July 26, 2000

Ladder, an old CP/M platform game (if you can believe that), is a staple of my childhood. For literally years now, I've wanted to find source code to port to, say, an ANSI terminal, or even a fancy DirectX update. Turns out I didn't need to look too far! Kevin Handy has already done a *nix ANSI terminal ncurses conversion of Ladder for me! Works pretty well, including source.

I looked pretty hard several times for a copy, but could only find a very faithful Amiga remake, which comes with 68000 assembler source. This version is playable on an Amiga emulator (such as WinUAE for Windows), though you'll need a Kickstart ROM and Workbench disks (+ a little patience; kinda surprised this site is still up, actually), as well as the LhA arcer program to play it.

Silly me, I never bothered to check the CP/M newsgroup. They directed me to the CP/M-86 Free Software Archive, which in turn linked to the CP/M-86 Commercial Software Archive. The latter hosts a mirror of the Unofficial CP/M web site, including binaries of CP/M-86 (CP/M for an AT PC)-- and, tada!, Ladder for CP/M! Also: Catchum, a Pac-Man-like game, IIRC.

But I ran into a roadblock with CP/M-86, namely I can't get Sydex's old 22DISK utility to properly use my floppy drive to transfer LADDER.COM to my bootable CP/M-86 floppy. CP/M Main Page seems to have good stuff that might help. But the *nix version works for me.

Hooka hooka hooka!

Related trivia question that I don't know the answer to: What is generally considered to be the first platform game?

comments...

Dan Sanderson, July 26, 2000 11:34 AM:

Kevin tells me the *nix conversion isn't his, except a few fixes. Original author unknown.



He also says there's a bug where you can score points by jumping over the 'o' in "Score" at the bottom of the screen. (In Ladder, you earn points by jumping over rolling boulders that appear as 'o's.)

D-Dubs, November 26, 2001 4:38 AM:

My friend Dave and his buddy wrote the original code for both of these games. He says he still has the source code.

TZ, November 27, 2001 4:57 AM:

Dave and I wrote it and was sold under the company name "Yahoo Software" through distributors and computer manufacturers (including Kaypro, Xerox and NCR). I sold the Yahoo name to a fortune 500 company. I guess I should have kept it. :)

Ken Irving, December 15, 2004 12:48 PM:

A small hack for the curses version is to add a call
to curs_set(0) after initscr() in ladder.c. This hides the block cursor, which otherwise shadows 'lad' on his rounds. I have fond memories of ladder on the Kaypro, and really appreciate having this code available.

Ken

Duncan McGreggor, February 20, 2006 4:07 PM:

Sweet! I too have intensely fond memories of this game as a kid. In fact, I am now a programmer thanks to the exposure I had to these CP/M games and the readable source of many of them. My mother tried desperately to keep me off dad's Kaypro, especially because of how into ladder I would get :-)

I've just compiled it on Mac OS X, and am giggling myself silly. This is fantastic! Oh, the memories...

There's also a java port of this game, and it's available here:
http://ostermiller.org/ladder/differences.html


I'm thinking of porting it to python, specifically, Twisted Python.

Thanks again, guys!

Dan Sanderson, February 20, 2006 5:24 PM:

I encourage your Python port project, Duncan! Twisted P would especially be a nice hack.

Kim Bradford, April 4, 2006 4:33 AM:

I love this game, and it's been about 20 years since i've played it on an old Kaypro. But i'm a bit of a dickhead and can't work out how to run it. My system is just a basic PC, Windows XP, nothing fancy like you guys are talking about, any chance someone can explain how i can get it working, i've found a ladder.jar file and have downloaded the latest Java, but i'm stuck!!! Please help me! I'm not working the rest of the week and can imagine myself spending the next 4 days just playing Ladder nonstop!!!! I'm not a complete techno-phobe, but need instruction!!!

Dan Sanderson, April 4, 2006 9:13 AM:

Hmm, I can't get the Java version working either (with Java 1.4.2). "java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError" (Unsupported major.minor version 49.0).

Try contacting the author, it might be an easy fix.

OSUKevin, May 13, 2006 7:01 AM:

I too remember this fondly. another 'bug' if this does not spoil it: top level, first hurdle: get on top of this and jump up and down. can put a pencil in the keyboard and go to class with it jumping away - did this several times!

great work keeping these games alive!