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Text File | 1989-01-07 | 18KB | 356 lines

WELCOME TO ------------------------------ A M A Z I N G C O N S T R U C T I O N S E T ------------------------------ A Drawing and Maze Generating Program DEMO Version 1.01 Copyright (C) 1988, by Steven Pauley, All rights reserved. Play testing by Drew and Darin Pauley This program was written in Personal Pascal, a product of ICD and CCD. AMAZING Construction Set (ACS) Files Should Include: --------------------------------------------------------- AMAZING1.PRG AMAZING1.DAT AMAZING2.DAT AMAZING3.DAT AMAZING4.DAT AMAZING1.DOC UPDATE.DOC - may be included if there have been any changes made since the main doc file was written. Several picture files with the .AMZ extender * ACS Requires an Atari ST with at least 350K and a color monitor --------------------------------------------------------- THIS IS A DEMO VERSION - You may copy this DEMO VERSION freely and distribute it to others as long as you DO NOT modify the program or it's data files in any way, or charge a fee for duplication or distribution. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN USER GROUPS - User groups may make this demo of ACS, it's data files, sample drawings and this DOC file part of their club disk library. No club shall make a profit from distributing these files. ACS and all of the support files must be kept together on the same disk and in the same directory. BBS's - You may make ACS availiable on your BBS system as long as ACS, it's data files, sample drawings and this DOC file, are all part of the same ARChive file. --------------------------------------------------------- Set-Up ---------------------------------------------------------- ACS can be run from either a hard disk or floppies. All of the ACS files must be on the same drive, and in the same folder, for ACS to run. The picture files with the .AMZ extender can be kept in any folder on any drive. ACS needs its four data files (the ones with the .DAT extender), or it will refuse to run. Your Personalized copy of ACS ----------------------------------------------------------- Amazing Construction Set is a copyrighted program. You may not make copies and give or sell them to anyone. You may use ACS on one and only one computer at a time. ACS is not copy-protected and you may make back-up copies for your own use only. Your copy of ACS has been personalized so that if you do spread copies around, I will be able to trace the copies back to the source. PLEASE DO NOT violate my copyrights. I have hundreds of hours in programing this program and it would be nice if I could make a few bucks for my efforts. Why a Maze Drawing Program? ------------------------------------------------------------ AMAZING Construction Set (ACS) was originally written for my two sons Drew and Darin. I got the idea for the program after watching them do mazes on the back of children's menus at restaurants. Many of these mazes were inside of animal shapes or other drawings. AMAZING Construction Set is a computer drawing and maze generating program that lets you draw shapes that the computer then turns into mazes. These mazes can then be solved on the screen by you or you can have the computer solve them while you watch or print the maze out on paper and solve it with a pencil. Don't be fooled by the origin of this program, a full screen maze can be very difficult to solve. I would suggest that you start out with smaller drawings at first, otherwise you may become frustrated. Although some of your large mazes may seem impossible to solve, it's impossible to create a maze that does not have an open path all the way from start to finish. The print routines in this program were written for the Epson MX-80 printer. Many other printers support the MX-80 format and this program should work fine with them. The Star Micronics NX1000 is one of the printers that support the Epson mode, and works great. The program is still useable without ever printing the maze out on paper, since you can draw a picture and solve the maze right on the screen. Instructions ----------------------------------------------------------- The program is so simple to use, that the need for instruction seems unnecessary. However, You may miss out on how to use some of the hidden controls in the program that are not obvious from just trying the program. The following is a description of ACSרs features and controls. Reading this will give you a good introduction to the main features and hints on how to use the not so obvious features of ACS. I have tried to make ACS as mistake proof as possible so that even young children can use the program. My 8 year old has no problem running the program and using all of its features. Saving and loading pictures may be confusing to younger children. Looking at the Screen ----------------------------------------------------------- After the title screen has loaded and run its little demo of a maze being generated, you should see the main ACS screen like the one below. The main program screen has two basic parts. The left 3/4 of the the screen is the drawing area, which is a grid 78 squares across and 63 squares down. The right 1/4 of the screen is the control panel, where all the features of the program may be selected. How to Start Your Drawing ----------------------------------------------------------- Whenever you move the mouse pointer over the drawing area the pointer will turn into a pencil shape. This will let you know that you are in the drawing mode. When you are in the drawing area you can draw black squares by pressing and holding down the left mouse button, while you move the pointer around on the screen. You can erase the black squares by holding down the right mouse button. If you move the mouse to fast, it may not be able to keep up with you and any line that you try to draw will be broken. Be careful when drawing near the right edge of the drawing area, or you may end up selecting one of the options from the control panel. If this happens you can always use UNDO to change your drawing back the way it was. Simple silhouette type drawings make the best mazes. A very complicated drawing might not make a very good maze. If you want any white lines to show up in your drawing, make sure that you draw them at least two squares wide. If you donרt, they may not show up very well and may look more like a path instead of a line, when you generate your maze. Maze Drawing Rule ------------------------------------------------------------ Each square of your drawing must be connected on at least one of its four sides to some other square in your drawing and all objects or parts of your drawing must be connected. Your drawing will not make a maze unless you follow this simple maze drawing rule. Control Panel ------------------------------------------------------------ On the right of the screen are the 17 buttons that you can use to select the different ACS options. When an option has been selected, the lettering will turn red. If the option letters are gray, that option is not active. Some of the option buttons will display messages to keep you informed about what is happening. Each time you select an option, ACS makes a back-up of your current drawing and saves it in the undo buffer. So if you select an option and then change your mind, you can restore your screen by selecting the UNDO option button. FILL SCREEN - When you select this option, the entire drawing grid will be filled with black squares. This will cover up any drawing that you might have on the screen. This option can be undone by selecting the UNDO button before you select any other option. If you want to fill only a selected area of the screen, use the SHAPE FILL/ERASE option button. ERASE SCREEN - This option will erase everything that is in the drawing area. This option can be undone by selecting the UNDO button before you select any other option. SHAPE FILL/ERASE - When you select this option your pointer will turn into a large cross. You will then be able to select an area of your drawing to fill or erase. If you select a white area, that area will be filled with black. Make sure that the area to fill with black is completely surrounded with a black border, or your fill will leak out and fill areas that you did not intend. If the fill leaks out, before you pick any other option, you can use the UNDO command to recover your drawing. If you select a black area to fill, that area will be erased or filled with white. This is very handy for erasing small areas of the screen. This option can be undone by selecting the UNDO button before you select any other option. SHIFT ARROWS - The four ARROW buttons can be used to shift your drawing 5 squares in the direction of the arrow you select. If part of your drawing shifts off one of the sides of the grid it will be lost and cannot be recovered by shifting back the other way. If you want to recover the part of the drawing that shifted off the screen, use the UNDO option. 4-WAY MIRROR - Use this option to draw or erase with a kind of kaleidoscope effect. This option makes some real nice symmetrical drawings possible. I use this option to help draw circles, squares and other symmetrical objects. Sometimes it's fun to just scribble with this option and see what happens. SAVE - This option will save your drawing to disk. You must use the .AMZ extender in your file name. The drawings are saved in a compacted form and take up very little space. It is a good idea to save these into a folder to help keep things more organized. ACS saves only your drawing and not any maze that you may have generated. LOAD - This option will load any previously saved maze drawing. It will only let you load a file with the .AMZ extender. GENERATE MAZE - This option will first check your drawing to see if all the parts are connected correctly. If all the parts connected correctly, it will erase the blue grid and add walls between your drawing squares. Then it will generate a maze inside of your drawing and ask you for a START & FINISH point. The legal start and finish points will be highlighted with red squares. Select your choice with the left mouse button. When you select a start and finish, your choice will remain and the other points will be erased. After you have generated a maze and have picked the start and finish point, the PRINT and PLAY button will become active. You will then have the option of PLAYing your maze on the screen or PRINTing it on paper. If parts of your drawing are not connected correctly, you will be given the option of returning to the drawing screen to fix the drawing yourself or you can have the computer try and make the correct connections in your drawing. It will make up to ten tries to fix your drawing before giving up. You can interrupt the fixing process by holding down the right mouse button. It may take a few seconds to finish that fix level, before it checks for the depressed mouse button. If you decide to fix the drawing yourself the computer will highlight in red those areas that it found disconnected from where it started to check your drawing. This feature may be of help in spotting simple drawing errors. If there are many disconnected parts in your drawing this highlight feature will be of little value and can be ignored. PRINT - The print option lets you print your maze on paper using an Epson MX-80 compatible printer. You have the choice of three different speeds/resolutions. The higher the resolution the longer it will take to print. You can stop the printing at any time by holding down the right mouse button. You can save printing time by making your drawing more vertical than horizontal. I use a print buffer with ACS and find it to be real handy, since printing some of the mazes can take a while. PLAY - This option lets you play with your maze on the computer screen. You have two play options. Option 1 - Let the computer solve the maze on the screen while you watch. You can slow the mouse down by holding the left mouse button down. To stop the mouse from finishing, hold the right mouse button down. Option 2 - Try and solve the maze yourself on the screen using the mouse to guide the pencil through the maze. Draw a blue line through the maze by holding the left mouse button down as you move the mouse. ACS will not let you draw an unconnected line or let you draw across walls. You must stay on the paths and your line must be continuous from the starting point. Pressing the right mouse button during PLAY mode will exit that mode. * When you are done printing and/or playing with your maze, select the UNDO option, which will return you to your drawing. Each time you select GENERATE MAZE, ACS will generate a new random maze. The maze that it generates will be different each time, even if you start with the same drawing. UNDO - When you are in the drawing mode, this option will let you recover from most of your mistakes. When you select this option your drawing will be returned to the way it was before you selected the last option. This will help you recover your drawing in most cases, but it is always wise to save your drawing from time to time in case something goes wrong or you change your mind. REDRAW - This option has two functions. First, you should use this option to change any red squares back to black before you select GENERATE MAZE. If you don't and the computer highlights some more squares, you will not be able tell the newly highlighted red squares from the old ones leftover from before. Second, this will update the UNDO buffer. You can use this as a way of backing up your drawing before you make any changes that you may want to UNDO. HELP - This option will let you review all of the built in instruction screens. QUIT - I bet you can guess what this button will do. Make sure you save your drawing before you pick this option or your drawing will be lost. Well That's It ------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your purchase of ACS. I hope you enjoy the program. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions, you can reach me by mail or modem. My Address is: Steve Pauley 2547 - 83rd Court North Brooklyn Park, MN 55444 U.S.A. You can also reach me by modem on the MAST BBS, which I sysop for the Minnesota Atari ST group. The phone number is (612) 560-9254. Use the comment to the sysop function. Warranty ---------------------------------------------------------- Steven Pauley specifically disclaims all other warranties, expressed or implied, including, but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will Steven Pauley be liable to you for any incidental or consequential damages arising out of your use or inability to use this program, even if Steven Pauley has been advised of the possibility of such damages.