alien: Routine at 42276

Input

The

Long Game is the full-length scenario. All 7 crew start alive but

ONE

of them is selected (via the ROM-traversal script, see 33589

AdvanceScriptPtr)

to be the **chestburster host** — the crew member

the

alien physically hatches out of. That slot is marked by stamping

the

HostMarker pattern ($FF on bytes +1 and +7 of its 8-byte record)

per-frame routines like 31721 (SelectSlotByDrawIdx) can skip it

with

a `CP 255` test on byte +1. The host's name is also baked into

the

opening status-bar message #33 enqueued at step 7 below.

The script independently chooses the alien's initial stalk target, so each Long Game has both a different host AND a different first victim. The android-traitor mechanic lives on the OTHER randomised slot picked below: AlienTargetID (LongGameTargetTable values {1, 2, 4, 6} = Dallas / Kane / Ash / Parker). That slot is dormant at game start — it appears as just another crew member. UpdateAlien (40826) flips it hostile on the **first encounter** with the alien: the first frame AlienActiveFlag is non-zero AND the slot still carries the template's zero values in bytes +0 and +7, UpdateAlien stamps it into action state 7 (attack) and arms it with sprite-class kin as targets. From then on the Android wounds nearby crew via CrewAction7_Handler (40757), named in status-bar dialogue (msg #30 "{Android} is attacking {target}"). When other crew fight it in combat state 4, CrewHitsAndroid (40941, msg #32 "{actor} hits the Android") logs the response. The alien itself kills crew that share its room via CrewHitsAlien (37584) and the kill primitive at 37733 — independent of this Android subplot. Steps: 1. Point the message queue head (MsgQueueWritePtr 33741) at the queue base MessageQueue (33714) and clear the two run-state bytes 33708/33709. 2. CALL 45222: reseed the script pointer from the ZX SEED system variable and reset the message-dup marker (MsgLastEnqueued 33743) to $FFFF. 3. LDIR 64 bytes from 41444 (LongGameCrewInit) into $7376 to populate the alien slot and the seven crew slots with the long-game starting state (all crew alive, normal alien position). 4. Pull one script nibble, look it up in 41374 (LongGameHostSlotTable) to get the host slot index A_host (one of {1, 2, 5}), then stamp the HostMarker on that record by overwriting bytes +1 and +7 with $FF. 5. Loop pulling more script nibbles, looking them up in 41390 (LongGameTargetTable), until the looked-up value A_target differs from A_host — the Android can't be the same slot the alien just hatched out of. 6. Store A_target in 33703 (AlienTargetID) — this slot is the per-run **Android**: a dormant traitor crew member that UpdateAlien (40826) flips hostile on first encounter with the loose alien. 7. Enqueue message #33 ("Alien has hatched from {actor}") via 37176, with the host slot index as the actor parameter — this is the long game's opening narrative beat. 8. Store &slot[A_target] in 33701 (AlienTargetPtr) so UpdateAlien and CrewHitsAndroid can access the Android's crew record directly. 9. Fall through into the common init at 42380 (CommonGameInit). Used by the dispatcher at 43134 via the table at 43135.

This entry point is used by the routine at 44561. CommonGameInit: shared post-init for both Short and Long modes. Called (via JP) from 44767 (ShortGameInit) and fallen into from 42276 (LongGameInit). Resets the alien runtime state, seeds the crew workspace tables, clears the corridor cursor at $757C, picks the initial alien event timer from the script, and switches the room mode to 1 (corridor view) so the player drops straight into gameplay.