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Part5
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1995-06-13
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633 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 maybe 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, and IconMerge is a useful icon tool. 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 any time with Basic.
You might want to have a BasicBench, which would be BlankBench with the
AmigaBasic program on it, just for running the odd program. There are some
great games written in Basic, and FPMapEd, a Firepower map editor, 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 - Insert a different File into this file
F - finds keyword
D - Delete line
Q - Quit Ed without saving
X - save file
SA - save without exiting ("freshen up the file")
Learn these and that's 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 BS is that once you have a block marked, you can't do much else with
the cursor or it loses the block. You can go to the top and bottom of the
file, as well as use the Find feature. If you want to MOVE the block, make
sure you Delete Block RIGHT after you've Inserted Block. You can also
scroll the text with the Ctl-U and Ctl-D commands.
IF uses the same formula: (Esc) IF"Ram:xx to insert an already-
written file into the line the cursor is on.
F, for Find, searches for the keyword you enter, such as (Esc) F"bubble
to search for the word "bubble". Also, remember Find is case-sensitive.
It's easy to forget it so I'll say it again: Find is case-sensitive.
Ed trick: ED actually just gives you 76 characters across, although you
can squeeze out 77 if you put a character in "front" on the cursor before
you get to the end of the line. That'll shift the margin out rather than
giving you a "carriage return", so you can type in the 77th character. Then
delete the extra character. I think Ed has some kind of margin control
command but I've never used it.
Now and then, for no apparent reason, Ed won't let you Save, spitting some
inexplicable reason back out at you as to why not, so just remember you can
still WriteBlock what you want (the whole thing, for that matter) to Ram or
something until you can get out of there and start afresh. If you're also
Typing (Lessing) the document at the same time it may not Save. Or you may
just be plumb out of memory, which Ed likes lots of.
*
And yes, that's the first quote mark we've used, I believe. Another
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 both of the DOS books. Read them just like you
did the Amiga manual; understanding each time you read it about 20 to 30
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, plexitable, disk rack, oodles of blank 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 Notepad was driving you crazy
with all of its little quirks, and using Ed is completely out 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. Notepad
doesn't save in text format either, which doesn't surprise me. Just
some of those many fun computerland quirks. I know a guy who has a 500 and
can't get his snazzy 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 per hour.
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...
Beast - Latest arrival. Almost stunning graphics, some of the
smoothest scenery scrolling you'll ever see.
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 the textfile I
uploaded called FPMapEd2.
Barbarian - A fun arcade game, like Dark Castle, kind of unique.
Chessmaster - Okay, so I've got a serious side.
Middle Shelf:
All text adventures, like the Infocoms. They're fun, but this is, after
all, a graphics computer for Hebben's Sakes! Still, if the above stuff
isn't your bag, try Infocom's A Mind Forever Voyaging, Wishbringer, or
Suspended. Suspended is definitely kind of a kick. I should also
mention that there is no better typing excercise than a text adventure.
Do a text adventure and your fingers will come out a'flyin'..
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.
BattleChess - At $39 I consider this "an expensive hack" (the graphics are
so trippy you can't concentrate on the game) but I just HAD to have it.
It does have a 2-D board that you can use but, for what it's worth,
ChessMaster is much smarter. It ticks me off I haven't got qui-i-i-te
enough Ram to run them at the same time!
Dungeon Master - A lot of people have this on their Top Five list, so
thought it deserved mention.
The Dregs:
SDI
Galactic Invasion
Adventure Construction Kit
Alien Fires
Golden Path
Destroyer
Anything else not on these lists unless it comes recommended. There's a
marked difference between a old game re-written for the Amiga, and one
written with the Amiga in mind...
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 we 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. Do 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 scriptfile:
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 scriptfile 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, once you've got a program to run, keeps things at least
withing the realm of potentially understanding what suddenly went wrong.
Next we change the IconEd 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 scriptfile. 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. Use 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 and viewing purposes
change them to tool or project icons.
*
Misc Dept:
SAY NOTES MUSTS
A: CLI needs Run
wander waunder
haw haw hau hau Notepad needs clipboard.device
shall shal but not the Clipboards dir
gals,pals gaels,paels
Say needs both the translator-
E: .library and narrator.device
baby babeeee
baby. babee Calculator needs mathieeedoub-
yeah yia bas.library
residence risidence
LoadWb needs icon.library
I:
service servis Select needs Execute and Run
fixing ficksing
Mrs. missus
friday fryday
office ofis
continent con.tih.nent
O:
do doo
to too
okay ookay
stove stofe
Jose hoesay
toots tutes
como cowmo
modem mowdem
U:
minute minite
doesn't dussent
you yu, u
truth trooth
*
Go Ahead, Pop My Balloon Dept:
Let's say you're writing a professional computer game for the Amiga and
you're wondering what key you're going to use for the Pause key. One key on
the keyboard that's kind of an oddball is the Help key, right? And that's
usually what you NEED when you DO go grasping for the Pause key, right??
So that kind of sounds like an obvious choice, RIGHT??? Check this out:
Starglider uses Del
Barbarian uses Esc
Dark Castle uses Tab
Silent Service uses W
Flight Simulator uses P
Firepower uses Esc & left mouse (simultaniously)
and..
FaeryTale uses the space bar!
NOBODY uses the Help key!
*
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. I humbly include what my idea of a "CLI-Buster" icon should look
like, released into the Public Domain now and forevermore. To the public,
it's a more byte-sized icon than the huge DU-VI one. But between you and me,
well, it'll just be a little reminder of these good times we're sharing.
Cunningham's also the one who did gShow, the fine Show (for graphic pics)
program. 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 can be pretty wild.
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. Not a thing. Nope, not one.
Well, uh, maybe one teensy-eensy little thing. Hate to even bring it up,
really. He, uh, well, he mixpelled 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. I think there's something in the documentation about changing
the color codes, but it was easier to play with Prefs.
We "Ed s/z" (z for zap, right?) and our scriptfile would read:
SetPrefs zap ;set to special NewZap color scheme
Lace ;NewZap needs all the help it can get
Utilities/NewZap ;load NewZap (no Run)
SetPrefs inlace ;reset to Interlace colors
Lace ;reset 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 DU 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 scriptfile 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" line to "pic directory".
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/or don't want to clutter up your s directory, you can use the Assign
command in the scriptfile 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.
*
Above, we made a copy of Select because we wanted to filezap it. Normally
in a scriptfile we'd just use the original Select and give it different
options, as well as re-Assigning the s directory. By doing so it can be
used over and over again, allowing us quite a bit of interaction. Combine
it with funny old Say and things can get REAL interesting...
*
Well, obviously we've come pretty far. But, of course, there just MAY be a
few things left up in the air. Like, for instance, we haven't used Ram yet!
*
Let's stop for a minute and make ourselves a checklist just to see where
we are in our personal little computer evolution:
- First we gawked at the screen and wondered if we'd ever figure out ANY
of this stuff! If you didn't then you're not a True Beginner and you
can't join the club.
- We settled down, read (?) the manual (??), and started double-clicking
everything in sight.
- We got better at moving files around with the mouse, and at one point
swore we'd never touch the keyboard again unless we had to.
- We actually DID something in one of the games we got, like actually made
it to the next screen or something, so we're feeling VERY good.
- We finally got the modem and Online!, brought 'em home, set 'em up,
opened up the manual and were crushed when we realized it was full of
that CLI garbage!
- We close the Online! manual and pull out the DOS books we'd been
avoiding. Once we get the gist with the pathnames and such we actually
start getting a little excited about using "semi-authentic computer
language", as referred to "icon-shuffling". We open the Online! manual
back up and breath a sigh of relief..we can read it!
- We make our first call to a BBS, thus taking our first tiny, hesitant
step into the New Age.
- We download just oodles of files. We save them faithfully on our neat,
organized archive disks just like that nice Mr. BenchMaster said to do.
- We become proficient at setting up and using our CustomBenches. We've
incorporated the basic gang, Mackie, Xicon, Conman, Select, PrefCh and
FaccII into the Amiga scheme of things. We're movin' now.
- Our fingers finally learned how to type and at one point we swore we'd
never use the mouse again unless we had to.
- We finally recaptured the Talisman in FaeryTale, FINALLY kicked the bad-
ass Black Knight off his throne in Dark Castle (and WHAT was our reward?)
bought some snazzy software like Dpaint, faithfully read the manual and
did every tutorial and let's face it: We're feelin' pretty good about
the whole thing, aren't we?
*
I certainly was. Especially about that megabyte of Ram, wow, sure was
nice havin' that big ol' megger of Ram around. Yep, just about the only
thing I didn't know, was what I was supposed to DO with it!
*
I quickly found out.
*
Df1 died.
*
It was a lovely service. We all said a few words, and I put an old copy
of Silent Service in its little slot just before they closed the tiny casket.
*
The guy at the shop said the heads had come un-aligned and it was history.
One drive?? Yuck! Requester City!! I was broke and couldn't buy a new one
just yet. What to do?? The answer was to load a bunch of the stuff I nor-
mally needed off the Bench into Ram, and then "CD Ram". That way I could use
df0 like df1, as the "remote" drive, and control it from Ram.
This is something you HAVE to try.
Everything in the l, s and libs directories and about half the c direc-
tory should just about do it, together with any special-purpose tools
you might need. If you've got the meg then you've got plenty of room to
spare, so put this in your st-seq. Or better yet, in one of your Select
files in the s dir (called RamBench?):
AddBuffers/FaccII 100 ;always this first
MakeDir Ram:c ;makes a "c" directory in Ram.
MakeDir Ram:l ;makes l dir in Ram
MakeDir Ram:libs ;makes libs dir in Ram
MakeDir Ram:s ;makes s dir in Ram
Copy c/Assign Ram:c ;copy c commands to Ram:c
Copy c/CD Ram:c
Copy c/Copy Ram:c
Copy c/Delete Ram:c
Copy c/Dir Ram:c
Copy c/e Ram:c
Copy c/Echo Ram:c
Copy c/Ed Ram:c
Copy c/Else Ram:c
Copy c/EndIf Ram:c
Copy c/Execute Ram:c
Copy c/f Ram:c
Copy c/If Ram:c
Copy c/MakeDir Ram:c
Copy c/Path Ram:c
Copy c/Run Ram:c
Copy c/Type Ram:c
Copy df0:l Ram:l all quiet ;copies l dir to Ram:l
Copy df0:libs Ram:libs all quiet ;copies libs dir to Ram:libs
Copy df0:s Ram:s all quiet ;copies s dir to Ram:s
Copy Utilities/DU-VI Ram: ;Copy your DU and any other special
tools you might need. Copy the .info
files too if you want the icons.
Assign c: Ram:c
Assign l: Ram:l
Assign libs: Ram:libs
Assign s: Ram:s
Path Ram:c Ram:l Ram:libs
The other Workbench directories will still be in the path, remember, but
only available when the Workbench disk is in the drive.
If you put the above at the beginning of the st-seq there'll be commands
like LoadWb and SetClock that will be "unknown commands", as by that time
you've already assigned c to Ram:c and the commands aren't there. Just draw
out the whole pathname, like "df0:c/LoadWb" and everybody'll be happy.
You'll run into snags here and there when you've got things Assigned to
directories on other devices, but hey, that's just part of what keeps it
all so dang interesting. That's why I moved the l and libs dirs over
to Ram also, to help keep the snags at a minimum.
This still isn't quite good enough, though. Having all those juicy
commands and libs and stuff in Ram is nice, but we still need to BE some-
where, i.e. a CLI window. We can't just put "CD Ram:" somewhere in the
st-seq because it just doesn't work that way, so we do this:
- type "Ed s/cdram". In the new file, type "CD Ram:" and save.
- type "Ed s/RamBench" or "Ed s/startup-sequence", depending on which way
you're doing it, put all that above garbage at the top, fill in the middle
with all the rest, then at the bottom, before the EndCLI, put in:
NewCLI from s/cdram con:0/336/318/064/CD-RAM
NewCLI con:321/336/318/064/CD-DF0
If you're using non-Interlace mode, use: 0/155/319/045/CD-RAM
322/155/318/045/CD-DF0
Re-boot this puppy and see what happens. Hopefully everything will go
as planned. You'll see less memory available at the top of the screen as Ram
has now got a bellyfull of goodies If you type "CD" in the left CLI window
you should get a "Ram:" back and in the right window the name of the disk
currently in df0. Fun, huh?
Goof around with this RamBench for awhile, enjoy the speed.
*
At this point, re-boot back to a normal Bench before continuing with the
tutorial. We're still writing scriptfiles to s, and if the s dir has been
re-assigned to Ram:s, we're writing files to Ram, which means bye-bye when
the computer's turned off.
*
Now you need a small scriptfile is s in case you need to get the memory
back to run some big graphics thing or something.
Type "Ed s/dr" (for Delete Ram). In the Ed box type
Assign c: df0:c
Assign l: df0:l
Assign libs: df0:libs
Delete Ram:#? all quiet
Echo "That's it, Boss!"
That last line, of course, MUST be in the scriptfile just as it is. Save the
rascal and the next time you need the Ram back, type "f dr" and there it
is. You can also have a scriptfile to reload all that stuff back in, as
well. If you can handle Ed yet, just take that whole block of Copies and
Assigns in RamBench and WriteBlock that sucker to the s directory. Call
it "lr" for Load Ram.
Next, presuming you have FaccII running, you'll want a scriptfile to give
you back both the Ram and what FaccII's hogging. Use the same file as above,
add "Fac -q" and call it as "m", for Memory.
If you ARE into graphics, then at times you may be grasping for every
byte possible, and wondering why they can't have a simple UN-LoadWB command.
I'll discuss memory recoverage next.
*
If you've done all the above, then congratulations: you are now CD-Ram,
another evolutionary step along the way.
AND you saved the price of a new disk drive!
*