Almathera Ten Pack 3: CDPD 3/Almathera Ten on Ten - Disc 3: CDPD3.iso/scope/051-075/scopedisk60/noah/part5

Text File | 1995-03-19 | 15.1 KB | 306 lines

  Let's take a quick peek at the Extras/Basic disk to see if there's
anything there we want.  Nope.  Oh well!

  Well okay, a few things.  Try out Keytoy just for giggles; it'll show
you your Alternate keyboard characters.  Fed is a font editor, and you'll
want to play around with it some day.  You'll also want to punch up the
PM but you may not understand it much.  More, the cousin of Less, is on
there, but use Less.  MicroEmacs is a big brother to Ed, but we aren't
within years of needing an editor so powerful.  The Basic demos are kind of
cute but unless you get into it, you won't be spending much time with Basic.

  You might want to have a BasicBench, which would be BlankBench with the
AmigaBasic program on it.  About the only time I see it needed is for the
occasional downloaded game.  Don't get me wrong, there are some fabulous
Basic programs out there.  FPMapEd, a Firepower map editor written in Basic,
is one of the finest downloads I've seen.

  That FPMapEd is, by the way, the program I mentioned before that ran much
faster with NoFastMem run first.  Maybe it has something to do with it being
a Basic program.  These are matters beyond our ken, no doubt.

                                    *

  Maybe it's time to spend a few minutes with that faithful friend, Ed.

        Common commands:  (all Esc commands)

          T - top of file
          B - bottom of file
         BS - Block start
         BE - Block end
         IB - Insert block
         DB - delete block
         CS - move cursor to start of line
         CE - move cursor to end of line
         WB - write block to new file
         IF - inserts a different file into this file
         D  - delete line
         Q  - quit Ed without saving
         X  - save file
         SA - save without exiting ("freshen up" the file)

  Learn these and that's most of Ed.  The WB and IF ones need EXACT format
like so:   (Esc)  WB"df0:s/xx  (Return)   That will write the block
you've selected (with BS and BE) to df0's s directory and name it
"xx".  The quote mark and no space are critical.  The only thing limiting
about WB is that once you have a block marked, you can't do anything with
the cursor except move it up and down..anything else cancels the block.  If
you want to MOVE the block, make sure you Delete Block right after you've
Inserted Block.  You can also scroll the text using Ctl-U and Ctl-D.

  IF uses the same formula:  (Esc)  IF"dh0/s/xxx"   to insert an already-
written file into the line the cursor is on.

  And yes, that's the first quote mark we've used, I believe.  The other
instance is when we want to copy or rename or whatever a file that has
spaces in the name, like, say, Workbench (space) 1.2

             Assign "Workbench 1.2:" df1:DirtyBench

  I presume you've bought/are buying the Bantam AmigaDos manual, and I'd
also recommend Compute!'s AmigaDos Reference Guide.  Read them just like you
did the Amiga manual; understanding each time you read it about 20 to 40
per cent of what you haven't understood so far.  Did I get that about right?
The books cover things like the usage of quotation marks quite well.  Now if
only they'd tell me when I'm supposed to use SlowMemLast!

                                    *

  What's that?  What's that you say??  You HAVE a modem, printer, extra
drive, joysticks, plexi table, disk rack, oodles of disks and BOTH DOS
books??  Well then, it's plainly time to go...software shopping!!

  Okay, you bought Online!  You screwed around with that dumb PD modem
program your buddy gave you and wondered just WHY they couldn't do just a
FEW simple things right..so you finally went ahead and spent real money.

  You bought Deluxe PaintII because you need it as a primary, basic tool for
any future graphics work.  And you DID, after all, buy a graphics computer.

  You bought FaccII and are, let's face it, thrilled.  You had a certain
bittersweet feeling as you bid that last goodby to faithful old AddBuffers
as it was borne away to far-off Bytelandia.

  You looked at Sculpt 3-d and said we-e-e-e-ll, maybe you'd better wait, and
that was the correct decision.

  You broke down and bought ProWrite because you were trying to write a
letter to your grandmother with Ed and it was just driving you CRAZY because
it doesn't have Word-Wrap.  Sure, it wraps around the first time you type
the sentence, but just try adding a few words here or there once it's
written.  If you don't know what I'm talking about yet because you haven't
tried using Ed to write a letter, you have a terrible shock awaiting
you.  I haven't the heart to say any more.  And I'm, if you can believe it,
writing THIS whole crazy thing in Ed!  Obviously the thing to do would be to
write it with ProWrite and then convert it to text, but NO-O-O-O, no one's
written a program to do that (yet, I hope).  And yes, ProWrite does have a
feature that saves in text format, but it doesn't work correctly.  Just
one of those many fun computerland quirks.  I know a guy who has a 500 and
can't get his snazy Toshiba printer to run right because no one's written a
driver for it!  "Why doesn't somebody write a program that will..." will be
a question you will ask more than once.

  So, you got all these neat programs, just like nice Mr. BenchMaster told
you to do, but what about GAMES??  When do we get to do some of the dumb,
mindless FUN stuff?!?!  "Mindless", did I say?  Ha ha ha.  Anyway, the
answer to your question is, right now:

  An "arcade" game is one you can play again and again.  An "adventure" is
one you just play through once.  No, it's not a waste of money.  I figure I
probably put 50 hours into FaeryTale, exploring every nook and cranny, just
generally kicking ass, and if the game cost me about $35, that's a pretty
good buy for top-notch entertainment.

Top Shelf:

   Silent Service - puts you in WW2 submarine.  Nothing's topped it yet.

   FaeryTale - A great adventure, have fun and enjoy.

   Starglider - You won't be able to look at another space game after getting
                used to this one.  You'll wonder why they even bother.

   Dark Castle - This is still my favorite arcade game..always something new
                 to explore, something crazy to try.  It'll give you a
                 brand-new appreciation for keyboard sensitivity, promise.
                 If you're really good, say your prayers at night, help
                 old ladies across the street, spend countless hours at your
                 Amiga and do everything in this tutorial, I'll tell you
                 where the unknown, hidden Secret Passageway is...

   Firepower - still the quintessential tank game.  Extra fun because you
               can make new maps or edit the originals with FPMapEd.  If you
               don't get the one with my added doc look for FPMapEd2.arc.

   Barbarian - A fun arcade game, like Dark Castle, kind of unique.

   Chessmaster - Okay, so I've got a serious side.


Medium:

   All text adventures, like the Infocoms.  They're fun, but this is, after
     all, a graphics computer for Hebben's Sakes!

   Defender of the Crown - a kid's game but some of the best graphics around.

   Uninvited - Another unique adventure, haven't gone too far in it.

   Flight Simulator - Everything is so Real Time it'll drive you crazy.


Don't bother with:

   SDI
   Galactic Invasion
   Adventure Construction Kit
   Alien Fires
   Golden Path
   Destroyer
   Anything else not on these lists unless it comes recommended.


  Those are my suggestions.  Get that money spent and quit bothering me!

                                    *

  If you've been using the Interlace mode since (or before) I mentioned it,
then you might have come to the question: Just what do I use the NON-Inter-
lace mode for??  Well, not much.  Icon editing for one.  We want to use the
IconEd, but everything's smaller in the Interlace mode.  No prob.  We
presume you've got the Interlace toggle switch Lace in the c directory, as
well as SetPrefs and SavePrefs, from the program PrefCh?  You can see them
there, right next to Conman, Mackie and Select.  Anyway, you have a certain
Workbench color scheme for the Interlace mode that you've saved with Save-
Prefs, calling it, say, Inlace.  You have another, brighter one for the non-
Interlace mode, call it Nolace.

  So you do the Xicon thing: First you write a script file:

     Lace               ;switches screen to non-Interlace mode
     SetPrefs nolace    ;turns on non-interlace colors
     Utilities/IconEd   ;loads IconEd.  Script file freezes here until
                         IconEd is quit (no Run used)
     SetPrefs inlace    ;turns on Interlace colors
     Lace               ;toggles back to Interlace


  You can't call the file "IconEd", as you know, so let's call it "IconEd!"
for now.  After you get the hang of Xicon, you can try renaming the
actual program something like "IconEd-" (in my own system, the minus sign
means that it's part of an Xicon file) and name the script file the correct
name, but for now let's keep things straight.  A few programs, including,
amazingly enough, IconEd, won't run correctly with the name changed.  The
best practice is to just call the scriptfile something else until you're
sure the file's executing okay.  Then do JUST the renaming business and see
if it still works.  It takes a little longer, but making just one or two
changes at a time keeps things at least within the realm of potentially
understanding what went wrong.

  The next step is to change the icon over from a tool type to a project
type, with IconEd (Doctor, heal thyself?) or IconType.  I know, I know, you
still don't have IconType because, well, you needed groceries, and then you
had to make a phone call, and then you probably needed to do something else,
and, well, just forget it.  The new project icon is named after the script
file, so it's "IconEd!.info".  Put "df0:c/Xicon" in the Default Tool box of
the Info window and that should do it.  Leave the old icon in the drawer as
IconEd looks for it to plaster all over the little editing windows.  It'll
run without it but gives you an error message.  That's why it doesn't like to
be renamed.  Online! is kinda picky too.

  You might also want to have a special editing pointer for IconEd, so you'd
SavePrefs a special setting just for IconEd, and use that instead of nolace
in the script file.  You might want different pointers and/or colors for
lots of different programs..live it up, they're a whole 232 bytes apiece.

  And actually (NOW I tell you..), IconType doesn't work all that well, so to
heck with it.  Get the Hermes IconLab1.2 as your main tool to change the type
of an icon.  Treat the disk icons, the "disk.info", like any other.  Also,
you'll want the IconLab to view any downloaded disk icons you have, as disk
icons can't be viewed inside a window.  For archive future and viewing
purposes change them to tool or project icons.

  Have you picked up DU-VI yet?  You can see why I call it a CLI-Buster..
what a great tool.  I've downloaded about six DU's and this is definitely
the best.

  Cunningham's also the one who did gShow, the fine Show (for graphic pics)
command.  gShow lets you activate the color cycling by hitting the TAB key,
SView shows the pic cycling by default, which is why I had you pick them
both up.  Just a couple of tools for ol' GraphBench.  I keep gShow in my
Workbench's c directory as a rule.  If you don't know what color cycling is,
well, you've just got a whole BUNCH of fun stuff to find out about, don't
you?  It's basically a function of DPaint and is great stuff.

  Anyway, DU-VI is certainly the most valuable tool you've added to your
bench yet; indeed, it may be the most valuable ever.  An excellent program.
It works so well and the documentation is so clear that I really can't think
of a single thing to add.  No, not one.  Nope.

  Well, uh, maybe one teensy-eensy little thing.  Hate to even bring it up,
really.  He, uh, well, he mispelled a word is what he did.  Hit Free to see
how many bytes are free on this device, and you get "dievice".  If you
don't then you've got one of my corrected versions.  Did you get NewZap?  I
hope you've got version 3.1; he messd around with it in the latest version
and screwed up the color arrangements.  It was hard enough to read before,
the latest version is even harder.  If you have version 3.1, open Prefs and
set the colors to:

        #1 - 6    #2 - 0    #3 - 11   #4 - 6
             6         0         11        0
             6         0         11        0

then hit USE and then "SavePrefs zap" to save this Pref setting.  Then type
"SetPrefs inlace" to get your Interlace colors back.  I really like the
program, it's just that getting the colors right so that things are clear in
the Search mode as well as the hex is a bitch; you are certainly welcome to
put NewZap on the bottom of the screen and Prefs at the top and experiment
for yourself.

  We "Ed s/z" (z for zap, right?) and our scriptfile would read:


            SetPrefs zap        ;sets to special NewZap color scheme
            Lace                ;needs all the help it can get
            Utilities/NewZap    ;loads NewZap (no Run)
            SetPrefs inlace     ;resets Interlace colors
            Lace                ;resets to Interlace mode


  Run that puppy, activate the Filespec box and type in "Utilities/DU-VI" or
whatever directory it's in (if in a directory at all) and hit Return.  The
garbage that appears is DU-VI.  Pull down the Search menu, activate the box
and type in "die" or "dievice", hit Return and NewZap will search the
program for those characters.  When you see it, click on the "D" with the
mouse and type in over the old letters "device" then a space for the extra
letter.  Hit Save, click NewZap's close gadget and get the hey out
of there.  Presto, one repaired Directory Utility.  If this gets you
excited, please be.  NewZap certainly gave ME plenty to do, heh heh heh...

  For starters, of course, you can change a line like "Searching for
selected files" to something a little clearer, like "Hold on a sec, will ya?"
You can zap games and have characters or the computer swear at you, just all
kinds of great possibilities.  I had a gas with Defender of the Crown.

  Of course, you can also do serious things with a file zapper.  I almost
hate to bother you with it.  A good example would be our new buddy
Select.  It normally says something like "Please select a boot sequence",
but if we were, say, running a graphics program by a script file and at some
point we wanted a chance to choose from which directory we wanted the pics
loaded, we could make a copy of Select renamed as Select2, zap it with
NewZap and change the "boot sequence" to "pic directory" or something.

  Continuing:  You then put "Select2 (filename) (filename)" in the script
file and when it gets to that point it runs the Select2 and then seeks the
s directory for whatever file you've chosen.  If you have a lot of files
and don't want to clutter up your s directory, you can use the Assign
command in the script file before the Select2 and "Assign s: df0:(dir)/(dir)"
and this way Select2 will search that dir instead.  At the end of the script-
file you'd have an "Assign s: df0:s" so that all systems return to normal.

  I can promise you:  At times Assign is going to save your butt.

                                       *