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Ictari Issue 46
ICTARI USER GROUP ISSUE 46 May 1997
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* m a g a z i n e *
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I C T A R I U S E R G R O U P
G Greenway, 8 Denmark Road, Reading, Berks, RG1 5PA. 0118 756668
http://www.elis.demon.co.uk/ictari/ictari.htm
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INDEX FOR ISSUE 46
==================
C: Fractal Generator
System Audio Manager Utility
GFA: GEM Object Functions
Resource File Routines
MISC: VT52 Animations
Buzzsaw, A Tetris Clone
Image File Format Information
(Bug-Fixed) Freeware System Audio Manager
Current Membership List
Index For Issues 1-45
STOS: Another Fractal Program !
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EDITORIAL
=========
This edition of ICTARI is a couple of days late. Sorry. I've been
snowed under at work, and even physicists deserve the odd holiday. (Such
as it was...) I hope you made it to the Goodmans shows, I was at the
Birmingham event, and took some ICTARI flyers along with me. I also left
some with those nice AUKAUG people, who promised to hand them out at the
London show the next day. The turnout was good, apparantly as good as
last year, even though the scottish contingent didn't attend, -they get
their own show this year. I was a bit dissapointed when I found out that
the Falcon Mark X is no longer available, but I want to get my hands on
a similar beast. A TT clone is just beyond my means at the moment. What
with all the flyering and the Micromart advert, two new members have
just joined ! I'll consider running the ad' again. The last time I
updated the WEB-site and advertised it on USENET 9Mb of data was
downloaded the next day. The site currently takes up around 3Mb, and
most issues are around 200Kb when compressed. Someone's been reading
ICTARI, then. Rather a lot of this month's disk is taken up by Jason's
game Buzzsaw. Rather a lot of editing time has been taken up by me
playing it. Thank's also to Anthony and Xav of "Kosmic Phish"
productuions for the Audio software (you'll need DMA sound) that comes
with this issue. Check out their article in issue 4 of Atari Computing.
Have Fun,
Giles.
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CORRESPONDENCE
==============
From: Giles Greenway
To: Conributors
Re: Contributions !
Thanks to all the contributors in this issue. Stephen Bruce supplied
The picture formats info, Theo Ross the GFA stuff. It's a shame the
correspondence section is a bit quiet. Keep 'em comming...
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From: Giles Greenway
To: Everyone
Re: UDO
Does anyone have a documentation file to write ? I've just used UDO
to write a report in both RTF (for use in Macrosoft Drow) and LaTeX
formats. Needless to say the document looked much nicer done in CS TeX
on my ST than it did on the OTHER package. Granted, both files needed a
little tweaking, but UDO performed very well. I intend to register soon,
and I'd recommend it to you. For those of you who don't know, UDO is a
Universal DOcumentation program, and handles loads of other formats
including HTML, ST-Guide and ASCII. Perhaps I'll start using it to edit
ICTARI...
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From: Giles Greenway
To: Mark Wherry
Re: Lattice C
(Mark has asked me if it's worth getting the latest (last ?) version of
Lattice C by HiSoft...)
It's quite hard to see differences between the later versions of the
package. Take your query about AES toolbars: The new version of Lattice
*did* have the binding, but I still had to refer to the compedium to
understand what was going on. (You can still get the CD from 16/32
Systems.) In general, things like Speedo GDOS, AES 4.1 and DSP bindings
are there, but the documentation hasn't kept pace. If anything, it's
been downgraded, the nice spiral bound manuals have been replaced with
ones with a cheaper binding. If you've got the time and the disk space,
you could always play with GCC and object GEM... Does anyone else have
any opinions ?
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From: Jason J Railton
To: JNO (whoever that is)
Re: Code '$1b'
In the assembly code on ICTARI #45, JNO had an example of printing on
the screen using GEMDOS. Part of the string printed was the byte code
'$1b', followed by the character "Y", two byte codes of 45, then the
text string.
This code $1b isn't a screen centering method, it's for moving the
cursor. 1b is hexadecimal for 27, or the Escape code. The Escape code is
used as a standard for printers and the DEC VT-52 text terminal (the
sort of dumb terminals that connect to a big mainframe in a company
basement) for controlling the screen and cursor. The ST's TOS emulates
this standard for it's 'console device' - the screen. In fact the ST
could easily (I suppose) be turned into a dumb VT-52 type terminal with
some very simple code. Just feed console (keyboard) input to the serial
port, and feed serial input to the console (screen). There's software
around to do this, though who knows why you'd want to.
Anyway, enough of history lessons, the point is that there are a whole
set of these codes. Escape code 27 is always followed by a printable
character, and the case of this character is important. 'Esc Y' is the
code to relocate the cursor, as used in the code JNO supplied. It is
followed by row/col co-ordinates. These codes start at the value 32 for
position 0. This makes the codes 32 or greater, so they are actually
printable characters. Strangely though, the colour control codes 'Esc b'
and 'ESC c' are followed by the actual colour code 0-15, so these aren't
printable.
The sequence in JNO's code was: $1b, "Y", 45, 45, "Text..." This
translates as: Move cursor to row 13, column 13 and print the text. Note
that the two 45s represent character code 45, which is actually the
minus sign "-".
See the file ANI_TEXT.TXT in one of the folders for a full set of these
codes.
Now to the fun bits. On the mainframes at Loughborough Universtity, I
put a load of these codes in a file which was attached to my user
information. Every time someone looked me up, they were treated to an
animated sequence as the codes moved the cursor around their screen and
re-drew images drawn in ascii characters.
The ZX Spectrum had similar codes, and you could even put them in the
10-character filenames that you saved on tape. So, when someone loaded
the program the filename would flash, show up in colour, or appear in
the centre of the screen.
The great thing is, you can put these codes in the text files that
accompany anything on disk, and when read from the desktop, all the
codes will be activated. You could have coloured text, or move the
cursor around the screen. Someone should write a utility to do it...
I've included some examples of text files with these codes included,
along with the STOS Basic listings I wrote to generate them. Just don't
put these codes in your ICTARI correspondence, as word processors don't
like them very much. And any file viewing software probably won't work
either. Only use them in text files that are intended to be viewed from
the desktop.
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From: Giles Greenway
To: Jason J Railton
Re: VT52 codes
JNO is our very own John Nicholas Oakes ! You're right about not
putting odd codes in ICTARI. Don't put them in 'net mail or news
messages either, or VERY nasty things can happen. Those things are fun
to play with, though. ANSI animations are also quite popular on those
OTHER machines. I've a utility to convert between the two formats
somewhere... I've always thought there should be a VT52 editor. Maybe
there is one, I'll have a look. It would be a great way to present a
game, assuming you ever write one pedestrian enough to require
instructions. The Desktop boots up with a nice, lurid backdrop, and two
icons. One runs the game, the other provides the instructions, complete
with little green aliens running all over the screen...
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From: Jason J Railton
To: Everyone
Re: My fractal program 'Formers'
Apologies to everyone. It seems the version that got to the ICTARI
disk plotted fractals in black ink on dark blue, making them almost
impossible to see. This is a problem I've had before, so I should have
spotted it. STOS programs can sometimes behave differently when
compiled, particularly where the screen and palette are concerned.
Anyway, I've sent in a corrected version. I've also looked at the
code again and added some comments and two new fractal forms. One, the
S-curve, is what you get if you do the Koch curve but rotate around both
end points in the same direction, not in opposite directions. The other,
the Cross, is a fractal form I developed myself.
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From: Giles Greenway
To: Jason J Railton
Re: Fractals
I thought the choice of colours was a little stange. I should have
said something. Duh. Anyway, I'm afraid some of my own efforts have made
it into this issue again...
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From: Jason J Railton
To: Everyone
Re: Buzzsaw
Yes, it's finally here. I've been mentioning this game for ages, and
I've finally finished it. I really want people to try it and play it to
death. I want to hear about even the tiniest bugs, or any suggestions
you have for improving it. Are the separate levels over too quickly? Do
the levels get too hard too soon, or not quickly enough?
Now, you will like this game. It's sort of like Tetris, but with the
inclusion of small furry animals and circular saw blades (yes, it's that
much fun). And turn up the sound effects...
Control is by joystick (left/right/down, fire = rotate), 'P' to
pause, 'Esc' to quit a game, and 'CTRL+C' to exit back to the desktop.
You don't need instructions. Just play it. It'll all become clear
within a few seconds of playing it. There are 10 levels of difficulty,
and you can start on any of the first five levels, for when you get the
hang of it. I thought of putting a 'next' indicator in, but personally I
get bored with Tetris because it just goes on and on. I can't get the
hang of using the 'next' indicator properly, and it annoys me when
people can, and regularly beat me. So tough luck. Hopefully this means
games will be over a bit quicker, so you can let someone else have a go.
Me, bitter? (No thanks, I'll have a Murphy's :)
Again, I hope it will work on an unexpanded 520STFM, but it does use
a lot of pre-shifted graphics. If it doesn't work from the desktop, try
copying it into the AUTO folder of a disk and booting from it, to save
the memory that GEM takes up. If it still doesn't work, I'll have a go
at writing a cut-down version. It's written in STOS, and I really don't
know how much memory it takes up when it's running.
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From: Giles Greenway
To: Jason J Railton
Re: Buzzsaw
Buzzsaw is really rather good. If there's any justice in this world
DEMON's WEB-server will be sent into overdrive when I upload the game !
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