PRIME

ZAPM, continued · still hunting the Orgasmatron

Date of birthMarch 2011 last release 2.5, 2014

CreatorsPsiweapon · Michał Bieliński

LanguageC++ ~55,600 lines

Platformcurses · NotEye Linux, Windows

Lineage

PRIME grew out of ZAPM after Cyrus Dolph stopped work on it in 2010. Psiweapon started it in March 2011; Michał Bieliński (who also ported BOSS to the PC) joined in October 2011, and they worked on it until the end of 2014. It kept ZAPM’s goal and jokes and added races, many more professions and monsters, and a graphical NotEye frontend with tiles. See the family tree.

Played here: PRIME 2.5a from Larzid/PRIME, with the NotEye tile sheet.

Credits

Psiweapon	Creator (2011–2014)
Michał Bieliński	Co-developer (2011–2014)
Cyrus Dolph	ZAPM, the base
Larzid	GitHub maintainer

Screenshots

Profession choice — Start: 14 professions in five groups, from Human Space Marine to the Xel’Naga.

First steps: a Space Marine on Space Base 1, meeting a pack of grid bugs.

Fighting grid bugs — A fight: “You derez the grid bug! (6 dam)”.

Inventory: energy cells, buckazoids, flares, a pistol, a pulse rifle, bullets, a flak jacket, a motion tracker.

Trivia

The Space Marine starts with a profane letter home about the “krab patties” that killed Johnny, and signs off “So long, bastards.” Every profession has its own introduction. (data/intro)
Daleks can levitate and follow you up and down stairs. (changelog, 2.5)
“Guardbot has something against ninjas.” (changelog, 2.5)
The monster list mixes in StarCraft (zergling, hydralisk, zealot, high templar), Star Control (Orz, Melnorme, Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah), Fallout (Brotherhood paladin, securitron), Dune (reverend mother) and System Shock (Shodan). (Monsters.txt)
You pick a key map at first start: ADOM, Angband, Dungeon Crawl, DoomRL, NetHack or PRIME’s own.

What's unique

Races and professions: humans, space orcs, space elves, Reticulans, a Yautja hunter and the Xel’Naga.
Psionics: four psyker professions with their own mutant powers.
Tiles: a graphical NotEye mode, with the ASCII game still underneath.
Everything ZAPM had: technology instead of magic, buggy/debugged/optimized items, implants, skills, the Orgasmatron.

Code dive

C++, about 55,600 lines. Monsters and items live in text tables (Monsters.txt, Items.txt) turned into C++ by m4 and a table compiler (tablemk, bison/flex).
Two frontends: NCurses and NotEye (Zeno Rogue’s graphics library).
A crash handler (libsigsegv) tries to save the game on a segfault and logs “Saving throw succeeded!”
This port: a new frontend in place of NotEye with the same tiles, WebAssembly, separate windows. Source: memmaker/prime.

Stats

Thing	Count	Notable ones
Professions	14	Space Marine, Stormboy, Yautja Hunter, Psion, Empath, Mastermind, Weirdboy Warphead, Ninja, Dissident, Software Engineer, Astronaut, Quarterback, Janitor, Xel’Naga.
Monsters	~110	Tribbles, flying toasters, naked Orz, kamikaze goblins, liquid metal slime, usenet troll, crazy chaos marine, Bastard Operator From Hell, the daemons, Shodan.
Items	~280	Guns, grenades, floppy disks, canisters, implants, ray guns, armour, tools.
Keymaps	9	ADOM, Angband ×2, Crawl, DoomRL, NetHack ×2, PRIME, PRIME for laptops.

Manual

The PRIME guide, updated from the ZAPM guide: read it here (text). The full changelog lists every version.

Getting started

Open the game, choose a profession (Tab shows descriptions), read your letter, pick a key map.
Move with the arrow keys; walk into monsters to hit them; shooting is in the Enter menu.
X explores; > walks to the stairs.
Enter opens a command menu; ? is help.

Help

No walkthrough exists. The guide covers items and skills; ZAPM advice applies. Tips:

Your motion tracker shows monsters behind walls; use it.
Melnorme traders sell services; translation helps.
Buggy items hurt, so identify before using.

Cheats

PRIME has a debug command for the “Bastard Operator From Hell” (create items and monsters, control monsters), but only with four command-line options; this port does not enable it. Export save / Import save keeps backups.