Not too long ago, I was discussing how MacForth was the first programming language that was usable on the 128K Macintosh. I learned yesterday that a game had been written in it, called ChipWits. It was inspired by a couple games, one of them an old favorite, “Rocky’s Boots.”.
The company that made it licensed it to Epyx, to distribute ports to the C-64 and Apple II, also in versions of Forth.
Recently, the Macintosh and C-64 source code was open sourced on Github. There’s also an anticipated modern version to be released on Steam next year.
The article says the fact that it was written in Forth facilitated making it portable. Though, given that the C-64 version (and presumably the Apple II version) had less memory to work with than on the Mac, some concessions were made.
True to the Macintosh concept, the 8-bit versions used a visual, iconic programming language, which you use to program a robot to navigate rooms, avoid obstacles, and avoid/attack bad guys, and pick up items. At least that’s what I’ve seen from some demo videos. Following the Macintosh theme, the 8-bit versions had players use a GUI, using the same iconic programming language, along with pulldown menus, using joystick controls to navigate the interface.
It looks like the goal for each level is to pick up all the “good” items before the “cycle count” runs down to zero.
