Piper

Piper is a logic puzzle game for 8-bit Atari I wrote when I was in high school. The game was written in assembler and had 4‑color graphics with 4‑channel sound.

The conditions back then were quite different from what we have today.

• I used a modded tape drive communicating at 280 bytes per second. It was necessary to adjust the head position with a screwdriver from time to time otherwise you were unable to load the previous saves.
• I had my Atari connected to a black-and-white TV. Not entirely ideal for graphic game development.
• There was an absolute lack of any manuals and literature. I was extremely happy when I got my copy of Commented Listing of Atari 800XL OS ROM, which became my ultimate knowledge source about Atari internals.

I negotiated with JRC, a Czech software distributor, about selling the game. They said the game is fine, but in their opinion the game was missing a level editor where people could design their own levels. I was offered 5 Kč per sold copy ($0.17 at that time). I don't remember if I eventually signed the deal but the fact is that I didn't earn a penny of the game. 8-bit home computers were already on the decline in 1993.

I still have my Atari 800XE in the garage. Unfortunately, I do not have the Piper source code as I lost the cassette tapes. Luckily, there is at least a Piper binary archived on Atarimania. You can download the binary and run it under the Atari800 emulator .

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