STARTREK v 0.95
Written by Nick P in Nov 07

I decided to write this programme as it was the first ever BASIC 'game' I wrote.
I played "STAR TEK" when I was studying at university and that was just before the zx80
was launched. Though it was written in PASCAL at the time I thought it could be written
in BASIC so that was my goal. I wrote a BASIC version along with a BASIC language interpreter 
for the BASIC language. i.e. a BASIC interpreter written in BASIC interpreting BASIC code. This was before old Clive Sinclair
educated us with his interpreter. That was quite a feat.

However I was always intrigued by the STAR TREK programme and a programme called "WUMPUS" which was a text adventure, so
I wrote my own version long ago, about 1978

I needed to write some code recently (to put bank statement downloads into some useable format) and turned to BASIC but noticed it had changed somewhat from a programming point of view
to the BASIC I knew and used when at uni with a host of new commands such as CASE, DO loops, WHILE/WENDs and 
certainly when I learnt BASIC, graphics that is possible in JB  was a figment of the imagination etc.

So I decided to learn JB by writing my own favourite "STAR TREK". 

I started off using all the graphics commands and after a while I came to the conclusion that this was not the "STAR TREK " prog
I knew and loved. So I "rewrote" (I use that term loosely) it without any graphics and is a purely text based adventure in space.
It does (like the old STARTREK progs) make use of grids which is the only pseudo graphical output.

The game is so much better than the graphics version I wrote as it adheres to the time old tradition. Frankly if you want a graphics
version there are so many better ways of doing it. Besides the graphics version did not meet my needs which was to familiarize
myself with the essential components of the BASIC programming language again. My overall goal would not require graphics.

So here it is "warts and all". Like many programmes the code has becomes unwiedly and I am sure some of the functionality of the 
programme can be done with much more professional code. Also after a while I could not be bothered to optimize or  annotate it etc and 
it became a question of "if it is not broken then don't fix it"

Also I am sure if there's anyone interested they can add to the prog with lots of ideas and perhaps add the graphical component 
without losing the intergrity of what this was meant to be and was an exercise in.

The programme evolved with new bits added here and there, and bits of code to capture bugs etc which after a while compound the 
messiness of the coding. I make no apologies for the codinng which if I had time I would tidy up and optimize but I am sure you can do better.

I would have liked to add so many more features but 3 days on this is enough, perhaps you can "fix" the planet system which does not work
the way it should and I had ideas of making this more puzzle orientated but never got round to it.

I hope you like playing it or at least the concept.  I have played  loads of times - won and lost and it should run ok without crashing.


But remember this is not meant to be a graphical masterpiece but simply a route to 
familiarizing myself with JB.

Live long and prosper!
