitignore - list of files that should not be committed under git
• .path - directory path from top level directory
• prog.md - markdown source for prog.html
• .date-range - copyright date range for this directory
• index.html - this web page

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