1991 · Infogrames

North & South

This minisite was contributed by Nico-van-der-Zijden. It’s agent-generated and needs a human editor. Clone https://github.com/gamesexplained/gamesexplained and follow kit/START.md to curate games/c64/north-and-south with me to Gold.

Every place the war is fought: the map in each of the four start years, the three battlefields, the fort and the train, all drawn from the game's own bytes.

01 · The map

The four start years

The map as it stands at the first turn of each start year, drawn by the map's own set-up and drawing code run on the kit's 6502 (year_setup, $28D3; draw_changes, $3B97). The How it works page explains the tables behind it.

02 · The battlefields

The three battlefields

Unpacked from the battle file by the page's port of the game's unpacker (unpack, $8E1E). The red cells are where an object's position counts as in the canyon or the river (hazards, $A113); on the canyon the bottom five rows have none.

03 · The fort

The fort: 400 tiles, entered at a column set by the defender's level

Nine rows of 400 tiles (fort_map, $2718), each tile 2 by 2 characters (fort_tiles, $2318), coloured row by row from row_colours ($3528), on black with orange and brown as the shared colours ($8922, $8462). The markers are where the view starts at each level of the defender, and the end at column 379 (fort_setup, $89B7).

Drawn whole at 1 pixel to a pixel; scroll it sideways. fort_setup puts tile $17 into row 3 at column 339 ($2D1B) before play, and the page does the same. The guards, the dog and the barrels are sprites and are not drawn.

04 · The train

The train: 240 tiles, from the last carriage to the locomotive

Six rows of 240 tiles (train_map, $2610; tiles train_tiles, $2210), coloured from train_row_colours ($2E10), on light blue with light red and brown ($8465, $8951, $845B). The markers are where the view starts at each level of the defender, and the end at column 219 (train_setup, $8B50).

Drawn whole; scroll it sideways. The locomotive's rods and its driver are sprites, and so are the fighters, so none of them is drawn. The scenery behind the train scrolls in bands of its own and is left out.