You're an inveterate tinkerer. Because you have a Ph.D. in Physics, and also because this is a fact you never hesitate to remind people about, your friends call you "the Doctor." Because of your advanced knowledge of physics you have managed to invent a time machine. Using your time machine you have begun to travel through space and time. Unfortunately, during your travels you uncover a plot by the evil species, known as the Darlecs, to gain control of the entire universe. They have managed to capture the "Infinity Device" which will allow them to destroy a whole star system, if they should so desire. They plan to use the threat of this device to extort untold wealth from the other civilizations of the universe.

You were in the midst of attempting to recover the device when you were captured, but now you have managed to escape and continue your mission. You must collect the Infinity device parts (Purple) while avoiding the Darlecs (Red). Your advantage is speed. Darlecs are a somewhat sluggish robotic race. When not actively following orders they tend to shut down into an energy saving mode from which it takes a moment for them to recover. You can use this to your advantage when exploring their lair.

Move in one of four directions and press Space to cast an "energy net" (orange) in the direction you were last moving. When Darlecs run over this net they will be destroyed. Beware, you cannot cast a net directly onto a Darlec. You are able to pick nets up by running over them. You have managed to collect three by the time the game begins. Another four can be found at random locations throughout the base.

There are also nuclear reactor energy stations (yellow) spread throughout the complex. These can be modified to explode spreading a deadly pulse of energy, which will destroy all the Darlecs in a particular area of the complex. However, they can be tricky to adjust, so you might have to work a little while at getting them to go critical (by running into them). When they do go critical, a countdown from five will begin. You have that much time to get to the next area of the complex to escape the energy pulse.

Collect the yellow keys to open the locked doors of the complex. There are enough keys for all the doors, but sometimes they will be protected by Darlecs. Pressing the 'K' key will display the number of keys you currently have.

After having collected all the Infinity Device parts (12) a message will flash indicating it is time to go to the time machine. When you get to the time machine you will be presented with your score, which reflects the number of Darlecs killed and other aspects of your skill at getting through the maze. You will not be able to get into the time machine until you have collected all the parts. Pressing the 'P' key will display the number of parts you currently have collected.

If you run into a Darlec you die. If the Darlecs touch you, they will shock you with their electrical prods. You can receive 3 such hits before you die. Use the Darlecs literal machine responses against them by luring them into different areas of the complex in order to get around them or destroy them more easily.

Don't assume anything about the maze of the Darlecs. Some mysteries and anomolies exist in how it is structured, that you might be able to use to your advantage.

A - Left, S - Right, W - Up, Z - Down, SPACE - Cast Energy Net
K - Display Keys, P - Display Parts

Preliminary coding

End Game routines

• Tweaks to the Maze and bug fixing.
• Added the ability to call up number of keys and parts.

• Fixed rare but major bug in maze read routine involving confusion of variable 'O' and digit '0' in FOR/NEXT loop of that routine.
• Tightened code of main loops.
• Added alternate G, Y, H, J key input.

• Fixed a rare problem with key pickup routine, when key is on the edge of the screen between two areas.

Converted the MC-10 source to Coco Basic. This requires paying attention to the following special instances where Coco Basic requires spaces after variable names and the following commands (the version of MS Basic for the MC-10 seems to have elminated these confusions and thus allows complete packing of lines):

ONT_GOSUB
FORT=D_TO
IFA>B_THEN
A_AND_B
A_OR_B
FORA=1TOB_STEP

All screen pokes had to be changed to reflect the change of the start value for the MC-10 screen (16384) and the Coco (1024). Added a routine 10000-10004 to handle the high speed poke routine of the Coco. The MC-10 runs its basic programs about 10% faster than a Coco in regular speed, so some of the basic programs I have written really require the use of high speed. But in other instances, high speed makes them a little too fast. For the latter instances, I make using high speed optional for Coco 3s so that people can use the lower speed as a difficulty level option, or learning mode. Otherwise, the routine always prompts for Coco 1 and 2s (and Dragons) just in case someone's machine can't handle high speed. Any orange text screen use must be switched from the MC-10's POKE49151,64 to the Coco's SCREEN 0,1. Also, all the peeks to sense the keyboard rollover tables must be changed, because these are handled very differently between the two machines. Other than such changes, the machines are pretty much the same if one is not using high res graphics or any other Extended Basic commands not available in the MC-10 such as PRINT USING, ATAN, ELSE, etc.

Make sure to set PALETTE RGB or PALLETTE CMP as appropriate for the CoCo 3, otherwise the colours will be wrong.

I would like to thank my son Charlie for his contribution of the 8-bit music intro to the game and his work as beta tester and the rest of my family for their patience exercised towards my TRS-80 MC-10 hobby activities.