On January 6th James Zeun wrote:
"It would be even cooler on a TRS80 M100." I apologize for my ignorance in
that I know nothing about the D&D game, never having played it, but I
applaud your willingness to undertake the task. Programming breaks down
into two (usually sequential, but don't ever let yourself get dragged into
the argument) tasks: strategy and implementation. The strategy, known as
the "algorithm", is just the logical path ("steps") to accomplish the
desired end. Implementation is using a language's syntax ("commands") to
describe each step in sufficient detail such that the computer can carry
them out. If you're going to do this on the Model 100 the you probably will
want to use the built-in BASIC programming language. Hopefully you have the
Model 100 manual, which has all of the syntax detailed, including the RND
function, which will be essential to your implementation. Your strategy
will be to determine /declare the number of dice in play and the number of
sides (range of values, if D&D dice differ from the familiar 6-sided,
dotted cube) on any given die, and then to create a random value for each
die in play that is within the domain of legal possibilities for the game.
Later you can expand the program to display these values, but generating
them is the first task. I know I've seen this algorithm in one of my books
- I like books, too - but when I find it I'll post it.-CH-
