Add alternative coordinates for UM08? (Misprint in Lost Treasure of Infocom)

[eriktorbjorn]

The original (I assume; certainly the grey box) releases of Starcross included a map with the coordinates of all the known and previously unknown masses. On this map, UM08 can be found at R 150, Theta 210, Phi 17.

In The Lost Treasures of Infocom, the map was replaced with a table. I don't know if it was also used in some other versions, or if it was produced specifically for this one. Here, UM08 is listed as being at R 150, Theta 110, Phi 17. Theta is off by 100. (The other masses have the correct corrdinates.)

So if you own this version, there's a fairly good chance that you will have to restart to be able to find the proper coordinates. Perhaps we should add the alternative coordinates as a workaround?

I think it would be enough to simply add a ninth element to MASSES and MASS-LOCS. Remember that the first element in MASS-LOCS is the number of elements, so that has to be increased too. Also remember that MASSES is initialized in GO, though I don't understand why.

That way, MASSNUM and MASS are still picked randomly from the first eight masses, but FIND-DESTINATION would be able to find UM08 with either set of coordinates.

[eriktorbjorn]

The incorrect coordinates also appeared in the Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces collection. Judging by the Museum of Computer Gaming History (www.mocagh.org) there are at least the following releases of the game:

Version	Coordinates
Saucer	Correct map
Grey Box	Correct map
Dysan	Correct map
Various C64 simplified packaging	Correct map
The Lost Treasures of Infocom	Incorrect table
The Sci-Fi Collection	Incorrect table
The Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces	Incorrect table

The only ones of these that I own are the Grey Box, the Lost Treasures of Infocom and The Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces, though, so they are the only one I can personally vouch for.

For reference, this is what MASSES and MASS-LOCS look like:

<GLOBAL MASSES
    <LTABLE UM08 UM12 UM24 UM28 UM31 UM52 UM70 UM91>>

<GLOBAL MASS-LOCS
    <TABLE 8 ;"number of objects in table"
           ;"R THETA PHI"
        150 210  17
            100 345 107
            100 285  87
            250  45 178
            150 105  67
            175 165  35
        100 135 101
             50  15 121>>