[NFBCS] Re-introducing Camel

[Nathaniel Schmidt]

Hi all,

 

Not sure whether some of you may remember a little computer game from within
the last decade or two (probably the latter) called Camel.  According to
Louis Bryant, it was an old MS-Dos console game although I can't find any
online sources on this at least.  The object of the game was to successfully
ride your camel through the desert without dying.  You had a select number
of drinks in your canteen, a certain of number of days you could travel
without resting and a certain number of commands / moves before you had to
stop to drink or take a rest.  There were also other obstacles to overcome
such as sandstorms and in the original game, you were being chased by a
bunch of pigmies who were basically portrayed as cannibals who would eat you
if you got caught.

 

It was ported to the BrailleNote Classic / mPower in the course of time but
almost went out of existence when BrailleSoft went off the grid.  There is
an old copy of it on the audio games archive but I have no idea if it even
works any more and the AGA website is not really liked very much by some
good-quality antivirus software solutions anyway which is rather annoying
and arguably a little suspicious.  The game code on the website for the
programming language the game was written in also does not compile properly
when you invoke the language compiler, which is also a bit of a bummer.

 

So if anyone is interested, I have attempted to re-write the game,
translating it from Rapid Euphoria to Python which means that it is now
cross-platform and will run on Windows, Mac and Linux.  I hope that this
will provide an easier (and much safer) means of obtaining the game if
people want it.  Sorry if this bursts anyone's bubble but I should probably
point out that I have changed all potentially racist references to Pigmies
and Berbers, replacing them with more ecologically appropriate options such
as ravenous hyenas and very general references to crazy kidnappers.
Potentially, the reference to pigmies in particular could be partially
justified if it was supposed to be a reference to Greek-mythological
characters but I'm pretty sure it is meant to be a reference to the actual
Ethiopian ethnic minority.  I also removed the reference to the Gobi Desert
which, as an Asiatic reference, carelessly does not even correlate with the
two-fold African ethnic references the game used to have anyway but still
appears to be an excuse to have fun at others' expense.

 

The game still needs a bit of work.  At the moment I think it is way too
slow-paced and makes it not as interesting as it could be.  It takes too
long to get to the 25-30 mile maximum limit where the hyenas start chasing
you and bad stuff happens too often which means that you die too easily.  I
am actually not sure yet as to whether my rendition of the game makes it
mathematically possible to win the game.  But if anyone would like to test
it out, I would be happy to hear any suggestions you may have to offer.

 

The Alpha pre-release of version 1.0 can be found at the following link -
just download the zip archive, extract all the files in the contained
folder, keep the files in the same location as each other when extracting
and then run the file camel.exe.  If you get a pop-up blocker from Windows
smart screen then just press enter or space on "more options / actions" and
then activate "run anyway".

https://github.com/njsch/camel/files/5879037/camel.zip

 

If you don't trust me with unsigned binaries and are worried about
unsolicited content, you can always run the program straight from source -
all code is in one file:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/njsch/camel/main/camel.py

 

Enjoy.

 

Regards,

 

Nathaniel

 

========================================

Nathaniel Schmidt

Undergraduate student

Bachelor of Computer Science (S306)

School of Information Technology

Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment

Deakin University, Melbourne (Burwood) campus

https://sync.deakin.edu.au/profiles/student/njschmidt/

 

E: njschmidt at deakin.edu.au

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/njsch/

GitHub: https://github.com/njsch/

Skype: nathaniel_schmidt1994

about.me/njschmidt/ <https://about.me/njschmidt/>