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Elite on the BBC Micro and NES

Main loop: Main flight loop (Part 7 of 16)

[BBC Micro cassette version]

Name: Main flight loop (Part 7 of 16) [Show more] Type: Subroutine Category: Main loop Summary: For each nearby ship: Check whether we are docking, scooping or colliding with it Deep dive: Program flow of the main game loop
Context: See this subroutine in context in the source code Variations: See code variations for this subroutine in the different versions References: No direct references to this subroutine in this source file

The main flight loop covers most of the flight-specific aspects of Elite. This section covers the following: * Continue looping through all the ships in the local bubble, and for each one: * Check how close we are to this ship and work out if we are docking, scooping or colliding with it
LDA INWK+31 \ Fetch the status of this ship from bits 5 (is ship AND #%10100000 \ exploding?) and bit 7 (has ship been killed?) from \ ship byte #31 into A JSR MAS4 \ Or this value with x_hi, y_hi and z_hi BNE MA65 \ If this value is non-zero, then either the ship is \ far away (i.e. has a non-zero high byte in at least \ one of the three axes), or it is already exploding, \ or has been flagged as being killed - in which case \ jump to MA65 to skip the following, as we can't dock \ scoop or collide with it LDA INWK \ Set A = (x_lo OR y_lo OR z_lo), and if bit 7 of the ORA INWK+3 \ result is set, the ship is still a fair distance ORA INWK+6 \ away (further than 127 in at least one axis), so jump BMI MA65 \ to MA65 to skip the following, as it's too far away to \ dock, scoop or collide with LDX TYPE \ If the current ship type is negative then it's either BMI MA65 \ a planet or a sun, so jump down to MA65 to skip the \ following, as we can't dock with it or scoop it CPX #SST \ If this ship is the space station, jump to ISDK to BEQ ISDK \ check whether we are docking with it AND #%11000000 \ If bit 6 of (x_lo OR y_lo OR z_lo) is set, then the BNE MA65 \ ship is still a reasonable distance away (further than \ 63 in at least one axis), so jump to MA65 to skip the \ following, as it's too far away to dock, scoop or \ collide with CPX #MSL \ If this ship is a missile, jump down to MA65 to skip BEQ MA65 \ the following, as we can't scoop or dock with a \ missile, and it has its own dedicated collision \ checks in the TACTICS routine CPX #OIL \ If ship type >= OIL (i.e. it's a cargo canister, BCS P%+5 \ Thargon or escape pod), skip the JMP instruction and JMP MA58 \ continue on, otherwise jump to MA58 to process a \ potential collision LDA BST \ If we have fuel scoops fitted then BST will be &FF, \ otherwise it will be 0 AND INWK+5 \ Ship byte #5 contains the y_sign of this ship, so a \ negative value here means the canister is below us, \ which means the result of the AND will be negative if \ the canister is below us and we have a fuel scoop \ fitted BPL MA58 \ If the result is positive, then we either have no \ scoop or the canister is above us, and in both cases \ this means we can't scoop the item, so jump to MA58 \ to process a collision