YOUR BEST INDEPENDENT COMMODORE MAGAZINE NEWS, SOFTWARE AND BOOKS-the pick of the bunch EXPERT GUIDANCE AND HELP WITH YOUR PROGRAMMING THE COMMODORE 16 HAS LANDED will it bury the opposrtiqn2^--^V _ ^ More MIDI magic flNDING NO JOY WfTH JOYSTICKS? Our review will help commndnri' 6\ HShVIDEOLAND PURE MAGIC! Join Alice in her journey through Videoland - an enchanted place populated by strange creatures such as bread-and- butterflies and pipe smoking caterpillars; where little girls change size and flamingos turn into croquet mallets! Alice in Videoland is a revolutionary new concept in entertainment for the Commodore 64. incorporating some of the finest graphics ever seen on any home computer, accompanied by a charming musical score. There are four different game scenes involved, and your performance in earlier ones will affect your ability to get through later ones and determine your eventual total score. Scene One - Stunning title page graphics give way to the first game scene as Alice falls into the rabbit's warren. Score points for collecting the objects to be found there - including keys to open doors, bottles to make her smaller, cakes to make her bigger! Scene Two - Out in the garden the Cheshire cat looks on as Alice meets the pipe-smoking caterpillar. Help her to catch the bread-and-butterflies and the rocking-horse flies that change into the balls used in the croquet game in the last scene! Scene Three - Alice is a pawn in the chess game where her opponents are the Jabberwocky and Tweedledum and Tweedfedee. Help her across the board by protecting her with your White Knights! Scene Four -The most bizarre croquet game everl Help Alice hit the balls through the playing-card-soldier hoops before the Queen of Hearts stomps on them! Alice in Videoland is available for the Commodore 64 on disk - £12.95. and now on cassette - £8.95. Alice in Videoland features graphics created with the Koala Pad. •Audiogenic P.O. BOX 88. READING. BERKS. LTD SEND FOR COLOUR CATALOGUE I Your editor spares a few seconds of her precious time t introduce another issue of Yo Commodor WELCOME TO THE THIRD issue of Your Commodore. If you've already fingered through (he pages then I needn't tell you that, once again, it's jam-packed with the latest news, re- views, games, utilities, special features and much, much more. If not. then bear with me until curiosity tempts you to turn the page. Since you last feasted your eyes upon a copy of Your Commodore, they've been working their fingers to the bone over at Commodore. Not only have the long-awaited 16 and Plus 4 machines been launched and exhibited to the world at large, but a host of new peripherals and software has also been released. How will the 16 fare in the face of growing competition? Read our article and judge for yourself. Commodore have also finally unleashed their Commodore 64 Communic- ations Modem and CompuNet, the new on-line service for Commodore users. But you'll have to see next month's Your Commodore for the low-down on this. Showtime Everybody loves a show and the 7th PCW show was certainly no exception as thousands of computer moguls, journalists, games freaks and would-be programmers trudged through the corridors of Olympia 2 from 19th-23rd September. With winter already well underway and Christmas on the horizon, the time is ripe and the market ready for new releases — all too evident with the hoards of offerings from software houses up and down the country. Wares displayed included not only the new Commodore machines but a tide of software, books and peripherals such as Currah's Speech 64. Lend me your ears Talking of which. Your Commodore is louder this month. Cone are the days when the only hint of music 6\ 0SB1DSIB f TVfosiCak: emitting from the confines of your house might be Radio 1 or you enjoying your early morning bath. Your Com- modore is competing in the music stakes. We bring you the second installment of our two- Sart MIDI series and we also ope to set your fingers tap- ping and your ears buzzing with a guide to two soft- ware packages — MusiCalc and Music Master — which transform your Commodore into a music synthesiser. Whoever suggested that new technology was breeding a nation of philislines? Reader input But. as much as we pester software houses in pursuit of the latest releases for exposure by our reviewers, toil as we may over our trusty typewriters to bring you erudite and entertaining articles, where would we be without you, our readers? We anxiously await your praise and criticism, your comments and ideas. Are we catering for your needs? Are there too many games — or not enough? Is the general tone too serious — or too lighthearted? We're quite amiable here — so drop us a line or give us a call. Praise or abuse us — we don't mind so long as you get your views across. Thank you to everyone who has already put pen to paper: we shall endeavour to answer all your letters. Your comments reveal a world of frustrated VIC 20 owners. We want to fulfil your needs — but our supplies are low. So, how better to pass those long winter nights than by retiring to a warm corner and conjuring up weird and wonderful games and utilities on your VIC 20. And. of course, we don't expect you 64 'programmers extraordinaires' to be sitting idle either. Get tapping and share your genius with us humbler mortals! Send your output to the editor: you'll findthe editorial address on the next page. I turn utc ** «i * •mi im mmmmm m COMMODORE 16 HAS LAMXD- wBflllllll" IIIWIillMI? sManwrwarsnaa* VOLUME 1 NUMBER 3 DECEMBER 1984 Editor: Wendy J Palmer Editorial Assistant: Alison Hjul Advertisement Manager: Mike Searue Advertisement Copy Control: Sue Couchman Chairman: |im Connell Origination: Ebony Typesetting Design: MM Design Editorial & Advertisement Office No 1 Golden Square, London W1R 3AB Telephone: 01-437 0626 Telex: 881 1896 Your Commodore is a monthly magazine appearing on the first Friday of each month. Distribution by: Argus Press Sales & Distribution Ltd, 12-18 Paul Street, London EC2A 4JS. Printed by: Alabaster Passmore & Sons Ltd, Tovil, Maidstone, Kent. Subscription rates upon application to Your Commodore Subscriptions Department, Infonet Ltd, Times House, 179 The Marlowes. Hemel Hempstead, Herts. HP1 IBB. The contents of this publication including all articles, designs, plans, drawings and programs and all copyright and other intellectual property rights therein belong to Argus Specialist Publications Limited. All rights conferred by the Law of Copyright and other intellectual property rights and by virtue of international copyright conventions are specifically reserved to Argus Specialist Publications Limned and any reproduction requires the prior written consent of the Company, c 1984 Argus Specialist Publications Limited. DATA STATEMENTS 9 We bring you up-to-dale with the latest news on the Commodore front. INPUT/OUTPUT E Your chance to air your views or ply us with questions. MASTERING MACHINE CODE 18 We take a further in-depth look at the computer's native tongue. ANACONDA Wind your way around the screen with this fast and furious game. TURBO 64 38 Speed up program loading time w invaluable utility for your 64. th this PYRAMID 40 Bury yourself with this great game. GRIPPING STUFF 42 Get stuck into our joysticks review. SOFTWARE SPOTLIGHT 46 Once again, our reviewers have been working all the hours God sends to give you the low-down on more exciting Corn- more games and utilities. VIC GAMES PROGRAMMING More games tips for VIC 20 enthusiasts. PRINT USING ON THE 64 54 Perfect formatting of numerical data with this handy utility. CLIFF HANGE1 16: COMMODORE'S LATEST NUMBER 28 GATOR □ We explore the smaller of Commodore's new machines. Just when you thought it was safe to go down to the river again Can you outwit the Gators? THE BASIC FACTS PT. 3 34 TALES FROM THE CRYPT 60 Conditional processes and loops feature in this month's look at BASIC. No, it's not another offering from the Hammer House of Horror but merely Runecaster in pursuit of further adventure. With (he cold, dark nights drawing in, why not curl up beside a roaring fire with a good book? MIDI REVISITED □ Strike a chord with the second part of our series on this novel musical interface. DIGITAL DUET 74 We review two pieces of music software for the Commodore 64. DOING IT YOURSELF 80 Turn your 64 into a business system with the minimum of expense and effort. MULTIPLE FILE COPY ■ COMPUTERS IN BUSINESS Protect your most valuable programs with this utility. 82 Discover the computing wholesale business West Country-style in the company of PCS South-West. SPACE BATTLE 70 Fend off those aliens with this game for the unexpanded VIC 20. SHOWDOWN AT OLYMPIA We take a look at some of the new releases on display at this year's PCW show. DESIGN 64 BEHIND CLOSED DOORS 88 Create your own characters with this character generator for the 64. We open the door to reveal John Wagstaff and Craig Communications. Are you only using To play only games J^>n a Commodore And for Jr these you need peripherals. play only games computer is like asking Albert Einstein to work out the square root of four. The computer's brain barely ticks over. To really stretch it, you need more interesting software programs. For example, record keeping, interactive education, stimulating adventure games or word processing. Like a Commodore disk drive, a really fast storage and retrieval system with a vast memory. Or a Commodore cassette unit, the inexpensive way of loading and storing programs. For those who like the idea of text and graphics being more alive and having greater clarity than on a TV, there's the Commodore colour monitor. ^^^^^^^^^ ■ ' I mm Dot matrix pnnter £230.00 Tractor feed Pnnt speed: 50 character per second COMMODORE MPS802__ _□ Dotmatm pnnter £34500 Friction feed lor standard paper Pnnt speed 60 characters per second COMMODORE DFS1101 U Daisy wheel pnnter £39999 Letter quality pnnt on all types of paper Pnnt speed: 16 characters per second XiMMGDORE I520 □ Pnnter plotter £16999 for charts and graphs Pnnt speed 14 characters per second :OMMODORE 1541 □ Disk dnve £22900 170K memory 5 '/<" diskette COMMODORE 1531 □ Cassette unit £44 95 For Commodore 16 and Commodore pfus/4. COMMODORE 1530 £44 95 For Commodore &4 COMMODORE 1701 □ Colour monitor £23000 JOYSTICKS □ Ipnces from £7.501 PADDIES l£1350l □ HeiaK correct at umf nl going tn cm Moth of your brain? And for hard copy, there are our three kw for further information tick one ior morei of the boxes above and copy, printers and a printer plotter. These will preserve on paper-in colour, black and white, chart form, graphs or text, the fruits of all your labour. •Finally, to make games playing more exciting, there are joysticks and paddles. So use your brain. And make sure you use all of your computer's brain. SEND TO THE COMMODORE INFORMATION CENTRE, 1 HUNTERS ROAD. WEID0N. CORBY. NORTHAMPTON NN17 1QX TEL CORBY (05361 205252 NAME ADDRESS PE YC O 1284 commodore An Argot P)» $»ft.M Pubhmtan am COMPUTING I For all CBM 64 Users • UTILITIES Gamesters delights galore — improved graphics, sounds, disassemblers - it's all here! 64 Tape Computing adds a new dimension to your micro! Run this Argus 64 tape and you'll soon see why it's Britain's top selling tape magazine. Each issue gives you a variety of exciting and challenging games to play, reviews of other newly released software plus valuable utilities enabling you to write your own programmes and games. N.rfl»jrvliruip Stretch your imagination and skills with 64 Tape Computing — available every other month from WH Smith, Menzies and other leading stores. (You'll see them advertised on TV from September!) Get your copy today! Argus Tape Magazines produced by ARGUS PRESS SOFTWARE 1 Golden Square, London W1R 3AB Telephone: 01 437 0626 Pride of place in this month's news from Commodore Busi- ness* Machines must go to the launch of their two new machines: the Commodore 16 and the Plus/4. Howard Stan- worth. General Manager of Commodore Business Mach- ines (UK) Ltd., hopes that these two machines, along with the 64. will "...form the strongest range on the market over the Christmas period". The Commodore 16 has been designed as a successor to the VIC-20 and will be sold in a complete starter pack at £139.99. It includes 16K RAM, a full typewriter-style keyboard, sophisticated sound capabili- Creditable interface? The Access Computer Com- pany of Stockport have deve- loped a serial interface and cable to connect most RS232 serial printers to the Com modore 64, VIC 20 or SX64 Portable. The unit, which is supplied with instructions and a 1-year guarantee, is available by Mail Order at £34.95 inc. VAT and post from Access Computer Company Ltd., The Computer Centre, 61 Shaw Heath, Stockport, Cheshire, SK3 8BH. Telephone 061-477- 6013. ties, 121 colours for high- quality graphics and advanced BASIC. The starter pack con- tains the computer, cassette deck. Introduction to BASIC part 1 and 4 recreational software" packages. {The 16 is reviewed elsewhere in this magazine). The Commodore Plus/4 is described by Mr. Stanworth as "...an affordable home com- puter for the more serious user". And, in an attempt to prove this point, it comes with 4 integral programs: word pro- cessing, database, spreadsheet and business graphics. But he does stress that the Plus/4 "...is no F»rWd in ess machine. It is a competitivelv- priced home machine ideally suited to the professional who wants to use it for productive applications". The Plus/4 contains 64K RAM, of which 60K is available to the user for BASIC programs and includes, amongst the more obvious facilities, advanced BASIC, screen window facility, a HELP key and simple cursor controls. It retails at £299.99. Both machines are being manufactured at the new Commodore factory in Corby and should be available at the end of September. Father Commodore also promises to stuff our Christmas stockings with other goodies. A new cassette deck, the 1531 (cost — £44.95) and a new single disc drive, the 1541 (cost — £299) should soon be available. Also in the Com- modore Christmas package this year can be found two new printers compatible with the entire range of Commodore home computers. These are the MCS 801, a colour dot matrix printer, and the DPS 1101, a low-cost letter quality printer; both models will sell tor £399. Both Commodore and the leading software houses are devel-oping a range of soft- ware for the 16 ancf the Plus/4. Show-down at Olympia The curtain was raised and the chips were down at the end of September for the Seventh Personal Computer World Show. Amongst the com- panies displaying their latest wares for the 64 were Anirog, Argus Press Software, Audio- genic, Bubble Bus, Creative Sparks, Melbourne House, Protek, Currah and many more. We reveal all about the PCW Showstoppers elsewhere in this magazine. E DATA STATEMENTS Get in touch with your 64 Touchmaster Ltd. have releas- ed their pressure-sensitive surface which, complete with its own microprocessor, is able to interface with a range of micro and personal computers, including the Commodore 64. Touchmaster, as the device is called, hopes to overcome resistance to keyboard usage. The Touchmaster has an A4 working surface and a resolut- ion of 256 x 256, The surface is fully linear across the active area and does not use any moving switches or similar devices. The company plans to develop a catalogue of soft- ware — to be called Touch- ware. The first releases of software specifically designed for the Touchmaster include graphic packages, educa-tional early learning programs, board games, arcade games, adven- ture games and programmer utilities. The complete package to be marketed will contain the Touchmaster, Touchware mul- tipart graphics program and other accessories required for immediate use with a home Currah speaks out New for the Commodore 64 from Currah Computer Com- ponents Ltd. comes Speech 64 which was developed in conjunction with General Instruments. It is an allophone speech synthesiser which means that it uses individual speech sounds strung together to make intelligible speech. It has an unlimited vocabulary and its makers claim it can synthesise any word or senten- ce in the English Language. Speech 64 features a 'Say' command which provides text- to-speech, a high and low voice eacn its own intonation and integral BASIC com-mands. It is a hand-sized unit which plugs directly into the back of the Commodore; sound is gener- computer. The recommended retail price is £149.95. Touch- master may be contacted at P.O. Box 3, Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, SA13 1WH. ated through the T.V. receiver. Currah^ speech synthesiser retails at £29.95. Currah may be contacted at Graythorp Indus- trial Estate, Hartlepool, Cleve- land, TS25 2DF. Telephone 0429-729%. We hope to review Speech 64 in next month's issue). PSS hit the road From the end of Seplember, Commodore 64 users can get on their bikes with the latest offering from PSS. Entitled Hyper Biker, it is a high quality representation of the popular craze, BMX biking. It enables up to four players to act out sophisticated biking man- oeuvres and, from a straight race, through obstacles, whee- lies, long jumps, high jumps and bunny hops to compete for the accolade of BMX champ. The bike is controlled via joystick or keyboard and track features include table top, whoop de doos, ramps, speed bumps, ditches and drop offs. Hyper Biker is available on cassette at £7.95. PSS may be contacted at 452 Stoney Stanton Road, Coventry, CV6 5DG. rHVPFP Available on Cassette £7*95 KBOULCBP I! cosh Statesoft In the wake of their success with their CBM games. Astro Chase and Flip Flop, State Soft Ltd. have released to new games for 64 users, Boulder Dash and Bristles. In Boulder Dash, our hero, Rockford, has to avoid crashin boulders, walls of rock an assorted creatures as he digs for the gleaming jewels. In pursuit ~)of the diamonds, he must turn his enemies to his advantage — for example, butterflies may be turned into precious stones. The mysterious escape tunnel is revealed only once the required number of diamonds have been collected. The game includes 16 mystical caves with a playable intermission after every 4, and 5 levels of difficulty. For all non-DlY enthusiasts. Bristles takes the pain out of decorating. The object is to paint all the rooms in a building without losing your brushes before time runs out. There are 8 different game screens and 6 skill levels tor each building; your target is to paint all 8 buildings in each level. While fulfilling your task, you must avoid the Bucket Chucker, the Dumb Buckets and flying Half- Pints. Lifts and stairs are provided for your transporta- tion — but beware the caretaker's daughter as she daubs your carefully painted walls with her hand prints! Your efforts are rewarded with prizes. Both games are available on cassette and retail at £8.95. State Soft are at the Business & Technology Centre, Bessemer Drive, Stevenage, Hertford- shire, SG1 2DX. Telephone: 0438-316561. Creating another Legend Legend, creators of the 1984 Game of the Year, Valhalla, have announced details of their latest release. The Great Space Race. Scheduled for release on the Commodore 64 in late September/October, chairman John Peel describes it as a "...completely new kind of computer entertainment — one that goes beyond arcade and adventure games, but retains the best elements of both". He certainly believes Leg- end's newest baby looks good. With a revolutionary operating system, MOVISOFT 2, Mr. Peel claims that "...true solid 3D graphics..." have been achiev- ed and advanced graphics enable the characters on- screen to be seen "...in detailed close-up". The game falls into two phases. In the pre-race section, you must compete for the best spaceships, weapons and per- sonnel for your team. The event itself involves a race against "...time, natural obsta- cles and your competitors". Using a new form of single key-press commands, The Great Space Race enables characters to offer you options based on their current situation through an 'options gene- rator' constantly monitoring game development. The Great Space Race costs £% million to produce which is thought to be the largest amount ever spent on the development of a single game. Legend may be contacted at P.O. Box 435, Station Road, London E4 7LX; telephone: 01- 524-8324/5. DATA STATEMENTS The Professionals Audiogenic Lid. has launched their Professional Range of business application software for the Commodore 64. The three packages in the range are a word processing system, Micro Wordcraft, a spread- sheet facility, Swift, and their database system, Magpie. All three packages are disc- based and retail at the following prices: Wordcraft — £24.95; Swift — £19.95; Magpie — £39.95. Audio-genic Ltd. may be contacted at 39 Suttons Industrial Park, London Road, Reading, Berks RG6 1AZ. Telephone: 0734-664646. Terminal Laziness Terminal Software has been far from idle in developing 'Lazy Jones', their new game for the 64. There are 18 doors in all and, behind each, lies the opportunity for Lazy Jones, the most indolent hotel cleaner in the trade, to avoid work: he can play games, hide in the broom cupboard, drink in the bar or go to the toilet — anything to avoid the irate manager or the ghost of the previous manager. 'Lazy Jones' features a split- screen window and retails at £7.95. Terminal Software are at Derby House, Derby Street, Bury, BL9 ONW. Telephone: 061-761 4321. Things that go bump in the night E Who would have thought it? David Darling (18) and his brother Richard (16) always seemed such ordinary young men but then unexpected things started happening round them. It all began at the beginning of 1981 in Canada when they acquired a VIC-20. From that moment on they found they had a talent, an unexplained power, call it what you will, which they have been attempting to harness ever since. At first it was just ordinary sprites they called up but more recently those sprites have been transforming them- selves into a complete demon- iacal hierarchy: gnosts, ghouls, zombies and poltergeists. The source of this power has been traced to their Commodore 64. Surprisingly, nobody seems to be at all concerned. Rather the opposite for the Darling brothers are in fact the authors of the new game for the CBM 64 from Mastertronic called Chiller. In it you are given the task of rescuing your fair beloved from a haunted mansion whilst warding off the unwanted attentions of the afore-mentioned denizens of the underworld. And at £1 .99 at least you're assured of a cheap thrill. This energetic pair who have so far written 35 games including about a third of Mastertronic's output (see Space Walk and BMX Racer, both for the CBM 64). are also working on a games designer for the new Commodore 16. This will be their third games designer this year and follows the one they did for the VIC-20, Hit Ma released on the Galactic label, and the Games Creator for the CBM 64. due for imminent release from Mirrorsoft. The C-16 version should be ready in about 2 months time and will be marketed by Commodore itself. The broth- ers have already been workin on a C-16 for a couple o months now, so Your Com- modore was obviously interest- ed in their opinion of the machine. "In most respects it is as good as the 64 — the two disadvantages are the lack of sprites and the sound," they told us. Still, a good games designer should go a long way to relieving the first problem. So, with all this activity it looks very unlikely that the Darling brothers will be disappearing without trace. Mastertronic can be con- tacd at Park Lome, 111 Park Road. London NW8 7JL; telephone: 01-402-3316. Toil and trouble from Creative Sparks News Creative Sparks have annou- nced the release of their new adventure game for the Com- modore 64, Macbeth — the Computer Adventure. Based on the Bard's gruesome trag- edy the game comes as two fast-loading cassettes, with a full set of instructions, plus a complete text of the play. The player can participate in four independ- ent adventures, plus psycho- analysis sessions giving the player an insight into the aims and motivation of the leading characters. The adventures all differ from one another in style and content; each depicts a Art tor Commodore's sake scene from Shakespeare's original play. Creative Sparks are part of THORN EMI; David Gearing, general manager for THORN EMI Computer Software Pub- lishing says of Macbeth "We are delighted to be publishing this ingenious package... It is full of unexpected twists and turns, rich in different mean- ings, alive with fresh possibilit- ies^'. Macbeth — the Computer Adventure retails at £14.95. Creative Sparks can be contact- ed at THORN EMI Computer Software, Thomson House, 296 Farnborough Road, Farn- borough, Hants. Telephone: The first prize of a £5,000 endowment and £1,5000 worth of computer equipment in the world's first competition to use home computers to create works of art, the Commodore International Art Challenge, went to Hugh Riley, a young unemployed art graduate. As a result of his winning entries in the 18+ Dynamic category, Louis (Meditation Failure 126) and Obsessiveness, Mr. Riley will be able to use the endowment to study computer art at a prestigeous educa- tional establishment in any country of his choice and hopes, as a result of this unique/ opportunity, to pursue a career uj in computer graphics. The awardwas presented by 1 Professor Brian Allison, World President of the International Society for education through Art, at a ceremony at London's Hamilton Gallery. Professor Allison commented that "The Commodore sales Commodore Art Challenge has each category received £1,500 revealed a fascinating new area for art and for home com- puters. I am convinced this initiative and the exhibition of computer pictures are just a glimpse into a future which will see art and technology increas- ingly working together". The competition was divi- ded into Still and Dynamic entries and under 12, 12-17 and 18+ age groups: the winners in worth of Commodore equip- ment of his or her choice, as did Mr. Joachim Wester of Sweden with his entry, 'Mr. Freaken- stein', winner of the best non-UK it* boost Commodore UK's sales topped the £100 million mark during the last financial year, thus attaining an all time record and making the company a major contributor to Commodore International's record $1.27 billion sales for the year ended 30 June. Mr. Howard Stan- worth, General Manager of Commodore Business Ma- chines (UK) Ltd., believes that "...in revenue terms..." this makes Commodore "...the undisputed leader in the British home computer market". New face at Commodore Rae Potter has been appointed as new Software Products Marketing Manager at Com- modore UK. He expects to be "...looking particularly for software which actively ex- ploits the full capabilities of our machines — not only the VIC- 20 and Commodore 64, but also the new Commodore 16 and Plus/4 home com-puters". Mr. Potter believes that: "The mass market for software has arrived and with the imminent launch of the new Commodore 16 and Plus/4 computers. Commo- dore is in an unprecedented position to dominate, not only in hardware, but also in software". Commodore dealers will now be providing 3 software packages with every 8296D business machine sold. These are: Superscript, a wordpro- cessing package including Spelling Checker; The Mana- ger, a comprehensive database and file management packag and Calc Result, a tinancia planning spreadsheet. The 8296D with integral 2Mbyte floppy disc drive, 128K RAM, monitor, keyboard and the aforementioned software packages retail for £1,690 excluding VAT. News DATA STATEMENTS CompuNet launch The PCW show will see the launch of the Commodore Communications Modem and their new database, service, CompuNet, initially available only to Commodore 64 users. The first year's subscription to CompuNet is free with the purchase of the Commodore Modem, which costs £99.99. New modem Cirkitt Holdings PLC has developed a modem which has full British Telecom approval and, so they claim, at £59.95, is less expensive than any equiv- alent equipment. The modem took under six months to design and bring to the market, compatible with most personal It is to be marketed by Protek computers on the market, Computing Limited wno have including the Commodore 64. worked closely with Cirkit on Cirkit and Protek are predict- its development and have ing modem sales of £2 million produced a range of interface over the next 18 months, packs to make the modem Cirkit Holdings PLC can be contacted at Park Lane, Brox- bourne, Herts EN10 7NQ. Telephone: 0992-444111. BIGGER, BOULDER^ BE AUTIFUL AMERICAN NO I. Q Eoxaen commodore 6\ ECLLCEF Cfl5H CASSETTE 8*5 DISK IO-95 1.MOU • MM m <■ «i mi »-.--- >". I—MI I -I . • -II IM. State Soft Ltd, Business & Technology Centre, Bessemer Drive, Stevenage, Hertfordshire SG1 2DY. Phone (0438)316561. They came from out of the desert to the HORROR of the ANTS mmm WH SMITH Letters Whether your forte lies in preaching or praising, asking or OUTPUT useful hints and tips to fellow Commodore users. Dear Sir, All those Commodore 64 users who cannot get their voice two to work, don't take the computer back to the shop. There is nothing wrong with it; the manual is wrong. On page 161 the waveform for voice two is 54283 and not 54288. Here's another tip tor you 64 users. POKE56325.X (X=1 to 255). This will speed up the cursor and is very useful when editing long lines. Yours faithfully, William Fong, London. Dear Sir. In reply to). Lee (Input/Output - October issue), I also have a Commodore and Brother EP22 series printer. He may find it useful to note that the interface I have found most suitable is the Stack for the VIC 20/CBM 64 ftom: Stack Computer Services Ltd., 290-298 Derby Road. Bootle. Liverpool, L20 8LN. Also, the cable he receives may be wired incorrectly: Computer end pins TO Printer end pins The most reliable commands found to date are: To take a listing OPEN 2,2,2.CHR$(2)*CHR$(0): CMD2 LIST A-B (Max. 60 lines) LIST B-C etc. PRINT&2 CLOSE 2 CMD3 To use within a program: The OPEN statement should be used before the DIM$ statements, and programs used with the OPEN in a GOTO/ COSUB routine should have this line deleted and moved to the top of the listing /e: 10 PRINT "HELLO" 20 OPEN 2,2,2,CHR$(2)*CHR$ (0) 30 DIM A etc OPEN 4.4 will not work. The interface cable and printer all work well. Yours faithfully, 5 K Thoanber, Hull. Dear Sir, What a super magazine - it is magnificent! As I was browsing along the magazine shelf I noticed your magazine screaming to be looked at. After a quick look I promptly bought and raced home to look at it; as a VIC 20 owner myself I bought it to seek out new talents. The reason it is so different is because all the other Commodore magazines focus mainly on one thing: the CBM64. Most of the programs, hints, reviews and information are on this machine. I congratulate you on seeing the light for us poor VIC ana PET owners. Your article entitled 'Vic Games programming' was exceptionally good. How about including the top ten tables of software for the VIC and 64. And, how about doing reviews of Commodore's new computers, the CBM 16 and Plus 4. Yours faithfully, Andrew Philpott, Hertford. We answer, We are delighted that Mr. Philpott, and all the other readers who showered us with praise, like our magazine. We shall endeavour to keep you happy and hope you will continue to send us your comments and bright sug- gestions for future articles, games, etc. Please, please inundate us with VIC 20 stuff as we're in short supply! Finally, you can find a review of the Commodore 16 elsewhere in this magazine. We hope to review the Plus 4 next month. Dear Sir, I have a Commodore 64 and I am very interested in becoming a member of CompuNet. I would appreciate it if you would send me details on how much it would cost to join, what would be the most suitable modem for my computer and. also, how much the modem would cost. Could you please give me more information about how CompuNet works and, also, tell me where my nearest main Commodore supplier is. Yours faithfully, Steve Paterson, Livingston, Scotland. We answer, The only modem suitable for use with CompuNet is Commodore's own Modem which retails at £99.95. On purchase of this modem you're entitled to one year's free membership of CompuNet (worth £30). For information on how CompuNet works, see the review in our next (January) issue. The modem is only available, at the time of going to press, directly from Commodore Business Mac- hines (UK) Ltd. at 1 Hunters Road, Corby, Northants. The nearest main Commodore supplier to Mr. Patterson in Livingston is Peritronic Ltd. at Lomand House, Almond Vale, Livingston, West Lothian- Telephone: 0506-410041. Dear Sir, I have recently bought a Commodore MPS 801 printer for use with my 64 and. as well as the standard 11 by 9.5 inch paper for the printer I have also acquired for free 2000 sheets of 7.5 inch paper. I should like to use this narrower paper for program listings but. when doing this, the longer program lines are printed off the edge of the paper. I would like to know if there is any way of making the printer print shorter lines when using the list command as this would save me a lot of money buying expensive printer paper. Congratulations on your first edition of one of the best magazines for the Commodore user. Yours faithfully, W.L. Williams, Dyfed. We answer, Can any of our readers answer Mr. Williams' 'cri de coeur7 Dear Sir. I own a Commodore 64 and have recently bought the 'PETSPEED' compiler. This gingers up some of my ordinary BASIC programs but I cannot make it work on even the simplest High-Res program sucn as those to clear the screen and draw a circle. My BASIC program is taken straight out of the 'Program- mer s Reference Guide' (pages 122-123 and 126-127) and runs perfectly (though appallingly slowly). I have added a very simple machine code program which clears the screen and puts it into High-Res instantaneously, but of course thereafter the drawing is as slow as ever. The PETSPEED will not run this either; but, if I include a command in the PETSPEED program to load the machine code program from disc, the screen does clear - and nothing else happens. It refuses to carry on drawing the figure and the screen remains blank until I hit RUN/STOP RESTORE. In every case, the compiling seems to be error- free, but the result doesn't run. The base for the 'bit-map memory is 8192. Since the compiled program seems to occupy about 8450 bytes (most of which is, I believe, the PETSPEED interpreter), I have tried altering the base to 10240 or even beyond, so as not to interfere. The effects of this are, firstly, that only the lower two thirds of the screen are cleared and the top third after the final 'paint' is covered in vertical bars; and, secondly, although the circle gets drawn, its centre is very much displaced (though this can be remedied by changing two constants in the program). This program compiles alright too, but won't run either (in the compiled version). I attach copies of the two programs. As you can see, they are very short and simple. Can you offer any advice? Where am I going wrong? And where can I find some literature more explicit and less superficial than the 'Reference Guide'? Yours faithfully. M.W. Peters. Dorset. We answer, Try putting the high-res screen down to 32768 and paging the VIC II chip to look at the third 16K block of RAM. Currently, your high-res screen is corrupting your program. See our guides (in this issue and in previous issues of 'Your Commodore') to the vast output of literature available for Commodore users. E A. P. and D.J. Stephenson explore MASTERING MACHINE CODE ONE COMPLETE ORDER TO the microprocessor is called an instruction. The 6510A has a repertoire, called the Instruction Set, of almost 60 different types but, because most of them are available in several different forms, the total number of permutations rises to several hundred. Such a huge number to choose from can be frightening to the newcomer. Because of this, we feel that presenting the full repertoire at this stage would be more confusing than helpful. Fortunately, only a relatively small proportion of the totaf number are in regular use. In fact, it is possible to begin writing workable machine code programs by restricting the repertoire to twenty or so instructions. The instruction format A machine code instruction represents one complete order to the microprocessor and normally consists of two has a verb but no noun so is incomplete. There are normally two parts of a machine code instruction, the operation code and the opera no*. The operation code This corresponds to the verb because it tells the micro- processor what particular action is required. In general, the op-code can be a decimal number, a pair of hex digits or, if you have an assembler, a three-letter group known as an instruction mnemonic. Every instruction has a unique code number. Unless you have additional software aids, the only way to enter an op-code on the Commodore 64 is by POKing a decimal number. This is an awful method because decimals and machine code are alien to each other. Machine code programming is not the easiest or subjects and if we have to work entirely in decimal op-codes, the task Verb Noun Op-code Operand ^lllllllllllll ■X-XvX-l '•X'X'X*!*! ■X-XvXvl Figure XI The instruction format distinct parts as shown in Figure 3.1 As in everyday speech, any order given to a person consists of two parts, the verb (what particular action is required) and the noun (which particular object is to receive the action). For example, suppose we instruct someone to luck'. The person is confused because, althoueh he knows how to kick, he has not been told which particular individual or object requires kicking. In other words, the instruction borders on the horrific. We shall not attempt to use decimal op-codes at all. As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, if you intend to take machine code programming seriously, you are strongly advised to get hold of an assembler as soon as you can. However, for the benefit of readers who feel that the extra expense is not justified, a simple program will be given later, enabling all machine code programs to be entered in hex instead of decimal digits. The operand This is the second part of the instruction, corresponding to the noun. It informs the microprocessor where the data (to be acted upon) can be found. The operand, in most cases, will be the address of the data. There are, however, several different ways of specifying the address. They are known as addressing modes. Some instructions may have as many as seven different addressing modes, whilst others may nave only one. The operand can be specified in decimal or hex but, here again, hex addresses are much easier to work with. Simple addressing modes The most commonly used instruction in the repertoire is LDA so we shall use it for illustration purposes where ever possible. LDA is an assembler mnemonic for LoaD Accumulator. It is used to place data into the accum- ulator. The whereabouts of the data is specified by the operand according to the addressing mode used. At this point, only three of these addressing modes will be described. Immediate addressing Memory is not involved because the operand specifies the data. This data will be specified by two hex digits (one byte) within the range 00 and FF. Suppose we want to load the accumulator with the hex number 05 and we have an assembler resident. The way in which the instruction is written depends on whether an assembler is used or whether you must use direct hex code. Both forms are given below: Assembler LDA#$05 Hex code A9 05 Notice that the assembler requires the character '$' to indicate the number is in hex and the character '#' to indicate immediate addressing. In contrast, the hex code version is just two pairs of naked hex digits. The first pair of hex digits is always the op- code. The op-code for LDA, using immediate addressing, is A9. Why A9? Because the designers of the 6510A decreed it to be so. Without an assembler, you must either memorise the hex digit pair for every op-code (and there are over 200 of them) or consult the full instruction set of the 6510A. Perhaps this gloomy bit of information will act as a commercial break for the Mikro or Commodore assembler. It is called immediate addressing because the data is immediately available in the operand. It is used when we want to load constants. Absolute addressing This is used if the data byte, to be loaded into the accum- ulator, is in memory — anywhere in the 64K RAM. The operand is a four hex digit number (two bytes) specifying the memory address. You will remember that any address in the 64K memory map can be expressed with the aid of four hex digits. Suppose we wish to load the data byte, residing at address C2056 hex, into the accumulator. The assembler and hex code instruction become : Assembler Hex code LDA $2056 AD 56 20 Notice that the hex op-code is now AD instead of A9. Notice also the strange reversal of the two operand Dytes in the hex code version. This is a standard rule when using 6510A hex code so we nad better emphasise it: If direct hex code is used without an assembler, all two- byte operand addresses must be entered in reverse order, low-byte first, high byte last. This is important enough to justify an extra example; the nex address 5472 must be entered as 72 54. The designers of the 6510A decided on this awkward twist because it led to more efficient organisation of the address bus. In machine code, the human is relatively unimportant so considerations of 'user friendliness' take second place to hardware efficiency. As can be seen in the example above, an assembler is a little kinder towards humans and the two operand bytes are entered in normal sequence. Zero-page addressing If the address of the required data happens to be on page zero ($0000 to SOOFF) it is possible, in fact it is normally desirable, to use page zero addressing. It is more efficient because the two leading zeros can be dropped, allowing a single byte operand to be used. For example, to load the accumulator with (he contents of the hex address 35, the assembler and hex code instructions would be: Assembler Hex code LDA $35 A5 35 We shall see later that page zero is very important because (a) two of the more exotic addressing modes only operate on data resident in page zero. (b) data retrieval is faster from page zero than from other areas of memory. Unfortunately, most of page zero has already been swiped by the resident operating system so there are very few vacant address locations left for the machine code programmer. In view of this, those which are left should be given VIP status and not used wastefully. We believe, although we can find no confirmation in Commodore literature, that: Free locations in page zero = $FB lo $FF inclusive. Indexed and indirect addressing These addressing modes are not so easy to understand and will be discussed in detail later in this series. However, for the sake of completeness, brief definitions are given below but, if you are completely new to machine code, don't worry too much about them yet. Indexed addressing with LDA The contents of one of the index registers is automatically added to the operand and the result is the address of the required data byte. Thus the same instruction can be used to access different addresses by simply altering the contents of the index register. There are three possible forms: (a) Zero-page indexed, where only the X register can be used (b) Absolute indexed, where either the X or Y registers can be used. Assembler and hex code formats, using arbitrary addresses, are as follows: used to access different data items simply by varying either the address pointers or the index register. Assembly format and hex coding, using arbitrary addresses, is as follows: Assembler Hex code LDA (SFB.X) A1 FB Indirect indexed addressing This is similar in general principle to indexed indirect, The essential difference being in the way indexing is used. Firstly, only Y can be used for indexing. Secondly, the contents of Y is added to the address pointer, rather than to the operand. An example should illustrate the difference. Using standard assembler Address type Zero-page,X Absolute. X Absolute.Y Assembler LDA $34,X LDA S3456.X LDA S3456.Y Hex code B5 34 BD 56 34 B9 56 34 Note the comma is used to inform the assembler that indexed addressing is required. Indexed addressing indirect An indirect address is the address* of an address. This is not so bad as it sounds providing we first neglect the indexing by assuming that X (or Y as appropriate) contains zero. The operand is the low-byte address (which must be in page zero) of a two byte address pointer. The high byte of the pointer is in the next sequential location. As a preliminary example, using standard assembler notation, assume we write LDA ($FB,X). Assume that address $FB contains $56 (the low-byte of the pointer) and the next higher address contains SCO (tne high-byte of the pointer). The effect of the instruction is to load the accumulator with the contents of address SC056. However, things are a little more complex when the effect of the index register is taken into consideration. Suppose X contains the number 2 and we again write LDA (SFB,X). The low-byte address is now increased to $FB+2=$F so an entirely different pointer is effective. The advantage is flexibility. The same instruction can be format for indirect indexed addressing, suppose we write LDA ($FB),Y and that Y contains 2. Let us also assume, as before, that address $FB contains $56 (the low-byte pointer) and the next address contains SCO (the high-byte pointer). Because 2 is now added to the address pointer, it effectively becomes $C056*2=$C058. The assem- bler and hex coding, using arbitrary addresses, for indirect indexed is as follows: Assembler Hex coding LDA ($FB>,Y 81 FB Indirect indexed addressing is used much more often than indexed indirect. Note how easy it is to gel mixed up with the position of the assembler brackets. Lets put them together to emphasise the difference. Indexed indirect. ..LDA ($FB,X) Indirect indexed.. .LDA <SFB),Y It is worth mentioning that the older terms were as follows: Indexed indirect was called post indexing (because the index was added afterwards). Indirect indexed was called pre-indexed (because the index was added first). How to enter a machine code program Up to this point, we have only used the instruction LDA to illustrate the technicalities of machine code and readers may be wondering how much longer they must wait before the rest of them are discussed. The trouble with machine code is that the various addressing modes are far more difficult to understand than differences between the instructions themselves. We have tackled the hardest part first. As we subsequently treat the other instructions, short program segments will be given to illustrate the behaviour of each. However, before we go any further, we must know how to enter a machine code program and afterwards, how to run it. We shall assume in the first instance that you do not have an assembler. Program 3.1 is a simple way to enter a program into the safe area of memory which, you may remember from Part 1 of the series, is the 4K block starting at address SCOOO. The program, written in BA5IC, allows you to enter hex machine code bytes in the form of DATA statements. You should key in the program and save it on tape or disc for use whenever you want to load machine code. The hex bytes shown are, of course, only an example so, once you have tried it out once, there is no need to save lines 140 to 180. When you load your own programs, or some of the examples which will appear throughout the series, you will have to enter the bytes in the form shown in lines 140 onwards. Once you have entered the bytes and the BASIC program run, you will be asked, via a screen message, the number of bytes used. In the example, there are 33 bytes. Once you have entered the number of bytes, the program will place tnem in memory starting at SCOOO. It will be up to you to ensure that the DATA bytes, which we shall refer to in future as a 'hex dump', are entered in the correct sequence. You will notice that the data bytes in the example are placed in groups of eight. This is for convenience (they are easy to count up if you stick to this number) and also because it is customary in machine code monitors to display the bytes in groups of eight. Programming 10 REM POKING A HEX DUMP INTO MEMORY 20 REM STARTING AT ADDRESS ♦COOO 30 INPUT"HOW MANY BYTES IN HEX DUMP"; NX 40 B=4?152 50 FOR L=0 TO NX-1 60 READ D* 70 FD7.=ASC<D*>-4B 80 SD7.=ASC ( R I BHT» ( D« , 1 ) ) -48 90 IF FD%>9 THEN FDX=FDX-7 100 IF SDX>9 THEN SDX=SDX-7 110 BTX=16*FDX+SDX 120 POKE B+L,BTX 130 NEXT 140 DATA A9,00,B5,FB,A9,05 f B5 f FC 150 DATA A9,48, 20, CA, F 1 , 38, A5, FB 160 DATA E9 f 01 , 85, FB f BO , 02 , CA f FC 170 DATA A5, FB,DO,EC, A5,FC # DO f E8 180 DATA 60 Program 3.1 Poking a hex dump inlo memory LDY. On the other hand, ST A has as many addressing modes as LDA with ihe exception of the immediate mode. A moment's thought should convince you that it is impossible to have immediate mode with any store-type instruction. There is only one operand so you can't express both the data and where to put it in one single instruction. Exercises To conclude Part 3, here are some exercises which should help you to become familiar witn some of the more simple addressing modes. Write each program, enter it with the aid of the loader (Program 3.1), run it under 5YS 49152 and see if it behaves: Running a machine code program Program 3.1 is purely a loading program. When you run it, it merely loads the machine code into memory — it does not execute the machine code! To execute the code, you should now enter SYS 49152 E This directs the computer to start executing the bytes, one after the other, starting at the decimal address 49152. This is, of course, $C0O0. If you have entered Program 3.1 as it stands, including the example 33 bytes, you should confirm that the machine code, when run under SYS 49152, will completely fill the screen with 'H' characters. In fact, 1024 of them are displayed but the last 24 will naturally cause the screen to scroll. Don't worry at this stage about how the machine code works. If you are a complete newcomer, it would be very surprising if you could since several tricks have been used which have not yet been explained. You should notice however that the last byte is hex 60 which is the machine code version of RETURN from subroutine. Most of your programs will end in 60 in order to allow a smooth re-entry to BASIC command level once the machine code program has stopped. The example program works directly you run tt but some machine code programs require some extra data before they can be run. In such cases, it will be up to you to POKE such data into the correct memory locations before entering SYS 49152. It should be mentioned here that it is not mandatory to always load at the start of the machine code block. After all, there is 4K available so there is nothing to stop you loading your program in the middle of the block. However, there is no point in being original just for its own sake. If you get into the habit of loading at SCOOO onwards, there is less chance of making a mistake. It also allows you plenty of room at the end of the program to store any extra data required. LDX and LDY These load the contents of the chosen index register with data defined by the operand. STX and STY These store the contents of the chosen index register in the memory address defined by the operand. STA This stores the contents of the accumulator in memory at the address defined by the operand. The addressing modes available, together with assembler and hex coding are given in the following table using xx to represent a single operand byte: 1. Display a character of your own choice in the middle of the screen. 2. Display two different characters, side by side, in the middle ot the screen. 3. Display your name across the bottom of the screen. Assembler Hex code LDX # $xx A2 xx LDX SXX A6 xx Load X LDX Sxxxx AE xx xx LDX $xx,Y B6 xx LDX Sxxxx.Y BE xx xx LDY # $xx AO xx LDY $xx A4 xx Load Y LDY Sxxxx AC xx xx LDY Sxx.X B4 xx LDY Sxxxx, X BC xx xx STX Sxx 86 xx Store X STX Sxxxx 8E xx xx STX Sxx.Y 96 xx STY $xx 84 xx Store Y STY Sxxxx 8C xx xx STY $xx,X 94 xx STA Sxx 85 xx STA Sxxxx 8D xx xx STA Sxx.X 95 xx Store A STA Sxxxx.X 9D xx xx STA $xxxx,Y 99 xx xx STA Sxxxx.Y 99 xx xx STA ($xx,X) 81 xx STA (Sxx).Y 91 xx From what has been said already, il should be possible to figure out the name of each addressing mode in this table by simply examining the assembler format. Notice that some instructions have a limited addressing repertoire. For example, you can't use indirect addressing with LDX or Warning: dont forget to count your bytes and make sure you choose the right op-codes and in the right sequence or, sure as hell, you will crash the system. Answers will be given in Part 47. dialog-. SOFT OIM YOUR POCKET TOUGH OIM OUR COMPETITORS DFM Database Easy-to-use, Big-System Features. Printed Reports, Mail Labels Option. Available for CBM 64 • BBC • Spectrum. £24.00 Disk or tape/ SPECTRUM E14.95/DFM • Labels £30.00. Home Accounts Bank Account. 20 Expense Headings, Name & Address File, Loan/Forecasts. Available for CBM 64 • BBC • Spectrum. £14.95 Tape/£I6.95 Disk. Transact Book-keeping System, All Day Books, Journal, Nominal Ledger, VAT. Available for CBM 64 • BBC 'B'. £30.00 Disk or Tape. • All disk software has now been improved— the Commodore Disc range has now been written in machine code. • Spectrum software is now microdrive compatible. • All our software has been re-packaged— this means that the boxes are smaller and there is more descriptive copy about the program on the back of the box. • Buy directly from us- alternatively if you write or telephone [Address and Telephone number are at the bottom of this advertisement). We will send you an informative Dealer Pack. • Watch out for our QL Sinclair Software! It will be available sooner than you think. The entire software range is available from Micro Dealer UK Telephone Welwyn Garden City 07073 28181 and select title ranges are available from Websters Software. Tel. Guildford 0483 62222 PCS Distribution. Tel. Darwen 0254 69121 1 and all Boots outlets Pl£ASE SEND ME FURTHER DETAILS OF NAME YOUR COMPLETE RANGE OF PROGRAMS FOR ADDRESS L CBM 64 □ BBC □ SPECTRUM Invostact Invoice & Statement Generator, Automatic Creation from Sales Product Table. Available for CBM 64 • BBC B'. £30.00 Disk or Tape. Stock-Aid Stock-Control System, Extensive On-Screen & Printed Reports. Available for CBM 64. £30.00 Disk or Tape. Electronics Study with Course Tutor to City & Guilds Standard. Available for CBM 64. £14.95 Disk or Tape. TELEPHONE DIALOG SOFTWARE 293 Copperfield, Umesfarm Estate, Chigwell. Essex. Telephone: 01-501 0799 accumulate points, as you wind your way around the screen hitting the boxes and dollar signs which flash in your path with this nail-biting game from 'Peter Pann\ ANA CON DA THE AIM OF THIS GAME IS to move your 'snake' (ie, a length of coloured circles preceded by an arrow) around the screen using the following keys: A(left) D(right) l(up) M(down) As you worm your way around the screen, you score points by hitting the boxes which suddenly appear (and, to add to your frustration, frequently disappear before you can reach theml: the number of points you score depends on the number {from 1 to 9) inside the box you pierce. Additionally you can score bonus points by hitting '$ signs'; these bonus points are then added to your score after you hit your next box. The number of bonus points scored depends on the length of vour 'snake which grows as the game progresses, but reduces again once the '$ sign' has been confronted. The longer your 'snake', the more carefully you have to tread as it is easy to entwine yourself in a maze of 'snake'. The game ends when you hit the boundary or turn back on vourself. Program Listing 5 POKE53280,12POKE53231,12 41 PRINTTflBC3)"M';PPESS A KEV TO PLAY) 42 GETfl* '• IFR$»" "THEN42 5d POKE49152,0:X«2000 60 E=53230:E1=53231 :E2=49152: 0=54272 70 POKEE > 0 : POKEE 1,0: PR I NTCHR* C 14) " :SD3 75 PRINT" ":PPTNT" '*; : IFPEEK<E2»0THENX-100 3 */*-fV-* " :L*PEEKCE2):FORJ«1TOL 90 HS*«HS*+STR*<PEEK<E2+J>* :NEXT:HS*VflL<HS*> :GOSUB1000: PRINT" W3I HIDE THE MOVING 'SNAKE' US I " ; 120 PRINT"NG THE KEVS : ": GOSUB 1000 : PRINT" a»3<LEFT>, RIGHT), 3ha<UP>, *0 < DOWN > IB 130 GOSUB1000:PRINT"JSrCiN-T HIT THE BOUNDARY <0R YOURSELF), AND TRY TO HIT TH E"; 140 PRINT" BOXES FOR POINTS, M" 1 GOSUB 1000 : PRINT"B I ITT I NO *f3 CREATES A BONUS WHIG H WILL BE" 150 PRINT" COLLECTED AFTER /~*l SCORE. " = GOSUB 1000 = PR INT" Mil I0U HAVE AS LONG AS V 0U LIKE T"J 159 PR I NT "0 GET THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF POINTS ! M : GOSUB 1000 PRINT "JO 00D LUCK ! " : G OSUB1006 171 PR INT "IIS S HIT ANY KEV TO START " : GOSUB 1000 : FORJ-0TO24 • POKEQ+J, 0 : NEXT : DI MP<800)/D(3) 175 DIMV<8>,H<8>,T<8>#RC8>i|C". 1 ■ M2-300 ■ B0=1 • P0KE323. 3 1 80 GETZJ : I FZ*= SOTO 1 30 1 35 GOSUB800 : D< 6 ) =22 D< 1 > =60 : D < 2 > =62 : D < 3 > =30 ■ T9= 1 024 : T6-3599 ■ G0SUB228 • GOTO230 220 P0KEQ+5 > 36 : POKEQ+6 , 36 : P0KEQ+4 , 1 29 ; RETURN 230 PRINTCHR*<142>"3BkSC0RE: TO KBONUS X 1 kHI :K"HS"SI" :FORJ=1064TO1103 = POKE J, 67 240 P0KEQ+1 > J- 1000 : PGKEJ+Q, 7 ! NEXT • FORJ=1984TO2023 POKE J, 67 : P0KEQ+1 , J- 1900 ■ P0KEJ+ G,7:NEXT:L=40 260 F0RJ=1 104TO1944STEP4O : POKE J, 66 ■ POKEJ+Q, 7 : POKEJ+39, 66 : P0KEJ+39+Q, 7 ■ P0KEQ+1 , IN TCJ/10) =NEXT 265 POKE 1 064 , 35 ; POKE 1103/73': POKE 1 934 - 74 : P0KE2023 , 75 : V=5 : H=5 : V 1 =0 ■ H 1 = 1 : P2= 1 0 : D 1 =2 230 TI$="000000" :T=TI 290 SSaTI:M^»INT<<10-3)*RND<l>>+3:lFPEEK<828>«WXTHENW?i=WX+l 292 POKEG+24, 15 300 GET2$ IF2$=""GOTO330 382 IFZ$="M"THENZ=0 E Program Listing 388 IFZ$="ITTHENZ=2 369 G0SUB220 : POKEG+24 , 1 5 320 Dl=Z D=2-1.5:Vl = IHTr;R£S(D>:>#SGN<D>:Hl=SGH<:D>-Vl 330 V=V-V1 :H=H+H1 -P=T9+V*L+H 356 P9»PEEK < P > : FOR I =2 1 T03STEP-7 • POKEQ+2 , I ■ NEXT : POKEQ+ 1 , UK 360 R6»R?:R7*R7+1 : IFR7>P2THENR7=0 370 P1=PCR7> P<R7>=R: IFP1O0THENPOKEP1,32 389 POKEP # D< Dl > : POKEP+Q , 3 P 1 =P < R6 > : I FP 1 O0THENPOKEP 1,81: PQKEP 1 +Q , UV. 382 I FT I >H 1 +M2 ANDPEEK < W ) =36THENPQKEW , 32 : W=0 383 LFPEEK<W)O36THENW*0 384 M»0: IFP9O36THEN390 385 IFPEEK'-PCM>)=31THENMM=MM+1 386 POKEPCM>+Q>WX:POKEP<M>j 19 : W=W+1 : PRINT "S!" TAB < 26 > "©3" MM "II ■ " = IFM>208THEMM 387 P0KEG+1,UM=M+1 : IFM=1 THENGOSUB80O : GO3UB220 : POKEQ+ 0 388 IFP<M»0THEN385 389 W2«W2+20 ; W*0 : P0KE828 . MX : SOTO400 396 IFP9O32GOTO340 400 IFRND<1»KOOTO290 4 1 0 VX*RND < 1 > *L/ 1 0 : P3=S6+V2 : VS»=V < V/i ) : IFVSO0GQT059 1 470 V2=INT<RNIKl>if:20>+3-H2=IHT<RNDa>*<;L-4>>+2 480 F0RV3=V2-1T0V2+1 P3=V3*L+T9:FuRH3=H2-lT0H2+l : IFPEEK<P3+H3>O32QQTO4?0 490 NEXTH3 , V3 : V < > =V2 - H < VX > =H2 500 ZZ=INT<RNIK.5>*7+9> : F0RV3=V2-1 T0V2+1 : P3=V3*L+T9 : F0RH3=H2-1T0H2+1 510 POKEG+4, 17 :F0RI=1T025STEP2= POKEQ+l* I = NEXT: POKEG+4* 129 520 P0KEP3+H3, P9 : P0KEP3+H3+Q, 22 530 NEXTH3/V3 - T=9*RND< 1 > : P8=V2*L+H2+T9 : P0KEP8, 49+T : T<VZ>=T = R<V,"0=P3 : GOT 0290 540 V2-P9-86 : I F V":<GTHENGGSUB800 : GOTO600 550 P8»R<VK) T=J<: V 'X> P2=P2+7T*=TI$ 560 T=T-1 :S=S+1*B0P0KEP8, T+49 FORI = 1TO10STEP3 : POKEQ+l , 1 : NEXT ; FOR 1 = 1 ©TO 1 STEP-2 : P OKEQ+1, I : NEXT 564 I FS> 1 499THENB0= 1 0 : G0T0570 565 I FS>999THENB0=5 : GGTO570 566 IFS>299THENB0=3 : GOTO570 570 IFU>0THEN578 571 W=INT(RND<1>*<2023-1064>+1064> : IFPEEK<W)»32THENP0KEM. 36 : GOSUB9O0 : W1=TI 578 S=S+MM*BO:PRINT"S»»MtrS;TfiB<20>"H X"BO M ll " : MM=0 580 POKEQ+4, 33 : FORJ=100TO65STEP-2 : POKEQ+l, J ■ NEXT : POKEQ+4, 129 IFT>=0GOTO56O 590 P2-P2+7 :TI$*T* : V9-V<VK> 59 1 FOR V3= V9- 1 T0V9+ 1 : P3=V3*L+T9 : H9=H < V'/. > +P3 : F0RH3=H9- 1 T0H9+ 1 594 P0KEH3 , 32 : NEXTH3 , V3 : V < V5i ) =0 : POKER < VX >,32: G0T0298 60O POKEQ+4, 17 : FORI=254TO0STEP-2 : POKEQ+l* I : POKEE, I : POKEE 1,1 + 1 ; NEXT : POKEE 1.0 POKE E,6 620 IFS>HSTHENGOSUB660 625 pokeq+24 o : pr i nt " ^msmmmmmmmmmm»nnnm " 626 PRINT R»»»»I3 ANOTHER GAME? / SIIIIU ; X=100 630 GETZ* : IFZ$=" "THENPRINT" afVM UK GOSUEIOOO 635 I FZt= " " THENPR I NT " El Willi", : GOSUBIOOO : G0T0630 640 IFZ*="V"THENPRINT"n M RUN66 650 IFZ*="N"THENENB 651 GOTO630 660 S$=3TR$(S> =L=LEN<S*> = P0KEE2, L = F0RJ=1T0L : P0KEE2+J, VAL<M1D#<S*, J, 1>> : NEXT ■ RETU RN 800 POKEQ+l , 230 : POKEQ+5, 9 : POKEQ+l 5, 30 : POKEQ+24, 15 ■ POKEQ+4, 21 : FORJ J=255TO1STEP-10 : POKEQ+l, J J 305 POKEE . J J '• NEXT ; IFM= 1 THENPOKEE ; 0 : RETURN 810 FORJJ=16TO0STEP-2 POKEQ+24, J J ■ FORA=1TO100STEP1 1 i POKEG+4, A POKEE , J J i NEXT A.. J J : POKEQ+24, 15 = RETURN 900 POKEQ+ 1 , 1 00 : POKEQ+5 , 9 = POKEQ+ 1 5 , 30 : POKEQ+4 , 21 = FOR JJ= 1 5TO0STEP-3 ■ POKEW+Q > J J ■ PO KEE,JJ 910 F0RA=15T01STEP-3 ■ POKEQ+24, A • POKEE, A : POKEE, A : NEXTA, J J : POKEQ+24 , 15 POKEE, O : GOS UB220 -POKEM+Q, 1 RETURN 1000 POKEQ i 240 : POKEQ+l , 33 : POKEQ+5, 8 : POKEQ+22, 104 : POKEQ+23, 1 : POKEQ+24 . 79 : POKEQ+4 ■ 129 -FORJ- 1TO30 1010 NEXT : POKEQ+4, 128 : F0RJ=1T0X : NEXT • RETURN THE 64 SOFTWARE CENTRE 1 Princeton Street London WC1 01-4300954 Business accunts Sales Ledger (Anagram) d 75.00 Purchase Ledger (Anagram) d 75.00 Sales Ledger (Ramtop) t 14.DU rurcnase Leager irtamiop) i id 'in 1 1.0U Accounts package (namtopf o,i 113.UU i^asnDOOK (Microsimpiexj a i79 in 1 / £.3U uasnDOOK lueminif a fid 04.93 oasnuooK (ueminij i rinai Accounts (oemmif a R4 Final Accounts (Gemini) t 59.95 Invpntnrv 64 iMMSl d 29 95 Stock Control (Gemini) d 24.95 Onmhinprt Park Nn 1 (fipmini) d 99 9S rtome applications buageteer (Aoamsoit) i 0 DC 0.90 unecKDOOk Manager lAaamsoiij a HA QC nome Accounts (oeminij a Home Accounts (Gemini) t 19.95 14 95 Hnmp Accounts (Fipldma^tpr) d 29 95 Database systems Magpie 64 (Audiogenic) d nrt nc 99.95 Mailpro 64 (Pro-Line) d 79.35 Oracle 64 (B.I.) d ' i c nn lib. 00 Practitiie 64 (MMb) d Simnlv File 64 (Simole) d 60.00 Suoerbase 64 (Precision) d 99.95 Figaro 64 (Saxon) d 86.25 Database (Gemini) d 24.95 Spreadsheets Busicalc (Supersoft) d,t 17.95 Busicalc II (Supersoft) d 81.65 Calcresult Adv. (Handic) d 99.00 Easy Calcresult (Handic) d 49.95 Multiplan 64 (Hesware) d 99.95 Practicalc 64 (MMS) d 44.50 Practicalc 64 (MMS) t 39.95 Programmers' Aids & Utilities BC Basic (Kuma) c 57.50 d = d«sk t = tape c = cartridge ALL IN STOCK NOW — Callers welcome (10am— 6pm Incl Saturdays) Mail Order: Cheque or PO — add £3 for items over £30. others free Credit cards (Access/Visa): phone or write. Immediate despatch The 64 Software Centre, 1 Princeton Street, London WC1 Please supply the following items: m •it @£ 1 Qty 2 Qty 3 Qty 4 Qty TOTAL £ POSTAGE £ TOTAL £ Name Address Visa/Access Card No Date Signature Cadpack (Adamsoft) d 35.00 Chartpak 64 (Adamsoft) d 24.95 Chipmon (Mr Chip) t 12.50 Forth 64 (Audiogenic) c 29.95 Forth 64 Advanced (Hesware) c 50.00 Graphics Designer (Adamsoft) d 19.95 Graphix 64 (Supersoft) t 11.50 Logo (CBM) d 57.50 Master 64 (Supersoft) d 71.30 Mikro Assembler (Supersoft) c 59.80 Hesmon Monitor (HesWare) c 34.95 Pilot (CBM) d 75.00 Printlink 64 (Supersoft) t 32.20 Ouickchart 64 (Adamsoft) t 6.95 Screen Graphics (Adamsoft) d 14.95 Simons Basic (CBM) c 47.50 Sprite Aid (Adamsoft) t 6.95 Stat 64 (Handic) c 29.95 Superdisk Utility (Adamsoft) d 12.50 Synthy 64 (Adamsoft) d 14.95 The Tool (Audiogenic) c 49.95 Turtle Graphics II (HesWare) C 50.00 Ultrabasic 64 (Adamsoft) d 24.95 Ultysynth (Quicksilva) t 14.95 Victree 64 (Supersoft) c 56.35 64 Doctor (MMS) d 19.95 Jetpack Compiler d 39.95 Jetpack Compiler t 14.95 Master Composer (Access) d 44.95 Word Processors Heswriter (Hesware) c Paperclip 64 (B.I.) Simply Write 64 (Simple) d Simply Write 64 (Simple) t Vizawrite 64 (Viza) d Vizaspell 64 (VizaJ d Educational & Languages Essential Italian (Dell) d Essential Italian (Dell) t Besieged (Sulis) t Wordpower (Sulis) t Time Traveller (Sulis) t Just a Mot (Sulis) t various subjects: Callisto, Collins, Commodore etc. War simulations Battle for Normandy (SS) d Knights of the Desert (SS) d Eagles (SS) d Combat Leader (SS) d Tigers in the Snow (SS) d Geopolitique (SS) d Operation Whirlwind (Broderbund) d Flight simulators Flight Path 737 (Anirog) t Flight Simulator (IFR) d,t Flight Simulator II (Sublogic) d Solo Flight (US Gold) d.t Heathrow (HC) t Business Simulations Commodities (Blue Chip) d Stock Exchange (Blue Chip) d Real Estate (Blue Chip) d Games A large assortment in disk, cassette and cartridge. 34.95 98.90 40.00 35.00 79.95 59.95 16.95 14.95 9.95 9.95 9.95 9.95 34.95 34.95 34.95 29.95 34.95 39.95 34.95 7.95 24.50 47.50 14.95 7.95 50.00 50.00 50.00 Programming In the third part of this series, Bryn Phillips invites you to irritate the neighbours by adding sound to your VIC gam* THIS IS THE THIRD OF A FIVE part series of BASIC Games Programming for the VIC20. The series is primarily intended for newcomers to games programming, but there might well be a few useful tips lor seasoned programmers. So far we've looked at two of the main elements of Games Programming on the VIC 20 — screen layout and movement. Even without sound you can write some good games. In fact some games are better with the minimum of sound — especially thinking games — it can be a distraction. However for most action games imaginative use of sound can make all the difference. As a VIC owner you have a big advantage in this area, because the sound comes through the T.V. speaker, giving youlots of volume. You're not limited to the odd pathetic bleep or click, either — you have an amazing variety of sound effecs to draw on. Tuning into the VIC The VIC has five sound registers, four for tone, and one for volume. As with most things on the VIC you have to POKE values into these registers, which have the following memory locations: Memory Range Location Volume 36878 0-15 Tone (low) .16874 128-255 Tone (med) 36875 128-255 lone (highi 36676 128-255 Tone (noiie) 36877 128-255 In order to use sound effectively in Games Program- ming it must be carefully planned, and not just slotted in somewhere at the end of the program as an afterthought. There are two ways of using sound. It can be put in in discreet packages, or carefully integrated into the program structure. One of the most valuable uses of sound in a program is to add interest or excitement either when there is no action, for example the introduction. VIC GAMES PROGRAMMING or where there is a distinct pause in the action. This would occur when something spectacular happens, for example an explosion, a ship sinking, or a bonus score message. Here you can usually put the sound in as a discreet package in a subroutine. It makes for neat programming, and allows you to come up with some sophisticated effects. Sometimes you might want to play a few bars of a tune. This is easily done by going to a sub- routine along the lines shown in fig(i). 10 POKE V.15 20 FORI=1TO10 30 POKES,N(l) 40 FOR J=1 TO 200: NEXT J 50 NEXTI 60 POKEV,0:POKES,0 fig 0) Where V is the volume register, S is a sound register, and the array N(l) contains the notes of the lune, which you define earlier "in the program. This sounds a bit flat though, and you can make it more interest- ing by enveloping the sound to give different effects. The simplest is the piano effect, and this is done by decaying the volume as outlined in fig (ii). 10 FORI=1TO10 20 FORVL=15TO0STEP-1 30 POKES,N(l):POKEV,VL 40 NEXTVL 50 NEXTI 60 POKES.O f'g ('■) Hitting the right note All you need to do now is to find some notes to give you a tune. Rather than constantly refer to the table of note values in the User's Manual, it's far easier to use a utility program to help you compose the tunes. The utility program, COM- POSER (Listing 1), allows you to compose short tunes (20 notes max), and provides you with the values to include in the data statements in your program. It's very easy to use; you just use the bottom row of keys on the keyboard as the white notes, and the second row of keys as the black notes. Any other keys will give you asingle note pause. You can easily change the tune using delete, and play it back at any time using f7. This program is deliberately simple. Without loo much effort you could convert your VIC into a neat little sound synthesiser, with chords, drums, and melody lines. But that would be getting away from Games Program- ming — it would use up valuable memory, and we need that for other things. Effecting sound Now let's get on to the sound effects. Probably one of the first things you did when you acquired your VIC 20 was to type in some of the sound effects at the back of the manual. Some of them are very good, and they crop up from time to time in programs here and there. It's tempting to leave it at that — as I said some of them are very good. Unfor- tunately they're not original — they were thought up by someone else. If you're writing your own programs you want your own sound effects which exactly fit your theme; whether it's ducks quacking, tyres screeching, or aliens scream- ing, it's up to you. Most simple sound effects are generated by nested loops. Fig (tii) shows the two simplest loops. 10 FOR J ■ 1 TO RP 20FORNT=N1 TO N2 STEP SN 30 FOR V=V1 TO V2STEPSV 40 POKE VL.V 50 POKE 5.NT 60 NEXTV 70 FOR I ■ 1 TO 100'PS:NEXT I 80 NEXT NT 90 NEXT J 100 POKE V.0:POKE 5,0 LOOP 1 10 FOR 1 = 1 TO RP 20 FOR V = VI TO V2 STEP SV 30 FOR NT =N1 TO N2 STEP SN 40 POKE VL.V 50 POKE S.NT 60 NEXT NT 70 FOR I = 1 TO 100-PS:NEXT I 80 NEXT V 90 NEXT J 100 POKEVL,0:POKE S,0 LOOP 2 fig (iii) In Loop 1 the volume loop is nested within the tone loop, and in Loop 2 (he tone loop is nested within the volume loop. Loop 1 can be used to give some pleasant musical effects, and Loop 2 really comes into its own for those wierd alien sound effects we r have all learned to love (or hatef). If you type in the utility program "MANIAC SYNTHE- SISER" (Listing 2), you can play with these loops to your heart's content, and when you get an effect you like just copy down the values for inclusion into the loops given in fig (iii). I've made up a table of some values you might like to try when you start off, but whether you agree with my descriptions of these sounds is another matter! loops if you want to experiment further. Integrating sound Earlier in this article I men- tioned Integrated Sound. The only problem of going to a subroutine each time you want to hear something is that it slows down the action. Even worse, il can make the whole thing jerky if the sound only hold a note. You have to first write your program, then sketch out your sound efect sub-program and merge the two. The speed of the action should not change when the sound effect occurs — you wif" just get a slight reduction in the overall speed. The more complex the effect the greater the reduction. The answer is not to go overboard with the integrated sound effects — keep them simple. You can DESCRIPTION RG N1 N2 SN VI V2 SV PS RP LOOP Aliens coming 3 150 200 5 5 15 3 0 5 2 Cricket 3 230 232 1 0 15 5 0 10 2 Machinery 4 230 240 1 15 5 -3 0 3 1 Knock on wood 4 200 160 -10 15 5 -5 0 3 2 Knock on metal 2 200 160 -10 15 5 -5 0 3 2 Piano 2 200 130 - 5 15 5 -1 0 1 1 Phaser firing 2 200 130 - 5 15 5 -1 0 1 2 Something (?!) coming 1 250 130 - 5 15 5 -5 0 10 2 When you type in the program it's important to make sure you get the screen formatting right, But otherwise there should be no problems. Loops 1 and 2 have been included in this program as subroutines, and if you follow the listing through you will see that it's quite easy to add your own customised occurs occasionally. In order to avoid this you have to integrate your sound effect into the structure of the program. This can take some thinking about, and will vary from program to program. The trick is to find natural delays in your program structure, and never use FOR/NEXT loops simply to save the sound extravaganza for the triumphs and disasters, as you savour the moment of victory, of flounder in defeat. The difference between Integrated Sound and the use of subroutines is shown in Listing 3 and Listing 4. Back to the bouncing ball featured in the last article. In both programs a ball bounces around the screen, and bleeps each time it hits the edge. In BOUNCE A the program goes to a subroutine to generate the sound, and in BOUNCE B the sound is integrated. It's a very simple example, but if you RUN the two programs you should notice the difference. So far we've been talking about aliens, frogs, rockets etc, and all we've got is the VIC's standard graphic set. If you've got a lot of imagination you are probably quite nappy with that — but it does take a lot. A square falling from a rectangle can be interpreted as a bomb falling from a plane, but a bit of realism would bring it all to life. That's what I'll be covering in the next article in this series. It's all about User Defined Graphics (UDG's) — they make all tne difference. Listing 1 E 10 20 36 4© 50 60 70 «0 30 100 110 120 130 140 190 160 170 l'?0 190 2O0 210 220 23© 240 290 260 270 28© 290 300 310 320 330 340 3*50 360 370 380 330 40O 410 REM COMPOSER REM BRVN PHILLIPS REM 1984 REM IMIT KEYBOARD t D1ML-:13> sDIMH< 18> jDIMH*' 18> 0IMPNK22;- iDIHNT<2?> V=368 78 :S= 36876 FOPJ= 1 TO 17 iPEftDL' 1 > I NEXT FORJ«!T017iPE*OH*T> (NEXT FOR J= 1 TO 1 7 sREADN* * J ■ iHEHT i i REM SCREEN DISPLfiV : PRINT"a" GOSUB660 J=0 : REM COMPOSE GET** IF***." "THEN240 [Ffl*a n VTHENRUN I PflSC " Ht « -2GTHENG0SUB44O : GOT0240 I FAf = " If THEHG0SUB54 0 : G0T0240 J=J*-1 :IFJ:>2OTHErU-2OlGOTO240 NT'. JJ-0iPM»< J J-"PS ■ FOR I = 1 TO 1 7 1FL- 1 '"flSC' fi* >THENMT< Ji*U< I ) jPN** J»«N*CX) NEXT I 1 FHT ' J>=OTHEN330 FDR VL=15T0OSTEP-l POKES. HT- J i iPOKEV.VL NEMTVL POKE V.OiPOKES.O PRINT TfiCv 1 IPHUI I ' rTAB<4 >HT< J> OOTO240 420 430 440 430 460 470 480 430 300 510 520 330 340 350 560 570 580 3'30 6O0 610 620 630 640 650 660 670 680 630 TOO 710 720 738 740 730 760 770 46, 780 131 730 REM DELETE NOTE i IFJ=0rHEHPETURII J.J-1 PR1MT"3" sGOSUB660:IFJ-0THEII RETURN FORK- 1 TO J PRINTTAB- 1 )PH«'.K > rTAB« 4 <HT<k > NEWT RETURN REM PLHV TUNE F0RK-1T0J 1 FNT « K > =OTHEH530 FOR VL-15TO0STEP-1 POKES,NT<K> iPOKEV,VL HEXTVL F0RTT=1 TO200 iNEXTTT NEXT* POKE V.0IPOKES.O RETURN REM SCREEN DISPLflV PP 1 NT " »I pIhE»»»»»M AttUW COMPOSER " E LONER" PPIHI"imiM»IMr-'- AND " FF IUT"I»MMMRMJDELETE TO" PRINT"HM»MMMMCOMr 0SE. PPIHT"»1MMM1MM»F7 TO PLAY" IMT II MMIMm FI RE-RUMS'* RETURN REM DATA i DATA 30 ,83, 83, 68, 67, 86. 71 ,66,72,78,74,77,44,76, 58,47 DATA135,143,147, 131 ,133,163,167,175.173.183,187 , 135,133,201 ,203.207 DATAC ,C# ,D ,D* ,E ,F -F» ,G ,G* -A -AH .B .C ,D ,D# ."E " Programming Listing 2 10 20 30 40 30 60 70 80 30 100 110 120 130 132 134 136 140 ise 160 170 172 174 176 130 190 200 210 220 230 240 250 260 270 230 230 300 310 320 330 332 334 336 340 330 360 REM MANIAC SYNTHESISER REM BRVN PHILLIPS REM 1984 F0RI-lT09:REftDPS' I » I NEXT F OR I = 1 TOT i PEAOOP < I > : NEXT FOR 1 = 1 T09 : READLL < I ' I NEXT FORI = 1 T09 : REAOUL < I > iNEXT FOR I « 1 T04 : READS< I > i NEXT VL=36873 SN«3(SV»3 : PEM DEFINE STRINGS FX*-" ^M^IIi^^l^'I^I^-I^L^l'P »LS t 1 FAR OPTION--. i i i ,, 4(W(i»iaai!M'iLi , i'a*ietti!»»ia ' ■ i cursor keys " REM SCREEN DISPLAY P0KE36879.28 PR 1 NT " 3I1*WN I AC SVNTHES I SER " PRINT sMiaiB REGISTER »?G| 3" PPINT'-JUUSCS 1ST NOTE 1H1B150" PRINT"!*t*39 END NOTE UH2« PRINT"Mia4B STEP NOTE tfSNl PPIHT"ttBB(5B 1ST VOL HVT PRINT"UU*S« END VOL |f-/2« PRINT "|fcia7B STEP VOL IK-Vl PPINT"lMl^B PAUSE iFSl 0 PRINT"UUS9B HO. REPEAT iFPB 5" PR I MT " sfcMliU 1-8 CHANGE VALUE " FS LOOP 1 F7 LOOP 2 00' 13' 3* PRINT tftL&i PRINT "|*iai PRINT' PRINT' s REM SELECT OPTION 28:J=VAL<A*J IGOSUB6201 GET A* 1FA*-" "G0T0340 IFV AL < A* > >0ANDVAL Cft* > < 1 OTHENCL- PRINTCHR*<:28>Fl»»CK*iG OTO4O0 370 IFA*="||"THENGOSUB?40:REMF7 330 | F A » a " !■" THENOOSUBegQ sREMF5 390 GOTO340 392 I 394 REM CHANGE VALUE 396 i 400 GET A* 410 CL-28:GOSUB620 42© IFA*="ft"THENCL=144 :00SUB620 :PRINTCHR*<2S.»CC» ;CF* :G0T0348 430 IFA*="||"THENOP< J>-0P<J> + 1 : IFOPC J.OUL' J :-THENOP< J) =UL< J> 440 1FAJ-"U"THEN0P« I>=0P< J>-1 :IFOPi J !> <LL OJt J THENOP <J f *LL < J > 450 0P«»STR»(OP< > 460 LG=LEN<0P»> 470 0P*-MIO*' OPt -2.LG-1 "> 430 IFLG=3THEN0P*"" "+0P» 490 IFL0-2THEN0P*-" "fOP* ■50© PP1NT"3" 510 FORI = 1 TOPS CJ^ 520 PRINT 10 REM BOUNCE ft 20 i 30 V-36878tS-3*873 40 P1-8164.P2-39884 50 CM*81 iCL-2 60 x-ieiv*oixi»i0ivi-v 70 DX-1 iOV-1 80 PRINT"3" 90 X»X*OXlV-V*DV 1O0 IFXC10PX>20TMEHDX-DX*-1 jOOSUBIT* 110 IFV<10RV>21TMENDV-0V*-1 IGOSU6I70 12© POKEPl+Xl-22*Yl,32 1» P0KEP1+X-22*Y,CH 140 POKEP2*X-22*V,CL ISO Xl-XtVl-V 160 COTO90 170 P0KEV.13 180 POKES. 210 19© FO*I-lT030iNEXT Listing 3 200 PO*:EV,t 210 RETURN lPOKES.0 530 540 530 560 370 33© 590 600 610 612 614 616 620 63© 640 630 660 670 672 674 676 630 690 700 710 720 730 732 734 736 740 750 760 770 730 79© 800 310 320 330 840 350 332 834 856 860 870 918 920 930 FMO 960 970 972 974 976 980 990 1000 1010 102O NEXT I PRINTCHP*-;i44>TAB<16>?0P« SV-SGN COP < 6 > -OP < S > 1 *0P f TO SN-SGN< OP < 3 > -OP C2>5 *0P < 4 1 IFSV<0THENK>7iSGt="-" : GOSUB680 IFSV: 0THENK'=7 lSG*a u " :GOSUB680 IF3N';0THENK=4 :SG« - " - " i G0SUB680 IF? N>0THENK=4 lSO»«" " :G03UB680 G0T0400 : REM PRINT OPT SUB PRINT'S" F0PI=1T0PS<J> PRINT NEXT I PRINTCHP*' i.L>"Wia"MI0«'STR*<-I>.2,l • RETURN REM PRINT SIGH SUB PRINT "fl" FORI=1TOPS<K> PRINT NEXT I PRINTTAB<16>SG* RETURN : REM LOOP 2 F0RN=1T00P<9> F0PV-0P<5>T00P<6>STEPSV F0RNT=0P<2>T00P<3>STEPSH POKEVL.V P0KES<;0P<1.>>.NT NEXTNT FOR I = 1 TOOP < 8 > » 1 OO J NEXT I NEXTV POKES<OP<1>>,0 POKEVL.0 NEXTN RETURN : REM LOOP 1 F0RN-1T00P<9> FORNT-OP< 2 >TOOP < 3> STEPSN FORV=OP< 5 ) TOOP < 6> STEPSV POKEVL.V P0KES<0P<1>>.NT NEXTV FORI-1TO10O*OP<8- iNEXTI NEXTNT POKES(OP<1>),0 POKEVL,0 NEXTN RETURN REM DATA 1 DATA 1,3,4,3,7,8,9.11,12 DAT A3 , 1 50 , 2O0 ,3.5,15.3,0.3 i DATA1, 128, 123, 1.0, 0,1. 0.1 DATA4,233,233,20, 15. 15. 15, 10,25 DATA36874 , 36875 , 36376 , 36877 10 20 PEM BOUNCE B Listing 4 30 V=36873iS»36375 40 Pl=8.l64iP2=338S4 50 CHnSl :CL«2 60 X=10iV-0!Xl=10:Vl»V 65 P0KES.210 70 DX=1 iDV-1 30 PPINT"3" 90 X=X.OX!Y=V+DV:POKEV,0 1O0 IFX<10PX>20THENDX=DX*-1 :P0KEV.13 110 IFV<10RV>21THENDV=DV*-1 :P0KEV,l3 120 P0KEP1+X1-22*V1,32 130 P0KEP1.X-22*V,CH 140 P0KEP2+X-22*V,CL 150 Xl*X*Vi«V 160 GOTO 90 Mike Roberts and Simon Rockman investigate the smaller of Commodore's new offspring, the Commodore 1i IE THE COMMODORE 16 IS Packaged in the same type of ox that has clothed Commodore 64s and VICs for the past few years. The machine's colour scheme is rather different to the CBM 64; it looks like a negative — gunmetal box and a grey keyboard. The ports at the back of the box show a departure from the 64/VIC stable with the omission of the R5232C interface and the parallel user port. Most remaining features have been changed: the cartridge/expansion port has been reduced in size to stop people shoving CBM64 cartridges into a C16. Commodore say that no RAM memory expansion will fit into this slot, only cartridges, although 'Memory Expansion' is written above it. Com- modore's answer is "We know"; apparently the moulding was made by a Chinaman or something. It is unknown whether the highly advanced structure of the CBM 64's slot is duplicated with the facility for second processors etc. The two D9 connectors of the CBM 64 have been dispensed with and replaced with mini DIN connectors: this means you can only use Commodore's joysticks but even their new 'hi-tec' style ones are not the best on the market. This is foolish since it is so easy to make an adaptor (or use with any joystick. No doubt there will be a roaring trade in adaptors. There is also one other problem with joysticks: on the box they are labelled PORT 0' and 'PORT V: BASIC thinks they are 'JOY (1)' and 'JOY (2)' — the mysterious Chinaman perhaps? The cassette recorder socket is also a mini DIN connector; this is because the C16 cassette deck is different to the old tape decks. This doesn 't really matter with the C16 as a cassette deck gets supplied with the computer. COMMODORE'S LATEST NUMBER Thankfully. Commodore have left the Serial BUS and the audio/video connector alone. Since all Commodore's existing peripherals which use these ports will work straight off, there are already printers and disc drives available for the machine: this is a welcome change from the usual state of affairs where the user has to wait up to two years for any peripherals at alt. The keyboard is up to Commodore's usual excellent standards and probably represents most of the component cost of the machine (it did on the CBM64 and VIC). Changes made from the VIC/64 keyboard include four separate cursor keys, an escape key, and various modifications to the layout of the keys to facilitate these changes. The cursor keys are now on the top right of the keyboard. This is confusing toa user who is experienced with the Commodore keyboard of old, but it is extremely logical and easy to get used to for the first time user. Inside the C16 The internal hardware reveals some surprises. Most of the inside is driven via one big chip: called either the 7501 or the TED chip depending on your inclination, it combines a 6510 processor at 2MHz with a sound generator, timers, input/output, memory banking, and graphics generation. In all it has 19 registers to control things fin order of graphics ability: the Spectrum has 1, MSX has 6, the BBC has 17, the Commodore 64 has 47). Sound ability is as good as any other computer although it only has two channels — either two sound channels or one sound and one noise (for special effects). Nearly all the advanced sound features of the SID chip have been left out like ADSR, filtering, and mod- ulation. Graphics ability is superb. It is natural that this and the Plus 4 will be compared with the Commodore 64 as there are a lot of similarities in spec; the graphics are different and there are currently two schools of thought as to which is better, the CBM64 or the C16 No sprites. . . The big difference lies with sprites. These wonderful things that make games programming easy have been chopped from the C16. In their place is a software simulation of them from BASIC where you can extract an area of the screen and store it in a string. This string can then be recalled and put back on the screen at any point. There are also other options to manipulate these objects, but they are not true sprites; a large 120 byte object takes about a quarter of a second to write to the screen. I feel that the world can live without sprites for at least another computer generation (about 18 months); the Commodore 64 and Atari were just too far ahead of their time. . . .But more colour The trade-off against the sprites is more colour. The screen of the C16 can have 128 colours (121 excluding black) made up of 16 colours, B luminence levels, and flashing. Screen size is 40 x 25 text with four other graphics modes. The other graphics modes are 320 x 200 with the previously mentioned 128 colours being used in a colour map system, and 160 x 200 in a multicolour form. Both hi-res screens have an option to leave four text lines at the bottom of the screen. There are some other graphics modes and options but these are only available by POKEing. UDGs are obtained by POKEing and manipulation of registers. The manual gives no hint of these although they are very straightforward to obtain. When playing with UDGs one other feature becomes apparent. A character gen- erator is 2K long (256 x 8 bytes), the C16 one is only IK long. How come? Well, the long and short of it is that the C16 uses a hardware reverse field attribute. The top bit of the current character displayed indicates whether it is inverted or not. The advantage of this lies in memory consumption. The disadvantages are that you can only have 128 UDGs, and flashing works in a rather strange way- A reverse field space is shown as a black square; when you flash it instead of getting a flashing square nothing happens. This is quite confusing until you Hardware Review "nr»i ■ • realise that a flashing space doesn't change. Other modes not docu- mented include Extended Background Colour mode, which gives you different background colours as well as foreground colours, and multicolour characters where each character can be made up out of a number of colours. There may be others but, without a technical manual, I cannot ascertain them. Programming the C16 While investigating the ROM in the machine i came across a strange quirk. Before getting the manual, I was PEEKing the top end of ROM to discover the BASIC keywords. Doing this produced garbage and not the codes that I was expecting. However, entering the monitor and interrogating .memory revealed them: all trie memory ging systems of the Plus 4 ave been left in, so when you try to PEEK the ROM the BASIC pages it out to allow access to the RAM beneath. This is alright in a 64K Plus 4 but in a 16K C16 there is no memory there — just garbage. This brings me ontoanother point. The BASIC (covered in the latter half of this article) is ideal for an inexperienced user or an experienced BASIC user, but what about us machine code hacks and people that wouldn't use BASIC if they were paid to? The answer is TEDMON — a full feature assembler, disassembler, monitor, debugger. It is similar to Extramon 7.5 and is very good indeed. This makes writing assembly language very easy as you already nave most of the development software built in. Here is a list of monitor commands. A ASSEMBLE C COMPARE D DISASSEMBLE F FILL GCO H HUNT L LOAD M MEMORY R REGISTERS S SAVE T TRANSFER Assemble a line of 6502 code Compare two sections of memory and report differences Disassemble a line of 6502 code Fill memory with the specified byte Start execution at the specified address Hunt through memory for all occurrences of certain bytes Load a file from tape or disk Display the hexadecimal values of memory locations Display the 6502 Registers Save to tape or disk Transfer code from one section of memory to another II mt _| _ ■■■■■■ S5T_ ^ f 1 The monitor can also be called by using the reset button. This is a great feature and is in a little recess just by the power supply. Press it in and the machine goes back to its power on state — memory contents are pre- served but it is awkward to get at them. The beauty of it all comes when you keep the STOP key pressed down at the same time as you press in the reset key: the computer jumps into the monitor, key in 'X' (for eXit) and you are back in BASIC, complete with intact program. BASIC on the 16 Commodore BASIC has been around in one form or another since the early PET in the mid 70s; little has happened to it since then. In the outside world fancy, structured BASICS have been the order of the day. BBC and QL BASIC are so far removed from the original Dartmouth BASIC that they can hardly be called BASIC at all. The Commodore 16 is the first major departure from the standard Commodore BASIC. The 64 and VIC use BASIC 2.0, the business machines use BASIC 4.0, The Commodore 16's BASIC 3.5 does not really fall between the two but goes beyond BASIC 4.0. It incorporates most of the features of BASIC 4.0 and adds any new graphics and sounds commands, the only com- and which is missing from BASIC 3.5 but is present in BASIC 4.0 is RECORD. RECORD aids the accessing of data in a random access File; this omission is a shame be- cause random access files open up (no pun intended) great scope for business program- ming. They can still be imple- mented but sending bytes off one at a time is a little laborious. There are lots of new commands in BASIC 3.5, some replace the POKEing required on the Commodore 64 and some add extra functions. They divide up into five main sections: structure, toolkit, disc handling, graphics and sound. Structure The IF..THEN structure has finally sprouted an ELSE lag. Most Commodore program- mers fail to seethe value of this, after all you can always put the next statement on the following line. Where ELSE really comes into its own is in conjunction with a GOSUB. Consider this routine: 10 IF Z =1 THEN GOSUB 100 ELSE GOSUB 200 20 PRINT "BACK FROM THE ROUTINE" Without the ELSE it would have to look like this 10 IF Z=1 THEN GOSUB 100 15 IF Z<>1 THEN GOSUB 200 20 PRINT "BACK FROM THE ROUTINE" Without the test in line 15 the program would always get to 200. The ELSE function is a very valuable addition to Com- modore BASIC. Brand new structures are DO. .LOOP WHILE and DO.. LOOP UNTIL. These allow a FOR. NEXT type of loop where the control variable can be altered in the middle of the loop. They do of course mean that any program with the variable DO in it will not work. Most Commodore users will be familiar with the line 10GETA$:IFA$=" "THEN10 Which waits for a key to be Eressed. Well Commodore ave decided that this is so common that they have added a command GETKEY which does the same thing. The INSTRcommand makes data validation much more simple, it returns the position in a string or a substring so PRINT INSTR ("NNANNN", "A") will give the answer 3. Think how useful this is for adventures, all you need is a INSTR ("NORTHSOUTHEAST WEST",D$). To neaten up output there is the PRINT USING command, this allows you to define the shape of the output and the decimal point and pound sign are looked after by the computer. Adventure writers will appreciate the RESTORE < line number > feature and everyone will appreciate the TRAP < linenumber > com- mand which causes the program to jump to a specified ine if an error occurs. This can ead to sloppy programming but its benefits, in preventing the user of a BASIC program getting into the program when an error occurs, far outweigh the disadvantages. m m ♦ 3 MCL P Toolkit From the early days of the PET there have been add-on toolkits for the PET. The C16 comes with one built in. Most prominent is the HELP key. When an error occurs in a program pressing the HELP key causes the line to be listed with the offending statement in a multi-statement line flashing. The VIC and 64 have always required a machine code patch to allow them to use the function keys on the left hand side. The C16 has a KEY command. Just typing KEY produces a list of the key definitions on the screen. KEY followed by a number and a string allocates that string to the key specified by the number. Even the HELPkey can be redefined. An AUTO command provides automatic line numbering. It works in an odd fashion, you have to type AUTO and then the increment. Then you start entering the program with a line number and then all the subsequent line numbers are generated for you. The AUTO command is not quite fast enough and can't keep up with a key defined with a message and a carriage return. The AUTO mode is switched off by hitting return over a blank line. The RENUMBER command neatens up programs and allows forgetful program-mers to squeeze in that essential bit of code which was missed out. Unlike the dreadful renumber in Simons BASIC thisone works properly and renumbers GOTOs and GOSUB's. The toolkit for the old PETs had a great TRACE function. This gave the line that was being executed and the last few lines above that in a window. The C16 just prints out the line being executed at the current print position. This means that the screen gets cluttered with a load of line numbers and cannot see what is supposed to be going on. It is switched on with TRON and off with TROFF. Disc handling BASIC 4.0 programmers will be familiar with all these commands. BACKUP provides a fast backup between drives on a dual drive unit. The only way of using this is with a 4040/8050 type drive and an interpod since the 1542 is only a single drive. There may be a dual drive in the pipeline; one was pictured in Commodore's report to shareholders. DIRECTORY shows the contents of a disc without destroying any BASIC program in memory. There is no CATALOG command as used in BASIC 4.0. DLOAD and DSAVE load and save files from and to disc. HEADER formats a new disc; there are two ways of doing this, a full HEADER which formats the whole disc and a quick HEADER which just formats over the directory on a disc which has already been used. The former is probably safer since it ensures the whole disc is safe to use and there are no bad sectors. RENAME does just that; it allows the name of a file to be changed on the disc, ideal for archiving a file you arc working on. COPY isslowerthan backup for copying a whole disc and does not format the disc it is copying onto but will copy one or a selection of files. Overall, the disc handling commands are a very useful addition — for disc users — but how many people will spend £230 on a disc drive for a £140 computer remains to be seen. Graphics By far the greatest improve- ments in Commodore BASIC have occurred in the field of graphic commands. The use of high resolution graphics really clobbers the memory, in high res mode the user is left with 2K to work with. Clever machine code could eek this out but most users will want to use BASIC. The non-high res com- mand is COLOUR. This replaces all the messy POKEing. There are three parameters to this command: type, colour and brightness. The type is a number between 0 and 4: 0 — Background 1 — Character (INK) 2 — multi colour 1 3 — multi colour 2 4 — border To use the high resolution graphics there is the GRAPHIC command. This allows for two modes, a 320 by 200 mode where the colour resolution is limited to two colours per 64 pixels and a multi colour mode which allows four colours per 64 pixels. There is an option to clear the graphic mode as you enter it. The graphic screen can be cleared with the SCNCLR command. The DRAW command will either draw from the last point or from and to a specified point. The colour can be given for each line. One of the major problems with a graphics screen is the difficulty of printing text to it. Drawing out a whole word can be very laborious. The C16 has two ways of overcoming this. The first is a text window at the bottom of the screen which can be printed to and which scrolls in trie normal way. The second is the CHAR command. This either writes or erases a given string at a specified position; it is slow but allows the string to be put anywhere on the graphics screen. The BOX com- mand is a fast alternative to using four draw commands. It is possible to produce a filled or rotated box. The CIRCLE command is a little slow but makes up for that in its flexibility; it can be used to draw any polygon or oval. Colour fill is quite difficult to write but this is no problem on the C16 which has a PAINT instruction. The 121 colours make the C16 a very pretty machine. An attempt to mimic sprites has been made by the inclusion of the commands GSHAPE and 5SHAPE. These suck graphics from the screen into a string which can then be squirted back onto a different part of the screen. There are flags for different logical operations which can be used to produce different effects when re- printing the software sprite. Sound Sound on the C16 is a doddle when compared to the 64. This is partly due to the new BASIC commands and partly due to the lack of facilities. There are only two commands, VOL and SOUND. There are two musical voices and one noise channel. The parameters forSOUNDare the voice number, the note and the duration. It won't be long before we start to learn the standard zapping sounds. Final points The manual is excellent and way past Commodore's usual standard. It is informative and instructional for the first time user. For the experienced person there are memory maps and register details. At only 16K the C16 looks a bit on the slim side, especially as the system cust out 4K for the operating system and screen. This leaves vou with 12K for programs. This is not too bad considering that Commodore machines are very frugal with memory consumption. Finally, another 10K disappears when using hi-res graphics, thus leaving only 2K for the user. Through clever Erogramming, an extra 2K can e extracted from the machine making a grand total of 4K!!! All we can hope for is that memory expansion units become available as soon as possible, if not from Commodore then from third I party manufacturers. [ COMMODORE YOUR BEST INDEPENDENT COMMODORE MAGAZINE Whatever you do, don't let this happen to you. When you rush down to your newsagents to get your copy of the latest Your Commodore don't suffer the disappointment of being told they've none left. Why not sit in the luxury of your own home and feel safe in the knowledge that your copies will come neatly wrapped winging their way through the post and find themselves popping through your letter box? Whatever your interest in the Commodore range of computers and peripherals, you simply cannot afford to miss a single issue. The magazine is packed with news, reviews of the latest software, information about the books for sale, articles to help you with your programming, games to type in and play, useful routines to make your computing life easier, and all sorts of useful, informative and entertaining features. So whether your interest is purely in the latest games available for the VIC 20 or in reading a serious review of the most recent hardware for your Commodore, you must ensure that you read and inwardly digest every issue of Your Commodore. And it's so easy to do! Just fill out the form below, write a cheque and send it off to the Subscriptions department. You know it makes sense! SUBSCRIPTION ORDER FORM Cut out and SEND TO: YOUR COMMODORE INFONET LTD., TIMES HSE, 179 THE MARLOWES, HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, HERTS, HP1 1BB Please commence my personal subscription YOUR COMMODORE with the issue SUBSCRIPTION RATES (tick as appropriate) UK £13.40 for 12 issues £15.30 for 12 issues I Overseas Surface £31.20 for 12 issues Overseas Air Mail / am enclosing my (delete as necessary) Cheque/Postal Order/International Money Order for£ (made payable to ASP Ltd) OR Debit my Access/Barctaycard* (•kdelete as necessary) D Please use BLOCK CAPITALS and include post codes. Name (Mr/Mrs/Miss) (delete accordingly) Address Signature Date. ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ALL COMMODORE USERS! A FREE LIGHTPEN! Yes a FREE Light Pen! with every GRAPHKIT! Graphkit is the ultimate in drawing!, designing! or painting! (using the light pen of course, which incidentally has a full 3 year warranty!) Graphkit will amongst other things allow you to: • Draw free handed on the screen anything from a Micky Mouse to your latest integrated circuit! With all the fill colour and erase facilities of course! • Save/load your latest master piece to/from the disk/tape drive • Or directly copy the drawing on the screen to the printer! And keep it for ever or send to a friend as a post card! • Design your own colourful sprites and characters • Play the games in the package! or use the light pen in your own games/education/programs GRAPHKIT is available on' disk and tape. Tape version is £1 595 and disk version (recommended! is £19.95. All you 1 540/1 541 disk users DMON 1 Is here at last. Dmon is the disk monitor you have been waiting for it wi allow you to: • read/write blocks from/to the disk • display and edit blocks on the screen • display and send disk messages/commands • transfer your programs from tape to disk or disk to disk or even disk to tape! • and more! DMON comes on DISK at only C9 .95. TORNADO 20/64 Do you use tapes? Are you sick and tired of waiting for your programs to be Loaded/Saved from/on the tape? Then you need a TORNADO!! Tornado allows you to Save/Load/Verify your Basic/machine code programs faster thart a CBM 1541 disk drive doesl Due to popular demand! Tornado now comes with new and more powerful commands plus extra instructions to assist you in making fast versions of your existing machine code/Basic programs. Tornado is available on tape for CBM 64 and 8K + Vic 20. BREAKER 20/64 Do your Run/Stop and Restore keys often tail? Do you want to come out of those crashes?! Or get into those unbreakable programs?! Then what are you waiting for, get yourself a BREAKER!! Reset switch and let your computer know who is the boss!! Breaker can be connected to your machine in seconds, no soldering. Included with the Breaker is a copy of basic recovery software on tape. Now available for any CBM 64 or Vic 20. I BSF CSL, 82 FURNACE DRIVE, CRAWLEY, W SUSSEX RH10 6JE. Ptease send me Tornado at £9.95 • mv free! Breaker Please send me Breaker at £7.95 L ..DMON at £9.95 Please use this form and block letters only. All prices are inclusive of p&p (mail order only, add £2 if outside UK). Please post to: BSF CSL, 82 FURNACE DRIVE, CRAWLEY, WEST SUSSEX RH10 6JE. Getting into a loop over BASIC? Then follow A P and D J Stephenson's advice on conditional processes and loops in the third part of this series. THE POPULAR PRESS IS fond of implying thai com- puters, in some way or another, have electronic brains' and that they work things out for us. This is typical media rubbish. Computers don't know how to work anything out. They do exactly what they are tola and nothing else. If a human doesn't know how to solve a Kroblem then no computer, owever much it weigns or costs, can solve it. Naturally, every problem could, in theory, eventually be solved by some form of trial and error process but this is not really solving the problem — it is just laboriously eliminating the methods which won't solve it) Fortunately, the computer works so much faster than humans that even trial and error methods are often practical, even if it involves working through millions of incorrect answers before they hit, by chance, on the right one. Perhaps it is this which is partly responsible for the myth that computers have 'intelli- gence'. Nevertheless, there is one statement in the BASIC vocabulary which, superfi- cially, appears to imbue the computer with some intelli- gence. This is the IF/THEN statement because it appears that the computer is capable of making a decision. (In reality, the computer doesn't make the decision at all but it seems as if it does). The format of the IF statement is as follows, IF condition THEN action. Example: IF A = 20 THEN 110 The condition is 'if A = 20' The action implies 'GOTO line 110 for the next instruction' Whether the action is carried out or not depends entirely on the truth or falsity of the condition. If it is true, the action after the THEN part is obeyed. If false, the action is ignored and the program continues with the THE BASIC FACTS PT. 3 next line number following the IF statement. In the example above, if A was indeed 20, the computer would go to line 110, but if it was not 20, the program would simply carry on to the next line instead of jumping to 110. It is important to point out that the particular action to be executed if the condition is true is not necessarily a simple jump to a line number. Here are some examples of legitimate IF statements: IF A > =25 THEN X = X+1 IF the condition is true, the action is a simple increment action on X. IF BF > K-(B+3) THEN BF = K*(BF+3) IF A ■ 30 GOTO 236 (Notice here that the word THEN can be missed but and replaced by GOTO if the action is a jump to line number) IF DS = K THEN Z = Z+3:PRINT DS Notice here that the action can be extended to more than one statement providing the usual colon delimiter is used to separate them. The rule is that all statements which follow the THEN part and which belong to the same line number are executed if the condition is true. If the condition is false, none of them are executed and the program continues at the next line number. It is clear from all this that although the IF statement appears to make a decision, it is not a decision in the intellectual sense. A true decision is based on a judgement formed after considering the relative merits of alternative solutions to a problem. The computer is not making a decision at all. It has no option but to act on the value of a variable so it is still a moron, behaving according to directions given by human intelligence. We are promised that the next breed of computers now on the drawing board, will usher in the so-called fifth generation revolution. These are said to have artificial intelligence built into them. It remains to be seen whether this is true intelligence or merely an increase in memory processing ability. In the meantime it is comforting to rely on the following definition: 'Intelligence is that which a computer does not have'. It will at least preserve man's dignity for a bit longer. Repetition A computer is ideally suited to carry out repetitive tasks. That is to say, an identical process is carried out on a variable, for a certain number of times. Although the process is identical, it is clear that something must change during each repetition or nothing much would be achieved. The following terms, relating to repetitive tasks, are well standardised. (a) Loop: the general name for value, 26 is the finishing value (b) Cycle: one complete process. (c) The loop Variable: the particular variable which is changed during each cycle. (d) The increment : the amount by which the loop is variable is changed each time. It can be either positive or negative. For example, the increment could be +3, meaning the variable is ncreased by 3 or -3, meaning the variable is decreased by 3, within each cycle. (e) The starring value: this is the value given to the variable on entering the loop. (() The finishing value: the final value required of the loop variable. When the loop variable has reached this value, the repetitive process is complete and the program is arranged to come out of the loop. As an example, to illustrate the meaning of these terms, suppose we want the variable A to grow, one at a time, from 5 to 26 within a loop, then A is the loop variable, 5 is the starting value,. 26 is the finishing value and the increment is +1. As a further example, suppose B 1 is to diminish from 300 to 200 by increments of 5. The loop variable is B1, the starting value is 300, the finishing value is 200 and the increment is -5. Components of a loop Bearing in mind the points raised above, a loop will consist of the following components: (a) Initialisation: Preparing the loop for entering the loop. This will often be no more than a simple assignment for setting the starting value of the loop variable. Programming (b) The process: This could be very simple, such as simply priming out the value of the variable each time round the loop or it could be a highly complex mathematical operation. It could even be a rearrangement of letters within a word. In fact the process could be almost anything, limited only by the imagination of the programmer. In some cases, loops are used merely to cause a delay somewhere within a program. For example, to display a screen message for just sufficient time for the operator to read it and decide the appropriate action. In such cases, the actual process is auite unimportant providing the execution time is judged to be equal to the required delay. It should be mentioned however that using a loop for inserting a delay is not to be recommended. It is crude and, unless you know the execution time of the statements which form the process, is little more than a trial and error exercise. (c) The incrementation: The loop variable must be altered in some way ready for the next cycle. There is no hard and fast rule as to the position of the incrementing proce- dure. Sometimes it may be advantageous to increment before and sometimes after the start of each process. (d) The end-of-loop-tesi: This is simply a check on the value of the loop variable. It is made each time round the loop to see. if it has reached its finishing value. If it hasn't, the process is repeated. If it has, the loop must be exited. The following simple programming examples will help you to become familiar witn tne terms. Program 3.1 100 A=1 110 PRINT A 120 A=A+1 130 IF A > 20 GOTO 110 140 END No apologies are made for the childish simplicity of the program. It is quite good enough to illustrate most of the points already made. The loop extends over the lines 110 to 130. Line 100 initialises the loop variable by a simple assignment statement. The process is simply to print out the value of A each time round. Line 120 deals with the incrementation of the loop variable, the increment being + 1 each time. Line 130 handles the end-of- loop test by diverting the program back to the start of the loop each time providing the value of the loop variable still remains under 20. When it has reached 20, the loop exits and the program stops. In short, the program prints out the numbers 1,2,3, . . .19. To show that the same objective can be achieved differently, study the next program. Program 3.2 100 A=-1 110 A=A+1 120 PRINT A 130 IF A 20 GOTO 110 140 END This time, the incrementation has been carried out before the process but, to satisfy the same objective, the loop variable is initialised to -1. It may be asked, 'Which is the best way?' There is no straightforward answer to this since situations can arise where the second version is more convenient. However, the first version is easier to follow. It is more 'logical'. Indeed, we can lay down the general rule that if there is more than one way of achieving the same result, always choose the one which is easier to follow, even if it happens to be a little less efficient and takes a longer time to execute. Saving a few microseconds here and there can sometimes be important but not very often. Tne vast majority of programs execute almost instantaneously anyway (at least as far as humans are concerned). Although a lot has been written about saving computer time, in the vast majority of programming applications, the advantages are often academic rather than practical. Avoid using 'clever' tricks just to show you are clever. You may earn the temporary admiration of a few neophytes but not for long. The watchword of good structure is clarity. Bugs in loops When programming a loop, there are two areas in which bugs delight to lurk, (a) Incorrect number of loops: It is very easy to be 'one out in the loop count. For instance, i both Programs 3.1 and 3.2, it i quite possible that the origina intention was to print out th value of A from 1 to 20 instea of to 19. The error, responsible for an incorrect loop count, can lie in either the initialisation or the end-of- loop test. n (b) The endless loop: It is easy, in fact ridiculously easy, to fall into the endless loop trap. Instead of revolving round a certain number of times, the loop goes on for ever. In other words, the program is locked within the loop and can never escape to the rest of the program. The most common cause of the bug is a jump to an incorrect line. For example, in Programs 3.1 and 3.2, if the IF statement returned control to line 100 instead of 110, it should be easy to see that an endless loop situation would exist because the effective increment is cancelled by re- initialisation each time. It would also happen if the end- of-loop test was searching for a number which could never be reached. For example, if we had written 100 IF A -20 GOTO 100 it is evident that this value of A would never be reached so an endless loop would be created. If the increment is positive and the starting value is greater than the finishing value, you have an endless loop. An endless loop will also arise if the increment is negative and the starting value is less than the finishing value. Unfortu- nately, the cure of loop bugs is not always so easy to spot. If the loop is at all complex, it may require a good deal of detective work and the occasional bout of cursing before the cure is found. Very often, curing one fault initiates another, particularly it you have been careless with regard to structure. The FOR/NEXT loop method Although the previous method of organising a loop is quite satisfactory, the designers of BASIC were kind enough to provide us with a pair of statements which were intended to make life a lot easier. The FOR statement is used at the start of the loop and the NEXT statement marks the end of the loop. The process is in the middle. Although the Commodore User Manual describes the use of the FOR/NEXT loop structure, we will start from scratch in order to amplify some of the points made. The format of the FOR statement is as follows, FOR variable ■ starting v a/ue TO finishing value STEP increment For example, FOR A = 1 TO 20 STEP 1 This will head a loop in which A will start at 1 and carry on until it reaches a value of 20, incrementing by 1 each time round the loop. The bottom of the loop is defined by the simple statement, NEXT A Note that the FOR statement does quite a lot. It combines the role of initialisation, incrementation and, surpris- ingly, end-of-loop test all in one go. To illustrate the elegance of the FOR loop and to see how it compares with previous work, study the following: Program 3.3 100 FOR A = 1 TO 19 STEP 1 110 PRINT A 120 NEXT A This will produce identical results to the previous two programs — it prints out the value of A from 1 to 19 inclusive. It does not require the addition of the IF statement to terminate the loop. Also, it is inclined to be less error prone because it reduces the chance of being one out in the loop count. It is important to be aware of the following features: 1. Whatever the parameters in the FOR statement, the loop will always process through once. 2. The value of the loop variable after exiting the loop will always be one increment more than the finishing value. For example, in Program 3.3, although only the numbers 1 to 19 are printed out, the value of A after exit will be 20. 3. If the increment is to be +1, it is not necessary to include STEP 1. Thus, the FOR statement in Program 3.3 could have been written in the more concise form, 100 FOR A = 1 TO 19 4. The loop variable must be floating point. We can't write FOR A% etc. 5. The starting, finishing and increment values can be variable names or any legitimate expression. For example, the following FOR statements are all legal: FOR A = B TO C STEP D FOR B1 = B+C-3 TO 5*D STEP E/3 FOR C = B-SIN(K) TO 26*TAN(T) STEP 1/COS (K) FOR D = 26 TO 5 STEP -0.1 FOR K = 26 TO 5 STEP 1 The last example is, of course, absurd but has been included to press home that even here, the loop will execute at least once. 6. NEXT A can be abbreviated to NEXT because there is no need to specify the variable although some think it is tidier. Loop objectives To consolidate some of the previous material, here are some loop problems and possible solutions: 1. A loop which prints out a table of the square roots of the odd integers from 1 to 17. Program 3.4 100 PRINT CHR$(147): REM CLEAR SCREEN 110 FOR I = 1 TO 17 STEP 2 120 PRINT SQR(I) 130 NEXT 140 END Line 100 clears the screen. It is a cleaner method than the ponderous PRINT "CLR/ HOME)" 2. A loop which prints out all integers between 5 and 24 except 17 Program 3.5 100 PRINT CHR$(147| 110 FOR I = 5 to 24 120 IF I > 17 PRINT I 130 NEXT 3. A loop which prints out the sum or all integers from 1 to 10000 100 PRINT CHR$(147| 110 S = 0:REM S IS TO HOLD THE SUM 120 FOR I = 1 TO 1000 130 S = S+l 140 NEXT 150 PRINT S 160 END Two points here. The program takes a little while so just wait patiently. We are aware of the simple formula for summing integers but this section is about loops. Nesting loops It is possible to have a loop inside a loop and indeed, one inside that, and so on. Such combinations are called loop nests. There is a limit to the number of nests but it is too large to worry about in practical programming at our level. Here is an example of a simple nested loop. Program 3.6 100 PRINT CHR$(147) 110 FOR A = 1 TO 10 120FORB = 2TO 10 130 PRINT A*B 140 NEXT 150 PRINT 160 NEXT 160 END The inner loop is between lines 120 to 140 inclusive. The inner loop first revolves with the value of A fixed at 1 whilst the value of B goes from 2 to 10. The value of A then remains fixed at 2 while the value of B again goes from 2 to 10. This process continues until the value of the outer loopvariable has reached 10. Since the process within the inner loop is simple multiplication of A times B, we are in effect printing out a set of multiplication tables. The PRINT line provides demarca- tion between the outer loop limits. Finally, we should explain that no attempt has been made in any of our programming examples to portray a nice screen appearance or to use literal messages. These will come later. Such niceties tend, in the early stages anyway, to obscure essential points. Loops are so important that nothing must stand in the way whilst they are explained. Soon, we hope, they will become second nature to you. SUMMER MADNESS SALE FROM SCI(UK) EPSON PRICE SPECIALS r-rmmmu\m\\< » EPSON RX80 (DOT MATRIX) . . . JE24&W £199+ vat =£228.85 J////i/iLll\\\ . . EPSON RX80FT (DOT MATRIX) . £235.00 £229+ vat =£263 35 EPSON FX80 (DOT MATRIX). . . .£438.00 £324+ vat =£372 60 EPSON MX 100 (DOT MATRIX). .£475.00 £355+ vat =£408 25 EPSON RX100 (DOT MATRIX). . .£45fcW£385 + vat=£442.75 t EPSON FX10CKDOT MATRIX). . .£56*00 £499+ vat =£573 85 D AIS YWHEELS. . . at an incredible new LOW PRICE! JUKI 6100 .just £329 20CPS: BiDireciional & Logic Seeking 10, 12, 15 & Proportional Spacing Wordstar Compaiable 2K Buffer: 13 inch Platen Underline: Backspace * Lots more Centronics Interface Standard OPTIONAL RS 232 TRACTOR AND SHEET FEEDER VAT = £378.35 THE DAISYWHEEL THAT HAS NO COMPETITION We will match any Genuine Price Advertised— SCI(UK) IS NEVER BEATEN ON PRICE MANY MORE PRINTERS AVAILABLE - 1000s of SCI(UK) BARGAINS/ S( send now for the FAMOUS SCI(UK) Catalogue/ - for the cheapest prices telephone 0730 68521 or 0730 68522 MORE SCI(UK) BARGAINS SHINWA CP80 £179.00+ vat =£205.58 - Friction and tractor feed as standard 80cps Bi-directional logic seeking 13 x 9 dot matrix giving true descenders Sub and superscripts. Italic printing and auto underlining Condensed, emphasised, expanded and double strike printing (can be mixed in a line) Parallel interface fitted as standard FIDELITY 14" COLOUR MONITOR & COMPOSITE VIDEO £189.00+ vat=£217. y. New from the world famous CANON Company CANON 1080a NLO DM best value ever at • i We have interfaces for all types of computers, = including CBM 64, VIC 20, APPLE, I RS 80, ■ | IBM, BBC, SPECTRUM, QL, etc. ^ ggggj Hi Eg 24 HOUR SECURICOR DELIVERY £9.50 plus VAT • BANKERS ORDERS. Bt ll.DING SOCIETY CHEQUES. POSTAL ORDERS - SAME DAY DESPATCH • ALL ORDERS COVERED BY THE MAIL ORDER PROTECTION SCHEME NATIONWIDE MAINTENANCE CONTRACTS ARRANGED • EDUCATIONAL DISCOUNTS VERY WELCOME It's SUNDAY - Do you realise you can order NOW - We are open 7 Days a Week. RANQEKEY LTD. Trsdkig m SCI (UK) SCI(UK) SCI (UK) FREEPOST (No stamp n—4*d) PETERSFIELD HANTS OU 32 2 BR DEALER ENQUIRIES I / I 1^ \ SCI (UK) FREEPOST (No iltmp n«*d*d) 0730 68521 EXPORT ENQUIRIES WELCOME l^I-ll UIV I PETERSFIELD HANTS QU 32 2BR n7Qn fi O C O T NO TAX WRITE FOR DETAILS % • ^ f 0730 68522 DELIVERY AT COST Large showrooms now open at 12 High Street, PETERSFIELD, Hants. GU32 3JG Telex 86626 MYNEWS G Les Allan's fast load utility should stop you nodding-off whil waiting lor your favourite progr; TURBO 64 This utility, when completed, exists as a machine code file booted from basic to $C999 and remains in residence to perform the following: M/C routine to save the finished product by pressing RECORD and PLAY on the tape. When the finished program SYS 49152 SYS 50000 SYS 50700 text mode to prompt available functions activate Turbo 64 save relevant section of memory to tape Turbo 64 commands are as follows: *- L this wilt load, at turbo baud rate, the 1st file from tape *- L" this will load a namefile from tape L" ",1,1 this will load, to the area of memory saved, a M/C file S this will save, at turbo baud rate, a program without a name 5" " this will save a program with a name S" ",1,1 this will save a M/C file to tape from the area resident in memory this will verify the 1st file on tape tf Program details The program as listed must be typed in exactly as written and saved prior to running. Error trap routines are included to ensure that the data is within the required limits and of (he correct value and quantity. The program when run stores the relevant data at a temporary is loaded and run the M/C routine transfers the data to $C000 and will remain available for use by the programmer to load, save and verify at Turbo baud rate — 10 times normal speed. Turbo save routine A save routine exists within the utility to enable the turbo 1. Load"T64".1.1 load turbo to memory 2. SYS 64738 COLD start 3. SYS 50000 activate turbo 4. ^ " load program 5. RUN figure 1 and $C608. This can then be used to load turbo saved programs as in figure 1. M/C files can be loaded by using a BASIC header as follows 10 lr A=0 THEN A=1:LOAD"T 64M.1 20 IF A=1 THEN A=2:SYS 50000 30 IF A=2 THEN A=3:— L"",1.1 The routine accessed by SYS 50700 should then be appended to the BASIC boot followed by the turbo saved program. ■ address at $8000 and when actioned transfers the data to the start of BASIC as a M/C file for the finished product. At this point the program when listed has overwritten the 'BASIC boot' and exists as a single line number 10 SYS 2064. The prompt on the screen is the routine to be used as a header for turbo saved programs. This is accessed by the command SYS 50700 and, when the prompt appears on the screen, the routine is saved by pressing RECORD and PLAY on the tape. The turbo routine is then saved to tape between $C350 N.B. Whereas the Commodore Logo key is used to commence the load routine for normal useage the turbo routine requires the use of the SPACE BAR to start the load sequence. This utility can and has been used to successfully transfer many commercial programs but information on such matters is strictly confidential and outside the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that material that would normally take 15 min to load will take a mere 1.5min with this utility. Program Listing 10 15 28 30 ^5 4* 48 50 55 60 65 ?& 75 88 35 90 35 100 195 ■ io 115 120 125 130 135 140 145 150 155 160 165 179 175 180 185 190 195 260 285 210 215 220 khM UrNHHt TU*B0 TAPE UTILITY FOP COMMODORE 64 »»««» PW.E53230.8 : P0KE532S1 > 0 PP1NTCHR*U47>CHR*<5>SPCU2>"^ TURBO 64 SO" F'PINT PRINT PRINT"THIS BASIC PART OF THE PROGRAM STORES" PRIHI-IHE TURBO ROUTINE AT A TEMPORARY ADDRESS" PRINI-Of- 32768 1*3000 J IN ORDER TO ENABLE THE" PRINT"F1NISHED PROGRAM TO BE TRANSFERRED TO" PRINT" THE START OF BASIC AND SAVED AS MACHINE" PRINT"C0DE NITHOUT THE NEED TO USE A MONITOR" PRINT PRINrSPC<3>CHR*(l29)"!'! WARN I NO Ml !M WARNING PRINT PRINTCHP*<28> PRINT-THIS PROGRAM MUST BE SAVED AS THE M/C" PR INT "ROUTINE USED HILL OVERWRITE THIS PROGRAM" f 1: REM MNtttttt«K»*ff*»»««*tt HEX LOADER WHMMMMM HWWWHWH I INC"0 SUM=0 PFADl'Hi I F Dh*= " END" THEN 1 70 IFLEN(DA*,'O2HNDDAJO"END"THEN210 H=ASC<LEFT*(DA*. l>> H1 = <H-48>#16 IFH>57THENHl=<H-55; H=ASC<PIGHT*<DA*, 1 t > H2=<H-48» • IFH>37THENH2«<H-55> BCD=H1+H2 IFBCD<0OPBCD>255THEN21O P0KE32768*INC.BCD INC-INC+1 SUM=SUM+BCD PRINT PRINTCHR*<5>SPC<.5»"DHTUM LEFT FOP TRANSFER :". PR I NT 1 920- 1 NCCHR* '1 57 > CHR* ( 32 ) CHR* < 145) CHR* ( 1 45 > GOTO110 REM tt*(t#»t#*t**tH* SAVE ROUTINE #*»**» IF INCOl 920OPSUMO 1 874 76T HEN2 1 0 PRINTCHR*<147>"DATA TRANSFER COMPLETE" PRINT : PRINT PRINT "HAVE VOU SAVED THIS PROGRAM 77" 0ETKEV* : IFKEV*0"V"ANDKEV*0"N"THEN185 IFKEY*="V"THENSVS34560 END PRlNTCHR*tl7>CHR*<17>"SAVE"CHR*i34J"TURB0 BOOT" CHR* '.34J PRINTCHR** 145>CHR*<145»CHR*a45;CHR*a45; END PRINTCHR*' 147) "ERROR IN DATA STATEMENT H'"-ST0P REM ##*(*»» Mttttfttt HE;; DATA FOR M/C ROUTINE 64 Utility 225 238 DATA 255 DATA 240 DATA 245 DATA 250 DATA ?SS DAT ft 260 DATA 265 DATA 270 DATA 275 DATA 286 DATA 285 DATA 290 DATA 295 DATA 300 DATA 305 DATA 310 DATA 315 DATA 320 DATA 325 DATA 330 DATA 335 DATA 34D DATA 345 DATA 350 DATA 355 DATA 360 DATA 365 DATA 370 DATA 375 DATA 380 385 DATA DATA 390 DATA 395 DATA 400 DATA 405 DATA 410 DATA 415 DATA 420 DATA 425 DATA 430 DATA 435 DATA 440 DATA 445 DATA 450 DATA 455 DATA 460 DATA 465 DATA 470 DATA 475 DATA 480 DATA 485 DATA 490 DATA 495 DATA 50O DATA 505 DATA 510 DATA 515 DATA 520 DATA 525 DATA 530 DATA 535 DATA 540 DATA DATA 54! 550 DATA 555 DATA 560 DATA 565 DATA 570 DATA 575 DATA 0B 1 08 . 0A . E0.3D. A9, E0.C0.BD. 0B,9D,80, BD-70.0E. CC . R9 - 0E,8D,20, F0.FF.A9. D2-FF.E8. A8.02.F0. A7.02.A9. AE, A7.02, A8.02-ES, A2 ■ 00 , 8E , 02 , BD, C0> E8.3E. A7, 85.C6.20. 08. 12,75, 66.60.60. 60,69-00, 20.B0.60. 20.20.7D, 7D.20.7D. 20,02,28, B2-6B.20. AD.60.7B. 70.70.20. 20 , 20 . 20 - 20.B1.AD, 6B. 20,20, 60.60.60- 60 1 60 - 60 . 00 .00.00- 48.49-53. 4C, 45,53 - 20,42.45. 20,26.26, 45.4E.20. 20.42-41. 54,48.45, 20.5F.4C. 20.20.4C- 45-00.20. 20,20,20. 46.49.4C, 20,20.20, 20.5F.53. 20.20,53. 45.00,00. 20-5F.56. 20.20.56. 40.45,46. 46.59.29, 52, 45. 2D- 4F,20-45, 30-00.00. 20.54.4F. 20-53. 54, 5B8D.08, 5F.F0.03- 10.C9.56, A7.20-73, 4C.AE.A7. 55. 50,45. 00,00.00, 00. 00- 00. 00.90.00, 00 . 00 . 00 . 05.86.AB, 38. F8.20. 00, 9E, 02, A2. 10, 0A, C3,BD, 9D,20. ACf . SD ■ D0.A9, 06, 8D, 4C2B, 03, 4C, 0E.SD. BD,C0. 8E, A7, A7.02, C2.F0, 02.-A9, E4. FF . 60,60. 60.60, 70,20, 69,20, 00, 7D. 20 . 7D . 70 • 00 ■ AB . 60 . 20. 7D, 20.70, 7D.20. 20,20. 20. El ■ 60.60. 60,60, 00, 00- 20 1 55 . 20.50. 00. 4C. 56.45. 54.49- 55.44, 20-46- 20-20, 4F.4I, 20. 5F, 20.20. 45.00. 20.20. 22. 4E. 41,56. 00-00. 20.20. 45.52. 49. 4C. 4E.41, 41.43. 4E. 54, 50,52, 20,51, 41-52. 03 ■ A9 . 4C.E7. F0.15. 00.20. 00.00, 52. 4D. 00 . 00 . 00 ■ 00 . 00.00. 00.00. 20, D4. 8F.F6. 32, 00. 9D, B0. C6, A7. 03. 86, C0, 1A. 86- Cl. 02. 18. 07, 19, C9, 60, 60. 60, 75, 20, 20- 7D. B3, 00- AD. 20, 60. 60, 00, 54. 52, 4F. 52, 4D. 20. 4F . 20, 44. 4C, 4C. 20. 20. 41 . 45. 00. 20. 49. 45. 4D. 54. 45. 45. 55, 54. C3. A7. 4C E0, 00. 4F- 00. 00 • 00. 00. El ■ 20. 30. BD. C0. 0C, E3- 02. 3D, 02, EE, C6, 02- F0. A3, AE. 20, CD. 00, 60, 60. B2, 60. 20, 7D, 20, 20. 7D- 7D. 00. 60, 7D, 60, 60, 00, 49. 4F, 41, 43. 45. 20. 4C, 20. 20. 22, 4F, 20, 20. ■411 . 20, 00. 20- 46, 22, 45, 49. 52, 53, 49. 5D. 8D. 20 ■ 08. C4. 00. 4E. 00. 00. 00, 00. A2- 7D. 36. 50. CI. 9D. EC- AC. 21- AE- A8. EE, 18, 07- 12, A8. D2, A8. F0, 60, 60. 60, 69, 7D, 20. 20. 7D, 20, 20, 7D, 6B, 00. 60, 6B, 00. 4C, 47, 44, 46, 53, 52. 4C. 20. 20. 4E- 41. 5F. ■ 45. 20, 00. 20. 59. 20- 46. 56. 20. 53. 54. 00. 09. 73, AF. 4i; . 00. 20, MM . 00, IJM . 00. 04. C4. 34.00. 88, 9D, BD.F0. 60, C4, A9,02. 01 .80. D0, 18. A7.02. 02. E8, A3. 02, AE.A8. 20. D2- CD-A8, 02, A0, FF,ES. 02. F0. F9,4C- 60,60, 60,60, 20, B2, 20-20. 20 , 20 1 7D.20. 70.20. 20, 7D, 20, 7D. 7D.20. 20.20, 20, 6A, 6A.60. 60,60, 92.00. 00.00. 49,54, 52,41 , 45,44, 49,45, 00. 4E, 41.54. 4F,57, 20,20, 20,31. 41, 40. 44,20, 53,20, 53,41. 46,49, 20, 4E. 00,00. 20,20. 00.20. 20.20. 49. 4C. 41.54, 53,59, 20-41. 20.20. 00,00. 03.60. 00, C9. 20,73. AE,fl7- 00,00. 36,34. 00 - 00 . 00.00. 00.00. 00,00, B5.2A, 20.91. 00.00. 00. C0. 0A , 9D , BD,90, D0,CA, AS. 02. AE,A8, BD,C0, 8E,A7, EE, A8. 02. A0. FF.E8. 02. F0, 02 . 20 - 4C92, 03, 4C, 94, E3, 60,60. 60.60- 20-B2- 75-60. 7D.20, 20. 7D. 20, 7D, 20,20, 20.20. 7D - 20 ■ B1.20. 60. 6B. 60.60. 60.60. 00.00. 00.00. 59,29, 4D,53, 2C-53, 44,20. 4F.52, 45,20. 49, 4E, 20,20, 53.54- 45.46, 26,20. 20,2u, 56,45. 4C45- 41.4D. 00-00. 20,20. 20, 5F. 20,20, 45.00. 45.20. 53.20, 4E.59- 20, 5B. 00,00- 20-73. 53. F0, 00,20, 20,73. 00,00. 0D.00. 00.00. 00 , 00 ■ 00 ■ 00 ■ 00.00. 95. AB. C4.A5. AA.AA, BD.30. A0-C2. 0D.9D. 4C.00. 20,44, 02, A0, C0-F0. 02, A9, 02, A9, 02,20, 4C.64. 03- 4C, F0,FF, C0.EE. 86, CO. AA , AA 1 60,60. 60.60. 20. B0. 69.20. 7D.20. 20.20. 20.70. AB . 60 1 7D.20. 20. 70, 20 ■ 6h . 20,20, 60,60. 60.60. 00.00. 00,00. 45, 4E. 20.54. 41,56, 41,54, 4D,41, 20.42. 47,00, 20,20. 20.46. 49, 4C, 4E.41, 20,20, 20.20. t2. 20- 45,46. 00.00. 20,20, 56,22, 56,45, 00,54. 54.55. 35.30. 20. 4B. 43, 4F, 00.00. 00. F0. 0B.C9. F0,C3, 00.20, 00.00, 00..00- 00.00. 00 ■ 00 > 00.00. 00.00, CA.D0. B9, 13, 580 585 590 595 600 605 610 615 620 625 630 635 640 645 65d 655 660 680 685 690 695 700 705 710 715 720 725 MM . A9 09- 9B BD.00 40, CS C0.20 E5.A9 04,20 07,26 08, CD 00. 3D F0.FF C0.EE 58, C© AE. A7 A8-02 A9.00 AA.&E 665 60-60 676 60.60^ 675 60.69" B2.2Q 7D,20 20- 7D 20. AB 69,20 7D-20 20, 7D 60-6B 6 A, 60 60.60~730 60.60- 735 00,00 740 00,54-745 41,42^750 4F,20~755 45,44 760 20-54-765 4C20" 779 59,20 775 00.20 780 20,20 -785 49,4i: - 790 45. 22 " 795 4D,45' 369 20,20" S05 00,20 '310 20.20' 49. 4C~ 820 00.20 20,20 4E.41 52,49 4F,20 52,42 30,30 45.59 4C44 00. A9 04. C9 4C.F0 4C.AE E3-C4 00,53 00.00 00.00 00. 00 00.00 00. A2, , F9.20 1 , 925 69 ,01 I 93Q 330 335 840 845 850 355 360 365 870 875 380 385 890 395 900 905 910 915 920 DATA HhTh iiMlH DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA OATn DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA DATA CA.20.B1, 0* . FA . Dfl . CA,20,B1, 91.C4.93. A2.03.E6. E5. AF.90, 84. C0.53, AD . 1 1 ■ DO. A0.00.A9. C6.AB.D0, 85. BD.45. 20-D3-C4, E9,60.CA, 00,2C.A2, 20.D4.E1 > AB.C9.02. 85,C3,AD, 2C,A8,A4, F5-84.90. C3,85,AE, C3.fl5.BD. 20- AF.C5. C0.D0.F6. C3,D1,C3- C4, A5.C3. C4.C8.84, F8.20.7D. 26.BD.A5. F9-C4.BD, 20,F0,C5. 10.2C.0D- 0F.DD. 68. BD.2F.C6, A9- 13, 3D. 53.59.53, 30,36,39, A5.2B.85, 20,FD.AE. 2C20-FD. S5-2E,20, fl5. 59.85, AA, AA.AA. A2,00.BD. 82.9D.01, BD,00,85. 44-E5-A2. A9 . 02 . 85 . 03,AA,05, 39.2C33, 4F,20,36, END C4, A2. F? . *fl . L4 . M2 i 20. Bl . AC ■ DO . E7,EA, 18, A3, 29. EF. 02,20. EE. 98. 07,85. A2,U, D0.FD. 01, A4. 20- FD. F9.08. 3D. 03, B7.F0. 20.D2- AD.3F, 45. D7. C9. 00. F0.2D, F0.02. C5.AE- C0,53, C4,84, BO, C9. D0.E3, 26-BD, DC • F0 - 4A.4A, F0.07. 77,02, 35,30, 36, 2C, 57, A5, 20 ■ 8A ■ flE.20. FD.AE ■ 2D-A5. AA , AA , 00.80. 0A.BD. 90,01, 00. BD. C6 . A9 . 11 38.34 34.20 08. dpi. 05. C4, 04. AS, 00, 3D, Bl, 20. 07. EA, 90. 28, C4. C9. 85. 0B. F5. 03. 05. F0. 20. 86. A5 ■ 18. D7, 02. 20. EA. FB. 68. 20, A9. 37, 22, 2C. AD. 8A. 20, 5A- AA. 90. 00- 00. 13, 5o . 59 . -jo * o— 30. 92. B9.AC. A2.04. ty-L0- 84-07. E6. flD . D7.20. SD.A0. 11.00. C4.A2. B1.C4. A9.08, 09,08, 05. A2. A5.2C, 20, 7A. 01-00. C4.20. 88, Bl. AD.3E. 65, C4. 90. F0, f?.^ ■ flF,C5, 90,45. C4,E5, A9.00. A9.07. D0.F5. DD.C5. Efl.EA. AD.0D- 00.00. 02. FF, 0D.8D. 36-39. 54-20. 85.58. 20. F7. AD- 20. 56. El • 85. 2E. AA.AA. 01.08. 83. 90. BD.00. 87. F0. 3D. 77. 3 2C.22. 22.2C, 00,20. Fl.BR. Bb-L'V. A2,07. CA.CA, B1,C4, 02. 4C. CA.D0. 07,88. A2.07, 85. A3. 20. D3. 0B.CA. 86, 0A, E1-4C. F3-A5- 50, F7. BB • D9 • 63,38. 23, ED, 04 - A9 - AB-20. 20. DO. 07,85, AF.90, 80. A0. 80.06. A0 . 09 . 88 ■ D0 ■ C6. A3. 0D.8E. 00.00. E8.4C 73 1 0- 36.34. A5.2D. B7.A5, F7.B7. A5.57. 60 ■ AA . AA.AA. BD.00, 01. 0B. 86.90, 07.20. 32. H9. 34,34, 93.05. 30,31, B1,C4- r.4 , B7 . EA. Bl 1 M c , . Hi . A2,07. 93. FC. FD.88. C0.09- 38.00. 06. BD. C4.A2. 00. F0. 86.93, 74, A4. B9-F0. 20, E4, 41,03. ED.3C. 30.03. FF.85, 0D-C5. C5-C4. 07- E6. DO, 20, 02, 4C. 00. A2. 20 , 00 . F6.60, 00. F4, 07,00- 00,23. 11. C6, 0~ 30,30, 22-2C. 85.59. 14.85. A5. 14. 85.2B- AA. AA, AA, AA, 81.90. BD.00. 01 .0E- 02. FF. 0D.8D. 36,34. 12.20, 13.00. A2-06. 90.03. tf^,B5, AC, 20, C5.AE. 88, D0, A0.00. 00. FA. OA. F4, F7,Cfl. A5.01, 0E . C6, 85.01, 84, C3, 20.61, 0A.AD. FF.F0. 00. CE. 03.08- 35. AF. 90. 4C. 91 -B2- 93.00. C3.D0, DD,C5. 93,FC, 01,20. C5,C9, A9,08, A5> BD, 48. A9, 44, E5- A9.02, 03. AA. 30,36, 36,31. A5.2E- 2B.A5- 85-20, A5.58- AA . AA . AA ■ AA • 01.09. 84.90- E3.D0- E3.4C. 78,02, 2C32. 54,55, 00,00. C8.C0 A3. 20 Hb.t:y B1.C4 A5.AD F6.C8 84. C0 78.60 A2.05 CA.60 23, F7 A3 -00 60, A2 85, C4 C5.A5 3C03 FB.20 98-D0 13,65 20.76 fl9,F5 C8,C0 02,31 02, E6 20,70 20, 17 F0,C5 02, F0 35, A3 60, A9 19,80 A2.00 85, C6 85.11 2C35 13.00 85. 5A 15,35 A5. 15 85. 2C AA.ftA AA.AA BD.00 01.0C D3.20 34,87 6C02 30.34 52,42 00,00 TURBO TAPE UTILITY FOP THE COMMODORE 64 UTILITY COMMANDS APE AS FOLLOWS # t * « ft ft # # It ft ft # ft # tt BB»BBBB«aBB««RBB«BB«BflBRflBWB8flfl»BBBflBflBB8KBBBtl*BS#8 SVS49152 SVS5000O SVS50700 H_ " NAME " ^."NAME" *V-NflME" BOOT TEXT MODE ACTIVATE TURBO SAVE TURBO LOAD NAME SAVE NAME VERIFY NAME # ft n it ft M ft t* ft ft # LES ALLAN ft 25TH JUNE 34 ft PYRAMID THE AIM OF THIS CAME IS TO hop around a pyramid whilst dodging the balls which rain down from above. Beware, especially, the blue ball which will hatcn into a snake after it reaches the bottom of the pyramid. The snake will chase you and can only be killed if you lure it onto one of the teleport discs situated at the side of the pyramid. Once you have landed on all of the squares on the first screen, you progress onto a new more challenging level. You commence with three lives and gain an extra life for completing screen one and then one for alternate levels after that. To complete each screen all the squares must be turned to the colour cyan; this is achieved by landing on the squares a certain number of items, depending on the level you are on. Level Method 1 land once on each square 2 land on squares twice 3 land once but square changes back if landed on again 4 land twice — changes back to halfway stage if landed on again 5 land twice but third landing completely undoes square Having completed level 5, you begin again at level one — but there are more balls to dodge this time round. The game includes three- dimensional graphics and a short machine code program to move the sprites more quickly. Instructions are included in the program and control is either with a joystick or from the keyboard. G4 Game Program Listing J FOPX-1T04 POKE49494»X0 NEXT 2 P0KE5328e.5 P0KE3328I,I1 3 PRINT-fc- 5 PI1ft»<34>.P<20>. '»<18> 9 PC*E33269 0 9 OOSU93000 10 M<1#J-- <\ 20 A«<11>-' 30 A*<I2>-* *0 Alii3>-* 45 Af<14>-' 50 Al<13»-* 55 A»<16>"- 60 Af<l7>»" 65 A«<10>-" re «i(i9>-- 72 A»<20>." 74 Af<21>"" 76 A*<22««" 78 flt<23>- _ 80 AJ(24>-- 92 A*<25»-- 34 A«26'-" 96 A*<2?'-" D-I«-I R-R-l rt»7 P0*E2047.14 00T0253 D-P'l H-7 P0KE2047, 14 GOT0233 D»D-| rt«7 P0KE2047.13 GOT0255 D-D*l R-R.| M-7 P0KE2O47-13 G0T0255 K /I I V I / \ N /\ /I I VlVI Al/NlA ✓ *✓ V \ K A A <l ivlvlvi A I A I A I A V \S V \ K /\ /\ yl i vlvlvlvl A IAI Al Al A ' V N 98 A»<28>--_ N ,A /N /-^ /\ -1 30 At<29>-" I VlVlVlVlv I 32 A»<»>«" A I A I A I A I A I A 93 AK31>"" ^ V V V V V \ 34 Af 32'"" K /\ <\ /-\ ^\ /\ /I 35 A*<33>"" I V I V I V I V I V I V I 36 At<34>"" \ I A I A | A | A I A I - 100 FORMS- IT 04 COSUB300O0 t4EXI 102 F0RX-1T06 FOliXtllf H P0» E53287»X-4 NEXT 103 OOSUST.W0C 103 Jf<fl>"-C" JK8)»"C* »(!>■■£■ /»<2'"'E- 110 J»(3>-*Q" J»<9>-"Q" Ji<4>-*Z" J8<6>»"2" 115 OX-156 OY»53 SH"7 SN-12»INKRN*i<0>48> 117 print-ojtress any «ev to begin- 118 OETW IFM---TMEM18 120 DR-3 DL-4 BH-3.9 NL-3 0050*2000 150 WC-54272 P0KEVC*24. 13 280 Fi>E33248'SM*2.0X POKE53249»SN*2,0V REM POSITION SPRITE SM 205 IFrfTHENFS'l M-N-I G0T0233 207 I FFS" 1 THENOOSUB700 210 GETAf IFA*O-"THEN220 212 «-J«<.PEEK<36320>AHDI5>-5> 214 !FA*'--THEN255 220 IFfl*«-0"THENP0»E4?42224 PRINT" 230 IFA»--2' THEMPC*E4?422.6 PRINT" 240 IFfl(.-E*THENP0KE4?422. 17 PRINT 230 lFfl!""C"THENP0KE43422 ■ 1 PRINT" 235 BC-BC'l «P 0»KG0SU»33e. 338,330. 370.400.410. 430. 390. 450 270 A-PEE*'53278> 308 SVS12*4836»16 REM MOVE SPRITES ?10 IFPEE*<3327S>AND128THEt<<iSiJFI00O REN CHECK POP COLLISIONS 328 G0T02O5 330 IFBM>-1THEN: ' -8N-1 332 IPBHD<l)<BMtHEHSJ-SI-"0" MX-0 RETURN 334 IPSUi"'"THEH»1-8N.| G0TO332 336 SlMLEFTKSLf -1) SLf*NIDt< SL*.2 > S«"St*SI« V7-VRL<S1»> R7-INI'RND< 1 >».3> 337 NX-1 RETURN 338 IFMX-OTMEHRETURN 33? P0«E53248'V742.140«32»*7 P0KE53249*V 7*2. 83 340 P0RE33269.'PEEK( 33269 >0R2tV7 342 RETURN 338 F0RX-lT0LEN<Sf>SP-VAL<f1IDf<S»,X.I>> 333 IFSPrHE-*-0"E4*4&8-SP42. 1'7*IN1<PHl><e>«2> 355 NEXT 360 RETURN 370 lFV*l<S«»80fiS«<3THENPOKEVC*4, 16 POKEVC. 48 POKEVCM. 1 1 POKEVC-5.8 371 POKE53271.0 IFSM<-2TMENP0tE53249.PEE*<33249>*2l 372 SW-SM-I IFSM-- 3THEMPOKE2040. 1 92 P0HT53287.3 373 IFSM04THENRETURN 374 POKE2O40,15 P0KE53287.6 376 SP"INTIRND< 1 )*2> SD"I 378 POKE33248.140.32WSR P0KE53249.85 P0KE33269.P££K<33269>01!1 SR«$R*2*4 RETURN 390 JFSH<-2THENF->E33271.1 P0kE33249.P£EK<53249>-2l 400 RETURN 410 Sll-LEFTI'.S*,I> Sf-MIDf<S».2> VH-VAL<SlI> 413 IRVflT»4£NP0*E5?269.PEE»'33269>flNP(253-2tVfl^Sl.S-SL»*SI» *19 RETURN 430 IFSf04IHENRE tUPH 432 IFSH>0THENRAMNT<RND<1>*2> SR-SR*1-Rfi*2 SD-SD-I POKE49400. I*RB»7 RETURN 434 IF$H>-3THENRETURH 436 PV-l IFSD>D0PSD>4THENPV-PV*I6 SD-SD-2 438 SD«SD-1 IFSR.'4.2«R-PTHENPV-PV»7 SP-SR-2 440 SR-SP-1 442 P0»E4946&PV RETURN •>"* BC-0 FO>EVC'4,17 RETURN 580 PRINT-*! ■ 5*5 F0PXMT06 SVSI2*40?6«I6 NEXT 510 FGROD-1T03 515 ft>K*l 338 0NKGOSUB59B. 338. 350. 370. 400. 410. 430. 390. 570. 380. 380. 388- 388. 450 540 SVS1 2*4096* 16 543 IFK."0TMEN313 5!*--4&.t SC-Q_Eflex«oroi3 PO»E49407.x.O NEXT Ma'WN 1 333 POKE33269.F£D.I53269>AHD129 360 P0K633262. 136 P0KE53263. 53 0-0 C-0 PP I NT - Ij0— MM»WI WW 563 FM"I«-[HT<PN)»3 OOTO700 370 *>SP*10'SD 372 IPNV«I03ORNV'— 6THENFOKE33269. 128 SP-99 ?«»1NT'PN0< 1 >»12*l2> J"J»I 360 FC«X-1T020 NEXT OETM RETURN 330 PH't"-l 00 TO? 32 €99 K* CMflNOE S0U8PES ^00 Ff^ IFR>0ANI* >I>T|4;N7O8 702 IF>DL«NI*':.DTHENIl»39 00'030t> 7t4 iFD-wftNOR.^ei-e'iPR-?? coTOsee "06 OOTOIOOO 708 PN-WD-i .. .-.F 789 IFD>3ORP;0TMENI000 710 OMLGOTO730. 880. 550. 900.950 "68 p^ P ' T 1n ■ 1ThEI * £TUP,, -. P<PN>-1 RE I UM PN'O P(Fto»i Mp-ND-l RETURN ?;0 fi ETUPfH 938 IPP'PN)=1TMENS70 960 PRiNT-^ntir «tin smiwmr p(PN>-i 963 ND-NIt-1 IFNP-2JOOTO2800 969 RETURN 878 PRINT" *Htl Ml IUW * TTMC p(PH'^ 975 NDWD-I RETURN 900 CNP'PN>G0T09ie.928 983 pt:n" i i— ■ n 1 1 * ■ ii— i > i wm 918 PRINT"^**«B^ TMII nmco^TW. F 915 N0"ND*1 IFW-21TNEM20O0 917 RETURN 920 'RINT-J Mlil iJ'JIIIg'iTinMll^irro 338 ONPtPN>OOTO96O 970. 953 print ' ^nivi^^am^rnnMB* : r tat . p«pn>-i return :ri-mr Blll«*l* TTW. P<PN>-2 965 1P"ND*1 IFND-21TMEN2000 967 RETURN 978 PRINT- Hill >illl lim r TTIII P<PN)«« NINMD-I RETUP" 1800 FOKE2047.I P0KE53294.2 POPX-I'TSOO NEXT 1003 'C-NL-1 P0RX-8T013 P0KE49407.X.8 NEXT P0KE332e l 128 1018 IFNL<1TICN1040 1013 PRINT-*11^F» 1020 BC-0 . : «-"8080- SLI--123456- Df** Of Tftf GET ft* 102T P0KE2847.I3 PCM-E33294 3 1030 P0KE33262. 156 P0» =33263- 53 I"0 R=« " I'" M»MMIIMMW«r 1833 SN"l2-INT-fiNr I '«8' P«»B»1-INT(W>*3 M-0 RS-8 RETURN 1840 PPINT'^IOU «FE XfDI" 1043 POKE33269.0 IfBe L-L»3»H PRINT "»"T"J REACHED LEVEl'L 1035 SC«304iND«L*ie.5»(L»»'L-l>»6W) ?60 PRINT-VOUR SCORE UWS'iC ■MS -*!-0 F0RX«1T04 HS«HS-P5n '49494.X)H8T'8-X*2> "5 " 1070 :CXC-MSTHENPPIHT"THE MI0-( iCORE 1S"MS GOT On 00 1080 P»:'<"-CONC*ftIUlft'IONS VOU HWT uaWPED PLL THE0THEP- : a MP BECOME THE 1090 F*IM> VPREME NOSER I" !092 FOPX-ITOJ 1093 v-nmAJS'SctOKe-xiz**^-*" PO*E«&*H»>: v sc-sc-v«io»<e-y»: next 1100 F*INT"«PRESS 'SfiCE FOR flNOTHER OtME. ' 1110 CETflt IFRIC?" "T^ENIIIO 111! RUH2 l-L'1 1FL>3THENL-I l**u- ! BN-5.8-<U-l 2eit =OP>:-ero28 p<x>-e next 2020 "INT'l- FORX-18T033 P*H.' •MTMO') >IEXT PRINT"»»»»I"«»' M 2030 0R-3 X»4 MP»0 ;04,1 '1L-I.L-. _ -"-It.T L ^ ■ i.i'Ti jWO PPINT'niNJ'PUCTIONe- 3010 PRINT-MHOP PiOUF THE PVRfiMIP TURNING ~-€' 3020 PRINT-TOP P«CE : c E'-CRV CUK CVHN. ' .^030 PRINT"*1HE PLflTFO*'?i AT THE SIDE OF TIC P^^lf - ;O40 PRINT'NRE TELEPOPT IC^DS WHICH SENS VOU TO" 3eT0 FF INT* THE TOP OF THE R«-"-l*!&. T HEV CftN OHLV" 3O60 ce IMT'BC USED ONCE E«H - USE THEM TO LURE THE* ■ 3070 FFI«T"SNHKE TO HIS DEATH. " ?O&0 PRIHT-tJVOU MUST AVOID THE SMAdE ^"II* T>€ ■ MM PPINT-EOU'iCINC< BALLS TO SURVIVE. ■ 3093 PRlHT-ajSE t£VS 0-2.E.C TO MOV'E" 3097 PRIHT"OR A JOVSTICfc IH CONTROL PORT 2 3100 RETURN DATFU3.7.I3 OATAOO- 0.0-1 DATAO. 0.0,0. 3.0.0 9.0.0 I*T«0, 0.0.0. DA TAP. 126.0. DATA241>2-2- DATA136.I 2f DAIAO. 127,0. 9,60.i 3.231 1.231 5. 0.O ft r t ,0 DATA36. 0.O. 36,0 0 36 MM9 DAIfl0. 0,33-0. 0-41. 128-8 30818 DATB14,7,3 3001! DATA8. 0.0. 0.0.0.0 30012 PATAO O.O'O.O'O'O 30013 DATA0. 0.0. 0.0. 60.0 30014 DMA0. 126.0. 30,223.0.63 30815 DATA! 43. 128. 127.223. 128.57. 25' 30016 DATAI28. 0-255 129.0.233,0 30817 DATA8.234. 0.0. 124.0.0 30018 DATR36.8.0,36. 0.8.36 30819 DATA8.0.236.0.I.I48.O.0 30020 DATA15.I.2 MMl KATAO.O.O.O-O.O e 30822 DArf*. 0.0. 0.0.0-62 :-O023 DATM0.O 233. 128 3 233.224 i>?025 Wf-i 3. 240. 15.233.248. 13 248.31.233.232.31.233 ?8026 DATA232. 31. 233. 2-2 31.233. 232 30027 DATA31.233.252.15 233. 248. 13 3P028 DATA233. 248.7. 233- 240 3. 233 30029 DATA224. 0,233- 128.0.62.0 0 30030 TATA192.0.3 38031 PATAO. 13.0.0.23. 128-0 300 32 DATA63. 192- 0. 102. 64. 0.224 30033 DAIA64. 0.224. O.O. 230.0 :O034 DATAO 233.128 0. 1 12. 192.0 30035 DATA216 . 192. 1 128 I 128 30036 DAFA0. 1.150 0.0. 243.0 30037 DATAO. 223- 128. 1,177 128-1 30038 DATA139.0- 1.129. O-0- 199 30839 DATA0. 0.97, 128,0.63,0.0 49999 REM SPRITE SET UP 38000 READ DN RE ft DSN READCO rOOI0 FORX-OT063 READN P0KEDN464.X H NEXT 30026 POXE2O40.SH DN P0*E33287*SN. CO 30030 RETURN ■3O00 CS-0 F0RX-1T048 READA 35020 CS-CS*A P0KE49167'K.A NEXT 55040 IFCS<^6798T»4ENPPINT"ERR0f 1M DATA LINES 6OOOO-6O03P- 3 TOR 36OO0 F0PX-0T015 POE49406 --: 0 NEXT 56010 CS-0 F0PX-IT064 RE ADA 36030 CS-CS'A P0KE49423«X.A NEXT 36040 !FCSO9S9;THENPRINT"ERR0R IN DATA LINES 60O40-- RETURN DATA162, 233.232. 224. 16.240.40. 189, 0. 193 . 195 . 16, 193. 201 68010 DATH133.240.24|.24,l23.0.20e.36.233 128.137 O.208. 232. 185 60820 DAT* 48.193.24.125.0.200.56.233.128,137 0-206 234 253 "98 NIM4D.1 IFND-21THEH2OO0 -^0 FE"L*H 808 OHP'PN'GOTO810,82O 6O030 DATA192. 76. 19. 192-96 60040 DATA133.131. 130.131/131. 130-131.133.125 60038 DATA126. 123. 125. 126. 123 133. 133. 133. 121- 130. 1 31, 131- 130 60066 DATA13I -153.125. 126. 123- 125 126. 123 133- 153. 153. 117. 123- 130 919 print- rr-^nir -urn ■^iMtrvr^rr 915 NT- Nil* | IFHP.21 TMEN2OO0 917 4ETURN rmr. P(PH)-I RETURN Ml". P'PN>-2 60870 DATA136.144. 158. 153. 1 17 123 . 130. 1 36. 144. 138-133. 153.153 60080 PATA106-1I2I20. 126. 133. 139.133, 106. 112 120.126.133-139,133.153 READY. E GRIPPING STUFF id OVER THE LAST FEW DAYS I have been using some of the old favourites along with some of the newer joysticks. As usual with reviews now a stick feels is a personal thing and what one person thinks is great another may think awful. Some of the comments regarding reliability are based on my experience working at one time in a retail outlet and so I have a good idea aboul whether a joystick failure was a one oft, or tends to be common in that particular type. I have dealt with them in the order they came to hand and not in order of preferance. Each joystick I have reviewed I have taken to pieces in order to see why they failed or survived. This dismembering was only tried after I had used them in order not to ruin them if everything shot out at 90MPH and lodged itself into the walls. I tried each joystick with an arcade game of the JETSET WILLY clan, a Drawing program and the fantastic INTERNATIONAL SOCCER cartridge which is sometimes available from Commodore. The toughest test for each came when they were used with an Olympics type game where they needed to be whipped from side to side in order to make the runner run. I feel that this was the ultimate test and that this type of game is unfair to joysticks anyway. If a joystick failed in this part of the test I will make it clear. Price seems to have no bearing on strength it would appear, and the only guide I could find was the prettier they are the easier they are to break. Quiclcshot 1 & 2 We sold a lot of Quickshot 1s in the shop and it seems I counted them all out and I counted them all back in again. Unlike harriers these were nearly all faulty. It seems you either love them or hate them. Personally I hate them. Some retailers say they are reliable others say they are not. I say they are not but would like to be proved wrong. When they started coming back in their droves I pulled one to pieces and the weak spot was at the bottom of the shaft. There is a small ring of plastic which actually pushes ontp the cheapest switches I have seen. This ring of plastic, in all the returned joysticks, had broken and, strangely, all had broken on the left hand side. The rest of the joystick was fine; the rubber suckers at the bottom made one handed operation easy and the contoured handle felt smashing. They were easy to hold for two handed use and were nicely packaged. It was just a shame they did not last. I did get hold of a new one for review and it broke (during a winning 100 yard dash). Same fault, same place. Life of that Quickshot. ..about 20 minutes. Then came the Quickshot 2. This one lasted a little longer; about another ten minutes. Could it really be the same fault? Never. One screwdriver and a cut finger later I was pleased to see it was not. The dreaded piece of thin plastic had been replaced by a (humping great ring of thick Klastic. Tne cheapest switches I ave ever seen had been replaced by the second cheapest switches I have ever seen. They had I am afraid suffered terminal metal fatigue. The switch was a piece of very thin gauge metal with four prongs. The prong which switched to the left hadbroken off and the 'UP' prong was nearly off. The other prongs had signs of hairline fractures. The rest of the joystick, like the Quickshot 1, was smashing. The rapid (cheat) fire button was great, the contoured handle was brilliant, but I still could not turn left. I look forward to being sent the Quickshot 3. I also pledge to review it with an open mind. Kempston The Kempston has been around a long time now and still seems to be a favourite. They are strong and very well made and have a quality of finish rare on most joysticks. I find them uncomfortable to use and would not like one myself but many would agree to differ and so I would not criticise it. A lot weresold in the shop and, to my knowledge, not one has been returned. I can't seem to get comfortable with the fire buttons. The price is good and, as I have said, the quality of the finish is the best of all those I have reviewed. I can see the Kempston continuing to sell well; no frills with it but a stayer, it is totally black except for the enormous red fire buttons. The Cambridge joystick Quite different to the standard breed this one: at first it was only available with an interface but now just the joystick can be purchased to use with any console that uses the nine pin plug. As can be seen, it is a different style and at first glance would not seem to bp suitable for the fast shoot'em up type games. I used one with a Spectrum at first and al- though they are not perfect they do perform well. Tney are self-centering and once you have got the hang of the small degree of movement they are a treat to use. The metal shaft is strong and they lasted through all the above games. When I worked in the shop we sold quite a few of these and only had one returned. Thiswasdue to poor soldering on the inside of the stick, which was easily repaired. When I had finished I looked at all the others but it seemed to be a one off fault. They are made from a hard plastic, are very strong and withstand almost anything. They come in an enormous box which swamps the stick but this is due to the fact that the same package is used for joysticks which are sold with the interface software. Hardware Review This joystick comes into its own when used with drawing type software. Because you hold the stick as you would a pen or pencil it is possible to be very precise when drawing in high res mode. Not so easy with a big stick of the standard type. There is another joystick available which looks exactly the same as this one but it is not self-centreing. That does not sound too bad until you come to use it, and believe me it's a pig. If this is the stick you would like then ensure you get the self-centreing model. As with the Atari the part that you hold does not look comfort- able but once you are used to the feel it is fine. It is without doubt a two handed job and attempts to stick it down for one handed operation have not been successful. It will stick down OK but, using it with one hand, it is uncomfortable as well as difficult because your wrist keeps touching the fire button. The price is good and it is a well maae stick which looks practical and performs well and from my experience is very reliable. As we are on the biect of reliability I will now al with the two baddies of su dea the bunch. The BOSS 'The Boss is here' so the box says. This one feels very heavy and sticks quite well to the sur- face mainly due to its own weight. Its external design, ex- cept for the single fire button, is similar to the trusty old Quickshot 1 but the similar- ity ends there. It lasted the course and I was blisterless. The contoured grip turns on its stem and I found that most disconcerting. It is strong and its internals seem to confirm that. I still cannot decide where it gets its weight from. When I opened it up (expected to find a lump of metal but it was not there. What I did find however were the strongest hunkiest leaf switches I have ever seen. I feel confident that this one will continue to work for a long time. The casing is as strong as any of the others and it looks good in its grey and black coat. The fire button was not the most pleasing I have used and did not seem very positive at all. There was no click to it. I think it would be a good alternative to the Quickshot if you really want that type of stick, and it appears that it would give you a lot more service. Due to the rotating shaft I did find that it was possible to find yourself going the wrong way but after getting used to it I found it less troublesome. For some reason I was left feeling unexcited by this one. Super Stick The Super Stick looks like a joke. Its stylish box says it is built to endure longer than most joysticks and boasts a one year LIMITED warranty. When I had taken it from its box I had to stop laughing long enough to try it. It looks foul, phallic and inferior. (I was proved wrong). The SUPERSTICK is pretty — just like the elephant man! It would look better if the colours were reversed. I couldn't take their claims for it being strong seriously at all but it survived. I pulled it apart and was amazed. There was almost nothing in it that could break. Its internals should be a lesson to all joystick manufacturers. The switches are balls of metal sunk into plastic stems. The contact is a massive metal plate with arms cut out. I put it back together and plugged it back in and tried to break it. I couldn't. I pulled it to pieces again tosee if it had suffered. Not a mark. It still looks foul and it still looks phallic but it is definitely not inferior. If strength is more important to you than looks then have a look at the SUPERSTICK. It has only got one fire button. It slidesaround the table like it has got a mind of its own; the non-contoured handle slips and it looks funny but I challenge you to break it. Nice one. Great for kids and gorillas. The ZipStick The ZIPSTICK is another that stood the test of the Olympics. It is advertised as strong and it is. The central shaft of the stick is a solid metal bar. A large coloured diagram comes with this stick showing it's internals but I still felt the need to get inside myself. Everything was tight inside and well fitting. I could see the solid shaft and I was surprised to see fairly standard leaf switches. The way thev were placed though and the mechanism of the stick itself made them potentially a lot more hard wearing. Again this one is a no frills stick out it was very responsive and quite unforgiving. It is more comfortable in use than it would appear and it was very clunky. Tne clunks are noisy but they do sound METAL. A couple of people who have seen it have also liked it and commented on how strong it was. This is another one that I tried to break. I succeeded in smashing my knuckles against the computer console and that was the only damage. It seems a little expensive but it is so well made that the cost seems justified. The fire button is on the base of the stick and is a little difficult to use if you are using it hand-held. My fingers would not quite reach up to the button but if you fix the stick down there is no problem. The coffee and cream colouring look nice and blend in well with my bruised knuckles. Cheetah Well then, that's the lot. You may have made up your mind as to which you would like. I have. If I was going down to buy a stick today and could choose any of these I think I would go for the ZIPSTICK. It's a little on the pricey side but worth the extra. If my funds were limited then without any doubt I would choose the gruesome red and black monster that goes by the name of SUPERSTICK. I ask myself why but I don't know. It's just so strong. Before ending this article I should mention that a new type of stick has just been announced. At tne time of writing it was not available for the 64 out it's release should be only days away. It has been released for the Spectrum and from what I understand it has had rave reviews. You may have gathered that I am on about the new infra red joystick from Cheetah. No leads on this one just pure infra red light. It is supposed to have a wide angle of light spread so that when you and the joystick dive to the left to avoid that last Galaxion it should still respond. I am sure that this one will soon be reviewed in this magazine so if you are thinking of spending about £30.00 on a stick (I believe this will be about the trice) then this may be worth anging on for. I wonder if it will interfere with the video recorder remote control? E Submissions YOUR BEST INDEPENDENT COMMODORE MAGAZINE SO YOU OWN A COMMODORE? SO YOU'VE WRITTEN SOME PROGRAMS? SO WHY HAVEN'T YOU SUBMITTED THEM TO US? Your Commodore is always on the lookout for new material for publication and we know that there are thousands of intelligent, literate, innovative and creative Commodore owners out there, so why don't we get together? It you have written an exhilirating game or an invaluable utility on your Commodore micro, share your talents with us and our readers by submitting your efforts and the form to the address below. All articles should be documented and type-written and should be accompanied by a printout of the program as well as a copy of the program or\ cassette or disc. All publication, it wiil be returned to you. You may not have written any software yourself, but you have very firm opinions about the world of Commodore and all tneir attendant industries and products. Then put your opinions on paper and post them to us, again at the address below — you never know, you might even get paid for airing your views! All submissions should be sent to: The Editor Your Commodore Argus Specialist Publications Limited No 1 Golden Square 44 L ★ PLEASE COMPLETE IN BLOCK CAPITALS Your Name Program Name Computer/memory size it runs on Amount o( memory program occupies Other computers/memory size which your program runs on without conversion or use Does your game need or use joysticks? Yes No Have you sent your game to another magazine Yes No Is it original/or a variation on a themef Your Address Telephone Number Times to contact you If an advertisement is wrong we're here to put it right. If you see an advertisement in the press, in print on posters or in the cinema which you find unacceptable, write to us at the address below. The Advertising Standards Authority. ASA Ltd. Dept 3 Br'ook House. Tomngcon Place. London WC1E7HN VIC-20/CBM-64 SOFTWARE HIRE FREE MEMBERSHIP!!! * A vast range of fine quality software * Prices from 60p per week * Comprehensive Membership book/catalogue * All tapes (guaranteed) originals * Free monthly newsletter Send 2 x 1 7p stamps for your Free Hirekit. Absolutely no obligations. Try us, you've nothing to lose! VSH (V), 242 Ransom Road, Mapperley, Nottingham, NG35H J N.B. Please state which machine COMPUTAPE'S DISCOUNT SOFTWARE Take a LOOK at our very competative prices and great variety in tapes from the leading software houses. Many more available. COMMODORE 64 BSP Our Price Aiaoian Nights Interceptor £7.00 £6 .80 Asiro Chase Statesoft £8.96 £7 80 Automama M.kro-Gen «■« « 80 Beach Mead US Gold £9 96 £8 50 Bear Bower Art* MM £6 90 Black Haw* Cieative Sparks £7 96 £6 90 Boulder Dash Statesoft £8 96 £7 80 Bristles Siaiesol £8 96 £7 80 Catacombs Anirog £7 96 £6 76 Chuckie Egg A & f So«**» £7 90 £6 60 Cuddly Cuban Interceptor £7 00 £6 90 Cuthbert in Space Microdeal £8.00 (6 80 Cybotron Anirog £7 96 £6 80 Daley Thompsons Decathlon Ocean £7.90 £6 50 Decathlon Activision £9 99 £8 70 Encounters Novagen £9 96 f B 50 Evil Dead (The, Palace £6 99 £5 90 Fhp and Flop Statesoft £8 95 £7 76 Football Manager Add.ctive Software £7 95 £6 50 QIMgani Gold Ocean £6.90 £6.76 GlugGlug CRL £7.95 £6 75 Harera.ser Prelude Haresoft 18 95 £7 50 House of Usher An.rog £6 95 £5 80 Hulk' The A/lnternei-onal £9 95 £8 50 Jack and the Beanstalk Thor £6 95 £5 80 Mtcro Olympics DataBase £6.96 £4 80 Monty Mole Gremlin Graph.cs £7 96 £6 70 Myst.c Mansion U S Gold £8 96 £7 90 Panic Interceptor £7 00 £6 BO Petch Anirog £6 95 £6 70 Pitfall Acliv<sion £9.99 £8 70 Potty Pigeon Gremlin Graphics £7 95 £6 80 psyvon Beyond Software £7 70 fS 95 QuoVadis Softek £9 95 £8 75 Stunt B*e (The) Ocean £6.90 £5 75 Tr#»hman Quicksih-a £7.96 £6.80 Twin Kingdom Valley Bug Byte £9 60 £7 96 Valhalla Legend £14.96 £1190 Vorte* Raider Interceptor £7 00 £5 90 2a«on US Gold £9.95 £8.60 To order any of the above tapes, please write giving details of the games, enclosing a Cheque/ P.O. made payable to: COMPUTAPE and post to: Dept. Y128. 27 Coombe Road, Southminster. Essex CMO 7AH. (Tel: Maldon 772589). We also have lists available for the Spectrum. BBC. Deagon 32. One, Atari and Tandy Computers. Please send SAE for these lists. BRAINGAMES Amplicon Group BRAINGAMES Amplicon Group Richmond Road Brighton East Sussex BN2 3RL Richmond Road Brighton East Sussex BN2 3RL Tel: Brighton (0273) 608331 Telex: 877470 AMPCON G Tel: Bnghton (0273) 608331 Telex: 877470 AMPCON G Braifisames is a dtvison of Amplicon Micro Systems Limited Bramgames * a division of Amplicon Micro Systems limited SOFTWARE 1 m The DOCTOR 64 package is a diagnostic program for Your Commodore. Il bears a resemblance to a unit for servicing BBCs called a F.l.T. test board (FINAL INSPECTION TEST). It will not diagnose faults on a dead machine as it must be loaded in order to run but this aside it really is a useful program. I think that the people who would find most use for it aresmall retailers who have no full service depart- ment; this would enable them to check machines prior to sale. Also, 1 found identify faults that are due to operator error as opposed to a machine fault. The program is nicely packaged and, as usual with disc, loaded first time. You can then select which part of the machine you want to check or an autotest routine goes through selected checks and ends with a list of checks completed with a pass or fail mark. Pictures are used to illustrate the items you can have checked and when a particular item is checked it slowly sidles off to the side of the screen and then the screen clears to give you instructions to continue that particular part of the test. The scrolling pictures are not really necessary on a program of this type and seem to only have the purpose of prettying up the menu. In fact when you are going through a series of tests, the wait while the picture moves is an irritation. I will list the items that can be checked with a brief description of what each test does. ' KEYBOARD TEST As with the BBC FIT test this shows all the keys on the screen, and as you press each key the relevant key on the screen disappears. As Commodore keys are notor- ious for gunking up this small quick test will allow you to check most of the keys at once. JOYSTICK TEST When this is selected you are asked to select port 1 or 2. A graphic representation of possible joysticks movements appears as well as a circle to represent the fire button. As you move the stick or press the fire button a dot appears to show that a good signal has been received. I found this useful when doing joystick reviews as I could confirm that joysticks had failed as-opposed to the joystick port. RAM TEST This test checks all available RAM in order to identify faulty IC's. On screen all that is shown is a row of dots. As the test progresses the line of dots gets longer. This is another useful test as one faulty RAM IC may allow the computer to work OK unless that particular chip is called. Of course if the IC at the start of BASIC is duff then the program would not load in the first place. PRINTER TEST Understandably this routine will only check printers connected through the serial port. With such a wide variety of printers available it would be very hard if not impossible to write a routine to check printer function when it is connected through the user port. This is another test which I have used many times when asked to look at non — functioning systems. DISC TEST This is a similar routine to the one found on the Commodore test/demo disc when you buy a 1541 disc drive. It does a read/write test to each part of the disc and checks for read/write errors. Another useful test: I did not find a way of checking my second drive which has a hardwire modification designating it as device ten as opposed to eight. VIDEO TEST More of a test card really. It simply shows a line of coloured bars and points out that this is a good time to adjust colour brightness etc. I tnink that a video fault would be apparent without this. SOUND TEST This displays a musical stave and plays a scale on each voice. The sounds are pretty gruesome notes and not very clean anyway. At first I thought maybe I had a duff SID or speaker coil but when I checked other 64s they sounded just as bad and so it must be trie program. CASSETTE TEST On the SX64 this is not relevant and when it is run the program drops out with an error. This is not really a fault in the program just a disadvantage with the SX64. If you run it with an ordinary 64 it performs a read/write test but if you did have a read fault then how did vou load this program? Other reviews for 64 Doctor have questioned the value of a program that must be loaded and run in order to see if a machine is sick or not. As I have said before this IS a valid workshop tool and useful at home. It is not something that you would use very often but is reassuring if, for instance, your joystick does not work and you wonder if the last time you unplugged it with the power on maybe you did mess up the port (I plead guilty to doing that more than once) One of these would be useful in a retail outlet as well as a club or school. It is the only one of its type I have seen for the 64 and what it does it does well. D.C. Software reviews Zim Sala Bim * * ★ * Melbourne House £9.95 CBM 64 I'M NO REAL ADVENTURER but I know enough to recognise that Zim Sala Bim is full of promise, eastern promise to be exact. And an adventure with arcade style graphics and scrolling screens into the bargain all accom- panied by highly atmospheric Arabian music. So to the storyline. Your village has been savagely raided by the Sultan, all the money has been stolen and it is on the verge of starvation. You are the only able bodied man left and you have been chosen to break into the Sultan's palace and recapture the hoard of cash. The trouble is that if you break into the palace unprepared, the Sultan s guards might catch you and sling you in the dungeon. But then, wandering in the desert has its dangers too. However, the fact that you can actually move around each location means that some of the objects to assist you in your task can be easily found. Others are hidden and have to be discovered. You will need all the help you can get particularly if you are to avoid the stench of rotting food in the dungeon. But please, don't let that put you off. K.M. Football Manager * * * * * SO YOU FANCY YOURSELF AS a Lawrie McMenemy do you? Totally devoid of a footballing background and yet the manager of a successful first division football club? Well here's your chance. But watch out because it's a game addictive by name and Fame Quest * Brain Games £7.95 (casselte)/£9.9S (disc) CBM 64 THIS, SAYS THE COPIOUS instructions, is an olde worlde game and by golly it shows. And just in case you were wondering, it has absolutely zip to do with the dancing sopranos in the TV programme of a similar name. It is set in the I days when demons, dragons and knaves still roam free and an aspiring young knight must [win fame and fortune before being accepted into the royal rourt. To meet the necessary 'requirements a knight must journey from one royal castle to another gaining fame in battle and enough gold on the way. Fortunately he has a certain amount of gold to start with, enough to buy some weapons to see him through the initial encounters on the journey. To add to the excitement (yawn), the screen is split into five extremely static boxes, the most exciting of which is a map of the player's position. Oh dear, what a bore. K.M. CBM 64 addictive by nature. Now it may be a game you are already familiar with because it's been around for some time on (dare I say it) the Spectrum but that doesn't mean to say that it is a bit of second-hand tut. Far from it. In fact it is one of those games that is worth its weight in gold. The object of the game is simple: to take over a club at the bottom of the fourth division and with skill and dexterity to take it to the top of division one through a series of league and FA Cup matches. There's a chance to dabble in the transfer market to improve your team's skill and even borrow cash from the bank to keep your club afloat! Each player has a skill factor and energy reserves which become depleted the more he plays. Players also become unavailable for selection because they are injured. Once you have picked your team, the computer plays out the matches before your very eyes. Shock results can unset the odds and the team morale factor varies according to the success of the team. But don't get too flush with a run of success. The managerial seat is not all that secure and a few bad games could get you the sack. Move over Subutteo because here comes a game that is going to glue you to that screen. K.M. JUST AMAZING ISN'T IT, THE NUMBER of maze games there are around these days? So what's one more amongst friends you might well ask? But before you get too despondent, it's worth noting that Fred still has something to offer the genre. Fred is stuck underground and desperate to get out. The only problem is that he's got to find the bomb and various other artefacts and detonate them on the outside without blowing himself up before he can pass on to the next level. Naturally there are traditional nasties wandering around the maze determined to put a spanner in the works. Sounds even more like you've heard it all before, doesn't it? Well, not quite, because the graphics are exceptionally good and Fred is a master of a rope climbing act. Whilst in the maze Fred's strength is sapped as the nasties catch him and drops of acid rain fall on him from the roof of the caverns. But it is not a one-sided affair. Fred has a gun and six bullets which are replenishable with which to repel the nasties and hisstrength can be restored by finding the magic elixir. All there is left to do is find your way out of the maze ... and with a horizontally and vertically scrolling screen, it is not as easy as it sounds. What's more, the higher the skill level you choose, the more difficult it is. K.M. E 7 I! SOFTWARE 4 YOU WAKE UP IN THE lounge of a waxworks and, as the words say on the package ... in such macabre surroundings dreams end and nightmares begin ... Well the only nightmares I'll have will be trying to figure this infernal what words to use. Lack of communication is very evident, it may just be me or this game reflects the feelings of the waxworks — dark and forboding! The program itself isn't in the same category as the infamous Zork series but it is a nice try. The graphics aren't as good as the Dallas Quest (which is on disc only) but the software company does have an intriguing fill command. If you are wondering why plot, that is because they do not mention one! It's up to you to explore the waxworks and earn by your mistakes. So in ;ame out. It's not that it's lifficult but the problem is haven't said anything about the my opinion (I've been spoilt) it is a standard adventu standard graphics, but try and solve it just to mind at ease. re with I'll still put my S.L.F.P. tz SOMEHOW I GET THE IMPRESSION that this might be a little conservation orientated. Not only do you learn about the evolution of a life commonly known as the frog, but it also gives hints about nuclear waste and on the higher levels you will find mutant creatures ready to kill you if you don't kill them. The idea of the game is evolution: breed as many frogs as possible before ending up as some creature's dinner. As it says in the booklet that comes with it "How else can we continue to play frog games, after all they have to breed somewhere". This is true! The game opens with you hatching asa frog spawn feeling very hungry, so you eat the pink amoeba and the eggs which the dragonfly drops into the water. If the eggs aren't eaten they hatch and eat you. To evolve takes a tittle while, because you have to consume five worms to go onto the next stage of development. Other hazards include jelly fish, hydra, spiders and nuclear waste which has been dumped in the pond. Even if you do die I think you will still want to start again and discover the birds and the bees about frogs! S.LF.P. New York Blitz * * Mastertronic £1.99 VIC 20 Optional Joystick I LOOKED AT THIS GAME THINKING have Mastertronic brought out a new original game at the cheap price of £1.99? Alas not, this is yet another copy of Blitz or the similarly named City Bomber. If you have nevef played this sort of game the basic aim is to flatten the city in order to land your aircraft which is running out of fuel. Once loaded, which it does with ease, you can begin. The aircraft moves across the screen, gradually decreasing in height. To bomb, press any key (you can't make a mistake as any key will do} or press the fire button on the joystick control. Surprisingly one bomb will destroy a whole sky-scraper; this makes it a very simple game and I went through the cities with apparent ease. Cities to destroy include Baltimore, Seattle and, of course. New York. Once destroyed your aircraft lands automatically. The graphics are one character and the skyscrapers look like ice-cube containers. The sound leaves a lot to be desired. The only good point in this game's favour is the price. At £1.99 it must be the cheapest bomber /blitz game around but as the old saying goes, 'Cheap and Nasty'. P. WW Software reviews i Kaiah * * * * Talent Software £7.95 (cassette)/£9.95 (disc) CBM 64 IT'S DONE IT AGAIN! THE machine has got it in (or me. Every time I come up with a good move it comes up with a better one. Mind you, I have only been playing this game for an hour. frustrating one at that) It is. apparently, a very old game which was played in deserts by people with nothing better to do. Let me explain this gem of a game from Talent Software. The game consists of a board with 14 holes in it. You own 7 holes and so does the computer. 6 of the 7 holes are in front of you and the same for the CPU, trie seventh is to your right (called the Kalah). more than half the pebbles Mike Masters who designed which are placed in the holes the graphics. They deserve a by moving them round the round of applause for the total board anitclockwise. If you are package as it is very good confused at this point, wait indeed. S.L.F.P. until you play the game. The rules take a Hide getting used to but after a few games it becomes clear that this is a definite strategy game. I think I should mention the two people involved in making this. They are Andrew Collins who wrote the oro&ram and Revelation ★ ★ * Softek £7.95 CBM 64 + J oystick IT IS AN OKICINALISH' game, but it doesn't quite get lo be called totally and absolutely original. In basic terms it is a shoot 'em up game with quite a large difference. Not only do you kill all the evil monsters but you have to destroy castles which, in turn, reveal a pentacle sign. Once you have revealed all the pentacles there is a brief blue flash telling you thai you can now kill the last of the monsters and escape cavern number one. Apparently in this game there are 31 monsters all on (he 40 different levels. They serve the same purpose in life: to kill you before you get to the last screen and stop the monster of Apocalypse from being crowned. That basically is what the game is about and I must say that it would be OK if it didn't take so long to play one cavern. The graphics are fine, except for the flashing of my character (and all the others), when there is more than a certain amount on the screen. This could either be the machine's limitations of eight sprites on the screen at once or the program's limitations in using soft sprites. Overall, it is possible but as I said before, a ittle faster please on the early evels and is it music in the background or has a dragon got indegestion? S.L.F.P. THIS IS A PARTIAL GRAPHICS adventure which operates in real lime. In other words you could be deciding whether to shoot someone or not and they could decide that they would rather not have you around. The game West puts you in the position of being a low enforcer on the trail of a gang of mean robbers. It's your job to kill them and get promoted to Marshall. These nasty reprobates are hiding out in and around an old mining town which is now a ghost town; hidden somewhere is a large amount of loot. The software company claims that there are between two and three hundred words that the computer will understand. Unfortunately I couldn't check that because I kept on being shot or bitten by a rattlesnake. It does have graphics, but only in certain places. The graphics are again very good. I say 'again' because the two other games by Talent have outstanding presentations. S.L.F.P. HAVE YOU EVERTRIEDTOFLY the latest in space defence craft from the Federal Inter Starbase Patrol Force (FISPF)? I have and it's exceptionally difficult and dangerous. Supersoft have generated a different type of flight simulator. Whereas with most simulators a small manual is provided, Supersoft have gone all the way in producinga 47 page flying handbook with everything in it except how to make the coffee! The game opens with you enrolling as a Sub-Lieutenant in the FISPF. You are then transported to your craft waiting at one of tne hangars. You have the choice of either going out into space or just running the inbuilt simulator to learn now to handle the Interdictor Mark III. It's one of those games that will take a lot of playing to get used to and reap the best from it as a simulator. The onlydrawback with this game is that it is auite slow and occasionally death came painfully slow indeed. SIPERSOFT Election Trail * * Brain Games £7.95 (cassette) £9.95 (disc) CBM 64 YES FOLKS, IT'S ELECTION time again in the jolly old US of A and Wally Mondieu is busily beating a path to Rodeo Ronnie's door. Election Trail is here to help you indulge in all the fun of the fair in the comfort of your own home. It's a one or two player game. If the one player option is chosen, the computer plays the Democratic party. The object of the game is simply to win the Presidential election and you do this by winning the most states in each of the four regions. At each turn you are invited to do one of four things: hold a rally, go on a campaign tour, hold a press conference or hold a public meeting, each of which depletes your cash-rich coffers. You then get the opportunity to either raise more cash, take a rest, look at the opinion polls or seek an endorsement. At the end of 20 turns, the whole cotton -picki ng roadshow grinds to a halt and the states are carved up between the reds and the blues. Although there is an element of strategy to the whole thing the degree of dependence on the computer ite higr k.M. SOFTWARE Flight Zero-One-Five * * * * AVS £5.95 VIC 20 AT LAST A FLIGHT SIMU- lator for the unexpanded Vic owner. Is this a miracle I ask myself? Yes, but it is less complicated than other games available for the expanded VIC 20 but just right for a beginner. The insert gives very good instructions on how to take off, cruise, descend and land. Once loaded, which it does without difficulty, press F5 to start the engines, hold F5 to start to taxi down the runway and with a minimumof 390revs you're ready to take off. Press F3, your brakes areoff and your airspeed builds up. Press and hold < (nose up): You're now cruising through the air. You do suffer from random turbulence from time to time and have to correct your course. Descent and landing need to be thought about: check your airspeed and lower your undercarriage to get your nose down. Press < : if you're lucky you should land; I suggest you shut your eyes and pray. Your flight time is usually about 7 minutes although the insert quotes 5 minutes. I couldn't find any bugs. The graphics are limited but the sound is quite good; when you rev the sound pitch increases. Overall it is a very good flight simulation ana the pro- grammer has my congrat- ulations for getting it into 35K. Well done. P.W.W. ACTIVISION WERE A GAMES manufacturer for Atari's game Console. So what? I hear you ask. Well, the good thing about this company making software for the CBM 64 is that they are producing very good quality products. H.E.R.O. is a prime example of what they can do. It is original, fast and has very good quality graphics. Some miners have been trap- ped down a mine shaft and it's your job to be a 'Hero' and save them. Sounds easy and it is for a couple of levels. Whilst traversing the mine shaft you will have to blow up walls and shoot creatures. To blow up a wall you'll need dynamite: you are supplied with six sticks, so use them wisely and don't stand too close. To make life easier you have a jetpack which enables you to ascend and descend with grace and care as the tunnels go in all directions. Once you have saved the miner, level two starts, exposing a little more of the mine shaft and a few more obstacles to get over. Good examples are the lava walls and lava flows: if you walk or land on these obstacles you lose a life. 5.L.F.P. HELICOPTER GAMES ARE FEW and far between and this one from AVS is the first I have seen for the VIC. The game loads very easily. To take off press F1 but do wait until the rotor blades of the helicopter are at full speed before take off. Using the keys Q A O P your first assignment is to blast rockets which appear horizontally across the screen. Once you have achieved this the second screen appears. On this screen you are on a small base station which moves from eft to right. Your assignment is to shoot down approaching objects. Your fuel is increased by 10 points for each success you have. Once the maximum target of 300 points has been reached you can then take off in your helicopter Your base station has to be destroyed. Once airbourne fly directly over the base and then drop your load; you then return to screen one. Sound easy; don't you believe it, it took me five or six goes to get it right. The graphics on this game are quite good as are the choice of colours. I also like the little touches which help to make it more interesting; a good title page and good sound. P.W.W. Software reviews AT FIRST GLANCE IT IS NOT easy to tell what this package does. The picture on the pack indicates a game, the wording indicates a language and the company name suggests it may be a word processor. There is almost nothing on the packing to indicate that it is a BASIC compiler. A compiler is a program which converts a program into another form to increase speed and efficiency. In all machines that run in anything other than machine code an interpreter has to be present to convert the program that has been entered into a form that the processor can understand. This conversion and checking takes time and can slow a program down so much that it crawls. Compilers turn a program into a form that is faster, closer to the object code, and in some cases have additional features to pass by bugs or poor routines in the original machine. In the case of the Commodore it fixes the dreaded garbage collect routine, though more on that later. Jet pack does all these things and is 100% compatible with BASIC 2.0; this means that you can compile any of your BASIC programs without modifi- cations, with some machines it is not possible to compile without rewriting certain parts. Another great feature of letpack is that if you use machine code routines loaded from within a program that is OK. In some cases it is necessary to POKE a couple of locations to do this but the procedure is so well described in the documentation that it is very very easy. The program for disc based Commodore 64s comes with a dongle to fit into the joystick port or cassette port; in case you haven't seen a dongle before it is a small piece of simple circuitry encased in a lump of plastic about 2" x 1.25" with a plug on. This will only allow the program to operate when the dongle is present. Backup copies of the compiler are easily made but without the dongle they will not run. I use an SX-64 and while I was carrying my SX around I lost my dongle from the joystick port. My compiler will not run now, but as it is such a useful program another must be obtained. If you have a tape based Commodore Wthereisa tape version. Unlike the disc version there are limitations to the size of the program you can compile (12K) as the compiler cannot lay onto tape, in a temporary file, parts of the compiled program. The price of the tape version though is so low that i( would still be an excellent buy. When you load a compiled be automatically changed to ease transportation of programs from one machine to another. Because of time available I have not been able to investigate this function so I hesitate to comment. Claims are made that some programs will run up to 25 times faster than in standard BASIC but most programs will achieve only 5 to 15 times speed increase. This however is still a lot faster and in the majority of cases I did notice a very definite increase. I use a lot of subroutines to format figures and the delay between input, format and printing to the screen was considerably less. For me the most impressive feature was the Jetpack Garbage Collect. I have one piece of software that uses Commodore collect routine has been a nuisance to you then Jetpack is an excellent buy just to stop hangups. To finish then I found DTL BASIC to be excellent. Unlike some compilers it is 100% compatible with BASIC and it will also run on the SX-64. The documentation is more than adequate and well written and is I think my most often used utility program. I now compile all my BASIC programs if only to make them unlisiable (another benefit). One important point is that although the dongle is needed to compile a program it is not required to RUN a compiled program so you can still give copies of compiled software away. Unlike some compiler producers, Dataview have adopted a very mature attitude program it is necessary also to nave a set of routines in memory which are called the runtime library. These are loaded automatically if they are not in RAM. They do not use much RAM at all and they are in a part of RAM not often used. Machine code routines that I use such as Centronics Interface Software do not conflict with the RTL. Chaining of compiled and uncompiled programs is possible and easy and it is possible to retain variable values and transfer them from program to program. If you use non-BASIC commands called extensions which are defined within the program it will still compile. Warnings are given that a non- standard command has been found but provided it is a genuine extension then the compilation process and the end result will still run. Special extensions to BASIC in the compiler allow for faster sprite movement which does indeed work well and a routine also allows PEEK/POKE addresses to almost the whole of BASIC RAM as one large string array. When the Commodore performs its infamous collect routine I have watched the machine hang up for 15 to 20 minutes while it sorts out the rubbish. When compiled it did still hang up but for less than a second. It is now a great joy to watch it hang up and burst back into life so quickly. If the to using the compiler with software that you want to market. If you sell copies of your compiled programs simply credit Dataview and t hats all OK. A shame others do not think like that. Just out of interest, below is the memory map to show areas used by th compiler (addresses in hex). $0000-50800 As per interpreter $0800-$9FFF Compiled programs and variable list array $A00O-$BFFF Run time lib. £C00O-$CFFF Unused $D00O-$FFFF Garbage collect D.C SOFTWARE WRITTEN BY THE SAME GENTLEMAN who concocted Flip & Flop, Fernando Herrera has done it again. This game is about trying to save Earth, I say this because it is very trying, and you always lose in the end. Apart from that it is very good. The graphics with the cartoon intermissions and the 1812 overture are just right. However, it lacks a little of the 'umph' thai Flip & Flop had. The game consists of stopping megamines from hitting earth and killing as many Megadarian ships as possible whilst keeping yourself alive," simple enough! After two 'chase' sequences I didn't have any saucers left, end of game for me. You do get shields which deplete your power, along with losers. At the edge of the galaxy there are power points from which you can replenish your weakening strength but be careful because a megamine might scatter the earth over a vast distance whilst you are performing this minor task. Eight different Megadarian fighters can be encountered on the 34 levels, of which you can select up to level 23. The cartoons are worth watching because as you progress your man is welcomed home in different ways. It's a good game but I did find it easy to switch off and play something else. S.L.F.P. Psycho Shopper * * * Masterlronic £1.99 . . VIC 20 8K RAM Optional Joystick YOU ONLY HAVE A SMALL AMOUNT OF time to get to the supermarket! Can you make it in time? Will you be bashed bv an old Cranny? These are the sort of prob- lems you encounter in this new Master- tronic game. You are a disorientated shopper heading for the supermarket, collecting gold coins on the way. Grannies plav a big part in making your life difficult. On the bumping into a mad granny or any other obstacle you are confronted with. On the second screen you arrive at the main road which you must cross avoiding the vans, cars and yet more grannies. I can guess what you are thinking, yet another version of Frogger. You're right, but this is more addictive. The third screen presents railway lines and trains. On arrival at screen four, grab your shopping trolley and off you go around a maze avoiding of course yet more grannies. Once you achieve this you're back to screen one. The graphics on this game are reasonable and the sound gives it added life. It loaded very easily first time and it has a good title page. At £1.99 it is very good value for money and a game not to be missed by any VIC owner. Forest of doom * * * Puffin Books CBM 64 LIKE THE HOBBIT FOR THE 64 THE Forest of Doom by Puffin is supplied with a book. It is worth remembering that this game is based on a book written by Ian Livingstone who is at the forefront of Dungeons. & Dragons. This is an adventure game based around the basic rules of D & D. Once loaded you are confronted by a high resolution screen showing a decidedly suspicious forest. I immediately thought that it was going to be a high quality graphics adventure. I was wrong at least up to the point I reached. Let me explain the principles behind the game and what your tasks are. The theory is that after rolling some dice (kindly provided by the computer), you build up your character's abilities. The higher the dice roll the better. Anyway, once your character has its qualities you then get a long briefing of what has happened in the world which you are now a resident. The plot goes something like this — you are a warrior of great reputation. One sunny day you just happen to be near a spot where this dwarf says his final words. In desparation and half madness he tells you of the four runes which have been stolen and mislaid in the Forest of Doom. He then expires and you decide to get the runes back because there mignt be something in it for you. From thence your struggle begins and even if you are short and clever or built like an ox (thick as one as well) you'll have some great fun. S.L.F.P. 52 Archipelago * * Talent Software £7.95 <cassette)/£9.95 (disc) CBM 64 + Joystick I DON'T NORMALLY LIKE WAITING 14 minutes for a program to load, but since I had already played Kalah by Talent for the 64 and was greatly impressed, I went and made mvself a coffee and got ready to IV! . play Archipelago. After reading the instructions which described Archipelago as a type of maze game, I started to have doubts. There have, in the past, been too many maze games and an addition to the very long call would make it just one more name on a never ending list. This would have to be very good to make it stand out above the rest. The idea is to collect the mysterious jewels from a maze so that you can escape the maze and inevitably go on to progressively harder levels. As usual there are guardians who for some unknown reason want your blood. Once loaded, the title screen and then the high score table are displayed. Then a rather nice animation of a storm battered island with a man running into a cave is initiated finally leading to the game. As a conclusion I am tempted to say 'Nice presentation, shame about the game', but I won't. S.L.F.P. Software reviews JUDGING FROM THE BLUR8 on the cassette insert, t thought this was going to be a pretty naff game. But how wrong you can be! Surely it wasn't me who was going to be a tinge tedious? Percy, of course, is no ordinary, run-of-the-mill potty pigeon. He is downright suicidal. The object of the game is to control old Percy in flight and to swoop down on to the road to pick up all the nest building twigs he needs to pass on to the next level. There are points for every twig taken back to the nest. Naturally, it is not as easy as all flight and almost totally uncontrollable. But that's not all. There are obstacles to avoid such as the passing cars on the road intent on turning Percy into strawberry jam and a variety of other nasties like the pigeon eating cat, the starving ferret, kamikaze planes, balloons and twig snatching sparrows. But Percy is not totally heloless. He has more under his wing in the shape of some revolting, exploding eggs. Points are gaine for splattering the passing cars, killing the cat, destroying the flying ducks (Rood enough to grace any wall) and gobbling up the butterflies. So, once again, who said nest building isn't fun? Certainly not loveable little Percy, the star of this nifty little game. K.M. 0 colore 1 St * • * Flip & Flop * * * * * Stale Soft (0 QC CBM 64 + loystick(s) (Cassette] based) WHAT HAVE FERNANDO Herrera; a monkey called Mitch and a Kangaroo called Flip got in common? Well, Fernando wrote a game which includes these two characters in a very weird setting! Mitch & Flip have found that they can escape from the Zoo by completing a maze. The problem is it's in 3-D and after playing for a long time, insomnia sets in your eyes start to water! Anyway, by traversing the squares of this maze and flipping special boxes placed at random on the board, you gain points and your freedom. The first couple of levels are dead easy once you get used to the joystick controls, the best results being achieved by holding it like a diamond (fire button pointing at the T.V.), but then the fun starts. The levels are made harder with the entry of the zookeeper on level 3 and a magic flying net on level 4. As the game progresses the maze gets larger as you complete each level. Cartoon intermissions have been included after every 5 levels of play as a reward for being very agile. The game is superb with very good graphics and sound. Oh yes, when you play as Mitch the Monkey the board turns over and you swing from square to square! Not that easy this one and it's well worth the money. Watch out for the sticky squares, they can be dangerous or very useful as well. S.LF.P. Traffic ★ ★ Quicksilva £7.95 CBM 64 + Joystick THE STREETS OF LONDON ARE ABOUT to descend into complete chaos. Only you have the power to prevent it. Vou are in complete control of the traffic lights at each or the capital's major road junctions and it is their skilful management which will stop the massive queues of vehicles from building up. With traffic entering from all sides of the screen and no way of telling whether it will turn right, left or simply go straight ahead at a junction, congestion seems almost inevitable and actually keeping the traffic flowing is more than a little difficult. So if you impress your superiors there is a chance of stepping up the promotional ladder and sorting out more congested areas. This, of course, means different screens and more difficult junction layouts. If you fail, well there is always the chance to start all over again providing you're a sucker for punishment because there seems to be very little method to all this madness. K.M. Daley Thompson's Decathlon] * * * * Ocean £7.90 CBM + Joystick MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A METAL joystick forthis game or it will cost a lot of money in new ones. This is a good reproduction of thearcade athletics game except that there isn't any voice synthesis. In this game you have to complete the ten events in which Daley Thompson competed in the Olympics. Trie graphics on this game are very good with excellent use of sprites for both Daley and the Computer (your challenger). Throughout the ten events your scores are registered, the world record is displayed and the crowd cheers whether you win or lose. My comment about the joystick referred to the way you make Daley run. This is accomplished by a side to side motion of the joystick: the faster you move it, the faster he runs. The fire button is also used to make him jump and throw. I did enjoy this game immensely but when I jumped or threw something, my man always fouled or fell over. It's worth playing but I do miss the voice at the beginning. S.LF.P. This utility from Mike Hart should help you format numbers MANY ROUTINES HAVE BEEN published in the past to provide a way of 'formatting' numerical data so that the data is rounded to the specified number of decimals and to ensure that the decimal points line up when the data is printed in a column. Many of these routines are very long and tortuous and may slow the system down considerably if there are a lot of numbers to process. I therefore decided to write a routine (in BASIC) which would be as short and as economical as possible, which would approximate to the speed of machine code routines and which would format fully even 'difficult' numbers such as those expressed in exponential mode. In particular, the routine needed to: — round both positive and negative numbers correctly avoiding the errors that are occasionally introduced when the CBM arithmetic function processes certain numbers ( e.g. try to round 812.676144 by using the INT(X*1000+0.5)/ 1000 approach!) — process numbers less than ±0.01 which would otherwise be expressed in exponential mode — put in leading zeroes for values between ±1 and -1 e.g. to ensure that .7 is expressed as 0.7 — add a fractional part of trailing zeroes to ensure consistency so that to three decimal places 2.3 will be expressed as 2.300 and that 2 will be expressed as 2.000 for example. 54 e he routine presented here is effectively contained in three lines i.e. lines 3-5 and assumes hat whatever number one wishes to process has been copied into the variable Z. The other variables associated with the formatting subroutine all start with Z so that the PRINT USING ON THE 64 programmer can avoid contaminating the rest of the program. Line 1 sets up certain default values but these may be changed in the course of the program if desired. The demonstration is set up with three decimal places (Z3), a rounding factor of 1000 (Z4) and a 'field-length' of 9 (Z2). The string of padding blanks (Z1$) can always be made longer if desired and obviously the GOTO at the end of line 1 points to the normal start of the program. Notice particularly that Z4, the rounding factor, is specified exactly — if you attempt a short-cut such as Z4=10tZ3 then the result may be internally stored in a slightly inaccurate form and this may introduce errors later on. This is due to the fact that exponentiation involves manipulating the logarithm of a number and some loss of accuracy is potentially possible. A 'balancing factor' (Z6) is included to compensate ror occasional failures to round exactly. The internal construction of the program is as follows: Line 3. Makes a rounded string of the number multiplied by the rounding factor. Notice that this works just as well for negative as for positive numbers. The 'balancing factor' (Z6) is necessary due to the fact that the CBM interpreter does not force a round before performing INT and one has to correct this deficiency. The balancing factor is the smallest that trial- and-error has demonstrated to be effective for both positive and negative numbers. If you wish to demonstrate the presence of the INT bug for yourself then try the following: PRINT 123. 4555*1000+. 5, INT(123.4555*100O+.5) Both should give 123456 but the INT gives 123455 due to the bug. The presence of the 'balancing factor' enables numbers such as 123.4555 and -123.4555 to round correctly to 123.456 and -123.456 respect- ively. If you do not mind the occasional inaccuracy caused by the failure to round up then you can cut out the reference to Z6 in Line 1 and the whole of the term Z6*SGN(Z) in Line 3. This also has the by-product of speeding up the whole sub- routine by some 10% but personally I would rather sacrifice a little bit of speed for complete accuracy, (inciden- tally, the PRINT USING routine in the COMMAND-0 chip will fail to round a negative number such as -123.4555 to three decimal places cor- rectly!) Line 4. Is only called into play for numbers (positive or negative) that are less than 1 and require a leading zero to be inserted. The effect of line 4 is to turn, for example, -.123 into -0.123 or 7E-03 into 0.007. Numbers that would normally be expressed in scientific notation get turned into 'normal' numbers by this line but a similar technique is not used for very large numbers which generally constitute less of a problem. Line 5; This line is one of the most critical in the whole subroutine. If we assume that a Z of 123.4555 has been converted to the string Z$ of 123456 (in line 3) then this line inserts the decimal point in the correct place, pads to the left with blank spaces and prints out the result (leaving the cursor on the same line) before RETURNing. It is obviously necessary that integers avoid this line altogether and that is why they are taken care of by the conditional statement at the end of line 3. How fast? Given that care has been taken to ensure that the routine is as accurate as possible, how does it compare with machine- code routines for speed? In order to make meaningful comparisons, I undertook some trials in which I compared this BASIC PRINT USING with (a) the COM -0 chip PRINT USING in a BASIC4 4032 PET (b) the PRINT USING routine given by Raeto West in 'Programming the PET/CBM'. The results are summarised in the table below: PROGRAM MACHINE AVERAGE TIME NOS. PER SECOND BASIC PRINT USING C-64 0.0540 18.5 WEST PRINT USING C-64 0.0411 24.3 BASIC PRINT USING 4032 PET 0.0518 19.3 WEST PRINT USING 4032 PET 0.0375 26.7 COMMAND-0 PRINT USING 4032 PET 0.0472 21.2 64 Utility The BASIC PRINT USING stands up pretty well to the machine code opposition! In the case of the WEST routine, the routine works by truncation and does not round at all (and you have to do this before the number is sent to the subroutine) nor will it attempt to process numbers expressed in exponential format (such as 1E-03J which severely limits its usefulness. As we have seen the COM- MANDS PRINT USING also has some deficiencies and will also make a mess of some exponential numbers e.g. 1E- 03 which is 0.001 emerges as -03.000 to three decimal- places! All in all, the BASIC PRINT USING comes out well in the accuracy stakes and also accuracy stakes and also formats and prints at some 19 numbers to the second which, as you can see, starts to get pretty close to the speed of the machine code routines in any case. Use of PRINT USING To incorporate this PRINT USING routine into your own programs it is best to type it in exactly as shown from lines 1-6 (although lines 2 and 6 are only given colons to assist readability) i.e. the routine should be at the very start of the program. The reason for this is that line 1 defines variables at the very start of the program and when these values are called the internal routines do not have to search through other variables in order to find them. For the same reason, constants have been defined as variables as this, too, speeds up the entire subroutine. These techniques are applicable to other BASIC programs as well where speed is the essence. If you know that you are not going to require integers then you can cut out the whole of the conditional statement contained at the end of line 3 and this too will speed processing slightly. To call the subroutine merely copy whatever variable you wish formatting into Z and then call the subroutine with GOSUB 3. You may consider that this is a slightly messy way to do it — why not use a user- defined function instead? As you might have guessed the user-defined function takes quite a bit more time to process and therefore I chose the 'copy' method. If you wish to alter the number of decimal places in the course of the program then you need to alter the parameters of Z3 and Z4. To effect the change, make Z3 the number of aecimal places required and Z4 the relevant rounding factor. For example, to rounato two decimal places make Z3=2 and Z4 = 100 before the subroutine call. These values remain in effect until you change them again. Program listing BftSIC PRINT-USING >307"Z 1S=' 1 2S* ll ~:2<>et23>3:Z8<>3!Z4>1000:Z3-.5iZ6*0. e ■ 3 Z»-STR«( INTC2a24-Z5*Z6aSGN<2 >>>■ IFZ3-0THENPR I NTR 1 GHT»< 2 I • 4 IFABS<2>< 1TH£NZ»-LEFT»<Z», 1 XRIGHTSC "000 " *MID*<2S,2 ) ,Z3 * I 5 PRINTRIGHT«<2 1 «*LEFT«< Z»,LEN<Z* > -Z3 > ♦ " . " «R I GHT«<2«,23 > ,28 6 : 10 K*RNDC-5>"N-!6»C-1 SO FOR J ■ I TONI X"EXP (RtO < I > 1 1 4 -3 ) >C " 2 "X I IF J<I0 THEN PRINT' ■ 30 PRINTJ,X;SPC< 18 -LEN(STR*<X) > > J I A-T 1 " GOSUB 3 1 8 -B * < T I -AM PR 40 C-ClNEXTIPRINT SO AV-B,'(Na60> "PRINT "AVERAGE" " ; AVI "SECS " 60 END 70 < 100 REM 2 1 10 REM 29 ieo REM ze 130 REM Z3 140 REM Z4 ISO REM ZS 160 REM 26 -IOOTO10 • 2».28>I IRE TURN > ) I I RETURN NT ORIGINAL NUMBER CCOPT) OUTPUT STRING FIELD LENGTH NO. OF DECIMAL PLACES ROUNDING FACTOR HALF -AO JUST <0.3> BALANCING FACTOR 170 REM 21» -.STRING OF PADDING BLANKS ISO I ISO REM 3 DECIMAL PLACES BY DEFAULT 200 i 810 REM FOR DIFFERENT FORMATS MAKE i 280 I 830 REM 23 - DECIMAL PLACES REOUIREO RELEVANT ROUNDING FACTOR" - 840 REM 24 2S0 i 860 REM 24 870 REM Z4 880 REM Z4 830 REM 24 300 ! 310 REM E.G 320 REM 23=8124-10012 READY. I FOR 10 FOP 100 FOR 1000 FOR INTEGERS 1 DECIMAL PLACE 8 DECIMAL PLACES 3 OECIMAL PLACES ETC FOR TWO DECIMAL PLACES XIGOSUB 3 t PRINT 1 1S67. 23988 1367.240 8 -3074. 1367B -3074 . 137 3 i8. 01 74446 12.017 4 -105.788891 - 105.787 3 IS6.BB093S 156.881 6 -7. I0634987E-03 -0.007 7 . 196348489 0. 196 S -3413.883S3 -3413.884 3 480. 7 1706 4B0.717 10 -4 121 .7488S -4181 .748 1 1 .04S458540I 0.O45 IS -4633.52048 -4653.580 13 142.590985 148.591 14 - .998771898 -0.999 IS 8. 19395891 8.800 16 -.383167819 -0.383 AVERAGE ■ .05 SECS I A meander along your favourite river may take a nasty turn when confronted by F.C. Tour's grisly IN THIS GAME YOU PLAY THE pan of Joe, out for a quiet boat ride at your favourite beauiv spot. Suddenly you realise that someone with a warped sense of humour has set loosea shoal of dangerous and ferocious alligators, intent on making you their meal of the day. Guide Joe through 4 waves trying to steer clear of floating logs, other boats, rafts, floatin weed — but, above all, watc those Gators! When you reach the narrow exit you have to guide joe through the locks without hitting the walls or over- hanging rocks. There is also a hole in the boat and you must use the fire button to bale out or (he boat will sink. You also have a lime limit — so don't hang around too long. The time limit and water level are shown at the bottom of the screen: I! Time. ..WHITE Water teveL.BLUE Plug your joystick into port 2. Normal joystick movement applies on the lakes but on the locks screen you can control joe by: Left reduce speed of boat Right increase speed of boat Up increase level of water You have 5 lives. Program Information Variables E V Q CO TL WL L S1.S2.S3 SYS 36864 SYS 37120 L1 LE SC 53248 (sprites! sprite locations) colour of water level and time imit (time limit) (water level) (joystick port) (sound) (sound on) (sound off) (lives) (lake number) (score) Type in parts 1 and 2separately. Gator — Part 1 10-200 Music interrupt and data 29999-61000 Sprite data 62000-62030 M/C Hi-res clr screen 62050-62150 Download U.D.G.s 62155-62235 Sprites for title 62300-62570 M/C routine to move sprites Gator — Part 2 0-50 Set variables 100-135 Set sprites pos. 600-999 Set lime and water level 1000-1099 Main routine 10000-10199 Screen 1 11000-11099 Screen 2 11100-11199 Screen 3 11200-11288 Screen 4 22000-22040 Lives left 23000-23155 Game over 30000-30199 Locks screen 60000-60998 Titles page 60999-61199 Music for title page 63000 Joe goes walkabout 64 Game Program Listing Part 1 QUI OH 1 14 PRINT-.T f 0*1-0102 FC*X«flt0i33 P*mDA |fH— I IHEN40 28 PL»E36864»T4256*.-..A HEXTX -.' NExrr 50 WTH169. 146. 1*1 21 60 DATA169.234, (41 .21 DATA172.8 ae datao. i4i 90 daiaiw-o. 100 datmuso 110 PWE 376*2 163.0.1*1.26. 3. 96.-1 169. 49, 1*1.28. 3.96.-1 192.16-240,37.206. 1.147.173. 1. 147, 281. 6.206. 44, 236. 6- 147. 169 2-169.31, 141,5,212.169,0.141.6.212.169. 17/ 141, *. 212. 183.8.147 14? 4,2 148.141. 1 '. 141 .0. 14 0 !12, 183.8. 149- 141,6.212. 103.0- 130, 141.1. 147, 76. 49. 234 141. 4. 212. 24. 144,242.-1 PC*E37633,0 FORT-0TU62 *£ADNf ,LF , D 130 Pt*E3?860*T.HF POE36144.T.LF Pt>£30406-T,D' NEXTT 135 POKE36144«T. 22 P»£38153*T.22? . 100 PO£3?300.T-I 148 r*"l*23. 1 77. 30- 23. 177. 30- 32- 94. 30. 20. 214, 30. 23. 177. 30, 22. 227. 30, 22- 22?. 36 1*5 DATA26- 21«. 38. 23. 177. 38- 22. 227.28 17, 37, 30. 19-63. 38. 21. 154. 38.22- 227. 30 158 DATA21. 154.38.22.227,38.25-177.48-28.214,28.22.227. 188.8.8. 28.23> 177.38 155 DAIA23- 177.38.32.94.38.28,214,38.25.177,38.22.227.38.22.227.38.28,214.28 I6P DHTA25.l?7. 30. 22. 227. 30. 17. 37. 30, 19.63. 30. 21. 154. 30. 22. 22?. 30, 21. 134, JO 165 DATA22.22?. 36. 25. 177.26.28.214.26.22.22". 166.38,126.29.28. 126-26.34. 75.30 178 DATA25- 177.36. 22-2*7. 30. 23. 177.30. 28. 214. 36. 32. 94, 36, 34, 73. 38, 43. 32. 30 175 WT*43. 52. 36. 43. 52. 26.36. 126. 26. 25. 177- 36. 26. 214, 36.22. 227. 38. 25- 1/7. 30 4.38.23.177,38.22.227.38.21.154-36.19,63.36.17.37.28.25.177.38 77.36.32.94. 36 214, 46.25. 177. 36.227227. 36.22. 227. 4*). 2B. 214. 30 77.38.22.227,36.17,32.36. 19, A3. 26, 21. 154, 36, 22. 22?. 20.21, 154. 38 38-28,214. 30.**. 22?. 30. 22- 227. 38. 22- 227. 268 * NEXT A NEXT 113 HH-X2-- 2 183 DM(A*5. 1 1*0 DATA23 200 DRTA22.227. 30.25. 17 299*9 H»l»eif'L*l3 READA Pt*E203464-i 3I06B F0PI-8TO63 READ* POtE- 244*t4 •< 1 38081 DATA48.0.0.23,48,0.2I3,2W4.0. 36804 >•-• 166. 168. 2. 254. 186.11.21 38887 DAIA254.186.0. 166. 168.0.20.6. 36811 DMltW.$3.0.0. 196. 192.8.53.0.8 3001* DHI-W. 166- 160.2.254.166.11 38613 DATAI66. 126.43-96. 126.43.96 38816 DATA 126. 1 1 . 106. 126,2.254 . 106 BJU7 DAfAO. 166. 168 0.4 0.0.4.0.0.4,6.0,33.8-6.196. 192.0,63.0. 97 00 4-. 6/ 0 V.ee. 8.8. 28.8 .126. 43. 214. 126-43. 214, 126. 11, 216- 126. 2 .88.6.49-64.0.197.3.12.21.48.246.212.6.6.0 4. a. 0.4. 0,0. 4, 0,0,4, a 38821 WI*e.8.192.e.3.3.e.8.21.e,< WHM t*TA0 166.168.3.254.166.13 W25 DATAI78, 126.43. 186. 126,43. II 36026 DATA126, 13. 178. 126. 3.254. I8> 20 0 0.63.0. 1.76.8,3.6 38827 m.) 166. 160. 0 30030 BRTWj 0.192.0. 3 5.12.0, 1.112.0.6.63.0.3.20.6.8.213,8.8.3,8 26. 0.6. 84. 6. 6. 83, 6. 1-76, 6 5, 6. 6. 26. 0.42. 154.0.1 74, iki 4»«0 DA1A126- 190. 1 71, 224. 169. 167. 232. 189, 167. 232. 196. 171, 224. 174, 191. 126. 42 10*63 DRIfll54. 0,0, 20. 0.0.5. 12.0.1.64.0.12.83.8.3,84,8.8.28.6 (8070 DMTA6-0 8. 0., 52.0. * 19. 8. 6.22a. 0.0. 16. 6.0. 16,0,0. 16,0.42, 154,0. 174,191 (OOBti DHTfli m. iw. 170. 224, 169, 169. 232. 109- 169, 232, 196. 178, 224. 174, 191. 192 .0090 DftT«42. 154,8.6. 16.6,6. 16,6.6. 16.6.6.228.8. 3. 19- 6. 8, 252- 0.0 II DHTR12. 0-O.&2 2 DATA0.0.20 0. 92,0.67 197.6 1813 DH1«6.49.64,8.0 800 1014 :>■ "-. 154.8. 174. 191. 192. 198 3 78. 1 12. 109> 169, 120. 109, 169 DATAI20. 190, 176, 112.174. 191. 192 31017 &BIM2. 154.0.0,80.0.49 31018 DATA64.0. 197 0.0.20,192 31019 DATAO, 67. 0- 0-88. 48. 8. 6 II Oil -AW! DhTAO.0 a 3*0*3 DAT«3,19: .0.0.200.0. 12-0.24. 12.0. 14B6.6. 112.7.1-224 34,06 [m'hO. 16, 38. 178.132.6.170 5*289 DATA144. 4. 8, 16,6.6.8.6 54301 DAr«0,0. 129. 1.0,134.2 5*382 DAIA3, 8. 14, 132,0,31-20 54383 DATA4,4,8.4,33.l2.9 84 M*3 DATA8I, 194-30.146.06-66,12 54 303 DATA109 140-0-246. 16.3, 124 54366 DA1H17. 136. 147.90.60- 164,132 3430? DATA35. 104, 132.4.80,72.4 54 308 DATA144, 232.24, 145.48, 33.9 ■4iv53 DATAO. 32. 4, 128.0,4.8,8 54481 DAIA0. 0.0.0.0-6.0 54462 DATAO. 0.0. 0,0, 0.0 34403 DBTA8. 0.0-8. 1.128, 8 54404 DATAl, 120.0.3,224.0,3 34*05 DATA240,0. 3. 216.0- 255.255 34406 DATA255. 192- 252- 14.127. 255. 248 54*07 DATA127.233,248.6.0.0.0 34488 DATAO. 0.0. 8.8.0.0 34489 DATA0. 0,0. 0.0. 0.0.0 55000 F0PI-8T0235-128 READA PC* E 2 45*64 • I . A NEXT 55010 DRIR0.8.8.0.B,8.0.e 80.0-0.0,0,0.0 0.0,0.8,8.64.8.1.213.170,131.191 35O20 DATA63, 126.42. 233. 233, 63. 170. 109. 3. 233. 244, 3-93. 208 35038 DA1I40. 0.0. 0.0. 0.0, 0.0. 0.6, 0,8. 6. 0.0, 0.0. 0,0- 0.0 53840 DHIAO. 232. 0.0,124. 0,2. 172. 0,0, 172. 0,0. 16. 0.0. 232, 8. 8. 116. 6, 8. 236. 6. 8. 100 55858 WT88, 2. 172, 0.2, 164. 8. 0.252, 0.6, 252, 6. 0,232, 8. 0.264. 0,0. 204. 8. 0.204. 8 8 55068 DATH136. 0,8. 68.0.0, 136,0.2. 100.0.0 55678 DATA6. 232. 6. 0,124, 0.2, 172, 0,6. 172. 0,0. 16. 0.6. 232, 0.0. 116,0.2,236.0.2.164,0 .0 33080 DATA1?4,0,0, 102.8,0,232.0, 15.232,0, 13.232,0.4, 12.0.0, 12,0,4.13.0.40,6,0.0. • .2. 172, 0.0,172. 0,0. 16. 8. 2. 232, 0.2. 1 16, 0.0, 174, 8, 8. 166.0 ■232.0,0.232,0.3,252.0, 11.204,0,43. 15,0.40. 13,120. 160.3 ,32.0.0.160.0 .2. 172. 0.0. 172, 0 0. 16. 0.0, 232. 0,0. 1 16. 0,0. 172, 0-0, 164.0 ,2.232.0.0.232.0.0.232.0.0.204.0.3,207,0.3,207. 120,10-3 160.40.0.32. 166.8,168,8 ,2.172,8,0.172.0.0.16.0.0,232,6.8.116.6,8.172.8.8.164 166. a. 2. 164. 6. 2. 232, 0.0. 252. 8.*. 232-0. 0.204. 8. 3. 286. 128. 3,286.120 128. 10.6, 128,0.0.0,48.8.8,8 ■,1.10.1 F".*£5j280.6 62000 FQBI-0TCMW READA PIJKE49900"!. A NEXT 62010 D«T*t234. 169. 40. 133. 238. 169. 4, 133. 231. 162. 128. 168. 0.138. 143- 230. 200, 192 62826 DMTH48.2e8.249.232. 163,256,24. 185.46. 133.258. 163 231 . 183 .8. 1 33,231 62038 DATA224, 152,288-226,96,0 62830 PC*E3328O,0 POKE33281.il I-O PC*E56334.PEEK.56*3*iANlu:5* F-3XE1.FEE" I >HHD2 31 62053 »0t0-8TOo4«8 P>>E1*336'C PEE* •53240«O> NEXT PQKE1 -PEEK ci »0M POKE56334 . PEE «( 563341 OP 1 62060 READA* T-T»l IFAKO-1TMEMPQk£14336'G*T . 90. 001062866 62863 FC*l-8T06646bTEP8 A-14336-l'l fc-PEE*< H» KOKEA. MM NEXT 62670 D»T«e.e.e.e.e,e.63.63,i26. 199.235, 124-33.63 62073 DATA192.233- 15.240,253.3.235.224.8, 193.233. 15, 243-63- 231 0 62660 DATA30.60. 255. 31. 231. 235. 239. 8. 136.221.235.233.235.255.233.233 55690 DATA8.8. 1.8. 0. 18.6 33100 DHTftO. 232.0 .8 8. 124,i 33110 DAI0252.8.8. 55128 DATA166.0O 180.8.) Id ,i i 53136 DHT88.232-8 .8 0.124.1 35148 DATAI88.0-2. 164.0.1 55156 DflTA160.8,0. 53160 DATA0, 232.0, I 60 . 4,1 a, 124.1 •••1 'D t*-IH0 35188 DHTK2. 192.3.253.288.31 ,233 2i6.o3.253.255. 127.235.255.255.233.236-195 62085 DH I -1253- 235.253.235. 255- 235, 123.34.06. 185, 233-23?- 253- 1 IT 1 66. 89 5080- DOTH233208.3, 191-192. I. 193. 128. 0 3*8*1 :■*-"! k:> o it 162 >J 0.68 I a 31*83 DHT«192.3.128.192,3.129.192.3.19 31006 CHTH235. 255-255. 63.233. 236 31608 VITR129. 128.3. 1-120.2. 1.0. 32883 DHT80, 1,131, 128,3. 12" 6.0-0.8-6.8.6.8.6-2.6,8.3.6.64,3,8 ,192.3.233^68.31.233.236,253.233.235 91,192.3,131.128.3 6.8.8.0,8,8.6,8.6.0.8,8.6,124.0,8.196 192. 227. 233. 200-233. 255, 236, 127.235 201. ,6.8.6.6, > 19 .3,255.288 52006 DATH255.63-255.255.31-233. 32007 DATA?. 191. 192.13.3, 120,20-1.192.40.0.96.64,0,46.0.0.24,8.0.0.0 330*1 DATAO. 0,0, 8,0,8.8 33802 DATAO- 0. 192 0.0.48.0 53083 DAfAO. 12.0.0- 197.04.0 33004 TXTA21. 149.64.90.233.34. 166 53085 DATA06- 149, 190. 183.218. 190. 183 33086 DATA218 - 166. 66. 149. 90.233. 64 538*7 &AIA21. 149. 64. 197.84.8.12 -J008 CATA0.0 48. 0 0 192.0 13009 > ->-■■■■ 0-8. 8. 8-0 34881 0.0,0.0.6.0,8.8-8 54003 DA1AO20.0.0.21.6O6 54084 DATH21.86.160.2. 175.230. 10 5*005 DATAI09.198.«2. 189- 126-42. 169 62*90 Dnm 253.238,aSBj25S 233,293 233,239 62095 DATA127233.63. 127.31 .63. 127. 233, 23*. 232- 248. 232, 234, 233. 23*. 232 62166 DATA27, 27, 219, 216.216, 219. 193. 193- 219. 219. 193. 193. 2?. 27. 216. 216 62165 DATA36.42.20.6.8.28.42.36 62116 DATA63. 127.63- 233. 127.63.93,8.234 . 235- 253- 234, 253,253. 176.136 62113 OATAO. 44. 190. 235, 233, 234. 255. 234. 34. 51, 119,63.233,31-63,127 62126 DATA*. 12. 190.223- 127- 190. 12,0 62123 DATA1 , 1 1 , 7.47,31 , 191 . 127,233.255. 127.63.93, 13.23, 3,3 DATA20 . 62 . 233 . 235 . 233 . 233 - 233 . 233 223.223,0,247,247,242,249.248.49,3. 199.231,227 2-37,237,235.15.240.233.31,231.248.233 62i: 62135 DATA231.251. 62146 DATA183. 183. 183.219. 221 . 22 62150 DATA-1 62155 FC«1-0TO319 READA ' • . .• ■ i-i.A NEXT 62160 DAIH131. 233- 126, 103. 233. 224. 63. 224, 240, 31. 192, 126. 63. 120. 126 62165 DATA126. 32. »l. 253. 0.23-233. 0,13. 233. 0.3.235. 6. 0-233, 14. 0.233. 7 -240. 233. 19 62178 DATA252-235.97.252.233. 192.28. 127, 128,26.63. 192. 28.63. 255.252, 1 1 1 ,255 62173 DAIH246. 131 -233.240,0 bile* DATAO, 62103 0ATA233 20.7.255. 192. 15.. 126. 192- 127 -O-k). 0.0- 8. 8.8.0. 32.0.46. 16 1 24 . 96 - 25 . 253 . 1 92 . 15 DATA126- 1 1 109 [91 1.2.173.230 5*007 DAT 02 1 . 06 .168. 21. t 10,0.20 DATAO. g,| .8,0.0.0. 0.00. 60 0-0 192 540)1 DATAO. 51-48. 8. 12. 248.0 54012 DATA243. 12.0. 12-240.0,51 5*eu DHTHO. 20- 12. 192-21 >03- 192 54814 . - - ■ . 6? .248-2. 173,234. II 126-42. 189- 122.42 M015 DATAl. 34016 DATA250. 10. 191.234.2 54017 DATA21 54016 EATmO 173. 169 70 166-21 60 . 192, 13.143. 192.36,219. 192.20. 113. 192.26.3 62190 DATA198.28,223.284,13. 185.246- 15. 255. 246, 7. 105.246.6.224-224.8 62195 DATA6, 0-6- 0. 6. 6. 8.0. 0.0. 0.0. 8. 8, 8. 6. 32.0.0, 112.0,0, 166,0.0.248.0,0,248,0,8 62260 DATAl 12, 0.3. 234. 0,3-234. O,0. 112. 0,0- 248-8 8,230,0,0.232.64.0.249.192.0,127 62263 0A(A128.6. 233.0. 3-136.0.0 62210 DA* AO, 0.0. 0,0, 0.0. 8.6. 6- 8. 8. 8.6. 8.8,U.0. 4. 0,0. 1.30,16.0.235. 166.8,235. 62215 DATAl ,235,224.3,228.246. 3. 191. 112,3. 146. 112,3,128.112 ^2220 DATM3. 128.46. 1 . 196.48.0.233. 160.8, 127,192,0.39.128,0.141,0,6 62223 DA TA0.Q. 0.0. 0,0.0,0.0.0. 0.0,8.8.8.8,8,8.8.8,0.0 62230 DATA7. 0. 0, 1 11, 240, 0,63. 232.0. 38, 8W.6. 31. 36-6 62233 DAIM29- 128.0.62. 126-0.62 0.0.62.0.0. 127.0.6. 156. 126.8.26.8.8.0.8.6.8.1 •2308 FORI-6T0255 READA POE49152" 1 .A NEX! 62316 DATA162.0, 169.8.208.24. 105,5, 157. 0.268. 201 . 240 - 157. 8. 208. 96 ). 8.8.0. 0.0. 0.8. 0.0. 0.8 5*020 DA I »*) >0. 0.010.0. 0.0.0. 0.0,0.0. 0.0, 0.0. 8>0<0>0. 2.0. 34022 DATA64. 62. 173. 00. 14. 173. 80. 14. 47, 64, 14. 11, 192. 38 54024 DATA*. 0.0. 0.0. 6.0. 0.6. 6. 0,8, 0,0, 0.0, 6, 8. 0,0,6,0 54026 DATAO. 6. 8. 6. 8. 8. 6. 6, 8. 8-8. 8 8. 8. a. 8.0. 0.0, 0.0. 0.0. 54028 DATA64, 2- 175.80, 2. 173.00.2. 13.64. 14. 34838 DATAO. 0.8. 62320 DATR162. 6.169. 11.6. 10,47 ,0-15 6***6 DATA162- 62346 DATAl 62- 62356 DPTH162. 169- 189. 286-24.233.5-157,0,208.261 .248, 137-0.268.96 200.24,233,5,157-1,208,201,240,137.1,208.96 200.24,103,3.137.1,208.201,240.137.1,200,96 201.200,144.2.169.203,137.248.7.232.224 0.0.0,0,0.8.0.0,3. 3. 192. 10.0.8,40,0,0,0.6 0.0.0.0,0.0.8.0.0.8 34032 DATA8. 0.8. 8-0- 0.0. 0 0. 0.0-0, O.O. 0.0. 0,0. 0,0. 0.0. 0,0. 3. 0.0. 13 54034 DATA64, 18,15.86.0. 15.86-0. 13.64.8.3.192.8 34836 DATAO. 8. 6- 8. 8. 6. 0,0. 0,0.0. 0.0. 0,0, 8.0.0. 0.0. 0.0 54181 DATA0,e.0.O. 136. 192.8-264 0.3,284.48.0.204.0,6,252,12.12.168.8 54104 DATA8.232. 3.46.232. 16.3.255-208. 195,87- 193.3-87,0,13. 16-48,204.16.0 5416? DATA13.0.0, 1.0- 192,48 54)06 DP TAB. 0,0. 0-0-8. 195.0-0-0- 0.0.48. 0.0.0,0, 0,0. 136.0.0 54112 DAIA204. 192.0.2*4.8,3.204 34113 DATA40.0.232.O.12.168.12 34114 DATAO. 232. 0.200.232.3.31 34113 BATA232.0, 13.87,0. 193.0? 54116 DATAO. 0. 19. 195,0. 16. 192 34117 OAIA40, 1.192. 0.1, 0.0. 0.12. 12. 0.0. 0.0. 192. 0.204,0. a. 48. 0.0 54201 DATAO. 0,0. 0.0,0.0 54202 DATAO - 0 0.6.0.4,0 54283 DATA16.30.170,134.166.170.132 34204 DATA4.0,16.166.170,132.38 54205 DATA170. 134.4.6, 16. 166,233 34266 DA'A154, 39.215.216.7.213,208 5420? DATA38. 235 152.166-170.134.4 201-211.144,2,169.200.137.248.7.232.224 is*. e 200.24. 163.1. 137.0.268.281 240, 137 it. 208 9* 109,* 200.24. 109,2 157,1-266.201 240. 137. 0. 206. 96 169.1. 206.24. 233.3. 137,0.208-201 240. 137. Ii H 189-1. 208.24. 1 09 ■ - 157,1.208.281 240. 137. 1 266 96 1,189.248.7,24. 165. 62353 DATAl. 288, 2*6. 96 62*68 0ATA1628. 189.240,7,2*. 103. 62*63 TjATAI .208 ■ 236. 96 62370 DATA162.2 62375 0ATAI62-* 62380 DATP162.6 62383 DATA162.6 62390 DATA162.il- 189. 0.200. 24. 103. 1.137. 1.208. 261. 246. 137. 0.206. 96 6239S DAIA162.13- 189.0.200.24.233.2, 137. 1,208. 261. 248. 157, 6. 266- 9* 62400 DMrfll62. 14- 189. 1.288> 2*. 233. 2. 157, 0.200, 201. 240. 157. 1.200. 96 62410 DATAI62.2. 109.240.7-24. 103.1.281 -214. 144,2, 169.21 1 • 137,240, ? .232 62*20 DAIA224.6.208.236.96 62360 F0PI-OT09 READA PU.E4»v»" 62310 FORI-6T038 READA PO*E4?3*0 62326 DATAl 73. 0.226. 32> 1 12, 193. 3 62530 DATA261 126.268.4.32.34.192.96.261.123.268.4.32,31.192.96.281.123.208,7.32 62348 DATAl?. 192- 32. 68. 192. 96, 261. 119- 208, 7. 32- 0.192. 32. 91. 192. 96, 96 62350 FOR1-OT024 READA PO.E45T66* •>25«6 DATA32, 114, 192. 32. 131, 192> 32, 140, 192, 32, 163- 192, 32. 182. 192, 32, 199 62370 DATA192.32216. 192, 32.233, 192.96 63806 P0K190-2 POE631.13 L0A& RE ADV. ,A NEXT l.t • 34 1 NEXT ..194,i >M • 11 1.261. ! 9 208 1 >f i NEXT E 6 Program Listing Part 2 e Sl'Wt ■i2'»542?? S3-54273 FORI-$I-4fJil-'20 RUFELO HEM FWESl***.*^ ©QTO6000 I $1-54276 &2*542r7 -33-54273 FQKI>»-410tl«ai PuiEl.O NEXT F-UFE51***. 15 10 1 1 Mil 1 1 1 1 M t II 1 1 1 Ml 1 1 M 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 u i' n> t5 J..'. 15 M-'ll id ' f-'h — I.. n Di-'.-a iiiiiMii;iiiiMi>iliiiMiRi;*iiiii|isiiiini|i" 30 EI*" 1*1 — i — ^ ! ■ ■ >n -it -ll." -ii -ii '-it: -Ii -ll •«.! -II ill 'ii <n 50 HI*"B» " &•■■■■■) t> '■■■■■■I ■ i Ii 'IIIIMHI m IK 100 -"5*248 0-203 PU*EV*21 .*35 P0FEV>28, i RO»Ev«3.~, 10 PC*EV-*36.14 Ll"5 SC-0 120 Pu«EV*39<l R-0 BEFFil^a'-iPEEF'V*30 ,; -Ml , l> BEPFNB<8 '-'FEEl tV«31>HHBJ > 130 F0R1-48T046 - i tv* i . 1. XXI PC»EV-3,1W K*tV«j.loO P^EV-9.200 POtEV»10. 150 135 PC»£V«1 1 , 1 j5 P0»EV«* 7,254 P0tEV»*9-* Ri*fev»40.1 CU-54272 500 Hu-4 9500 Pi>£V.iO.0 POFEV-31.0 uO'UlOOOw 600 F0R1-1944TQ1983 Ft>tl.:« H»tl".O.l NEXT FORI-19O4TO2023 P0KII.72 6I0 Pi>EI*C0-4 HEXI TL-1983 v*.-1984 L-56320 00*215 IM. ! .1 IXH, 3100 ■•9? REIURN law iv*40 iFFNA>A>-ioRFHB-.t'-ITHEHP<>E»I.O <iOiu^*ww 1010 P0» ETL. 32 R0&EML. 72 POFEWL^CO-6 TL"TL-. 1 ML "ML*. S IFPEECL'-l 1 1 THEH0Oi'JB230 ©0 1012 IFTL-l94VjRML.«o*<.IHEH2 t .i«0 10*? PETUFTI 10000 P0KE332M.2 P0*E5i28l-3 tjUSOBl 32-5OR-0 LE*1 iowoo f*!ht-.t iin ia in hi t.1 . wanoBmniummi hhi.&i.ui ppini"*-- printfi luuoe FRlHrMOOr PPINTOI PRINT "«)M~ t-*(HUKb<3l'.C-l O0SUB12550 POKEV*21.235 iowo* iyjsniteJ» kb-ev*! . ire poev.235 Knvtas.ti po*ev*3i.o r-o Pc*E2e4i,2i4 low OOSuB^OOO 10010 '»>su»ieee r*p-i ifr>39ihei**o iu05>: iffeei • v«i ■ .45t'*M>c-i'."Lt»5oo-»liH< il'-lHltw^5- QQnOMM .THB'P'.EI- ■ . ThB-R> ,EI PO»E53280-2 P0FE5328I-3 &O'>UBli*50 Pt>EV*3-l26 PC*£vt30.0 P0*EV*3).0 NEXT ppihIIsi trz 101 1« PRINT* iei?9 oqtoiooio 1 1000 PPIN 11005 PPINI-B- liooo Pl-IHr-TTl noo? print "m I 10WH PUNCHI IISB? PR1NTTTT 1 1010 P61Hl"TD UOll PPINI—TT1 11012 PPIMt-TTI 11013 PPlNT"m uoi4 ntiNTTxii 11015 P61NI-TT1 1 1016 PRINT 11017 PklNr-TTl UOIO PRINT 'Ttl 11019 PRlHT-m 11020 PR IN 11021 PR1N 11022 PRINT 1 1023 PR IN 11024 PR]N 11025 PRINT-TT1 11026 PP1NT-TT1I1IIIMMI I I 1 1 I I I I I 1102? PR1NT--TT1IIMIIIIMMIIIIIM 11031* QOSUMM SVS3C064 K>Ev.4o FU»Ev*1.2 1103* POKE2041.222 LE-2 0030824000 G0SUB12330 P->EV«2t»,3 P0f£v»21 . 255 11040 O0*sUBIO0u 11060 IFI»EE».V-»l><43THEI»$C-5C'>'LE«50e'»|NT'IL>-IHT.l«./5' GOTOjOuOB 11099 OOT'JU04y IllOW PC* 651.80 2 F-otE5326l-3 •Ju>ajBl>250 LE-3 V-53248 »-0» EV-*0 - 1 POKEV-21.255 11105 PRINI-T PRINrb*.M.H*.i.l. > '«M*SM»W0M*V > .-9*.nf .lit .b« F-U»E*041 , 223 nio-. pmnI"* i»mi »m»m>mi . prihtfi f*ii'<-mm m **m*w wu aaa m , kkev-40.5 1110? PR1NITHB>*4-.FI PRlNT-aMV PRIHTijI «RL«T WPW' PR[HTTHS< 31 1 , W C-OSUbl.5*0 11108 PPI»I mmmau RR|NtTBB'4.H«.''-TTn MH/TTIl - .Hi,-rm -,M* 11128 OOiOl-600 PC*E"1-170 PutEV,235 POEV*j8.itf »J*EV-31 . | Ft*£V*3.I55 11139 ii- ■ t- • 11140 ooswiaM 11160 lFP€E«>:V-li<4iTMENSC«^L»<LE*5O0'«INT(TL>-INT(Ml./5- WOIWOW 11199 WJT0II148 11200 PC*E53*80.4 P0»t53281.3 PRlHf.H" PRINH-I. 11210 FURT-OTO20 FRlNT'lf s'i 11220 PRINT -HOT PRINIIHB'4-.H».T«B- l3'.Mi.lNB.22'.m,l«BUl»-MI 11225 PRINT' NT PRINT TAB' 31 > < CI 11230 PtlNl-MMMMM* F*!HI IR|n4i.l4J. --T . 1Mb'. 13 • ,M». THB.22-.HI, TH»Ol I -M 11235 PRINT' S' PRINTTmB' 1 : ■ Ml 11240 PRINT •mMMM' FBINIThB- 1 1/- ■i-"THB'20'. 'S-"THB'29> 1 "»-" 11245 PRINT 'llMI' PBIHTThB(20J . 1 1 2 it) print "■aawMat" prjhithk . i «i »«i >m mi jiiil«l 11255 POKEV-21-255 PRItit *Himil»H» 1 1 1 1 1 f 1126b &Cr»UB60O SYS36864 K*EV.24| PU»EV*1.195 PWfcv-3 200 PUfEV*30.0 POfV-31,0 11269 P0»E2041.^22 LE-4 WJJUB24000 OJSUB12550 PO>EV.283 P0KE2040205 II 200 OJaUblwOw 11290 IFPEEh<V»l><43THENSC"S",»'Le«W0/'|NHlL'-lNliHL'5' U-IIOIWXWU 1129V OUIO112O0 U'5*>0 FRIHT'M". PRlltllrHB'34>SC ( <PRlHTTnB'V4r,Ll 12555 F*1HI"«W. PRINII«B( J4..U «II*N 13250 P.>E2040.2O5 F-*-[^T0l5'iUF'2 PO*fcV*I O NEXT • ■! r - . - > ■• Pl>EV«31/0 RETURM .-tfOu v-jio864»256 22005 D"2l' FX*E*3I.16 Fwtw.lb FUR J -5 1 025 hi-N-1 IFH.=THEND*B* I PU»E^»40.D «-U 22010 F0Rj;-5T0JSTER.5 POKE53/JJ POKEil.33 NEXT J J. i PWEV-27-1 R0>£S1.0 22015 Ri>ES1.128 P0>E&2>1I9 22020 a«PEEkv< yapttk\V*l> PttEV.rt FL*I-vTL«5*»lt»'5 Fu* 1 1-22010^*1 P B K m **»n 22V30 PL»E>1-I*0 ROKE-'l,! POES3-250 FT>,tSl l2? FURI*«OT020 22035 NfcXIH.TT.T RU*EV*2? 0 Ll-tl-l SYS3b864 IFLKIlNENwCPiUB^^lOO 001068668 22040 ONLEOOIO10OOO.110eO-lliee.|l2O0>3OOOo 23000 IFHL'.l9MIMti*hlURM 23005 P0kEHL*C0.4 QO-OO-I IF00^2l6lHtllUU>*15 23010 »*.-»JL-| FM>t204W.W RtTim 23108 ■ !■ rW M >W*—O W i»l ijnUE OVER* Pi*tv.<i.8 F-O* E53260 1 1 23140 P0*(5i281.ll POFEil-16 P»ESl«r.32 P0»E51*14 . 32 WEW. 31 PUKE'S2*?.15 23145 Pi>tn»14 i| 3VS36e64*256 23150 FOBTT-100TO5iTEP-4 Ry*ES3.TT POKtSJ*; . I T*10 P0>E&3»14. Tl*20 PMM#I7 23151 Kkk.»l*/.4J F\»ES1»14.33 PRIMTH FOFE64©. IHTiRND' I '"15 ' NEXT 23155 PRINT* I PRINT- SCORE --8L FO*T-0TO250O NEXT RETURN 24000 PRINT"««-. RRIinTHB-Ji^-Slt-. 2*005 PRINT-MOT PRIM* '"*B"32'"LI' - ' • 4010 PRINT 'Our. PRIM 1 1HBS32. 1 'LH~ 24020 PEU#*I 30000 PC*E532?2.31 CM-14336 y 15496 PO»E5J*80-0 O"1024 M-U08 RO»E190.0 FF-255 >•■'.'- POKE5t>3il • 1 30010 V-53248 FORI-OTO" P"*Ei.H*I*w*F HEX I RUKE53*81.3 30014 PRINT-tfcT POiE5J2ei.0 5VS499O0 K3RI«10«4iyUOO Pi*El«CN.0 NEXT 30020 F\»E.-04U.^44 X-20 V-l'I P0»£V»2l.l ROkEV,X R0*EV*1.V Pl>EV»31-0 30050 RRINTTHB' 37 " INBI-k I I* PRINT l«6> 3i">"*Tfc»" PRINTTftB- 37. "TMI U" 300bO PRlMUHb- J4 •- «-». ,!-•)■ PR PIT 1MB. 30 1 * 1Mb. I I **-tt ' HXtO'' 30X5 FUN'TMB' Urlt-yxj^MmtKM-' PR1NTTAB<22>"1»4> m 1 1 1 1 tfMf 1 1 1 ■"■MOO" 300ro prI"UThB<22» "Ttcooc<"-':---n ■nrBoocooo"* 100." PRINT 1MB' 10 "TU I I I I I I M I I ft* I M I I M (~BX^B>OSJOOO* 3OO80 FR|MfTHBaO--'M-^X->s->^AV^«ll»**. I • ' "■tOXKMO'mbOO" JOBS! MOM «095 «10O KIN 30116 301 15 3012O 3812* 30124 30I26 3812,- 3012* mi ■ 30132 101 34 30136 301 39 3014W .0150 (0155 30157 (01&5 J0I70 J0175 Ml i COOL" 60015 6002. CM - ,.,104, «IU4' 60065 (OOM -«9.-4 ■■■0995 vtf ^0997 6IO05 •1010 61015 -.1020 61025 ■>1030 OI035 61199 oiOOO 63010 63015 6)020 S363S ^*05-i 630e0 6(065 63W/0 63075 6)060 6)08. )064 6 308*. o(00>i print !mb< i o i - 1 1 1 L—rmjotL 1 1 ra-fcawjAwiojuo' PPINT-T«* I I M I I II K-H rWXrC'^U • "•jOCv-^jOIV -J ■X4rtBJJ^iJjO0M>00 PRINT >n*«0«0<JOC0004l K>OOOQJX*X>WiO^mOC*lCm)*D0ltXMmX>O0 * PRINT—BM4I 1 1 1 riBwoAcottooOo-j':-.-:-"*-' -U ■ " . ■ ■o-BjUJOO'jO 1 PRINT "MOO. BDOUOfc I ■T>XH>X'0.40O->JBX>QC'i.>^ T« .w «• »« ' .1 >>X»00OOO000<X>00000OO'' pRiNi " t»'^f>ioo<r>>y^o<y)00ooo>jiooO'>>Moo(yKr>jo' ** INT"0)X)0OO0OOll)0O»to00O0*X4D*»XKI0>»OOItF. J " RPlNT-i>Btooo>>^oooci;a>jooocoolt>oo:a^ %l ' f*iNr-«B6«»>>xiooo'>>>3Ji'rtii^o»&>^ i r* 1 pR]Nr'*BB<wxxi%oo>A>tHM)coooooi^^ i r~ PPINT"(0MiMxrO000HMaCKH>XdtXil^^ Hif" PRlNT''fJIMIMXK)IIXOOtH30«>OC">>^^ i 1 1 If" — u n ■ . -ooowi ■ r- xtmMj'MQomacwjQm r- KOOOOOOW I K 1 IT" IFDB-lTMENbD-O RETURN ■0 R-56320 ROKEV.X*2*56»'X>255. P0>EV«I6, vPEEF' V«16-F«D253 't*- X>255- P0KEV»l,V ROVEU-FF U«U-.3 V-v-.i ROCEVH-V ROKEV«31.0 Pij*EV«3«.0 PfafRKW) X-X*2 »C"3C->I IFPP-|23THENX«-I V-V-.4 W-.* IFPP-ll9TNEH'.-:>2 v-v-,2 U"J-.2 1FRP-126TMEHV-V-.7 U«J-.7 !FFtlB-B>-lTHENPOKEV+]e.e L 1 >C I - 1 ONLEOOT 'J1U0OU : 1 1000 ■ I I 100 1 1 200 - I UOtW IFX>33OTMENPC*EV»I6.0 LI*U«I ONCE00T01 IO00 11100.11200.10000 OOtOMMt pnnsaa—^ii ronsaan.t pc*e5J2^2.3i »v&3ri20 poKt5324e-2i.o restore FijRI«54272ICi542y6 POFfcl.O HE T POKE 54 296. 15 PO> E5 3265- PEEK ■ 53*65 'UP 16 V»5)24& PG*EV«il.31 P»EV«23.255 Ft" tv«29 , *55 FOR 1-391046 PO»EV*l,13 NEXT (■«EV*2s.o 00*250 R0*EV»2-.O DD-I P»INI"T l Xi'iUBiW050 FRIHT'RB |V FPHNK TOUT I I I HI T SPftCE fctHP TO RLflv - X2-I25 X3-l«5 X4-205 X5-245V 1-255 POREV./l P0KEV-2.X2 Pt»EV<4,X3 P0KEV«6,X4 ROEV.8.X5 FORI-lTO*iTEP2 POXEV-I.VI NE-.r F0R1*2»40 J0.W44 OO-OG-1 P»EI , 00 MEXT *0R-l*255Iu55iTEP-l FO»£v-i,vi RMCV*>rVl PU»EV»5 VI POEV7.VI t*0KEV«9.Vl MEXTVI C*OW(t H-UOW b-tfOO F0R1-39T046 POKEV.1.13 NEXT OETXB Pi>E>l*7.|fc ROtESI.32 fOVESI*14.|6 P0»ES2*14. 31 P0*ES2*7.31 POES2.I5 RENIiH.B.C POFE-33'71 PWtS3->14.B H W»|.C PUFES1 47.17 PO>E&I,33 Pt»ESI-M4. 17 1FC-*hjOTHENPEsTORE OOT060090 F0PI-OT0150 NEXT IFX«-""TM£N60fl84 m I F >:•■" " I HE l-i0-.* 9d OOTO6O084 BV6MM4 OO*iiJb63000 CLP V-53248 POibV*23.0 R»»tv*29.0 RESTORE for i -2042 t 0*04 7 pc*e1 ■ 215 next qot01 DhTn5.5-5.10, 10. 18. 5. 5. 5. 10. 10. 10, 5-5-5. 10. 10. 10, 5,5, 5, 10. 10. 10 DHIK5. 10.20.20. 18. 5. 5. 5. 5. 10. 20,5. 5. 10. 5, 55. 5, 5. 3. 18.10- 10.20,20.20 I+ITH-IO. 10- 30. 10. 20, 30. 10 - 50- 50. 18.60-70. 10. 40. 60. 10.30.70. 10.20.60. 10- 10.5 l*.Tri20. JO-2O.iO.4O,iO.4O.5e.4e.60.6O.6O.5O.4e.3O.40.3O.2O.3O-2«,ie.»/i;,S I*<Th*0 . 30.40.20.30.40.20. 30-40,40.50 60.40.50.60 40.50.60. 30. *0- 10 20 1* 5 M-TH20 «• *»- >0.40. 30 40. 50-40- 143.*0. *0-5O.40, 30,40. 30.20. 30 -20-10.20. 10.5 BAnue<8 Dh I H40O • 000 - 000 FOKE53200.3 P0*E53281-3 RR[HT"-7' PU»t53272.31 A] I K I M M I I M I I I I I M I I I I M M I I II I I I M II I I I I T fO*~~m «}|."H M I M I I I M M I I M I I I M M I I I M M I M* H4|."<1.«.,...-.... ■ H51 •■'•«—>■ IIX*B 1 «<»" i6l'"5IMOBH I" PRINT-IT PR1NITHB' 331'MOOOOOO" PP INI TSBi 32 ■ ■ '■•COOOOOO" FBlN^THB^31>■•^^0OO000OO■• PP1NIIHB<30>-^■000000000'• PR I N T T MB < 2? > * TPOOOOOOOOOO " PRINTTHB<29>l*4»TflB'29'.H5IIMB<69'.'45ITHB'6*'H4l FRINTTlU-29',l»4»T»IBi29>.H5IIFIB'69-,H5iTH8'6?.i :; Hil RRIHTTftfl. 7--fl3ITHB'8'.H2«TH6.4B' WI^BB' 47, . H3IIflB.48> ,R2IThB<08- . R2I FOPT-0TO4 PRIHTF.ll ICXT PR I NT "TTTT TTTTT IITTT* PR1NTTHB" 67. ,H6I FRINTThB' . < '■ Ml *M " Pi>E2040 245 V-53248 FOEV*21.3 PWEV.36 POVEV.1-166 PC*EV.28.3 MjtfcV-37-7 POttV»36-0 POlEV*39.1 Pl>Ev-*j 3 P0*EV»29,3 PO«EV»27,2 Fi»E2041,237 PLREV.2.240 P*£v*3- 121 POfEV--4o,10 X-240 FuRT-Olu* FOR2"*46I0250 P0t«E2O41.Z'X")fr-I Pu*EV*2.X FORH-01020 NEXTn.Z,! FORV-121T0I66 P0»XV*9.V llEXI F0RX1-36T02STEP-.2 P0FEV-X1 R0*tV*2.Xl NEXT POKEV-23.0 POKE V29,0 RETURN i-'EHLV. The natural development for Commodore 64 users IN fILlS CF UP TO 16* DUHUCIfBS! SlKHBASl 'i EVEN H«S * S«fE»»«T AMD CAiCTAHCP C«PABILII*. CflLEKD** WNCTICNSt E»S» IHMT FKH WBOPPOCtSSOR ffl WI* FILES. BOTH »€Nb-CBl»EN »ND WOC«H CPM0NS, 5CF 1 1 Mj/SE ARCHING. FULLY OCTINABLE OUTPUTS... SUPC<**SE W IS ESSC'l*. IF TOI HAMT THE MOST FROM TOUR 64! SUPPlIEO ON 15*1 DISK KITH E'CfLLENT rjIfFIAl/PEEEPEWI MftMjtL PLUS AUDIO LEABHItC IAPE... AND THERE'S A WIDE CHOICE Of "GET-»0U-CO:nc" APPLICAIIDN STARTER PACVS AI tPA* £9.W EAf! or ma i2*r> tea.tc YOUR PBOOPAMS £y to MILL RE ALL* •* ' I*x( OFT WITH OIL UPAOf! 'DLL* COMPATIBLE VITH BASIC. JE1PACK COMPILES BASIC PROGRAMS INTO MUCMIfC CODE. Ptl W.J.NC UP TO 25 TIMES FASTER AMD EVEN USING UP TO HALF AS MUCH MEMORY... AND IT ACCEPTS EI TENDED BASIC AND MACHINE CODE ROUTINES TOO! FIGAR0<5t AT LAST. AN EASY-TO-USE YET POMERniL UMRIC DATABASE. KITH A FULL RAM* OF BUILT-IN STATISTICAL FUNCTIONS. PLUS FORECASTING. CALCULATION IND MIXED Ml-RES/TEIT GRAPHICS. SUPPLIED ON DISK Him CLEAR. COMPREHENSIVE -.-■< ■ . FUNCTION- KEY OVERLAY. DEMQ PB0O " H - OP PRICE tUrSR £75 .00 ^izawfite 64 VlidRRITE ilk IS A NIGM-PERfCHMAHtl . LO--COST *ORD PROCESSOR. WITH ON-SCREEN FOBNATTING. THAI TAKES FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE Lb S COLOUR. GRAFHICS AND MTMOO* FEATURES... AND SUPPORTS VIRTUALLY ANY PRINTER! WITH A COMPREHENSIVE AND EASY-TO-FOLLOW USER REFERENCE M/NUAL. Vl7»ITE IS THE ULMMME PERSONAL COMPUTER WO PROCESSOR! AVAILABLE ON CARTRIDGE (I MPtt U3 ). DISK ( L»T*3 I6fj ) OR WITH VliASPELL 03^% Ifi'j) MM II TOMORROW? CALL US TODAY ! Oh 01-546-7254 YI2ASPELI VI /ASIAN DTI JETPACA EASYSCRIPT EA5Y5PCLL SIMON'S BASIC ASSEMBLER M ii)is« ; (DISK) (TAPE) 10ISU (Oisr.) (CAST) liMl H9.9S i»r« 169.00 U*r« 113.95 UVtOO I6S.00 IHWJO 1*1.95 ISOrOO 1*1.95 HJUiPLAN (US) PRACnCALC PBACTICALC HASItR M THE 100t HOlteASE 1-4 <0I5*) lbt. 9S (OISI) U*rtO (TAPE) U9 13*. K (DISK) tU^OO 16*. 95 (CART) U*r1S 139.9S (DISK) 117.95 rOlSK) BMim.ff PBI«TLIW 6* INTERFACE 1?9.95 PRICE'. INCLUDE ISt VAT AND AKE CORPEt T ON GOING 10 PRESS. ORDER BY POST OR PHONE. USING CHEQUE. ACCESS/ BAB CLAY CARD OR OFFICIAL ORDER. DESPATCH IS BY 1 AWE -DA Y 1ST C LASS P05I. PRE- PAID DSD[BS Ffiff. MOIXXT DATA AVAILABLE ON RE QUE ST . REF A JO LAKESIDE HOUSE, KINGSTON HILL. SURREY. KT? 701. TEL OI-S**-7256 **** COMMODORE 64 **** R.B.S. (RAPID BACKUP SYSTEM) CONVERT YOUR SINGLE AND MULTIPART TAPE PROGRAMS TO TURBO-LOAD. FASTER THAN THE COMMODORE DISC DRIVE. EACH CONVERTED PROGRAM WILL LOAD INDEPENDENTLY OF R.B.S. NO POKES. NO SYS CALLS. NO USER KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED. LOAD "THE HOBBIT" IN 120 SECS. FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. CASSETTE £7.50 INC. HYPERSAVE — 64 A VERSATILE AND FLEXIBLE FAST-LOADING UTILITY. 8 ADDITIONAL BASIC COMMANDS. SAVE/LOAD/VERIFY UP TO 48K CONTINUOUS RAM AT HYPERSPEED. CASSETTE £7.50 INC. BACK-UP - DELUXE A POWERFUL AND USER FRIENDLY SERCURITY BACKUP UTILITY. LOAD/SAVE ALL PROGRAM PARTS CONTINOUSLY. INCORPORATES A SOPHISTICATED HEADER-READER. FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. CASSETTE £3.50 INC. PRO-SPRITE SPRITE LIBRARY. DESIGN, MANIPULATE, CATALOGUE MULTI AND SINGLE COLOUR SPRITES. CREATE DATA. JOYSTICK CONTROL. PACKED WITH FEATURES 100% MACHINE CODE. CASSETTE £7.50 INC. COMPLETE WITH YOUR FIRST SPRITE LIBRARY. SPECIAL DISCOUNT: ANY TWO PROGRAMS £9.99. ALL FOUR £19.00 PLUS FREE! SECRETS! I/O GUIDE WITH EVERY ORDER. CHEQUE/P.O. ORSAETO: DOSOFT 2 OAKMOOR AVENUE BLACKPOOL FY2 OEE •** FAST DESPATCH GUARANTEED **** Unlock the full potential of your disk-based Commodore 64, use Superbase 64 - the complete records -handling system that puts business-style power and practicality at your fingertips. Superbase 64 solves a host of filing problems with its easy record formatting, powerful indexing and sorting, extensive outputling options, and its 'Superbasic' programming capability. ■ Invoices ■ Stock ■ Finance & Banking ■ Prospects ■ Collections ■ Management Accounts ■ Recipes ■ Car Fleet Records ■ Personal Filing ■ and many, many more! - The complete information control system for the Commodore 64 includes a simple-to- follow manual . Complete your Commodore 64 - Complete the coupon More inloimation on SuperOue 64 u availa£*e t'om Commodore Daeton MafOr Retailers o> (torn Precind Software direct From ihe authors ol Easy Script I Please send me more information on Superbase 64 Name Tel Address Age '1% Occupation ±5 Precision Software Precision Software Ltd. 6 Park Terrace. Worcester Park. Surrey. KT4 7JZ Tel: 01-3307166 Telex: 8955021 PRECIS G Peter Freebrey tries to prevent fellow adventurers from getting lost in pursuit of their goals. WITH THE RIGHT PIECE OF magical/technological equip- ment, it is possible to see and hear from afar. The past is clearest, the present can be just a little misty and the future can be decidedly foggy ... but in an effort to keep you at least partially informed, the scrying glass has been dug out of the cellar and given a quick polish. Sadly, causing mystical black runes to appear on this piece of specially pulped wood fibre has no magic involved. Technology takes it's toll and by the time you convert this to neural pulses, and translate my apparent gibberish into some form of understandable communication . . . some of our prophesies will already have been proved true (or false!). PSS get the Midas touch PSS are introducing the MIDAS adventure concept for the CBM 64 — The Multl Dimen- sional Animation System. This appears to offer all sorts of exciting facilities, including: 3D graphics, data compression, a form of artificial intelligence, mixed joysticks and keyboard entry and expansion modules for future games. The first adventure using this system will be 'Swords and Sorcery', which appears from PSS releases to be a rather fine example of 'mazes and monsters'. Your character may be developed in traditional style and then progress through further Swords and Sorcery* modules . . . . Sounds great — we'll let you know when we see one! Piecing adventures together Mosaic Publishing have three adventure games for the '64 about to hit the RAM. "Erick the Viking' has been written by Level 9 and is a graphics and text adventure based on the children's book by Terry Jones. Screen shots on the packaging look good — so keep your eyes skinned for this one. Also from Mosaic, but this time programmed by Shards Software are: The Stainless Steel Rat Saved The World' and 'Nomad of Time'. Both are based on books bv well known TALES FROM RYPT ig1 sci-fi authors, Harry Harrison and Michael Moorcroft, respect ively. Pre-release review copies of these two seemed to be a trifle slow in response time. Final versions may well be improved — watch this column for the low down Beyond midnight Beyond Software have finally got to the point of releasing Lords of Midnight' (well almost!) for the CBM 64. This program has caused quite a stir since it's introduction for the Spectrum and is eagerly awaited by us 64'ers. 'LOM' crosses the boundaries between an adventure game and a strategy game and by anyone's standards, produces an epic saga. On the Spectrum some 32,000 different views of the landscape are claimed ... I can't wait! Talent goes West Talent Computer Systems is a new software house and amongst its offerings is a mainly text adventure for the 64 (sorry all you other Commodore owners — but thats the way the bytes crumble!). Called 'West' the program is set in and around a ghost town in the Wild West — you ). T. Edson fans had better oil those sixguns and check your poncho's waterproof! As this will be a regular adventure corner, we hope to foster a certain camaraderie with you the reader. If you have any views or news — let us know. We might even be able to HELP. Alternatively it might be just as pleasant to learn that we are semi-mortal and cannot solve that problem either. You are on a mud bank . . . What next? This is part of the opening sequence that you will find on entering 'Dungeon Adventure' by Level 9. You can of course 'thrash around' every which way, to try and find something — anything! — and generally get the feel of the game. Possibly some of us have to 'get going', move and be damned etc. But, if you are planning to be a true adventurer, sanity must return and out should come pencil and paper as you carefully start at the beginning. Incidentally, if you do have a quick 'look around' before starting seriously — don't forget to QUIT first — if you do not start from scratch you may find that quick 'look around' has used up some of a pre- determined number of moves . . . and the light/sun might go out ... Or you may develop blisters before finding the bandaids etc. As you move, study each location description carefully. There may well be red herrings but many of the clues to solving WILLOW S. END ISLAND I MIRROR SIREN the game will be in what you see and meet (literally in the better graphics games!). Some- times the descriptions will tell you which way you may move — even if this is so, still try all directions anyway. Some programs have the phrase obvious exits are:' I leave it to your imagination as to what the un-obvious exits may be. Moving may sometimes prove to be a puzzle in itself! Most adventures will accept a verb and a noun — in that order: GO NORTH — some will accept more complex sentences and many will be quite happy with single letter entries for directions — N,S,E, or W. Find out what your program accepts. Why waste time typing CO NORTH if you can more easily use 'N\ Simple movement direc- tions are usually no problem — even if you do have to type in GO WEST in full! What can prove baffling is how the programmer has interpreted requests for other seemingly simple actions. Try not to pet too frustrated if what you think is obvious was not so to the poor old programmer. Ideally each adventure should recognise all the synonyms for any given word, but memory limitations alone preclude this — just be patient and learn his system I There may be a location hinted at, which appears impossible to reach by using the compass points N, NW,W, Adventures SW . . . some programs even require NNE etc! Do not despair, try ENTER 'XXX', or GO 'XXX', or IN 'XXX', or even ENTER, GO or IN. If it's above you try CLIMB, SCALE or ASCEND — you did try UP didn't you? I feel that the simple obvious word should be used, as I'm trying to solve the overall puzzle provided by the adventure, not trying to pass an additional test on the English language. I once got caught for ages trying to put my lamp out — otherwise it burnt the basket I was trying to put it in! — OFF LAMP, OUT LAMP . . . finally, and almost at the point of as mentioned earlier, there may be a time/move penalty and also in most games you must learn by trial and error what to do with what, when and where. Most adventures seem to be split up into quite definite sections. Having solved (you think !) a section, if the program permits, SAVE your game at that point. This seems obvious, but a surprising number of people end up starting from the beginning, repeating dozens of moves only to be killed at the same spot again and again. Fig 2 T EDGE OF FOREST LARGE TREE EDGE OF FOREST H V EAST/WEST ROAD THROUGH FOREST SLEEP SPELL EAST/WEST ROAD OUT WAND, COINS, DICE 1 giving up, EXTINGUISH LAMP — ouch ! A Thesaurus is a useful book to have on occasions. Another thing to look for is whether you have to type in the lull word — or will the first 4 (or 3 or 5) letters suffice. It may look cryptic but THRO CRUC is much quicker to type than THROW CRUCIFIX! Be prepared to die or quit fairly often. Partially because. One standard puzzle is to find something in section 'B' that is needed in section 'A' to locate something that you must have in section 'C ! Again SAVEing at some point enables you to explore further down the 'chain to 'suss out' what may be needed back near the beginning. Most programs support the following commands: INVENTORY/LIST LOOK HELP EXAMINE/OBSERVE Displays all the items you are currently holding. Repeats the location description . . . worth trying if you have just 'done' something, you may see an object added to the original description. In some games this produces a clue (us ually cryptic), in others it repeats a set of instructions, and in still others you just get a rude comment! Very important ... if in doubt EXAMINE everything. Clues, hidden objects and solutions are the order of the day follow- ing this command. Displays current score, either as a number or as a percentage . . . can often give you a A grassy plain to the north . . . However well you may solve individual puzzles, or find valid clues — they are no use to you unless YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE AT ALL TIMES. Mapping is a personal thing and there are several different methods. Almost every system you use is going to call for Fig- 3 r several large sheets of blank paper! Try to be logical in what you do and above all be consistent. I use a series of rectangular boxes which may or may not be joined by lines indicating whether there is a connection between the locations. Level 9 kindly agreed to me using 'Dungeon Adventure' for the following examples. First how to deal with one particular location (fig 1). The box represents the loc- ation which is the SOUTH END of an ISLAND. On the island may be found a magical MIR- ROR. The line at the south of this location has two arrows on it, indicating that I can move to and from this location in either direction. SIREN' by the side of this line shows a hazard or puzzle that has to be solved before free movement is permitted. 'WILLOW' to the north, with only one arrow indicates another hazard, and as there is an arrow pointing in only one direction — this tells me that I cannot travel in those from the north end of the island! Lines with CROSS BARS at E,W,NE etc show that I cannot trav el in those directions. The two additional directions that you should try are UP and DOWN. I only indicate these if they are accepted. Looking at a slightly larger section of the map we have something like Fig 2. Leav e yourself plenty of room on the paper, so that you can record such things as SLEEP WELL' and. if you wish, a brief note on how to overcome the spell! If I find a location where I am moving to another 'section', I usually write a letter in the box and start mapping on a new sheet of paper with the same letter in the location I have just moved to. Above all be methodical — check every direction. Some- times you may only travel in one direction from one location to another, so only one arrow will appear on your map (fig 3). Always check to see if you can return to a location by the same path. Fig 3 also shows how I record a path that doubles back on itself to the same location. So, we have the beginnings of how to approach a new adventure — moving an mapping. Next month we w' have a look at one of the adventure programmers favourite tricks — the maze. Again we must map it, but this can prove difficult and calls for a somewhat different tech- nique. Once again, we have browsed through our Commodore book shelves to bring you REFERENCE LIBRARY Book Title: VIC 20 Mind Stretchers Author: I. Creasey Publisher: Sigma Technical Press Price: £5.95 DISGUSTED WITH THE HIGH cost of VIC 20 games filling the shelves of software retail outlets and prepared to spend a little time and effort tapping away at the keyboard? Then fork out the price of one game for this book of 30 'mind- stretchers' from Ian Creasey. These games seem to have a high destructive element. There are bombs galore in Bomber where your aim is to bomb buildings and land while avoiding the anti-aircraft missiles, Submarine where you have to bomb submarines from a plane and Dumper where you must protect an underground city from the aliens trying to bomb it. If your idea of fun is confrontation with aliens and assorted weirdos, then test your skills at Alien Attack where, while moving to the top of the screen, you must shoot the aliens emerging from the bottom. Munchers where you have to defend the town'sdyke from the Munchers and Zombies where you must lure the zombies into the pothole at the centre of the island. Animals also feature with Rhino where you must avoid being eaten by the rhinos while fleeing through the jungle. Cat and Mouse where you must get the mouse out of the maze without being eaten by the cat and Snake where you score points by eating up green numbers (why this obsession with eating?!). Mr. Creasey does produce the odd yawn with such well-worn numbers as Mastermind, Breakout and Connect 4. But the book is also spiced-up with such relative VIC-20 MIND complexities as Awari, an African game of logic and Hammurabi where, having been appointed Hammurabi, you must rule the ancient city of Sumaria for 10 years. An interesting addition is Life, a version ot a simulation of the life of cells. The book concludes with a few useful utilities. Finally, although the introductions to the programs could be described as clear and concise, I failed to discover the 'comprehensive notes' which Mr. Creasey promised would help in 'creating your own programs'. Book Title: Mastering the Com- mododre 64 Author: A.J. Jones and G.J. Carpenter Publisher: Ellis Horwood Limited Price: £6.95 InHB THIS BOOK AIMS TO provide those readers, already at home with the Commodore 64 and BASIC programming, a deeper understanding of this machine and its capabilities. mmmm The first chapter reviews BASIC — BASIC keywords, arithmetic functions, string functions, logical operators, input/output statements. The reader is then shown how to facilitate BASIC programming through prints, string handling and structured programming. Arrays, binary searches and sorting methods are incor- porated into a chapter on data manipulation and BASIC is combined with the 6510 microprocessor in a chapter on memory management. Sound, graphics and sprites are examined in detail before discovering what the 64 has to offer in the way of peripherals. The authors get to the heart of the 64 with a study of its system architecture, the operating system and the kernal. By this stage, the reader should be ready to handle machine code programming — the internal registers of the 6510, addressing modes, interrupts, using an assembler and a full nstruction set. An insight into the 6526 Complete Interface Adaptor, the RS232 and the registers of the 6526 chip is contained in the final chapter. Assorted appendices and listings complete the book. So, if you wish to expand your BASIC knowledge and fully exploit the possibilities of the 64, this meaty guide could be just what trie doctor ordered. Book Title: Putting Your Commodore 64 to Work Author: Chris Callender Publisher: Interface Publications Price: £4 95 THIS SLIM VOLUME OF business applications enables the reader to put the Commodore 64 to work as a B business system. The first program. Word- screen, turns your 64 into a word processor, albeit a very limited one with 10 commands at your fingertips. Other applications included are a Database package whereby you can store and retrieve information on your Com- modore and Cardfile to replace your conventional card filing system. Be spared unpleasant confrontations with your bank manager by keeping track of your spending with Home Accounts and, for those of you with short memories, key in short or long term engage- ments with Planner of Calendar. Mailing List and Telephone Directory allow you to discard that dog-eared address book and Spreadcalc.a spreadsheet package, and Stock Control are provided for more serious business applications. The most useful programs in the book are chained together with BOSS (Business Orientated Software Svstem) at the end of the book. Although these programs cannot hope to replace the more comprehensive packages on the market, they should appeal to the business man or woman with limited needs and a low budget. Book Title: The Sensible 64 Author: David Hightnore and Liz Page Publisher: Micro Books Price: £5.95 THIS BOOK CLAIMS TO offer a less technical overview of the Commodore 64 and its various aspects than that offer- ed by the manuals. It is aimed at experienced programmers and novices alike. Presented in a very plain format and produced in a simple style, it proves that you don't have to depend on glossy pictures and obscure jargon to get your views across. The authors haven't produced an absolute intro- duction to the world of the Commodore 64: rather than covering the fundamentals of programming or summarising the capabilities of the 64, they launch into the subject of information input — tne GET statement and the various function keys. User-defined graphics and, in a fair amount of detail, sprites are then investigated. The delights of sal*** : c ^»»VDu». screen rolling, extended colour mode, high resolution bit mapping, X-Y co-ordinates and bit map graphics and joysticks are then examined followed by an insight into sound ana music on the Commodore 64. Information on disc drives and the graphic capabilities of printers conclude the book. To sum up, although not for those readers who don't know one end of a computer from another, this book, sensibly illustrated with diagrams and examples, provides a useful introduction to most aspects of the Commodore 64. Book Title: Getting More from your Commodore 64 Author: Mark Harrison Publisher: Sigma Technical Press Price: £6.95 ANOTHER BOOK CLAIMING to make some sense out of the Commodore 64 manual. This comprehensive volume takes you from abacuses and Charles Babbage through BASIC pro- gramming, high resolution graphics, sound and the relative complexities of machine code on the Com- modore 64. Starting with a brief history of computers, the book leads into a general overview of the Commodore 64. It then guides the reader through program- ming techniques, Commodore 64 BASIC, the 64 functions, character set and string handling. Computer logic, the 64's memory and character display mode are covered before handling the more intricate high resolution graphics and sprites. Bring your Commodore alive with a chapter on sound and turn your computer into a business system with knowledge of files, data storage and printers. The book concludes with informa- tion on data structures and machine code programming, and a list of useful appendices. I found particularly helpful the index to the programs used as examples throughout the book. There are copious intro- ductions to the Commodore 64 on the market but this one seems to delve deeper into the subject than any of its rivals and should prove invaluable to those readers who feel little the wiser after scouring the 64 manual from cover to cover. Book Title: Getting started on your Commodore/VIC 20 Author: Tim Hartnell and Mark Ramshaw Publisher: Futura Publications Price: £2.95 THE CREDIBILITY OF THIS beginners guide to the VIC 20 lies in that one of the authors is a schoolboy — the category from which a large proportion of its readership is probably drawn. Unlike many so called 'introductions', this jargon- free book really is aimed at the E 332 novice: anybody else may find the authors' approach rather condescending. The book starts where any self-respecting beginners guide should start — with an overview of the VIC's keyboard. It then guides the reader through the basic tenets of programming — screen input, editing and printing. Random numbers, loops and subroutines are explored before venturing into the world of sound and music on the VIC 20. Strings and data are covered before tackling PEEKs, POKEs and arrays. Finally, the reader is shown how to add graphics — user defined, multi- colour and high resolution to his programs. The reader is encouraged to make construc- tive use of his new-found skills with the sample programs liberally distributed through- out the book. To conclude, although this book won't teach you all you ever wanted to know about programming the VIC 20, it should give you the knowledge and confidence to confront some of the more technical guides available. Book Title: Commodore 64 — BASIC Programming and Applications Author: Larry Joel Goldstein and Fred Mosher Publisher: Prentice/Hall International Price: £7.95 THIS BOOK PROVIDES A comprehensive tutorial' on programming in BASIC on the Commodore 64. The text is accompanied throughout by programming applications and exercises to test your progress. The book commences with an introduction to computers and a look at the 64 itself. The authors then take you, step by step, through the BASIC programming language. Each lesson is incorporated into a program and, at each level, you are encouraged to 'Test Your Understanding'. Before adding loops and subroutines to your programs, learning to input data and manipulating strings, and coping with random numbers, the major Com- modore peripherals — cassette recorder, disc drive and printer — are assessed. A chapter on filing on the 64 is consolidated with a do-it-yourself Word Processor. You are finally instructed to apply the knowledge thus acquired to creating graphics, designing sprites and adding sound and music to your appfications; and try your luck market with in the games a chapter on creating computer games. The book concludes by showing you how to enhance your BASIC programming with Simons' BASIC. The authors have produced a clear and informative introduction to BASIC programming on the 64, elucidated throughout by appropriate examples and self- test exercises. 9 4 on E=' CASH CONTROLLER COMMODORE 64 HOME BUDGETING & BANKING SYSTEM ON CBM 64 DISK AND CASSETTE AUTOCALC 6' COMMODORE 64 THE SPREADSHEET IN A | / A professional style multl function Cash Controller program. In disk format you can load, and make an entry ... or update your existing records ... In Just seconds. This easy to use program can handle up to 400 transactions, giving Instant statements of your bank balance. BANK ACCOUNT • Statements on demand from any date to date. t Holds up to 400 transactions. • Standing order facility. • All transactions can be automatically coded to allocate up to 16 budget headings. • Search facility for any single item by description or amount. HOME BUDGETING • 16 budget headings, e.g. Gas, Rates, Car, Tax - you can choose the headings. • Highlights under/over spending. Full budget expenditure breakdown. • Budget "re-think" facility. LOAN/MORTGAGE CALCULATOR All you ever wanted to know but didn't like to ask! Calculates: • Interest rates • Payback periods • Capital sum • Period of loan • PRINTOUT FACILITY USING STANDARD COMMODORE PRINTERS OR SEIKOSHA GP100VC. • FULL SECURITY WITH PERSONAL PASSWORD, • SAVE DATA ONTO CASSETTE OR DISK USING 1541 DRIVE. DISK £14.95 TAPE £9.95 (inc. P&P| CREDIT CARD HOTLINE 06286 6353 1 (24 HOURS) Please send me: Autocalc 64 DISK Autocalc 64 TAPE Cash Controller 64 DISK Cash Controller 64 TAPE at £19.95 at £14.95 at £14.95 at£ 9.95 (Overseas orders add El. 50 P&P). I enclose Cash/Cheque/PO. payable to Richard Shepherd Software Ltd. OR please debit my ACCESS/ VISA card No. I I Signature | NAME _ I 1 I I I I I I ADDRFSS CLASS OF ITS OWN Q ; Which spreadsheet is suitable for accountants, engineers, scientists and home users/ A: Autocalc 64 Is Ideal for any application Involving extensive manipulation of data and formulae from financial planning to market research. Q: Which spreadsheet offers an advanced level of formula handling? A: Autocalc 64 copes easily with trlgnometrlcal functions, parenthesis and boolean logic as well as totalling and averaging. O: Which spreadsheet accepts complex conditional statements? A: Autocalc 64 can handle statements as complex as IF aK4,000ORa1>8,000ANDa2 = 500 THEN bl =0. Q: Which spreadsheet offers a flexible screen format? A: Autocalc 64 allows you to select (I) column widths from 3 to 30 characters (II) the number of rows/ columns you need (ill) up to 2,000 cells of Information (iv) text or numerical entries lined up to the right or the left, or a combination. Q ; Which spreadsheet offers a choice of numerical formats? A: Autocalc 64 gives you a choice of (i) Integers (if) floating decimal point (Hi) currency (iv) any combination of these. Q: Which spreadsheet offers a full 'replicate' facility? A: Autocalc 64 has an advanced replication function for transferring text, data, formulae or conditional statements from any cell |or block of cells) to any other(s) without monotonous retyping. A go to' facility will take the cursor instantly to any cell of your choice — saving time. Q: Which spreadsheet is easy to use yet advanced in operation? A : Autocalc 64 Is designed to guide you — helpful error reports diagnose Input or formulae errors. A full demonstration program and comprehensive Instructions are Included. Q; Which spreadsheet is compatible with standard Commodore printers? : Autocalc 64 gives you a printout facility using any of these printers: Commodore 1515, 1525, MPS 801, 1 526, MCS 80 1 , DPS 1101, Selkosha GP 1 OOVC Q : Which spreadsheet is 1 00% machine code for fast efficient responses, and offers a choice of saving to disk fusing 1 54 1 drive) or to tape using a C2N unit? A: Autocalc 64 — as if you didn't knowl Q: Which spreadsheet sells at a realistic budget price? A: Autocalc 64 costs Just £ 1 4.95 on tape, £ 1 9.95 on disk Inclusive of VAT and P&P. Q : Where do I get one? A: Ring us now on 06286 63531 (24 hours) to place your ACCESS or VISA card order, or complete the order form and send It to us today. (Prompt delivery promised). Autocalc 64 is available only direct from Richard Shepherd Software. CREDIT CARD HOTLINE 06286 6353 1 (24 HOURS) FUWHOUH ;j ?StUMlMOrTLANE CiWlNHAM UOuGm BEAKS 1L (06166)63*31 Chris Palmer takes another look at MIDI and shows you how to set up a system. REVISITED THOSE OF YOU WHO MISSED last month's article must be wondering just what a MIDI is. Well, it's not animal, vegetable or mineral, it is in fact a Musical Instrument Digital Interface. What MIDI enables you to do is lo interface various musical instruments (usually key- boards) together. Information from one source can then be passed to another and vice versa. For many, the most important feature of MIDI is that it also enables you to plug these devices into a computer. This means that your computer can record what you do on any keyboard which is attached and, if you want, play it back on any otner keyboard which is attached. Because a computer is very good at manipulating information of any sort once it is stored in its memory, it isalso possible to edit or change the musical information. This is obviously a great boon to both Erofessional and amateur alike, ecause we all make mistakes. You don't even have to be able to play a musical instrument to use a MIDI/ computer system. The note and timing information for your composition can be entered using the computer keyboard and then played out through a MIDI device attached to the computer, a sort of space-age player-piano if you like. So, that briefly is what MIDI is. Now let's have a look at how to go about setting up a system. Setting up a system For the purpose of this piece we are going to take the Commodore 64 as being the basis for our computer/MIDI system. Why the 64 you might ask? Well for the simple fact that the 64 is one of the most 66 popular computers around at the moment, and therefore a lot of the development of MIDI interfaces and software is done for the 64. So, having agreed that the 64 is the heart of the system, lets consider what we need in the way of a mouth. E When buying an interface of this sort, you have to apply similar criteria to when you buy a computer: chiefly, what software is available. You don't want to land yourself with a system which isn't going to grow with you. A lot of the companies producing interfaces are themselves producing the sotware to accompany them. This at least means that the software will run alright with the interface, but it does create other problems. Because the software authors are so involved with the design and development of the interface, they often lose sight of the fact that it is the ordinary punter who is going to have to use the thing. Quite a few of the packages which I have seen nave been less than friendly in places. Moreoften than not the documentation and examples given in the manuals are misleading as well. Given that we are a nation of tinkecers, it might also be worth your while finding out how accessible both the software and the interface is to Crying programmers. Who nows, you might even be able to sell your creation back to the company. Try and find out what the companies' future software plans are, and whether any other software companies are writing for the interface. Ins and outs The purpose of an interface is to pass information from one place to another, so let's have a look at what your interface should have in order to talk to the outside world. For a start it should have a five-pin DIN socket labelled MIDI OUT. This is essential because, without it, your grand composition will have no way to travel to the keyboard in order to be played. Don't worry if the interface has more than one of these, it just means that the interface can talk directly to more than one keyboard at the same time, without having to resort to the rigours of MIDI THRU. If you want to be able to send MIDI information to the computer from a musical keyboard, then you will need a MIDI IN. This works in the same way as a MIDI OUT, only backwards. You should only need one of these, because unless you are a closet Rick Wakeman. it is unlikely that you will be using more than one keyboard at a time to program the computer. Though not essential, another connector you should look for is SYNC or CONTROL. With one of these you will be able to play back any compositions in time with an external source. More often than not this will be a drum machine or rythmn box, which provides a trigger signal out for just this purpose. Unfort- unately you can't synchronise with a real drummer, as these will no doubt take exception to having a jack plug rammed up any available orifice. The last connector you might run up against is one labelled MIDI THRU. What this does is provide an exact copy of the information being passed to the interface via the MIDI IN socket. The real advantage of MIDI THRU becomes apparent more on the keyboards than on the interface. Using it you can 'daisy chain' several keyboards together in such a way as there will be no discernable time-lag between you playing a note on the first keyboard and it sounding on trie last. Above all when buying the interface, make sure that it will do what you want and, if possible, have it demonstrated. Sorting out the software Carrying on our journey from the heart, via the mouth, we arrive at the brain. Here really is where any system stands or falls, on the quality of the software. It is very difficult to lay any firm guidelines here because everyone has a different idea of what they want to do with a system. Hardware ► % * * • Al the moment MIDI software falls into two categories: composer pro- grams which record, replay and edit musical information which is sent down the MIDI bus from an external keyboard, and those which perform similar functions, but who take their input from the computer keyboard. The prime consideration for any program is the amount of storage space that is available for the note information. It isn't worth having a program which can drive 16 keyboards, edit any part of the tune and make the tea, if it can only hold ten seconds of music. For a composer program to be any good you need to be able to write more than one part into it, and then have them played back simultaneously. If you are after one of these 'multi-track' packages, then find out the limits of how many tracks you can use, against how much note information can be stored on each track. If the package does not use a MIDI keyboard as an input device, find out what system you have to use to input the note information. It would be pointless buying a package that uses standard musical notation if you do not know how to read music. If it is a multitrack package, then find out whether each track can be sent to a different keyboard as one of the big bonuses of a system like this is the ability to write on one keyboard and play back on many. Above all, when you choose the software, have a firm idea of what you want to do already in your mind and then make sure that this is what the package can do. Choosing a keyboard Leaving the body now (probably through the nose) we journey into outer space in search of the device which is going to turn our wonderful composition into reality. Be warned, the syntnesiser/ keyboard market is nearly as bad as the Hi-Fi market. Walk into any music shop and you will immediately be assaulted by row upon row of shiny keyboards, crammed full of the latest in LEDs, LCDs, VCFs, sliders, benders and triggers. If you ask a shop assistant for some help you will soon realise that the computer industry Is not the only place that survives on jargon and buzzwords For a lot of people the criteria on which a keyboard is bought is purely price. The problem is making sure lhat you're getting the most of what you want for the price. Obviously, the prime condition that the keyboard must satisfy is that it must be MIDI compatible. Like the interface, it must have both MIDI IN and MIDI OUT sockets. Find out whether the keyboard can change the MIDI channel it responds to. This is particularly important if you intend to use more than one keyboard with the computer. For instance, if you have two keyboards with the same MIDI number attached to the computer, it will not be able to differentiate between them. This destroys the advantage of being able to play back a piece of music, with different parts being played on different keyboards. If you are not yet conversant with how a synthesiser works, it would be best to buy one of the MIDI equipped piano/organs which are on the market. If you intend to get into synths as well there are plenty which offer pre-$et of pre-programmed voices whicn will get you going. Find out what information the keyboard sends out via MIDI. This can range from only the note value and duration, right up to the parameters that make up the sound. As a rough guide the keyboard should send the following information: the notes which are being played, the position of the pitch bend control (if it has one) and any voice/program changes which occur. With this information coming through MIDI you shouldbe able to record on the computer every aspect of your performance on the keyboard. It is best to check that the keyboard will work with your computer/interface/software as some combinations will not work, despite the fact that MIDI is supposed to be a standard. What's around Hopefully now you will have more of an idea of what you are after when putting together a computer based MIDI system. To help a little further, here are some interfaces, keyboards and drum machines which would be a good place to start yourself off on the road to computer composing. Interfaces Sequential Circuils Model 64 Sequencer This contains all the operating software in ROM and plugs into the expansion port of the 64. It has MIDI IN and OUT along with facilities for syncronising it to an external source. It can be programmed in real-time ana offers multitrack recording, editing and auto correction. It has a capacity of upwards of 4000 notes in real time. Proposed software updates include step time input. The price is between £150 and £180. Siel MIDI Computer Interface This interface comes supplied with a two way adapter which will fit both the 64 and the Spectrum. It features three MIDI OUTputs, one MIDI IN and a MIDI THRU. It also has a control port for external synchronising. The software is available on disc or tape and at the moment comprises a six track monophonic sequencer where the note information is input from the computer keyboard. Also available is a sixteen track real time sequencer in which each channel can be assigned to a different MIDI device. The price of the interface is around £99. Keyboards Korg Poly 800 This is an eight note poly- phonic synthesiser with 64 in- ternal memories. The sounds are a little thin sometimes but are on the whole very good. The MIDI cnannel can be changed and is implemented througn a MIDI IN and MIDI OUT socket on the back. The Poly BOO is available also in the form of the EX800 which is a keyboard-less expander unit. Its features are virtually identical to the Poly 800 except lhat it lacks the keyboard and the bend control. The price for the Poly 800 is between £400 and £450 and the EX800 between £300 and £350. Siel MK900 This brand new keyboard from Siel features 10 preset sounds of which any two can be split between different places on the keyboard. It also features an inbuilt rythmn unit which can be programmed. The quality of the sounds is quite good considering the price of around £449. Drum machines Yamaha RX15 A very good digital drum machine which can actually be played from a keyboard via MIDI. It has the interna memory to store 100 patterns and 10 songs made up of 255 parts. MIDI IN and OUT are provided, making it possible to record and play back patterns using a computer. Price is around £450. E MULTIPLE FILECOPY a long process. Take out the strain by using this program from 68 IF YOU OWN A SINGLE disc drive, you will soon come across the problem of backing the disc up. Even if you own two drives or have access to a twin drive, there is a need for a good, selective back-up pro- cedure. There are several program s available to do this but all of them require several disc changes. In fact, the minimum number of disc changes for backing up an entire 1541 disc is three because the Commodore 64 can hold about 62K of data at a time and a 1541 disc holds about 165K of data. Another problem with these programs is that thev are often difficult, conf- using and clumsy to use. The enclosed program goes some way to solving these problems. You will notice that apart from actually reading a file and writing a file, the program is written entirely in BASIC thus making it easy for you to improve on it and aad your own extra commands and functions. If you select one of your discs that you require to back-up, you will probably find that you only really need to take a copy of about half the files contained. This will arise due to several reasons: perhaps you alreaady have a copy elsewhere, there may be several versions of a program you are writing on the disc and you only need to take a copy of the latest one and so on. Drive on The program will work for a single drive, two drives on different device numbers or MULTIPLE JLECOPY lAinnibrE for a twin drive. The facility is given to header the disc you are copying ontoso you may use a brand new (unformatted) disc. If you have a single drive then you will simply press Return over the first four questions. The directory will be read in and listed to the screen. Displayed will be the file name, the file type and a 'y' against each name to indicate whether to copy the program or not. Trie program will not copy relative files. You may now cursor up and down the screen and enter 'y' or 'n' against each entry. If you cursor off the top or the bottom of the screen (assuming that there are enough entries) then the display will scroll. If you press V or HOME the cursor will move to the top of the screen. When you have finished, press the 'e' key. Having pressed 'e', the files to be copied will be listed to the screen with the amount of space taken by each, then trie total buffer size and the difference between this and the sum of the programs' size will be printed. The chance to re- edit the list is then given. If there is enough buffer space then the answer to this question is defaulted to 'n'b. If there was not enough space then an error message is printed and the answer to this question is defaulted to 'y'. The copy will proceed when you are ready and at the relevant time you will be prompted to insert your destination disc. Any disc errors are reported and if a file already exists on the destination disc, the option to overwrite it is given. 64 Utility Getting lined up Lines 100 to 140 in the program listing bring down the top of memory (which you will have to reset having run this program), set a pointer to where to put the machine code and also set the buffer start and end points. The buffer is the area that the files from the disc will be stored in. Note that the full capacity of the Commodore 64 's memory is not being made use of here. Also note that by changing these pointers, this program will run on any Commodore machine. Line 150 allows up to 80 files to be read in from a disc which should be more than enough. If it is not enough the program will crash with a bad subscript error and you will have to increase all of the '80's on this line to cater for this. Next in the program, the machine code is read in from the data statements at the end of the program and POKEd into RAM. This machine code simply reads a complete file (sys p+3) or wriies it (sys p). Lines 200 to 300 ask for the information about your drives and gives suitable defaults. The directory pattern is the same as when you load a directory from a disc. Thus 'fi*' will return all of the file names startin with 'fi', '*=p' means a program files and so on. Lines 400 to 599 read in the disc directory. If you look at this closely you will get the idea of how the directory is stored on disc. Line 460 is calculating the file length for instance and lines 490 to 500 get the file name. Lines 600 to 699 allow the editing of the program names. It is here you could perhaps add another function — maybe one to make the cursor go to the bottom of the screen and then to the bottom of the list. Lines 700 to 799 list your selected files to the screen and check on buffer size etc. and lines 800 to 2000 actually do the copying. The data at 61000 is for the machine code and lines 63900 onwards save this program to disc keeping one back up copy of it. Program Listing re- run rem i fin rem f em mull i p I • I i I* copy own manderlield )/g» grahame a.-m 7 fit i rem i rem : rem lop ol mem • »J00O cote Had ■ 5)000 buffer start ■ $1100 bullet end • SeQOO 100 rem 110 .„■.,•<.«..... in p.vton 1)0 bt> )**09(> 2*21* 1*0 Be- I0->09( 1)0 dim li«<IO).IS(IOI,lt$(IO),<(S(IO),pl<IO).p2(IO. 1(0 pl>p irem poke up machine cote 170 reada. la<999thenpokei I ,a ipl >p I • I iioio 1 70 200 primchrSlU7)chrS<l*>"MulIiplt Pile Copy Prog.* 20) prim-b, C-»n Mandvr I le I «* ipr ml 110 prim- Source driee 0" 120 prim" Damnation drive 0" I* I" 1)0 2*0 210 2*0 270 100 SOI )I0 )20 no )»o >S0 1*0 HI 170 )IG uni I pr I ni ■ Source prim" Oeiiination prim- Directory pattern *.p* pr<ni~Ne* Dettination Disk rt" prim" Oitk header name n/a* pr inlt hr S( I9)iprintiprift( rem-«SSR left • No. > Hint press ■ It Cor tor No. 1*1 < •»-nd ieli M>-|dd lelt *)>"tm left ■>''.'. *.p<CRSR le 1 1 ■»>-idp$ n<t»SH lelt *)>"in^ I imei a<a>v Q'CHS* ■«n KOUB 1- lelt •«>*lhS lelt *)>"ieS:ilaS<>"y"th«n)QQ inpul" Source drive input- Destination drive input- Source uni I input' Destination unit inpul* Directory pattern inpul "He* Destination Duk if n$<>-y*tnenpr int igo to 310 Inpul- Oitk header name pr i ni t input -Correct ■ ICHSfl 1)0 open I*, lu, I Si open I S.du. I S »00 pr int i pr int i -Reedi ng Source Directory-iprint -Pre 1 1 •10 openl.iu.O.("$--rlghlSUtrS(*dl.l>."i-.dpS> ■ 20 inputfel* .a.eS.b.ci ilaiOthenvbO »)0 c loie 1 1 pr int *Di tec I or y Error - "a" ,"aS" ."b" . "c tend ».0 getfl.aS.aSinO »)0 gei#l ,aS.hS.(S.dSi. l*$.bS---then*»0 »S2 eetaSiifaS-* "thenStO »(0 Il*(il.a*<(c$.chr J(0)l.2»a-a.c(dS-ChrS(0H *7Q O 1 -oraS>chr$(IS)then*70 •10 fS(t)**'iif*S<>chrS()*)theniSl i)-a$ t*0 .- f . ■ ■ :t $( )*) thenllO »9) .:.<':.-:.$-- "igotoDO )O0 ■S(i)<l$(i)-aSigoio*90 SIO gei»l.bSi.lbS-- -tnenSIO 170 geiaM.aSi ifaS>-"thenbS.bS-a$!goio)20 S)0 bS.l.llSlb$, !):(!$< I i ifb$.-rel*lh*n*10 1*0 aS.rlghiSlstrSli).!).* ".leltSUSf i>." *.I7( SO .S.*S-leltS((tS(i/.)>." -.>ight$<" *.Hf$(ll»( l )■!>♦.), 51 SSO pr inlaS.I I Si i );•$ S40 i.i.l igoioOO SSO clotehnl.t-Z »00 pnntchrSIUJIi'Select tiles to copy- ipr i ni "OK ■01 l»l (02 b.IOll tnl CHlkltlail (OS a- I .go*ub(10igoto420 (10 tor i-.tobipr.nl I IS( ( ) tab! SI )ri|htS(f iS( |t. I )!ne.t .return (10 printchrS(l»»ipriniip. intilori.lionf (» ^!as!!lis!--tnen.lo U, "''' n,S< ' ,S,,, ' nChrJM **'''*" °" " Bd 011 4*0 lte$<>-y*ora$<>-n*then(SO (») ItSOI.Ief tSdtSt i >,)).a$ip< inichr M MS)tab( )l >a$!ioto(90 (SO pr intthr S< US) tab< )l > r t gh t $( f i S< i 1,1) ((0 if*S<>"*"endaS<>ChrS(US>or ..Jth*n(7Q ((7 i.i-7ipr intthr S< U1)chr$( US); SPAC£ lo Stop-:prlnl irem end ol directory irem hit space bar to force end irem aS ■ ipace or tVi on irem ch>$()*» * quote '■■ ■van gel file name until quote ■ rent ditto i rem ditto irem don'l want space* ip/Do*n V,N or E-ipnnt liiln-liif |n>0o<nf<2)lhen49S.iem cursor up ((* «.i t lie*i<Z*;goiub(IO:pr lnlchr$( I9> l i In. I igo I049S (70 (7S elO (90 (92 (9S i ire cuir or up itai.(hrS(77)oraS--e-thenl.999igoio(90 .rem preiiad e lo end ilaS-chrS(l9)ofa$.-h-iI»eni.0iprinichrJ<l9)|i|olo((9 irem preiied h or home ifaS<>ch r S(l))a n daS4>chr(l71ihenprl»ich>S(l«S)|ii.i-li l oto(9S.rem illegal key I f tail thenpr intchrSt . - • . If tn<2*thenlnifn>l he-' • ..em clear k.yboaid buffer 700 pr>mchrS<l«7)*Pile* to Copy i I ll -0t tb.O 710 lor • ■■ Y ■'. ■ ■ •n'ihen7S0 720 tl.tf-l:lb.lb<2S**llttll) 7)0 prlntrightS<itrS(tfl.2(- *fS< I )tab(ZS)leflS(ft$( i >.1)i 7»0 print- "nghliC -. 1 1> St f l*< i l»2S« ) . S) 7S0 ne>i ipr int ipr ini -Total Pi let ."H- . 'lb-Byte** 7(0 print-Buffer .lie >*b*-ai*. Free ■'bcBi-lb 770 *S.-n"i i ( be-bt-ibXOihenpr int IN mt-But for Too Full*iaS«"y" 710 printtpriniDc.Edit Lilt -*$ch'5( I S7)ehrS( I S7)chr J( I J7I ■ 712 inputaSi 1 (as<>-n*than(00 7IS ilbe-b>i-tb<0lnenpr int tpr int 'Buffer Too Ful I go to 2000 790 priniiprint-Procede »nh copy y-ehr Si I S7)chr J( tS7)chr S< I S7) i 79S i npu ia$ 1 1 f a$<>-y- 1 he "end ■00 pr int ipr ini Heading Filet From Source Duk' ■10 tf iO.plxb.ip2.bi ■20 lori.|ionfiltriihiS(fi$(.).|)<>-.-ihent90 ■ )0 If. H. l:prinltftab(*H$<i)| ■3S openl.. u .).(mid$(t(rS(td).2l.-i-.fS(l)**.-.lefl$(fti(i),l)) ■*0 inputdPia.a.aS.b.ciprinl* - **S: i t alhenc loie 1 1 go IO2000 »S0 prini'Hait"pliipoke*al.pl/2S(ipoke*»0.pl-2S(*peak((*l) ■(0 rem no* load buffer Harting at (*0,(*l note end addr returned in (*2,(*) 170 iy> p> )ip2>p*ekl(*2l<2S(*pe*h((*)> ipr int - End~p7 * -.a$,b,ciitath*nprinia$.c loie I iMlblOffl l( I ). p I . p7I i t>p2iplip7iclo*el ■90 ne.l 900 iftdOdd or tu<>duihen9*0 *I0 pr in t ipr i nl 'Place Oeiiination Duk in Drive* 920 inpul-li Di<k Ready y<C»SR left *S>-|aS »>0 i fa$<>-y-then9IO 9*0 ilnjo-y-ihenl000 1000 pr inlipr mi~*r i t ing FI ■ 75 1(0 le* to Destination Dim' 1010 1070 10)0 10)) 10*0 10*2 10** >bt i p2'bi for i ■ I ton I . i f r i ghl Si f t S( i >. I )<>"y-t ben 1090 Ifetfellf lS.-,--leltS(ltS<H, t )•■,-.' printtftab(*)fS(i)|iopenl.du,I.(midS(ti'S(dd).2)*-i->fS(iNflS> i " S,a,aSib.cipr inttabl20)aS.i ta.OthenlOSO cloteltifa<>()then2000 input-File ttnli Replace y<CRSR lelt • )>" iaSt i f aS""y-!hen 1090 prinl#IS.-t-.mld$UtrS(dd).2).*|-.lS(lligOtOlO]0 pl'pl(ilip2:p2(i)iprtn|-tiari-pli poke(*l ,pl/2S(ipoke(*0.pl-2S(*p*ek( (*l ) poke(*S.p2'2Stipoke(*?.p7-]t(*peek<(*)liiyt p *y* P irem set start and end address and transmit I07S pr mi- End*p2 10(0 inputM».a.a$.b.t;p'intaSiilathenclos*l>goto2QQO 1 990 c lose I .nei t 1100 pr mi .pr mt -Copy F i n i ihed" le nd 2000 print.i - ■ ABUttTEO* i end data 2*. I **.*(. I '). 121,2, 1 11.91 data 17). 129.2, I S). 99, 1(2, I , 17 * tela '2,221. 2SS.I4S d.ia 91.2)0,91, 101.2.2)0.99. 1(S I0S0 I0SS 10(1 1070 tela data (1020 (1010 (10*0 (10)0 (10(0 data (1070 data (1010 data (1090 date (I 100 data •> 1 1 10 data 41120 data 4S900 open I SO. 2*0. 2)9. 1(1,91, 1*1 . 1)0.2 US. 99. 1*1 , 1)1.7. )2, 20*. 2SS 94.17). 121, 2. I)). 91, 17). 179 7.I)).99,I(2,I.)2,20I,2SS 1(0,0.177.91. )7, 710. 2)), 2)0 91. 201, 7. 2)0.99, 1(1,91. 20) I )0, 2. 20I.7K, U). 99. 20), 1)1 2, 20«, 229. )2. 70«.2SS.94, I '0 I Si tS*'mlc(*-ipiinia*l ,-.0i *IS t)970 ■ - . "t S~.bak:-f S.gotub4)940 09*0 sa.ef-Oi-. tS).t:gosub()9(0iend 4J940 geiMI .aSip'intaSii ilaSOchrSf i))incn()9(0 bak"igoiub()9(0 unexpanded VIC 20 game from Andrew ■■■■ The aim of this game is lo shoot as many aliens as possible while dodging ihe stars. The game is operated with the following keys: J = Left K = Right Z = Fire Alternatively, you can use a joystick with the fire button to nyperspace. SPACE BATTLE Line number 3 6 9 14-16 18-22 23-24 25-34 35-44 44-54 57-60 61-66 67-72 77-90 100-108 Action Prints your score and the number of lives left Draws approaching stars Draws aliens Moves your ship Reads keypress Controls shooting Sets screen Sets your shooting and goes to instructions Instructions Starts game Gives score plus play another game routine You get killed More instructions Sets data for graphics / ■ . Vic Game Program Listing : 001078 3 Mim-«C -$.8PC<S>-LV -, FOB I- 1 ICV PSINT* , " , NEXT P0KE214.21 PRINT RETURN 4 J-l 3 FORI*>1TOU 6 P0K£B'22->RNTJ(T1>,46 NEXT 7 00SUB3 8 F0RI-1T0U 9 l-RN0<TI)t2e 1FKU4STMEN30 10 |F(K2TMENF0IH-nO5« NEXT 11 POKES- 32 WIN! 12 G0SU83 13 OCTRt Jl-f«K<M) POOR*. 127 J2rf«K<PB> P0KERB.233 14 lF(»tf--J"«<JlHHD16»-e>»*I«>79oeiMEN«-H-l 15 lF<M--K'0»«J2*DI28--e)FWDfl<7921TMtH«-B.l 16 1F<H«-- •'0B<JlfWD8)-e)IKN18 17 001028 IB lFKV-WNrNI«r»eMHV-l MT-MT.l 00 T 02 7 19 IFHV-ITHENHY-0 20 IFHV-1IMEK27 21 IFPEE»<rt>-4«TH£Nfc8 12 POKER. 39 23 LK"PEEK(»*22> L0-PEEK<R»44> Jl-PEEK<Pft> 24 JFL0O32«ND'A»-' , Z"0RtJlRHD32i»*'«HM.0<>46ANDL'O46THEN34 25 IFL032TMEN2? 26 IF<LK"460RL'»6lORLK-620RLt-6<>;TMEH65 27 »1 IF.K2O0TMEN5 28 U=U«1 00104 29 POKEW.0 38 ii-B>iHT<2i»*mD<ii'> rn-PMD<Ti> 31 IFTM>.4TMENBOkEn.60 POKEN.30720.6 GQT0I I 32 1FTH>.IT»«W>0»EN.61 POKEH-30720. 4 00T011 33 P0KEN.62 POKEN»30720.5 00TO11 34 L-R>44 B lFP£EML>"60THENS-S-20 00TO38 36 IFPEEV<L)*6inCNS-S>4e O0TO39 62TMEN">»S-60 00TO38 P»EL.42 POKEL'30720. 1 39 lFFG-0HNlJS>"730THENLV"l.V*i FO-I 40 P0«EV. 13 41 F0RI-222T0238STEF2 42 PO-EL30 POKEU.l R0KEL.32 P0KEL.3© P0»EM.fl "EXT POKEL-22. W 43 G0TO27 44 PBIHTTT POKEX,9 PRIHTTAB(3""IBIim.TRUCTlONS* PPINTT*B<6>-*"#)IE[J 43 PPI»TTRB<7)*«- VClj" 46 PPlHTTFlB<7j-nca 26 PTS" 47 PPIMTTfiE i 40 PTS" 4Q *»IMT t«B' f > ^TS* 49 PRINT-BfcCORE 730 FOP EXTRA ,' 37 IFPEEKa; 38 POKEL-22- 31 0 PRlMfBVOU CRM 00 MVRER-sfACE* PRINP'ONLV TUICE" "PINT-BVOU HOST FIRE «T THE- FOPI-ITOIO000 FRIHT-.TtC - PRINT-IP -■ FP1HT-B ■ ■ ICXT G0TO2 SPRCE BATTLE »*■ C BETURN nwiMi* ""inr-.r mrt.-. 14 b» »QRI"1T024 PR I Ml NEXT .1 i PPIIIl-FRONT C* 'HEM' io=o H-r«n E-diC4 38 0Oy)B3- FOPI-1TO.-O0 HEM RETURN 5» KKER-23.2S POKEfl-22.27 POKEA-21,^9 Fi>X2l4. 18 PRINT RE'UPH (0 KKEX.23 GCSUB3) 61 F*[HT-«BO V9-J WORED "S 62 IFS>HITMENHI«S *3 PRUIT-M8 HIGH SCORE "Ml 64 PR|IITTRB-4,''M-PlAY RGAJN V/H- 63 OETM :FM-""T>«JI65 66 lf8I»-H-THENl« 67 »9«FRE(0- 00T01 68 FOKEA-30720,4 POKE36&77.128 F0RI-13T0OSTEP-I re pobxv. i 71 FOkEA.30 F0PO-1T0W MEXT POKER, 42 « 0*0 ■ IT 030 NEXT NEXf 72 IV«LV-| R.79I1 73 IFRIOHTITl^'O-TS-THENlOO 74 POKE36877.0 POkEY 0 POKEX. 14 PRINT-X 73 1FLV-OTHENOO1O60 76 GOSUB39 0CSUB3 77 FORI-ITQ800 NE>T OOT013 78 ROE 36679,217 BOX650 129 Z**"8V RHDREU KWTH' 0OSUJ53 79 F*IMTTHB(3'"W2f 68 '*l MTTRB<3<"BBX>E JOYSTICK QR- 51 PPItlTTRB<7;"«lJ LEFT* 82 RRINTTRB'7."* RIGHT* &J PBIMTTRB'7>"«Z FIRE' 34 P»INTTRB'3 ••'•SPflCE HYRERSPHCE" 85 PRINT 'rati ENTER SMU 1-6* £6 CETRI !FA1»"-thEH86 87 IFflSC<A*X490RASC<fW'>34THEir>: 38 U-VflUnl.> MT-0 89 RPiH'irtB' i8?-iru o»so ifrtmtheh; 38 PRIIITT(4B<3>-WTn PLERSE MBIT" 91 KKE9 1.255 PQKE52-27 P0t£S?..255 P0KE56.27 POKE214.U U.R WHMX<214* RT"I 92 U«36876 X- 36879 V- 36678 2t«"B¥ RIIE*EW MOTH" P*"37l3l PB-37132 »B»37134 A.0 93 F0PI«OIO472 POKE7163-l.PEEt> -2768-1' MCXT 94 F0RI-OT03I 93 READS 36 MKE7C41*I.R hEXT 97 FOP1«0TO33 REROA P0'E7?84* I R ICXT 98 POKE 36869 . 233 POtE36866.IEf I 368*i6'0Rli8 00T044 IA1A60. 24, 133-233. 133,24,24-8 J00 DATA0. 24-68. 126. 233-24. 36-66 181 DATA24. 68, 126, 253-219,193,126. 66 102 BA1H24. 60-102.231-233.36. 66. 36 103 DATA253. 255. 165255. 233, 255. 129-0 104 DATM8. 1.63, 127.213-233, 1J7-63 105 K-TA0, 128,252,^54. 171.253.234.232 106 CATA82,8. 133.32.4. 143.4.82 107 EATA8. 4.2,4,8. 16.8.4 108 POKE63O.0 P0KC36869-248 POKE36866, 130 RERDV. P(* EC E Dave Burnett helps Your Commodore readers to design your DESIGN 64 TYPE IN THE PROGRAM AND save it before running it. Ensure that the DATA in lines 1140- 1210 are typed in accurately as this is used in a routine that Dlavs an important part. This program contains a routine that transfers both character sets into RAM starting at 12288. The BASIC program (well REM'd) occupies RAM from 2049 to 10275. As the operating system uses spare RAM for BASIC Variables etc, the pointer (End of BASIC) has been set by POKING 56 with 65 protecting the program and the Character Data. The program makes use of the Function Keys (1-8) and also uses the CBM Key in conjunction with the Function Keys giving a total of 12 controls which are displayed on screen, with general instructions (LINES 1300-1710). When run the program transfers ROM to RAM via the machine code routine (LINES 1130-1210). useful in itself. Characters 0, 254 and 255 (in both POKE sets) are used. All other characters can be changed. The screen displays the character number (as well as the character) and the start address (in RAM). Having selected the set and the character, keying F5 will display an 8 by 8 grid on the left, an enlarged version of the character and the data making up the character. A second empty grid is then displayed and a new cursor (non- flashing) at top left. This curosr can be moved up, down, left and right (with wraparound control). Stop moving the cursor and press the fire button; the cursor becomes solid. Now moving leaves a trail which can be turned into any shape desired (press fire button again to revert cursor to normal). When finished designing your first hew character, keying F7 will set it to memory and you can see the result (if satisfied); keying F8 will transfer the machine code routine and your new character to tape, provided you have a tape ready (changing this to disc use would be straightforward, see LINES 6000-6240). Then "proceed with your next character etc saving each in turn on the same tape (second and subsequent savings); save only character data. Each character is saved separately (OPENed and VARIABLES USED FK — Function Key (PEEK ADDRESS) FS — Shift Key (PEEK ADDRESS) JS — loystick (PEEK ADDRESS) Port 2 GL — Grid Left (SCREEN LOCATION) GR — Grid Right (SCREEN LOCATION) C — Colour Value To Add To (PL) S — Start of Characters in RAM A — Character Used for Grid (REDESIGNED) PL — Place (SCREEN LOCATION) for Cursor CO — Colour Screen CT(J) — Array for M/C Transfer Data GC — Grid Colour (SCREEN LOCATION) NC — New Character Count (SCREEN LOCATION) NV — New Value Count (POKE VALUE) NX — Bit Value Count PA(K) — Poke Address (NEW CHARACTER) Array CV(K) — Character Value (NEW CHARACTER) Array CH — Character (PEEK VALUE) Transfer G2 — Grid (SCREEN LOCATION) Transfer ZZ — Used for Counting in Save Routine BC(J) — M/C Data Array in LOAD Routine BV(j) — Data Value Array in LOAD Routine CLOSed). When finished, key in CBM and F2 to close save routine. There is a short program (LINES 9000-9130) which can be copied and run independently which will LOAD the machine code routine and your characters. You can then use your characters within your program and you lose your characters. If you break out of the program, to try out your characters clear the screen and type GOTO 2030 (which puts you back into the program without losing your char- acters). PfOftrjm titling 100 REN **•• DESIGN 64 •«•• 101 102 REM •••• BV Ii. EUPPIETT ••*• 163 IW FEH «••• AUGUST 1984 163 iet »em ••>■ isicc bvte; 12© 121 PEN VARIABLES USED •■« 123 130 POKE53281.© P0t;ES3;ee-6 ''0«t S4>6 140 FX=|?7 FS*653 JS-36320 13© GL«I3©4 0R-I324 C-34272 CC-1 160 SM228S A»233 PL*1324 CO-PL «C 170 sRu-anmnmimnRMi" 188 SSI"" l?0 DIIKTCW) : .him 1010 REN ••»* ChAPACTEFS ' -El i 0:0 1030 PPIHT CHRi<l4?> 1 966 ioto 1030 1090 1100 1110 1120 1130 1140 use 1 160 1170 use 1190 1200 1210 1220 1230 1231 1232 124© 1230 1260 1270 1288 1290 1295 1300 1301 1302 1318 1315 1320 1330 i 1330 1355 1360 1370 i sn 1390 ii w 1410 1420 1430 1440 ISM 1520 1530 : 1560 ive ] V-,, i >:.oc 1610 1620 -. 1710 PEN CHARACTER <fl> SETS I MID 2 REN USED FOP CP1D. PEN* CHARACTER (254 4 > "EH SET 1 AND 2 USED AS CURSORS. PEW «M CHARACTER TRAHFER DATA F0RJ-0T037 READX CTcJ>-X POK£49|32*J . X NEXT DP.Tfll20.16S. 1.41-251. 133. 1, le? DATA©. 133. 25©. 1 33. 252. 169. 208- 133 DATA231, 169.48. 133-233. 160-0 DATAI77-25©. 145. 252.20©. 208 DAT A249 . 23© . 25 I 230 . 253 . 1 62 ■ 224 DATfl228. 231. 268. 239.163. I. 9-4. 133 DATAl. 88. 173-24, 208. 41, 240 DATA?. 12- 141.24.206-96 3VS49I52 PEn ••■* GRID CHARACTERS •••* POrt 12288, 255 F0PJ-6T05 POKE12289-I. 129 NEXT PO»£12289*I. 253 P0»El4336.2S5 FOPJ-OtOS FOE 14337* J. 129 NEXT RO*EI4337*J.233 p-14328 rokep.255 pokep*7.255 pokepm-129 p0kep*6129 pwep*2. 153 p0kep'3.i53 pokep-4.189 foep.3- 189 pm6376 pokep-253 pohep'7.255 f0kerm.129 fokep-6- 129 po> ep-2. 153 p0kep*3 . 1 33 p0>ep'4 .189 po*er*3 . 139 fort--et07 p0ke14320*j.233 poke 16366* i- 233 next rem instructions print-si character msignepj-q- "H'"" :i a -■■ ■ i ">n PPlNT"Fi ADVAttfE CHARACTER SELECT* PRINTS — RETARD CMAPACTEP ;ELECT" PRINT "FS — DISPLAY CHARACTER GRID" PR I NT "F 7 SET RE DEFINED CHAPACTERB" PRINT-NOTE » USE SHIFT KEV Atffi FUNCTION tXV fM3" PRIHT'F2 — SELECT FIRST CHARACTER SET" PRINT ~F4 — SELECT SECOND CHARACTER SET" PRINT-F6 — - RETURN TO SELECT M0IC- PRINT'TB — SAVE REDIFIMED CHARACTER*' PR I NT "MOTE Xa USE CF*I KSV AND FUNCTION KEV MT PRINT"*:* — TO CLOSE SAVE ROUTIHE* PRINT--F4B CLEAR RIGHT GRID" FP1NT--F6B — REVERSE LEFT OR ID TO RIGHT" PRINI--F8B fPAHFEP LEU GRID TO - I'-'u PR I NT -""PRESS ANV KEV TO CONTINUE..." OCT AH* IFAH*"""THEN1510 PPI"T"rTIPST US. IF 23 OR IF 41 TO SELECT CHARACTER" Pt»lHT"S£T.f* THEN u;F MT 11 OP IF3S TO SELECT THE" PRIHT-CHARACTEP NUMBER. NEXT USE IF53 TO PLACE CMAPACTEP ONTO GPlD.iT PRINT-USE JOYSTICK (PORT Z: FIRE BUTTON MILL SET OP INSET. HOVE WDOHN. PRINT" LEFT OR RIGHT" PR I MT* USE 3 CBN ■ UITH KF4 F63 0> 1*83 TO CLEAR. C0PVOR REVERSE* - PRINT" CHHRACTEP.ir PRIMT*U8I 1F-J3 RtT'HI TO SELECT NODE OR". PRINT- IF FINISHED SET CHARACTER WITH IF TXT' PRIKT-lFsa MILL SAVE M'C TRAHFER ROUTINE ANli MEUCHAPAC T£R DESIGN ON THE" PRINT* FIRST SAVE AND" PRINT" IUST THE CHARACTER 3*1 OTHER SAVES. <* PRINT-LEAVE NRECOPD.'PLAYS DOWN UNTIL FINSISHED DE»:«HIMG CHARACTERS" PRINT-USE * CDT-I f WITH IF21 TO END SAVE ROUT (HE* 1 PRINT-STRESS ANV KEY TO CONTINUE. . .3" GET AN» IFANM--THENI710 64 Utility Program listing 2001 pem DISPLAY START ♦»•• 2010 PO'E5328O.0 P0>E53281.e P0KE646-5 2626 PRINT "3 * CHARACTER DESIGNER QT 2023 2026 rem •••• F2 .ev press 2087 2030 IFPEE»<Ffc>-4ANDREEMFS>«lTHENCS-142 S-12288 GOSUB 4000 2033 2836 REM •••• F4 -£v PRESS •••• 2637 2040 lFFEEK<Fk>-WDF-EEK(FS>-iTHENCS-14 S-14336 GOSUB406O 2043 2©*6 REM Fl "EV PRESS •••• 2047 2859 IFP£0<FKl-4flNW>EEK(FS)-eTHENCC-CC-l IP C0253THENCC- 1 2866 AD*$*CC*8 GOSUB4000 2063 2066 PEM •••• F3 KEV PPESS •••• 2067 2070 IFF€E'iFK)"WDFtO<FS)-0TMEMCC-<X-l IFCC<lTHDlCC-»3 2080 SD-SiCCW C" nvv ^Er' ••>■ F3 »ev PRESS •••• 2087 2690 IFPEE*'F>-6ANDPEEK<FS>-«ThEH JC"1 GCSUB41O0 2101 REM •••• Fe >EV PRESS •••* 2102 2110 IF PEEKIFX— 3 AND PEEKFS>-1 THEN SR-SR»I 2120 2121 PEN •••• CBM AND F2 IEY PRESS •••• 2122 2130 IF PEEK<FK >*A HUD PEEK<F$>-2 THEN A- 2 GOSUB 2300 IF JROI THEN GOTO 2030 3001 REN ***« JOYSTICK ROUTINES ••*• 3002 3010 IF PEEK<FK>-3 BHD PEEK'FS>-2 THEN GOSUB 5660 S028 IF PEEK'FK>-6 AND P£EKFS>-2 THEN GOSUB 5400 3036 IF PEEK<FK>-3 AND P£EK<FS>-2 THEN GOSUB 9666 3040 IF PEEK'FK>-6 AND PEEK<FS-I THEN JR-O 3200 3201 REM •••• JET. 'UNSET •••• 3202 3210 IF PEEKUS>-111 AND PEEK PL) '254 THENA-233 3220 IF PEEK<JS)-111 AMD PEEK<PL<-255 THEN A-254 3300 3301 REM •«•• MOVE UP ***♦ 3302 3310 IF PEEK<JS>-I26 AND PEEK<PL-40>O32 THEN TV-PL PL-PL-46 CO-PL*C GOTO 3340 3320 IF PEEX<JS>-|26 AND FEEXPL-40.-32 THEN TV-PL PL-PL*289 CO-PL-C - - H 3340 IF PEEK TV) -255 THEN POKETV-O P0KETV.C.I2 34M 3461 REM •«•• MOVE DOWN »•»* '■u 3410 IF PEEK(JS>-125 AND PEEK(PL*40>O32 THEN TV-*L. PL-PL*46 CO-Rl-C 00T0 3430 3420 IF PEEK<JS>"125 AND FEEK(PL.40>-32 THEM TV-PL PL-PL-236 CO-PL-C 3430 IF PE£Kav>-253 THEM POKETV.0 POKETV-C.|2 3501 PEM •••• MOVE LEFT 6666 3562 3510 IF PEEK<JS>-123 AMP PEEK(PL-1>032 THEN TV-PL PL-PL-1 CO"PL*C GOTO 3530 3520 IF PEEK'SI-123 AMP PEEK ( PL -1 >-32 THEN TV-PL PL-PL*7 CO-PL *C 3538 IF PEEK<TV>-255 THEM POKE TV. 6 PC*£TV*34272> 12 3661 REM •••• MOVE PIGHT •••• 3662 3610 IF PEEK<JS>-119 AMD PEEK < PL* 1 >032 THEN TV-PL PL-RL'l CO-PL *C GOTO 3620 IF PEEK<J3>-II9 AND PEEK(PL*1 >-32 THEN TV-PL PL-PL-7 CO-PL *C 3630 IF PEEK<TV>-253 THEN POKETV.0 POKETV-54272 . 12 ! rm 3701 REM MM PESIONIMO CHARACTER 3702 3710 GOSUB 4500 3801 PEM Mm F7 KEY PRESS •••• 3802 3818 IF PEEK<F*(-3 AND PEEK<FS>-6 THEN JR-0 GOSUB 3998 IF JROI THEN GOTO 2030 J999 ir -no* ivr ;.>;ni 4660 4001 REM !•** SIRE EN DISPLAY 4002 4010 PRINTCHRKCS > P0KE33296. 12 ■■■■■■ - - -v>i urn 4696 FCI'it CC 4S40 PRINT" "I-orTP*<24>- ADDRESS". 4050 PC*EI120,CC P0KE35392.6 4666 PRINT ht 4070 RETURN 4101 OEM MM DISPLAY GRID LEFT 4182 4118 PRINT-*06W1" 4126 PRINT-2631- 4138 PRINT-e4268421 DATA" 4146 0L-I3O4 GC-X*C 4150 F0RK-8T07 4166 F0RJ-6T07 4176 P0KEGL*J.6 PQKE0C*J,12 4180 NEXT GL-GL»48 GC-OC-40 NEXT 42O0 4201 REM MM CHARACTER ON GRID MM 4218 L-6 OL-1304 GC-GL-C X-128 »!■' 4226 F0RK-6T07 X-128 4230 :w»PEEX(AD*K> 4240 F0RJ-6T07 4250 IFCH>-X THENPOKE0L»J«L-254POKE0C*)*L.lI CH-CM-X 4260 X-X/2 4270 NEXT 4290 L-L-40 4296 NEXT K 4360 4301 REM *••■ CHARACTER VALUES MM 4362 4310 F0RJ-0T07 4320 IF PEEK(AD*J>>-0ANDPEEKCAD»J><-9THENPRINTTAB<10>- "PEEK<AD*I> 4346 IF PEEK(AD*J)>9ANDPEEK(AD*J)<-99THENPRINTTAB'I0>- "PEEK<AD*J> 4350 IF PEEK<AD*J)>99THENPRINTTAB(ie)PEEK<«IH-J> 4 360 NEXT 440C 4401 PEM •••• DISPLAY GRID RIOHT 4402 MIC 0»*IJ24 OC*OR*t FL-1324 H-253 4420 F0Pt-0T07 4430 FOPJ-OT07 4446 POKEGR-J.O POKEGC'J.12 4450 NEXT OR-OR-40 K-GC-40 HOT 4476 POKEPL.A POKEPLK.l CO^L«C 4430 RETURN 4500 PWEPL.A POKECO.l 4510 FRINT~c0MK'X-»»M»i»»MM»l 4520 PETUPW 4601 DATA FOP PIGHT 3PII •••• -;NV ;NV 4610 NC- 1324 NX- 128 4628 F0PI-0T07 FORJ-0TO7 4630 IF PEEKNC*J>»254 THEN NV^IV*ie; 4640 M»NX/2 4650 NEXT 4660 MC-HC«40 CD-flD*K 4670 4688 REM »••» DATA PRINT •••• 4690 4700 IF HV->e AND NV-<? THEN PRINTTAB< 30 1 4710 IF NV>9 AND NV«<99 THEN PR|MTTA9<30>- 4726 IF NV>99 THEN PRINTTABI30> .NV 4730 CV(»)-NV PA<K>-CD NV-0 NX-I20 NEXT I - i'ii 4801 REM •••• ADDRESS AMD DATA •••* t i,i Fi I Q 4820 PPIHTPACJ>. 4630 IF CV(J»-0 AND CV< JX-9THEMPRINT- *CV<J> 4840 IF CV<J»9 AND CVC J><-99ThEiiPPINT" "CVf J) 4850 IF CV<J>?99 THEM PPINTCV<J> 4860 NEXT PRINT 'TTTTT FORJ-0TO3 4870 PPIMTTAB'20IPA'J«4>. 4S80 IF CVO4»0 AND CV< I•4><-9THENFRIMTTAH26> , ' ■CV<J«4> 4896 IF CV<J«4»9 AND CV< J*4K-99THENPRIMTTAB<20>" *CV<J*4> 4900 IF CVCJ*«»99 THEN PRIMTTAB<20>CV( J*4) 4910 NEXT 4920 FORJ-OT07 POKEPA' J>.CV< J> NEXT 4999 STOP 5001 PEM »4*4 MOVE TO RIGHT GRID 5210 L-0 02-1324 0C-G2'C X-128 AI-"WW6ni" 5226 F0Rt:-6TO7 X-128 5230 CH-PEEK<HD*K> 5240 F0RJ-OT07 5250 IFCH>-X THENP0KE02*J*L.254 POKE0C-J.L.11 CH-CH-X 5260 X-X.-2 5270 HEXT 5286 L*l'*a 52?0 HOT K 5300 RETURN 5400 5401 REM •••*■ REVERSE TO RIGHT GRID 5462 5416 L-6 02-1324 GC"G2*C X-128 AF--«66666r 5426 F0RK-0T07 X-128 5430 CH-253-PEEKADHO 5440 F0RJ-0T07 5450 IFCH>-X THENPOKE02*J*L254 POKE0C*J»L . 10 CH-CH-X 5460 X-X/2 5470 NEXT 5466 L-L-40 5490 NEXT K 5566 RETURN 5600 5681 REM CLEAR RIGHT GRID 6666 ?602 5610 GP-1324 GC-OR*C PL-1324 A-255 5620 FORK-0TO7 -■>:■:$ crc t-^7-i- 5646 POKEGR-1.0 POKEOC'1,12 5650 NEXT GR-GR-40 GC-GC-40 NEXT 5670 POKEPL.A POKERL-C.l CO-PLK 56E8 RETURN 6066 6001 PEM SAVE ROUTINE •••• nk 6010 PRINT SRf.-TAPE READY TO SAVE ? ANV KEV TO CONTINUE- 6020 P0KE198.0 GET MM IF NIK-" " THEM 6020 6636 PRINTSRISS* 6040 IF SR>1 THEN 6100 6650 PRINTSR4. OPEN 1 . 1 . 1 - "DATASAVE" 6066 FOftl-61:^" 6070 PP1NT41,CT<J> 6666 PRINTSR1- "SAVING M/C DATA FOR SPEEDY TRANSFER • 6095 PRINTSR*. SSf CL0SE1 6166 6101 REM tMt SAVE CMARACTEPS 6102 6105 22-22*1 CS*--CHARSAVE-»STR»(22) 6116 PR I NT SRI 0PEH2- 1 - 1 .CSf 6120 PRIHTSR*; "SAVING DATA" PRIHT»2.FN<6) 6130 FORJ-OT07 6140 PRIIIT42.CV'J> ICXT 6150 PRIHTSPi. "FINISHED* « 6160 CLOSE 2 RETURN 6200 6201 REM CLOSE P0UTII4I •••• 6262 6205 22-22*1 CS»- _ CHARSAVE"*STR«22> 6210 0FEN2.1.2.CSf 6226 PRINTSRI. PR I NT §2. 9999 CLOSE 2 6236 2Z-Z2-1 6246 PPINT'-r. "SAVING COMPLETE " ■22- "CHARACTERS SAVED" S566 6501 PEM *••■ LOAD PROGRAM *»•• ■:-:>?: 6510 PR|HT".T- -SAVINO COMPLETE ";22. "CHARACTERS SAVED" 6520 PRINT-USE A PROGRAM LIKE THIS TO LOAD YOUR CHARACTERS BACK FROM TAPE.' e540 LIST90OO- REM *••*■ LOAD Nt ROUTINE **•* DIMBC<57> 0PEH1 . 1 . 0. "DATASAVE" FORJ-0TO57 INPUTRI.«C(J> HEXT CLOSE I F0R.J-6T037 P0KE4?152*J.8Ca> NEXT BVI49152 .'00 L ?016 REM »M LOAD CHARACTER 2Z-ZZ*1 CS«--CMARSAVE"»STR«22) 0PEH2. 1 . 0. CSi INPUTI2 . DA IF DA-9999TH£'| CLOSE 2 END FCOJ-0T07 INPliT»2. DV< J> NEXT CLOSES F0RJ-6T07 P0*EDA»J. DVt J > NEXT GOTO 9670 Two notable pieces of software face the music in these reviews from David Crisp and Mike Roberts. MUSICALC (FROM WAVE- form for the CBM 64 or SX-64) is one of those programs that you need to use as soon as you get hold of it. The packaging is more reminiscent of a double album than a computer program, but it is stiff card and gives plenty of protection to the disc and manual. MusiCalc is essentially a program which will enable you to stretch your SID chip to it's limits. It is a synthesiser program which makes my three year old monophonic sythesiser look like a barrel- organ. Waveform obviously realise that most people will want to get music out of their 64 straight away and so. very thoughtfully I feel, the thing that comes to hand after the disc is a small card which shows you how to be totally impressed within minutes. When you load the program the screen displays two numbers: one is the E.T.A. (estimated time of arrival) the other is the C.S.T. (Com- modore standard time). The ETA is the time the program should take to load and the CST is the lime it actually lakes. It does sound frivolous but it is useful. Waveform point out that should the program take longer to load than the ETA shows then it is time to have your Commodore Disc drive doctored. Creating sound After a few minutes loading a screen somewhat like the display you see in an Intensive Care Unit appears. A grid on the right shows three 'blips' moving backwards and forward and on the left is a mass of lines, squiggles and dots. At first I though I would never get the hang of it but the manual is very good and. despite appearances, the display is very logical and easy to use (with practice). As you would expect you are able to control the three voices of the Com- ^™ modore and at the top left of 74 the screen is a panel for each voice. This enables you to select independently the type of waveform used in sound generation as well as adjusting the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) for each voice. Below this you are able to \ adjust the width of the pulse wave and manipulate the filtration of the raw sound according to standard sythesiser practice. There are the usual types of filters e.g low, high pass etc, tempo controls ana switches to turn on or off particular voices. At first it is a little difficult to see what the oscilliscope like 'trace' on the grid is doing but as you work through the very well written manual the mud clears. Unfortunately I have prior knowledge of things such as how ring modulation and oscillation affects a given sound and so found it difficult to assess whether or not the manual was effective in teaching the 'ground rules' of sound manipulation, but as you can hear exactly what you are doing with the sound as you change it is possible to get what you like without knowing why you have got it. Knowing the theory though would certainly assist in usinc the synthesiser to the full. The 'get you going notes' show you some of the built in preset sounds and songs (referred to as scores). A total of thirty two scores and thirty two different 'sets of sound' give a potential combination of hundreds of different variations on a theme. It took me a couple of days to get past the stage of listening only to the demos. The preset sounds go from the most accurate synthesis of fair- ground pipes playing 'Cruising down the river to Dr. Who/Craftwork type sounds playing really out of this world scores. Some of the sound Software reviews E resets I am sure would even ave the BBC radiophonic workshop boys drooling. The next step in the manual allows you to play along with any of the preset scores and sounds using any one of the three voices. Making music Eventually I decided it was time to let my, as yet unrecognised, and doubtful musical talent loose on the machine. There are two ways to enter music into the machine. First you choose the type of keyboard you require. This can fol low the standard chromatic scale as found on pianos etc. or the types favoured by other musical cultures e.g. Hindu, Japanese etc. Choosing different scales means that instead of the usual c,c#. d etc you can have a keyboard that plays a, c#f or almost any combination of the above. Seriously though, if you wanted to do a Ravi Shanker then the keyboard would follow the way the notes follow in music of the Indian culture. A very difficult concept to explain and a difficult one to grasp if you are only familiar with the standard keyboard. When you have chosen your keyboard you next enter your score. The grid shows each voice following a set pattern across the Rrid. You can then choose which row of music you wish to enter or edit. When you have the display corresponding to the selected row the screen is split horizontally into two: the top part shows the NOTE you will play and the bottom shows the Octave in which the note will play. Choosing octave 0 effectively plays a rest. Using the function keys you then LAY OUT your tune so that it looks like two bar charts. As you move your BAR up and down you can hear what you are entering so it is easy to correct mistakes. When you finish row MusiCalc /Synthesizers Sequencer Hv Richard W..ilc>n one you can then move through the grid one row at a time. It all sounds very difficult but takes only minutes to get used to. After that time it is very easy to use. No knowledge of music is needed to enter the selected score as it can all be done by ear. Using this method of entry it is also easy to copy in standard SHEET music fairly quickly and without too many mistakes. The other way of entering music is to switch into record mode: the notes you play using the qwerty keyboard are remembered. You play one voice at a time and can hear the first voice while playing the second voice and so on. The music you have entered via the keyboard is represented on your ROWS. This can then be edited easily and quickly as described above. A very clever idea and one which makes for easy production of songs. Within minutes I was able to bang out family favourites like ESKIMO NELL. If you like a set of sounds included in the presets you can use these in your own compositions, equally it is possible to adjust the sounds that the preset scores are played with. It is important to work through the manual as small points can be missed and it is possible to get into all sorts of tangles. My only real critisicisms are the way the keyboard responds. It seems a little slow in response to playing and takes a while to get used to. The other less important one is the relatively small score that can be built up. It is possible to give the impression of a long score by careful repetition but this is not easy. I think that this program has a massive amount of potential not only at home but in the professional field as well. I don't mean that you are likely to see Spandau Ballet using these in their performances but I think that, withthe addition of the other modules, groups who cannot read or write music can produce scores eaily and quickly. Other modules This leads me on to the other modules which are available. The first one of these will translate your scores into standard sheet music with the aid of a printer. This module also solves the problem of the limited score. Il will extend the length of score it is possible to construct without repetition: essential for professional use I would imagine. The third module can be used as a stand alone program but is really intended to be used with the main program. It allows the user to play arpeggios with one key, contains a visual editing mode to allow the user to set up the keyboard into any required arrangement and has many other functions. It would be unfair to make comment on these two modules as I have not seen them but I feel that the quality of them is probably up to the excellent quality of E MusiCalc 1 and so they would be a good buy. It is possible that these two modules may be reviewed in later issues of the magazine. To sum up the three modules, it is best to borrow Waveform's description: MusiCalc 1 is the instrument, MusiCalc 2 is the keyboard and MusiCalc 3 gives you a hardcopy of your music in standard musical notation. I have just discovered another little extra which is available: a disc containing preset drum rhythms. These would be ideal to base other compositions on and would be great to play along with if you play another instrument. Tnis is an excellent product and a good synthe- siser. I did want a Jupiter synth but I don't think I will bother now. MUSIC MASTER MUSIC MASTER BY SUPER- soft claims to make using the SID chip in the Commodore 64 easy. I oon't know about easy, but it at least makes it usable. The SID chip is unquestion- ably the most advanced music synthesis device in any micro. There is only one problem — to produce a note requires a huge amount of POKEing and bit slicing for each voice. When you can be bothered to work out the masses of computations involved the sound produced can only be described as excellent. Music Master goes some way to helping you to produce music that uses the full facilities of the SID chip. When the program loads, the main screen shows a piano keyboard representing most of two octaves. Other inform- ation around the edge of the screen gives you all the details that you could ever want to know. The most interesting is a small note at the bottom of the screen saying 'press shift-h for help screen'. Waveforms Following this advice leads you to three screens that summarise the comprehensive manual. Back to the main screen and you can start to experiment. Pressing keys on the keyboard makes a note sound on all three channels. The way the note sounds can be altered by using the waveform screens or the special effects screen. These screens allow you to manipulate the way the sounds are made to sythesize a piano or flute for instance. There are 10 preset waveforms that can be used, or you can make up your own. When you have got a sound that you like. Music Master can then create its own program of tspn tspn tspn i ■ • MUSICALC ■■■■■■■■■■■SB adsr adsr ddsr V ^■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■b qsrt 9srt 9si iV jllllUlllllllllll 1 * - ^■■llllllllllllll' ■ ■■■ ■■■■■■■■■> ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■a ■■■■ ■■■■■•■■■■■■■a Hit BH MM i |f a p^ = = sgosc ■■■■■■■ ■■■■■( I i 1 1 g Bfifg gg p ! ■ ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■a I I HHdl?3e M It 3456789J i i i ill (NU| 0123456 MOD POKEs to set up the SID chip for you, and dump it to tape or disc. This is a sound for sore ears as this is the biggest problem that the Commodore nas. Entering music Entering music into the system is quite easy. Tempo (speed of entering music) and the octave that the keyboard is in can be selected and then you're off. The three channels are displayed on the top of the screen. One of these channels can be manipulated atatime — the edit channel. When the music is entered it can be altered and changed to suit — extra notes added, notes removed, note values changed etc. The whole thing can be played back with speed changes if necessary. There is a limit on the number of notes in a channel, but whether this is 3000 or 1500 I don't know as it is a bit vague. The sound parameters or all three channels can be saved to tape or disc. One other feature is the backing music. This is the same as those awful Yamaha electric organs that were in fashion some years ago. Channel 2, 3, or both can be used with a list of 17 different backgrounds. You can then play over this. It makes almost total dross sound reasonable. This is not available from edit mode and you cannot store any music using this feature — only play it. Final note There are so many things that Music Master can do it rs beyond the scope of this review to go into them all in any great detail. I hope I have covered all the main important features. The disc version of the program comes with a large number of demo tunes ranging from 'A string of pearls' (spelt A$ of ...'!) to 'When I'm 64'!. Also, the demo programs from the manual are there. I don't know what the tape version contains, but the manual only mentions one tune. The big problem with the program is that the manual says that it is beyond its scope to explain how to incorporate the data that the program produces into your own programs. After a weekend's work and 2K of machine code later I agree — but it can be done. There is a program in the book that will play one channel at a time, but it is very unsatisfactory and can be improved 10 fold with the addition of a single line. This said, for the price it is an excellent program. I was very surprised to find that the main body of the program is in BASIC. If you want a music program for the 64 this is the one to get. re Deathstar, can you penetrale its I destroys you 7 ou 1 2 screens ol 3D graphics super e sound effecis. music, 4 skill levels b ultimate challenge! to be believed' You have noi »4 is capable o' until you have rlftr - CommodQi^fi*^. HOW TO ORDER ^Tb purchase Deathstar Interceptor. sirtipj IjteiAdaddress orP^Mece ot paper, enclosii ^GBBk payaDl|Io: SYSTEM 3 SOFTWAR| |jaddressj|HH ease a " ow 7 ,0 14 aa V s 1 Please aflH^Wfeeifca me ordered. South Bank House, Black Prince Roj Tel: (01) 587 0873 J □it WRITE YOUR OWN IMMTTT DEALER INQUIRIES EXPORT INQUIRIES WELCOME A This diagonally scrolling mazegame features superb 3D graphics brilliant sound effects and requires 1 00% concentration to successfully manoeuvre your helicopter through unknown hazards in order to complete Zaga Mission and live to play another day — Commodore 64 — £7.95 Also available on Disk 8t£ TRADE ENQUIRIES: ANIROG SOFTWARE LTD. 29 WEST HILL DARTFORD KENT (0322)92513/8 MAIL ORDER: 8 HIGH STREET HORLEY SURREY 24 HOUR CREDIT CARD SALES HORLEY (02934) 6083 PAYMENT BY CHEQUE P.O. ACCESS/VISA 50p POSTAGE & PACKAGING THE REAL TIME GAME SYSTEM 15000 The different game with the NEW ' TOTAL REALISM concept developed by sets you firmly in the middle of an International conspiracy where you have to use your computer together with SYSTEM 15000 to recover $1,500,1X10. The game is a 'real time' investigation that realistically captures the excitement of accessing computers by telephone and breaking their codes to obtain vital information. AVAILABLE NOW - CBM 64-BBC B SPECTRUM 48k Also available - The No. 1 chart success FLIGHT ZERO-ONE FIVE (VIC20) and the Helicopter Action Game - WHIRLWIND ONE-FIVE (VIC 20) SPECTRUM £9.95 BBC AND COMMODORE £12. .95 = ^ ===== ^ = CRAIG COMMUNICATIONS = I'D H( >\ 4f> HASIXi ;STt>KI. HAMS H(,>l I HA t'HOM. IOS6.55462 THUiX writ, SOTHXti iCHAIt. COMXH \ICA IIO\Si AND LEADING COMI'l 'TF.H STORES This month, Grahame Da vies, Your Commodore's D.I.Y. business enthusiast, looks at formatting numbers and sorting data. AN IMPORTANT SET OF routines are those which limit variable input to integers, one decimal place, two decimal place etc. and then format these numbers. Apart from the CBM 700, Commodore machines do not have a ROUND function or a PRINT- USING command and so we have to write our own. The advantage of being forced to do this is that we can format our numbers exactly how we like them. For instance you might format the number negative one thousand five hundred and sixty-three in various ways: DOING IT YOURSELF -1563 -1563.00 (1563.00) (1 563.00) (1,563.00) or if you were German (1.563,00) The BASIC INT command always rounds down thus 1.4, 1.5 and 1.9 will all become 1 if INT is performed on them. We now have to use this limitation to our advantage. The first function to write is a round-off function so that 1.4 = 1, 1.5 = 2 and 1.9 = 2. This is how rounding off is normally performed but if you require different rounding then it is a simple matter of altering the following function: 1120 def fnr{z) = int (z + .5) The function we have just defined will now round off to an integer and can be called bv a =1.5 : b = fnr(a).To round off to one decimal place we simply multiply by ten, perform the round off and then divide by ten: 1130 def fnr1(z) = int (z * 10 = -5J/10 To round off to two, three etc. decimal places, it is a simple extension of the above function: Programming 1140 def fnr2fz) = int(z ★ 100 + .5) /1 00 1150 def fnr3(z) = inl(z * 1000 + .5)/1000 Having done this, we can now set about formatting these variables into strings. The easiest way to do this is to write one general format subroutine for the variable with the most decimal places (we will use and then use smaller subroutines to call this one by simply truncating the string accordingly. Starting with the general format routine, we will format numbers to two decimal places and return a string of length ten. It is important that the string returned is always the same length so that listings will always be neat. We will also make sure that the routine handles negative numbers. explain briefly how a Bubble Sort and a Shell-Metzner Sort work, giving examples of each. The Bubble Sort is the most simple and most popular sort used by micro-computer owner. The principle is to scan along a set of data held in an array, comparing adjacent elements and swapping them if necessary. If there are N elements in the array then it has to be passed N minus one times to ensure that the sort is complete. If an element is at the wrong end of the array to start with, it is going to be swapped a lot of times before it reaches its sorted position. This is obviously going to be slow. Another problem is that for large arrays, the constant swapping of strings will cause one or more garbage collections thus slowing the sort even more. Each pass of 1*00 6i lnr 2(a>:a$.sw $(b.. 001 ) i i f t>«0 1 hena$:" . 00 - 1*10 rem ihere is a spare here ^ 1*20 aS-midSf- " , sgn ( a ) • 2 , I >: a$*a$*l*(t$(r ight$<" ■♦*$, 10), 9) 1*30 rem ff^ minus space Space 6 spaces l**o return This routine allows a floating point number up to 999.999.99 to be formatted. The first character returned is either a space or a minus sign depending on the sign of the number. If zero is returned, the first character is also a space. If you want to change this then change the first string in line 1420 ( mid$("- ") J to the symbols you require. This is in the format negative : zero : positive. So if you wanted a minus sign for negative, a plus sign for positive and an asterisk for zero, the string would be "- To format a string one decimal place, we simply have another subroutine such as: 1500a=fnr1(a):gosub1400:a$=le ft$(a$,9):return For formatting an integer you could still use the same standard routine: 1520 a=fnr(a):gosub1400:a$=lef i$(a$,7):return Sorting yourself out The next subject to tackle is the one of sorts. This subject is vast but for out purposes I will the data will result in one element ending up in its correct sorted position. More than one element may be sorted correctly but wo have no way of telling this and so this can be ignored. Each subsequent pass of the array will have to scan along one less element as they become sorted. The code for the Bubble Sort is therefore very short and convenient for sorting just a few items and here is an example — it sorts N items in A$(arravl into ascending order. Your Commodore will sort numbers faster than strings and it will sort short strings taster than long ones. To make use of this, if you had three hundred records each with one hundred characters of information then you should scan the array taking out the key and putting it into a second array together with a pointer to its original position. Sorting this second array with its snorter records will be much faster and you will end up with a sorted array of keys with pointers to the first array. If you do this, you must remember to keep your keys the same length otherwise the Siointer will get merged in and orm part of the key. 1600 for x = nl to 1 step -1 1620 for j = 1 to x 1640 if a$(j) a$(j*-1)thent$=a$(j) :a$(j)=a$(j+l):a$(j+1)=t$ 1660 next:next 1680 return Example of Bubble Sort The Shell-Metzner Sort is far faster because it makes swaps of items over greater distances and ii also does an "intelligent" Bubble Sort. It does less scans of the data but is more productive on each of these scans. This means that less swaps are made and so the speed increase natu-rally follows. The "intelligent" Bubble Sort referred to above is more easily explained with an example: if you have an un- sorted list such as A C D B E and you do one pass ot a bubble sort on it, you will end up with a list looking like this: A C B D E and it will require another pass to get it into a sorted order. The Shell-Metznei sort tries to move back after it has made a swap and then tests to see if further swaps may be made and so on. When it cannot make a swap, it moves forward to continue the rest of the scan. Thus the list will become ordered in only one pass: A C D B E goes to A C B D E (making the first swap the same as the Bubble Sort but then moving back one item to see if B may be swapped again) thus giving A B C D E in only one pass of the data. The information I have provided you with should be enough for you to see why the Shell-Metzner sort is faster although you will have to study it in greater detail *o fully appreciate it. The following example sorts N items into ascending order in A$ array. Both of these sorts will sort data in situ (not creating new arrays to sort into). If you had enough memory for duplicate array(s) then faster methodsare available but the above two should be adequate for most applications. 1700 sw=2T( int(log(n-l)/log(2)) + l ) 1720 swrsw/2 1740 p3=n-sw: p2=0: i f sw< 1 then return 1760 pl=p2 1780 p4 = pWsw:if a $ ( p 1 ) >a$ ( p4 ) then 1840 1800 P 2=p2* 1 : i fp2>p3 then 1720 18 20 goto 17*60 1840 t$=a$(pl ):a$(pl )=a$(p4) :a$(p4), t$ 1860 pl = pl-sw: ifpKO then 1800 1880 goto 1780 Example of Shell-Metzner Sort David Crisp examines tribulations COVERING SOMERSET, Devon, Cornwall and the Channel Islands PCS SOUTH- WEST have grown from very humble beginnings into one of the major home computer wholesalers in the area. Andy Denning, founder and present chief, started off as a salesman for a well known record company. As the home computer market started to expand he soon saw the potential and need for a distributor in the South West. He had already been selling records to many of the shops that were now beginning to stock home computers and software, so as a known face he had a head start on other salesmen. While calling on a customer he heard thai a recently formed distribution company were looking for agents to set up depots throughout the country. Andy left his sales job and within a few weeks he was touring the west country in an estate car selling the latest software at competitive prices. The car was his warehouse at first with his entire stock loaded into bread baskets. It was only a matter of months before his own house started to fill up. Andy says "I didn't want to get too big too quickly and so my wifeand I put upwiththe house being full of games just in case things went wrong". But nothing did and so he was forced to rent space where he could develop the business and put it on a more permanent rooting. Early days At about this time the Christmas rush of 83 was just starting. It was necessary for his wife's sister to help run the office while Andy carried on moving around getting into more and more retail outlets and receiving larger and more regular orders. It has always been his intention to know his product well and so when new software was released he made sure that COMPUTERS IN BUSINESS Andy Denning he tried it himself and could then decide whether or not it was worth stocking. With the rate at which new software is released it is not possible for him now to judge everything personally but everything they stock will be judged by one of his workers and their "opinion passed on to Andy. With competition between software houses as it is, software is often advertised on a large scale months before it is released. This obviously means that retail outlets are bombarded with requests for a particular game and in due course Andy is bombarded with orders from the retailers. He has to try and placate the retailer by explaining that despite the adverts the game is not yet available. He feels that he is the cushion between the software house and the customer and has to take a lot of unfair critisicm for not being able to meet demands. "It makes me look as if I am not getting the oods quickly enough and it fleet or loes reflect on me" ne says. Primarily software I pointed out to him that in some circles it was felt that computer and games sales had now reached their peak and would now begin a slow decline. His reaction was one of surprise. He said that since he had started there had been a progressive rise in sales and the trend seemed to continue to grow. He said that unlike the skateboard and CB radio, computers could always offer something new, an original game or a new application. Because of this he feels that although the rate of increase ay although the rate of increase may slow down as prices fall and the machines become more powerful there will always be a good market. Unlike many distributors he has not become too deeply involved in stocking the computers themselves. He will supply the hardware but only carries a small stock or gets to order. He says "If you get a bad batch of games it does not mean a massive amount of money has to be found in order to credit the retailer, however ten machines represents a large investment and you only need a few returns in order to make a big dent in the bank account". Christmas rush When I was there Andy was preparing for the Christmas rush. Trying to predict which games will be dead and which games will become popular is a nightmare, he says, and that is without any new releases that may appear between now and Christmas. From what I could see while I was there it seemed he had a very good 'nose' for predicting the sellers as when the phone rang he could fulfil almost every order, and many of the unfulfilled orders were due to being out of stock. I went to see Andy late one afternoon and while talking to him Adam, another of Andy's new recruits, was making upan order for a shop in Exeter. The order had only been received at five o-clock but it was being put together and would be delivered bv about six o'clock. This seemed to bear out what Andy had said about trying to get orders to the customer as fast as possible. Adam had started with Andy on a job creation scheme but Andy told me that he would be kept on as a full time employee after the scheme had finished. He said he enjoyed the work and Andy was a good boss who even made the tea! Recent weeks have not been the quiet period that was expected and the new premises taken over only a couple of months ago are already too small. New premises are required already and possibly more staff to cope. Expansion By the time you read this Andy will have made great strides towards even more expansion and should be distributing nationwide. He will obviously need more people on the road Profile Y to do this but he says whatever happens he will still take a key role and continue to offer fast efficient service, thus enabling Andy to buy software in larger quantities and therefore at a lower price. This should allow him to sell at even more competitive prices and so, with luck, these savings should be passed onto the customer. looking around I could see a Spectrum, Commodore 64 and a Dragon and these were being used to evaluate the last batch of new releases. The games were getting a good tryout and two were harshly criticised. "According to the adverts" says Adam "this is supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread. The graphics on the title page are brilliant but the game is a disaster, but due to the massive amounts of money spent on publicity it will sell and I am sure a lot of kids will be disappointed". A large box of tapes, joysticks and discs sat by the office door. Andy told me that they were faulty returns but when they check through he finds that many of them are perfectly OK and presumes that either instructions have not been followed or tapes have been copied then taken back to the retailer as faulty and simply sent back to him assuch. "It is one of thecoststhat I have to absorb" he says. Looking through the box myself I could see what he meant. I could also see that on such things as joysticks many of the returns were due to misuse. It seems that rather than upset retailers Andy will take them back in a lot of cases and simply repair or replace them. One of the other staff who works in the office is a young girl called Elaine; today she isat college as she also is on a job creation scheme. Andy feels that these schemes are an excellent thing and although they are misused by some on the whole they bring benefits to the people on them and to the employer. Certainly true in Andy's case as all the people on schemes sent to him have now been taken on as full time. Peripherals Apart from games Andy's second best seller is joysticks; I saw boxes full of joysticks in all colours, shapes and sizes and, while I was there, almost every order included some joysticks. He tells me that they seem lo be the first peripheral bought after the computer. Disc drives come next. I asked Andy if he wanted to become involved in software writing himself. I was surprised to see that he was in fact marketing an adventure game for the Spectrum under his own label. It was written using the Quill, a piece of software Andy rates highly, and is available for both the Spectrum and Commodore 64. It is called INSANITY and so far it seems to be doing very well. Plans for further releases are not yet known. Q Piracy I asked him if he had seen or been offered any pirate copies of popular games. He immedtately responded with an unprintable sentence of what he thought about pirate tapes. He has seen very good copies of populargamesat very low prices, but he says they are a recipe for disaster. As the software companies have to put up prices to cover the losses due to pirate copies, sales decline. More copies are made due to the price and so on. It is a vicious circle which cannot be stopped once it gets out of hand. Who is going to spend hours writing and marketing high quality software only to see it ripped off within days of it's release and, in some cases, before it's release? Not only will the prices rocket but the quality of software will drop. American software Talking of quality Andy pointedout to me some of the new releases from the USA. They had to be seen to be believed. He feels that this injection of high quality software will force UK writers to think hard and long about the quality of their own goods. Although he is sad for the companies that will obviously 'go under' he feels it is only right that the customer should be able to get the best available for their machine. He is a little worried about the state of the pound of late and says that just as the price of imported software should have been dropped, bang went the exchange rate. This will make price cutting difficult if not impossible and in a few cases may even mean upping the price of imports. He also pointed out to me that over nere we are only seeing the best of the American games. He says that over there you can find a lot of very low quality software for sale. I asked him what he thought about the high hardware prices over here compared with the States. He told me that unfortunately he felt it would always be the same. He says that apart from the exchange rate the sheer volume of sales potential over there means profit margins can be very low. If you can sell a machine or peripheral to just 1% of users over there you are talking about hundreds of thousands of sales. It is the same for everything over there — cars, records the lot. I could see what he meant. Business sense Andy is pleased to see home micros being used for other things as welfas games. "When I first started it was almost impossible to get any business software for any of the machines and what you could get was not worth having. That has all changed now and some of the business software for the Commodore 64 for instance is infinitely more superior than software that is being run on 'real' business machines", he said. At the moment Andy is looking to get his business computerised. Andy told me "It is a hard choice. I need a fast and powerful machine and the amount of information I need to store will, without doubt, require a hard disc system. I also need something that will grow with the business as once I get the system set up I don't want to find that it is going to need changing after a few months. I've almost come to a decision on the machine I want. It's now just a matter of getting the right software". For a non-computerised office everything was incredibly well ordered. Andy said that speed was important to him and that he had to have everythig well organised. This was borne out by the fact that virtually no orders were mislaid and very few orders were late in being delivered. It was this reliability that had helped him succeed where others had failed. "There is no hard sell here. We don't get on the phone all the time asking for orders. People know where we are and they will order from us as long as we do what we do well." "Our van goes round most of our customers once a week or at worst once a fortnight. The shops are, in most cases, able to take their stock immediately from the van. They can see what they are buying at the time without having to rely on what they have read about it. Of course it is not possible for us to relv on our dealers. Take the Channel Islands for instance, all the business there is done by post or telephone. If a shop is not too far out they can go on our regular route. That way they know when we will be there and that they will find plenty of stock in the van; of course they can still order between visits and we send orders out the same day or the next morning at the latest. In most cases we find that the post gets everything where we want it very quickly but urgent orders can be sent by courier. This means that people often have their orders by the next morning." Final note While I was in the office another account was opened with PCS. A customer in Devon was dissatisfied with their E resent wholesaler and had eard from another dealer that PCS S.W. were fast and reliable. That customer would have the van round to him the next day. Andy tells me that they rarely have to go out and find new business now; their reputation is spreading and most new accounts come through recommendation. To Andy tnis is a good indication that he is still doing things right and will continue to do it this way grow- ing bigger and better faster. E More companies than ever before appeared at this year's PCW show. Your Commodore was there to sample their wares. SHOWDOWN AT OLYMPIA MICROMANIA HIT THE metropolis on 19th September. For five days a regular army of businessmen and journalists, grandads and eager schoolboys marched through the doors of Olympia 2. Deals were made, joysticks twiddled and books perused. The conglomeration of traders displaying their wares made it all too clear that Christmas starts early in the computer world. The 7th PCW show had arrived in town. Distributed over three floors of the exhibition centre with the 'big names' on the ground floor, business on the first level and entertainment on the second, this year's exhibition was hailed by the organisers as the'biggest and best yet. Showbiz reared its gaudy head with clowns and acrobats, American footballers with cheerleaders in low, Anirog's P.C. Fuzz on his unicycle and a trio of forlorn tiger cubs. But, under cover of the fun and frivolity, the stage was set for battle (not only on the computer screens!) and eyes were turned to the competition. Commodore live Even overcome by the sheer immensity of the occasion. Commodore fans had no excuse (unless they had made their entrance illicitly through a back window) for bypassing Commodore's latest products. Machines and peripherals, old and new, arose out of a patriotic sea of Commodore red, white and blue. Commodore's four stands, including also the new modem and a mass of software, were strategically placed to the left of the main entrance. But Commodore obviously face tough competition as illustrated by the vast output from software houses up and down the country. Sport and spies The football season got off to a kicking start with Addictive Games' 'Football Manager' and Argus Press Software's much advertised 'American Football'. Sport was also featured with Ocean's 'Daley Thompson's Decathlon' and Quicksilva's 'Summer Games' based on this Summer's Olympic Games. Any budding Shoestrings or P.C. Plodds might have been tempted to enter the world of crime fighting as A&F's private eye, 'Gumshoe', Hill Mac- Gibbon's 'Special Agent' or Anirog's 'P.C. Fuzz'. The latter program uses Currah's 'Speech 64', featuring two voices and a text-to-speech system, which was also launched to the public at the PCW show. Audiogenic and Beyond Audiogenic were out to prove that big business wasn't all fun and games with their three Commodore 64 business packages for the small businessman — 'Wordcraft 40', 'Magpie' and 'Swift'. They also catered for anv aspiring artist with their Koala Pad. a graphics tablet which enables the production of full colour drawings and illustrations directly on the screen. But Audiogenic are still entren- ched in the games scene with six recent disc-based games — 'Alice in Videoland' (an adventure based on Lewis Carroll's novel), 'Frantic Freddie', 'Pegasis', 'Forbidden Forest'. 'Aztec Challenge' and 'Slinky'. Beyond, already renowned for their best-selling Spectrum games, 'Psytron' and'Tne Lords of Midnight', have released a 64 version of 'Psytron', 'Psytron 64', along with 'Ankh', 'Aztec' and 'Mr. Robot". Also in the offing at the time of going to press were 'My Chess II' and J Psi-Warrior\ Bubble Bus and co Parked on the ground floor, tucked behind the Com- modore stands, was Bubble Bus Software. 'Cave Fighter', described as 'an all action jumping, climbing and shooting game', is their latest release for the 64. but Bubble Bus were also showing off other favourites such as 'Bumping Buggies', 'Flying Featners' and 'Widows Revenge' for the 64 and Antimatter Splatter', 'Exter- minator' and The Catch' for the VIC 20. Creative Sparks sank from the sublime, with Macbeth', to the ridiculous, with 'Danger c I GUMSHOE how report Mouse in Double Trouble', based on the popular TV carloon character. And Microdeal were trying to bury poor old Cuthbert again witn their new Commodore 64 game, 'Cuthbert Enters the Tombs of Doom'. Channel 8 shouldn't have alienated too many of their fans with three new arcade games for the 64. 'Phase 4' and 'Time Zone' follow similar alien- attack themes and, in Channel 8's other space game, as 'Borzak the Amazing Bug-Eyed Beastie from Betelgeuse' falls out of his spaceship into a marsh on earth, you must assist him back to the ship. Hero time Action-packed adventure was certainly in the air with Elite's 'Kokotoni Wllf, Melbourne House's 'Zim Sala Bim' and Ocean's 'High Noon'. As Kokotoni Wilf, your aim is to recover all the pieces of the legendary Dragon Amulet whilst dodging the dangers which cross your path. In 'Zim Sala Bim', you move your character through the Arabian desert and, with luck, into the Sultan's seemingly impene- trable palace. Ana 'High Noon' is a Western Adventure whereby you must keep the peace in a frontier town by shooting the bandits and preventing them from escaping with the girls or gold; it features an aptly named character — Riga Mortis, the undertaker! Bandits also featured in New Generation's 'Cliff Han- ger' in which our hero, Cliff, must stop the evil bandits from shooting up the canyon. It features cartoon-style sequences and humour, based on the popular road-runner series. Animal magic Things turned hairy again at Llamasoft with Geoff Minter's latest offering, 'Ancipital'. Mr. Minter describes the Ancipital as 'the harassed-looking little half-man, half-goat creature which scuttles across the planetary surface' in Sheep in Space and the game includes 100 rooms, goats to collect and the villain of the piece, Rory the Vicious Guinea Pig. Quicksilva have also gone animal crackers with their Commodore Attack'. version COMMODORE 64 Final offerings Bikes and cars always lend well to computer games and this show was certainly no exception with Martech s 'The Official Eddie Kidd Jump Challenge', Micro Powers Stock Car' and 'Car Journey' from Hill MacGibbon. Also new from Micro Power came 'Bumble Bee' for the 64. But these had to share the limelight with other Micro Power gems like 'Ghouls', 'Cybertron Mission', 'Felix in the Factory' and 'Swoop'. Activision. one of the ghts in 64 software. also exhibited some of their top games for the 64 — 'Pitfall II , ^Beamrider', 'Hero', 'Zenji', 'Toy Bizarre' — as well as their Designer' Pencil which enables you to draw on the screen with a joystick And there were many more besides — Virgin Games (recent purchasers of the Rabbit brand name and logo) with 'Terrorist' and 'Falcon Patrol 2', a vast array of software from U.S. Gold such as Forbidden Forest' and Aztec Challenge', and graphics tablets from British Micros (Grafpad) and Touchmaster, as well as shelf upon shelf of books and magazines (al- though only one of these, of course, was a worthy purchase!) Widows Revenge COMMODORE 64 As seen in the national press XH© PfiZGSZ en in th e na tiona You could win £2,500 to be spent on a dream holiday of your choice for you and your family! Second prize — a complete Canon portable video outfit worth £1 ,300. Third prize— a BBC Model B micro computer plus software worth £450. Fourth prize— Minolta X700 camera with a 50mm lens and flashgun, worth £280. # How to enter: Just identify the twelve objects pictured opposite.... H I NT —the Arg us Specialist Magazines listed below might give you aclueT Games Computing Photoplay Movies and Video ZX Computing Electronics Today International Personal Computing Today Movie Maker Your Model Railway Clocks Home Computing Weekly Beatbox Ham Radio Today Electronics 35mm Photography Model Cars Woodworker Military Modelling Hi-Fi Now 1 Wine maker Citizens' Band Model Boats Video Today Popular Cratts Which Video? Your Commodore and write your (one-word) answers in the spaces provided oi the coupon. Forinstance, if you think thatnumber9isa record , write ' record' in the space next to 9 on the coupon ani soon. Then tell us in upto 20 words why MAGAZINES MAKE IDEAL HOLIDAY READING. Complete the coupon in BLOCK LETTERS, and send it to: DREAM HOLIDAY COMPETITION. Argus Specialist Publications Ltd., No 1 Golden Square, London W1R3AB. to reach us no later than 31st December 1984. Competition rules 1 The competition s open 10 all UK and Fire readers ercepl emptoyees ol Argus Speotilisl Publications Lid Iheir rmnle's and dislrimlois 2 As long as at) original coupon Irom the maga^nefs) or your choice is used lor each entry Ihere is no WW to Pie number olonlnospor person PnoKcopted coupons will not bp accepted 3 All entries must be postmarked belore 3 '9 Docembor I9A4 A I ho pn/es will be awarded 10 Ihe first lour enlranls who doniily the twelve objects correctly and whose completed sentence istudged iho mosi apt and ongmal b No correspondence w* be entered mlo aboul Ihe compclilon results the judges deosion is fcnal 6 Winners will be nohhed by posl and Ihe resuK w* be published *i a future issue ol this magazine The 12 objects are 1 4 7 10 2 5 8 11 3. . 6. . « 9. . 12. Magazines make ideal holiday reading because (up to 20 words) AGE (if under 18). NAMEfBLOCK LETTERS) ADDRESS Send to DREAM HOLIDAY COMPETITION, Argus Specialist Publications, No 1 Golden Square, London W1 R 3AB NAVIGATOR ftf.SMHM hjM-taKaEMif EXECUTIVE OFFICER □met lm»>n«» SCIENCE OFFICER SKrtiiv* umiuMM Mfani- OcaMn*r«09cai CAPTAIN Sow Dtpvrtitt*. Coungnu- EictHM ItMv ENGINEERING OFFICER °ny Strang Law I Q PoltntWlNMMftM JROOfFKER AuKwaMln, MnoimM ENGINEERING OFFICER Unl-iiitwoilhy. IMbpptta THE CREW Personnel files follow — yours to command — well almost... SPECTRUM 48K- CBM64 Featuring the unique Personality Control System No. 1 Golden Sauare. London W1R 3AB. TeleDhone 01-437 0626 Simon Palmer unlocks the mind of John Wagstaff, rock star turned programmer, and the brain behind Craig Communications' System 15000. MID-19B3 WITNESSED THE launch of Flight Zero-One- Five, a flight simulator for the unexpanded VIC-20. It contained no graphics but proved that outstanding software could be reproduced in just 3.5K of memory. Since its release it has sold upwards of 16.000, and is still selling. Its creator was John Wagstaff. A very tall gentleman with long black hair, he started employment at the age of 17 on a fairground with his parents. John then became a musician, receiving gold discs for songs he had written. He earned fame and fortune in Germany (anyone who has ever heard of Lee Kristofferson will realise that Lee and John are one and the same). But he soon discovered that, even though he had 'made it' in Europe to a certain extent, the money did not immediately come pouring in. With cash running low and to stop himself from going mad, John bought a VIC-20 for £200. He taught himself to program and, a year or so later, released Flight Zero-One Five followed by Whirlwind One-Five, which achieved moderate success, and, finally, by his latest baby. System 15000. a communications game. Craig Communications The first company to accept John's software and distribute it was N.K.K., where David Giles was already working as the sales-force of this two-man operation. His job was to visit shops and persuade them to buy various titles distributed by N.K.K.. After two months, David's efforts proved so successful that N.K.K. were bought up by a larger concern — Ferranti & Craig, who had been looking for a company to handle distribution. Richard Craig, the final ingredient in the 'mix' spotted N.K.K. Throughout this change, John Wagstaff's software was still selling and, finally. System 15000 was released. In May 1984, Richard Craig left Ferranti BEHIND CLOSED & Craig taking with him David Giles and, inevitably, John's software. A brand new company emerged from this re-shuffle — Craig Com- munications with David Giles in charge of the software side and Richard Craig responsible for the rest of the organisation. The re-release of all John Wagstaff's software followed swiftly, with a better style presentation for System 15000 and careful attention it had not received under Ferranti & Craig's guidance. The stage was now set for System 15000 to revolutionise adventure games. System 15000 System 15000 is a new breed of game. Whereas with a normal adventure exercise the game can whish you off to an island or transform you into a detective in hot pursuit of a murderer. System 15000 turns your computer into a computer, the monitor into a monitor and plugs an imaginary modem into the back of the computer, thus introducing you to the B.B.C.'s 'Bird of Prey typesituation. It is such a simple idea yet no-one has thought of it before now. System 15000 also differs from other adventures in that, since it is a modem simulation game, you can, by dialling a number, return again and again to various computers at any time in the game. It is a Profile genuine real-lime commun- ications investigation. For those not familiar with it already, the following synopsis should arouse both interest and enthusiasm. Your friend's company has been ripped off to the tune of 1,500,000 dollars in a deal it has negotiated. A colleague has contacted you, giving System 15000 and a modem utility and asking you to help get the money back into the swindled company's bank account. He also provides one telephone number, an access coae and two names; armed with this information, you open your investigation! Sitting comfortably op- posite |ohn Wagstaff in the pleasant surroundings of his living room, trusty pen poised above paper, I asked him where he found the idea for System 15000. "It just came to me and. at first. I could not believe it. So obvious, yet after almost endles searching through magazines and the like, I could not find any indications of other people being there first". How long had it taken him to write it from the initial concept to the finished product? "About nine months of bleeding eves" was the reply. David Giles appeared and weighed in with: "John wouian t even tell me what it was until he had completed it ready for playing — and even then he refused to tell me how to proceed. He just said 'play it" . I must agreeethat detailed instructions are very sparse but, according to John, this is totally intentional. With the old-age consideration of value-for- money. I asked whether the price was not a little steep — isn't £12.95 somewhat excessive for a single program? John's reply was quite logical and emphatic. "People can, and some- times do, pay in excess of £12.95 for a hard-back book of merit and feel that they are getting good value. The same applies to good software with its underlying creative base, intellectual challenge and complexity. If it gives you a good run for your money, where's the argument?" I personally do not need any persuasion to this viewpoint, having myself reviewed quite a number of games programs and con- stantly wishing for more writers of John's calibre and standards. John emphasised that heaimed to produce good quality software rather than higher quantities of less meritorious products. He regards with stronR dislike the companies who flood the market with mediocre products, thus devaluing a positive potential for intellectual and. at the same time, entertaining pursuits. "I owe a great deal to the good people who buy my software — it pays my food bills and stops me from starving. That, after all, is how I got my first computer. I wasn't having much success in getting my money for the records I produced for the German market, and we were literally starving. I am sure that buying that computer did stop me from going mad". Reminding him of his earlier statement that it took nine months to write System 15000. I asked if he had experienced any problems. He chuckled: "I have a little saying that every programmer should write out and place above his computer THERE'S ALWAYS ONE MORE BUG' ". j pressed him, and he continued: "The telephone aspect of the game did present a problem or two; one number which I initiated for the American section of the game turned out to be 'Dial a Blue Joke'! I changed it, but quick! I also had to get permission from the various telecommuni- cation authorities for the useof their different dialling and engaged tones for the U.K. and overseas. Music and computers Apart from John's first computer warding off imminent insanity, were there any other reasons for deciding on the purhcase?" "Yes, I am in the entertainment business and. at the personal level, they are bought mostly for entertain- ment and have become instruments, both audio and visual for entertainment purposes. Music is after all a form of software, a complex writing sytle embracing almost infinite interpretive functions with both intellectual and entertainment potential. Computers and software can be made to perform the same functions, the only difference being that computers are interactive with the operator". John, as I have already said, is an accomplished musician. On the wall above where we sit hangs a gold record and. alongside, a gold cassette for 10,000 copies sold of Flight Zero-One-Five presented, ironically enough, by Ferranti & Craig! Does he see computers making an even bigger impact in the music arena? "If you think about it, computers are already in music in a very big way. In keyboards, drum machines and mixing desks. Synthesised sound is now an established medium, having progressed from an embellishment role such as echo-boxes to the present-day reproduction capability of musical instruments, and onward to new and previously unheard of tones". John's first encounter with computers was in fact in the studio where he worked on his recordings. 'Apples' were used as an integral part of their mixing system. To illustrate this point, he led me into another room and showed me histrusty CBM 64 which he had linked up, via sequential circuits, MIDI interface and software, to a Poly-800 keyboard, drum machines and mixing desks. He then gave me a thoroughly competent demonstration of some of the capabilities of this set-up. Impressed? I certainly was! (If this has aroused your interest in MIDI systems, reach for your back issues of 'Your Commodore' and re-read our MIDI articles). Other ideas I asked John whether he thought the CBM 64 was an easy machine to handle for programming? He replied that, although it is a powerful machine with much more unexploited potential, there is the hurdle of Commodore BASIC to negotiate every time. Alongside all this music equipment, I could not fail to notice a large amount of machinery for video editing. When asked whether he had yet combined computers and videos, he answered that the closest he had got so far was in the use of slide projectors linked with a music track and controlled by a computer. It is an idea which has been used before for all sorts of purposes in a variety of settings from schools to concerts. He opined that if the technology could advance further, he had some ideas of his own which he would like to try: "What I'm waiting for is a computer that can handle those ideas!". I could not help thinking of the current use of computers in stage presentations to control lighting systems such as the Vari-light used by Genesis. School chips Leaving the musical sur- roundings, we rejoined David in the lounge. Would John consider writing software for the education market seeing that the coming generations will be living and influenced by computers on an ever- increasing scale? He has not yet seriously considered this but 'SVSTEM i5t>dt> V the real time fUU SOUND AND COLOUR VlC7.0 FULL SO does agree that imparting knowledge does not have to be boring! At this point, David interjected: "My kid sees a computer and recognises it without any problem. It seems that children as young as three aren't scared of them". John believes thai, had a VIC-20 been around five years earlier, it would have been regarded with awe as though it were a mainframe in a plastic box! However, the improved understanding of the com- puter's role in present-day life is reducing the mystique which hitherto surrounded these machines, and the unquestion- ing acceptance of computers, particularly by the younger generation, is fast consolid- ating their influence and impact on our way of life. One can only hope it will be completely beneficial. Inevitably, the older folk have trouble in appreciating and accepting them, but this has always been the case through history with every develop- ment since Man first used a fallen branch to lever away that obstinate lump of rock which barred the way into a likely looking cave! Reputation We finally returned to the subject of John Wagstaff and Craig Communications. Did they worry about their reputation? Yes, they did — and to a surprising extent. Said David, "John used to check one in ten of every Flight Zero- One-Fives before despatch". "I used to sit with my VIC-20 plugged in with a tall pile of programs on one side and the passed' software on the other", added John. This certainly paid dividends: of 16,000 copies sold, only about 200 were returned and, of these, roughly 180 were customer errors. All of which amply demonstrates John's philosophy of value for money, initiated during his earlier struggles as a recording artist. None of John's software has his name on it, his reason being: "Because some people must have their names on Eroducts as an ego trip, but a alance must be maintained; others sign their work in the hope of recognition and consequently more employ- ment". John likes to think that, maybe, his work is so highly individual it does not need a 'tag'. • And finally I asked John about the future. Would there be a sequel to System 15000? "Almost certainly". The quotes are closed because he did divulge some of his ideas for a follow- up but, I think it would be unfair to John, and it would spoil your fun, were I to pre- empt his next product. I hope that this insight into the mind of John Wagstaff will assure you that not everyone is in the software business to rip you off. This man has standards and I think that things to come will prove to be as much 'value for money' as System 15000. AT LAST 1 TAPE 2 MACHINES COMMODORE 64 VIC 20 MINIPEDES It is the height of summer and the garden is buzzing with bees and bugs. Minipede. a mutant mushroom monster advances relentlessly towards you. devouring everything in its path. 1 5 screens of fast and furious action make Minipedes a real challenge to the arcade enthusiasts. Commodore 64 - VIC 20 16K J.S. or K B. £5.95 Experience the thrills of the gambling cenirA of the world from the comfort of your own armchair. Both versions include features such as spinning reels, hold, number-feature nudges, gamble /collect, spin score and hi-score. The Commodore 64 version has additional features, nudge, reward lucky 3, step-a-win and hi- score tables. As with any arcade machine the odds are stacked against youl Tom is trapped in a scrolling maze populated by loathsome creatures, guardians of the lost treasures of the Magezam Six separate screens, five levels of difficulty and four player option provide an exciting challenge for the whole family. Another stunner from the author of BONGO! (1 to 4 players) Commodore 64 - VIC 20 16K J.S. £5 95 Commodore 64 - VIC 20 1 6K K B £5 95 J.S. AND KEYBOARD £7.95 CSAMftVICSOMC J.S. £7.95 J.S. AND KEYBOARD £5.95 J.S. or KEYBOARD £7.95 J.S £7.95 COMMODORE 64 VIC 20 TRADE ENQUIRIES: ANIROG SOFTWARE LTD. 29 WEST HILL DARTFORD KENT (0322)92513/8 MAIL ORDER 8 HIGH STREET HORLEY SURREY 24 HOUR CREDIT CARD SALES HORLEY (02934) 6083 PAYMENT BY CHEQUE P.O. ACCESS/VISA 50p POSTAGE & PACKAGING - the sophisticated spreadsheet ! Easy to learn, easy to use - something that can't be said of many business programs. But it's true of all the programs in the BUSICALC series. BUSICALC 3 can handle all sorts of jobs - budgets, expenditure analysis, stock lists, price lists, and product costing are just a few of the possibilities. TTiree-dimensional formulae automatically access data stored on disk, so that you can easily pull together information from several different sheets and summarise or manipulate it. It's simple to transfer data to other programs such as Easy Script. And you can use virtually any printer with BUSICALC 3, whether dot matrix or daisy wheel. Commodore or non-Commodore. For the CBM 64 and PET/CBM 4000 & 8000 series. Available through dealers or from: Supersoft, Winchester House, Canning Road, Harrow HA3 7SJ Phone 01-861 1 166 for more details and a free catalogue.