C64 Game: Orb (first few levels)

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Published on March 30, 2014 9:14:08 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NbUiABm6lw

Duration: 7:36

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In another time, in another place: The Orbs people live on a gigantic space station in a distant solar system called Theta Boroni, very close to the well-known Atair. There are four inhabited worlds in this system:
1. the mine planet Auron,
2. the farm planet Hestia,
3. the ocean planet Hydron and
4. the high-tech planet Argonia.

The orbs are very talented transport engineers, and they have been hired with their space station to ensure the distribution of the goods to the individual planets.

For this very reason, the orbs developed the open-plan containers, which consist of five spheres.

These are interconnected: a small control and drive ball in the middle and four large balls on the outside, which contain the cargo hold.

The orbs also invented special transmitters that pick up the containers and place them on the right planet. A colour has been assigned to each planet so that there can be no confusion.

For example, the goods for Hestia arrive in green containers and are only broadcast to Hestia through the green coloured transmitter fields. Red stands for Auron, gray for Argonia and blue for Hydron.

If a transmitter field is reached by a large container of the same colour that is moving towards it, it emits this and then closes again. It is completely irrelevant from which side the container approaches, since the transmitter field is so strong that it also works through its boundaries.

It is only necessary that the container is already moving towards it at a certain speed and is not directly next to the transmitter field when it is heading towards it.

Of course, the orbs also face problems. First of all, there is inertia. Such a heavy container can only be braked when it is in motion with such an energy expenditure that the orbs have not even bothered to integrate the brakes.

Instead, they use highly compressed walls and simply let the containers made of special steel crash into them. If a container should not go in a certain direction, the orbs install rebound elements. These send the containers back in the direction from which they came.

In order to simplify matters, the orbs have also installed rotating segments that deflect the containers to be controlled in the direction of the arrow.

In some distribution halls there are still problems with outdated technology.

There is one or more main control centers in the marshalling area of ​​the containers. If a container hits such a center, the color control of the transmitter fails. They are still there, but you can no longer see them.

However, as before, they only transport the containers that were intended before the color control failed. The Mings also pose a problem. These are aliens from Mingaria, for whom the tremendous economic power of Theta Baroni is a thorn in one of their thirty-four eyes. The Mings keep smuggling themselves into containers in the space station. There they leave contact bombs that, when a container touches them, blow it up.

These saboteurs are difficult to deal with because of their small size and excellent perception. That is why the container manoeuvers always have to watch out for bombs.

A handicap are also sometimes containers that still have the paintwork of their last destination and therefore have to be repainted. The Orbs have developed a quick coater for this. This injects containers that collide against it, as indicated by the colour wheel in the middle.

However, counter-clockwise, i.e. from blue to red, from red to green, etc.

Sometimes a container has to be overmolded so that it does not use a transmitter field prematurely.

The latest development of the orbs is a small transmitter, which has containers moving against it materialized again at locations within the distribution hall calculated by the orbs.

The orbs worked for Theta Baroni for several centuries. They were happy with their payment the whole time.

But one day it was too little. They went on strike and now it's your job to get the orbs done.

The game is controlled with the joystick in port # 2. The joystick can be used to move the cursor in all four directions. If you press the button on a container, you get into the movement mode of the container. Now you can move the container in all four directions. Pressing the fire button again brings you back to cursor mode.