FALLOUT.BAS

What is it?

An implementation of the terminal hacking / password guessing game from the Fallout series of games, written in TRSDOS/LS-DOS 6 BASIC to run on an actual or emulated TRS-80 Model 4/4P.

It most closely resembles the minigame in Fallout 4, by design. The conceit is that the program is a "ROBCO Terminal Hacking Trainer" that allows the player to practice terminal hacking at selectable difficulties.

It is intended to run either under TRSDOS/LS-DOS 6 interpreted BASIC or via Misosys' EnhComp BASIC compiler. It only will work on a Model 4/4P, as it requires 80x24 video mode.

Why?

If you have to ask....

What are these files?

fallout.dsk - A bootable LS-DOS disk image that will automatically launch the program. If you're using an emulator, this is almost certainly your path to victory.

fallout.cmd - The compiled program, using Misosys' EnhComp BASIC Compiler.

fallout.bas - The tokenized BASIC file for LS-DOS/TRSDOS 6 BASIC. This will be slower and less responsive than the compiled version, and slightly harder to use.

fallout.txt - The BASIC source code. This is for if you want to hack on it yourself, though you can also use it to run the program in BASIC if you don't mind waiting a few extra seconds at startup.

What works?

Pretty much everything:

• Setting up the "memory field" with the correct number and length words, depending on player INT and terminal difficulty
• Navigating the "memory field" using the arrow keys or vi-style hjkl
• Selecting a guess or nugget by hitting Enter or Space
• Displaying how many matches there are
• Ticking down your number of guesses
• Selecting the start of {}[]()<> pairs ("nuggets") to "remove dud" and "reset guesses"
• Notifying you when you win or lose

What's different from the real game?

Some little stuff:

• In actual Fallout, a word can "split" between the end of the left field and the start of the right. The trainer can't do that. I have no current plans to fix this.
• The vi-style navigation keys are not supported in the actual game, sadly; neither is Space to select. I flip-flopped on whether to add this but eventually decided to indulge myself.
• The trainer's word-layout randomizer is much less sophisticated than I'm sure the real game's is, so it can be slow, especially when trying to place a large number of long words. In the compiled version, expect a few seconds delay as it lays out the field. In the interpreted version, this can take up to ten seconds.
• The word lists are drawn from actual word lists displayed on actual terminals during actual playthroughs of actual Fallout 4; that is to say, the trainer doesn't algorithmically choose from a giant pool of words. Some randomization and stirring is done, but if you play this enough, you might see repeats of word clusters. The password itself is always randomly picked from the wordlist, so even if you notice repeats, the answer isn't likely to be the same.
• When selecting/triggering a nugget, the trainer will immediately de-highlight the nugget; in the real game it remains highlighted until you move off of it. I will probably not fix this.
• There's not juicy lore or valuable information or door/gun controls presented after successfully hacking. I might try to do something about this, but we only have so much RAM to work with.

How do I use this?

If you're using a Model 4/4P emulator, simply mount fallout.dsk in your emulator's :0 drive and "hit reset" to boot from it. It should just fire right up into the trainer. The floppy image contains the CMD, BAS, and TXT files for your convenience, as well as LS-DOS BASIC.

If you want to play with this on an actual Model 4/4P (and, after all, who doesn't?), it's more complicated to get the program file of your choice ('CMD' or 'BAS') onto the actual machine. In case you're not familiar with this process already, options include:

1. Start with the supplied fallout.dsk floppy image. Then do one of:
   • Use a specialized floppy controller like a Greaseweazle to write the disk image to a real 5.25" floppy using a real 5.25" floppy drive. This can also help with getting LS-DOS and the EnhComp compiler onto disks and into your TRS-80.
   • Use a DOS-based emulator that can (sometimes¹) write a TRS-80 floppy using a PC's 5.25" drive, such as David Keil's, or Matthew Reed's. You can then mount the floppy image in the emulator, and copy files from the disk image to the real floppy drive. Check out Tim Mann's discussion of this process.
   • Use a Gotek or similar hardware connected to the TRS-80 to access/mount the floppy image.
2. Use a FreHD connected to the TRS-80: Copy the program file(s) onto your FreHD SD card, put it into the FreHD, then from the TRS-80, boot into a TRSDOS or LS-DOS image, and type IMPORT2 FALLOUT.CMD or IMPORT2 FALLOUT.BAS as appropriate. (Note: do NOT use the -n switch when importing the CMD or BAS file².)
3. Connect the TRS-80's serial port to a modern computer via a null modem cable, and do an elaborate dance to get the program file(s) transferred via XMODEM.
4. Type the contents of fallout.txt into the TRS-80 by hand (don't do this, ugh).

Once you have your program file(s) available to your real or emulated Model 4, if you want to use FALLOUT/CMD then you can simply type FALLOUT at the DOS Ready prompt. If you want to use FALLOUT/BAS then you can start the program by typing BASIC FALLOUT/BAS at the DOS Ready prompt. See below if you want to use FALLOUT/TXT.

I want to hack on it!

You'll need a real or emulated Model 4/4P, with TRSDOS 6.2 or LS-DOS 6.3, in order to have the correct BASIC interpreter. Additionally, if you want to compile the program, you'll want Misosys' EnhComp BASIC Compiler. From the above link, you can get LS-DOS itself, as well as both the Model 4 version of EnhCamp and the LDOS/LSDOS BASIC documentation that covers both the interpreted and compiled flavors of BASIC.

My current process is that I'm using trs80gp, booted from its FreHD support into an LS-DOS image that contains FreHD's IMPORT2/CMD.

I keep fallout.txt in the fake-FreHD-SD-card directory, from which I edit it using vim on my host machine.

When I'm ready to test, on the emulated TRS-80, I do:

  IMPORT2 -N FALLOUT.TXT

...which slurps up the file from the fake-SD-card directory, changes the end-of-line characters to be correct for the TRS-80², and names it FALLOUT/TXT on the TRS-80. Then:

  BASIC FALLOUT/TXT

and after it has loaded and parsed/tokenized the file, off it goes, and I can test my changes.

Once I'm satisfied with my changes, from inside BASIC, I'll:

  SAVE FALLOUT/BAS

to create the tokenized BASIC file, then exit to LS-DOS via SYSTEM, then:

  BC FALLOUT/TXT

to compile FALLOUT/CMD. I then run FALLOUT from the LS-DOS prompt to test my changes and to verify that it works at all. The compiler is a little finicky and can break during the compile, or can output a crashy program, so I typically test the compiled program pretty thoroughly to make sure I haven't introduced any new crashes or weirdness.

If you want to do this on a real TRS-80, you'll need to use one of the schemes mentioned above in How do I use this? to get fallout.txt onto the machine.

This is awesome!

Thanks! I'm enjoying the conceit and re-learning how to make ancient BASIC do things.

This is terrible!

Found a bug? Have a request? File an issue!

What's next?

• Possibly do something more interesting when you win or lose, RAM permitting
• Possibly save a tiny config file containing the last-selected settings and maybe win/lose stats... possibly

ATTENTION RETRO HACKERS!

I have a couple of issues I'd like to fix that are sorta beyond my current understanding. There's just a handful of people in the world that might be able to help me, but if you're here looking at this, it makes it immensely more likely you're one of them.

My primary issue is that the compiled version of the program doesn't display the blinking cursor at all. I've hacked in a fake cursor using a reverse-video "space" character, but it's less sexy than actually having the real blinking cursor. If you have any insight as to why the EnhComp-compiled version of the code would disable the display of the cursor, or more specifically, how to re-enable it, let me know. (CHR$(14) and CHR$(15) don't seem to be the medicine, sadly.)

A second question is whether the upper 64K of "banked" RAM in a 128K machine is available to BASIC somehow. I'm imagining not, that this would require dipping into assembly language, which is out of scope for me, but I'd love to hear about it if I'm wrong.

R Pickett [email protected]

Footnotes

1. The details of this are beyond the scope of this README, but only some PC 5.25" drives, using some floppy controllers, will successfully work to read/write actual TRS-80 disks in a DOS-based TRS-80 emulator. You need an actual 34-pin floppy connection from a supported motherboard or controller card to an actual 5.25" floppy drive. You're gonna need a retro PC. Alternatively, if you're wanting to invest in this process, check out the Greaseweazle and similar specialty hardware for a USB-based solution (that still requires an actual 5.25" drive, of course). ↩

2. The -n switch to IMPORT2/CMD translates end-of-line characters during the import. This is needed for plain ASCII files, but will corrupt binary files. You will NOT want to use this switch when importing either the 'CMD' or 'BAS' file; you WILL want to use it when importing the 'TXT' file. ↩ ↩²