Stock Market - Peter Young (Your Spectrum-Issue 2-Page 85)





Fancy yourself as a budding financial genius - well, here's your

chance to prove it. Dealing in stocks and shares, your task is to

make a veritable fortune anticipating the 'bears' and 'bulls' in

the stock market.

	There are four skill levels to the game, and these determine

how much prices have changed independently of the information

given to the players. Depending on the number of players

involved, you should choose your level carefully. Playing alone,

you would be wise to opt for level four; for two players, level

three would be the best bet; for three players try level two; and 

if there are four or more players then level one is for you.

	You specify how many rounds you require (a good game

would comprise six rounds) and, complete with £1000 to play

the market, each player gets to study the seven companies available

for speculation and decides which shares to buy. You can

'cheat' a little as you're provided with three rumours as to what

might happen, with the option of a fourth which has to be

bought. Of course, if you get found out trying to bribe an official,

you could find yourself in hot water!

	You'll notice that the shares in Akran, Belso, Cobra and

Dobro will not fluctuate too much each round, whereas speculations

on Elsat and Finet will turn out a lot more lucrative. The

final company, Bchip, represents the kind of share which never

actually falls in value, but whose gradual rise in price will 

never make you a Nelson Rockefeller.

	All prompts for the buying and selling of shares are indicated

on-screen, and the program is error-trapped should you decide

to type in a lot of nonsense! When all players have completed

their various transactions, the Spectrum will list any changes of

share values and inform those unlucky enough to let their funds

go down to £0 that they'd better reserve themselves a place on

the window-ledge.

Should a company be dissolved, all shares in this enterprise will

be discontinued and you stand to lose all your cash. However,

you will find that the company will re-emerge due to

an influx of government subsidy and trade will continue with the

share prices being set to their original starting price of £15. 

After the final game turn, the program converts all share holdings into

cash and gives each player their final tote - the winner, of

course, being the one who has made the biggest fortune.





Lines 1-15      Initialise screen colours, POKE Caps Lock and keyboard bleep,

		and finally PRINT the game title.

Line 20         Sets the initial values of the bribe attempt and the game turn.

Lines 21-23     Get the details of the number of players, skill level, and the

		number of game turns required. The subroutine starting at line

		9100 (called no less than three times within this short routine)

		reads the keyboard.

Lines 25-30     Call the variable subroutine and jump to the main program.

Lines 40-60     Contain a subroutine to print screen details. This is positioned

		at the beginning of the program to speed up the proceedings.

Lines 100-330   Main program loop. This is called once per turn for each player.

		This portion of the code prints the screen, rumours, and bribe

		attempts if necessary.

Lines 4000-4030 Unknown rumours routine. This routine calculates the 

		extra rumour.

Lines 5000-5110 Contain the buying and selling of shares routine. Each player is

		asked if they want to buy or sell shares. Checks are made on the

		number of shares available and the amount of cash the player

		has - this information is used to stop 'illegal entries', ie.

		cheating.

Lines 6000-6220 Calculate and print information on the rise and fall of shares,

		and also the suspension of shares.

Lines 7000-7040 Check to see if a company is bankrupt, and plays a merry little

		ditty when all is lost.

Lines 8000-8220 Initialisation of variables.

Lines 9000-9060 The 'end of game' routine. This prints details of who has what at

		the end of the game, cashing shares and announcing who has

		made the most of their opportunity.

Lines 9100-9130 Wait for a key to be pressed, returning to the main program with

		the string, K$, holding the necessary data.

Lines 9997-9999 A SAVEing routine for those of you who have purchased ZX

		Microdrives. Do not type in these lines unless you have

		Microdrives.



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TYPE: Strategy 



COMMENT: 





This info file was typed by Jim Grimwood



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