8 BIT SOFTWARE
Constructive comments on programs
published by 8BS are always welcome.
Here are a few:
From : 27N (John Ilsley)
Program: Various
AMAZING!.... Some pokes actually work!
First lot of pokes to ever work!...
The game 'GUESS WHO'
Well, as I see it, it would have been
alright if us only users of computers
in the family or families who's parents
are still, even now frightened of
computers, could have played against
the computer!... Any future plans?.
I reckon it is a good game, though
playing against myself, I tended to
cheat!
Space commander Quite a good game, doesn't need
much input from the user. I class this
game as a game to send you into a
pleasant deep sleep. In the nicest sort
of way. I enjoyed this game and played
it for a good 15 mins. Nice and simple.
Paras Too small, too quick, Keys are not very
good, and the boat and man moves two
characters (mode 7 that is) at a time!
Battle ship Give this guy a medal!.... Fantastic,
a large improvement on the previous
version. But couldn't the computer
check it'self to see if the colour of
the pixel under the cross was yellow or
blue? I enjoyed this game so much, I
lost track of the time I was playing it
for. I feel the computer does cheat, I
lost!.
Zarch
Simple, but good, the printout even
worked, If a little slow at printing.
From : 0E7
Program: Various
Paras If the boat is on the lefthand side of
the window and the para falls out of
the aircraft down the righthand side of
the window then with my Master there is
no way I can get the boat across to
pick up the para quickly enough, as the
response to the key press is too slow.
Something somewhere needs speeding up
or slowing down to give the player a
chance to win..
Battleships
I have no fault to find with the
programme as such as it is the best
version of this game I have seen.
However I would like to make a point on
the basic design of the game as such.
When I was at school and we were
supposed to be doing Private Study then
the Battles were fought. The way we
used to play it in my opinion was
superior to any of the computer games I
have seen. We used to insert a single
letter in a square for the type of
battle wagon it was to represent.
A=Aircraft carrier B=Battleship etc.
This made the game harder to play and
it lasted longer. Surely this would
make it easier to write a programme
than to have an Aircraft Carrier take
up 4 to 5 squares and the input would
be easier for the players as they would
not have to state vertical or
horizontal would it not?
Mortgage This appears to be a very good piece
of programming but I would like to
raise the following point. Unless I am
missing something this programme is
excellent as long as the interest rate
is constant throughout the mortgage.
However as we all know they go up and
down like yoyo's. Therefore it would
appear to be impossible to foretell the
amount that is to be paid over the full
period mainly becuse no one knows.Sorry
if this appears to be stating the
obvious.I agree however that it will be
a good guide as to what the total
payment will be if one assumes there
will be no future change in the rate.
Perhaps if this was made clear in the
programme information it would solve
the problem.
Catalogue printer This will not run on my MASTER in ADFS.
I get the message 'bad command at line
700'.
Wordsearch solver 1 & 2
I like both of these programmes and
they will be a big help to people doing
word search puzzles but only when the
words are known.
How about when the words are not known?
Can we have a programme of similar
standrds to solve that problem please?
..Editor.. 0E7 doesn't ask for much!!
This one should be a doddle. Baggies
you enter the dictionary though Fred!!
From : L1L
Program: Various. Issues 23 24 & 25
Convert A vast improvement on the original.
Quite useful here in Australia with our
Metric based system, but still with
many things measured in so-called
Imperial units. eg. miles per gallon -
kilometres per litre feet and inches -
metres and centimetres
Monthp
A good little utility. Couldn't a
simple routine be implemented to
calculate the first day of the year
instead of the program asking the user
to input it.
Lettbox Quite impressive simple lettering
styles to add that something different.
If you have a Model B with the Graphics
Extension Rom then you can see the uses
of the boxes also. Simply turn on the
GXR with GXR-ON <RET>, press <BREAK>,
then *DRIVE 2 <RET>, CHAIN"Lettbox"
<RET>. Incidentally the Union Jack
display also works on the Beeb with
GXR.
Presenting Poland Pt.2 Although a short history, it was very
interesting and was not too long for
young readers to become distracted -
again the graphical displays maintain
attention. Issue 23 of 8BS was minus
the utility 'SCRAM' which can be copied
from Issue 20 to enable the dispay
programs to work. A nice fade routine.
Looking forward to Pt.3.
Samples on Issue 25 Appeared to fail on BEEB. All just
sound like computer noise. Do they work
on the Beeb - if so, how?
Big Ben
Well presented and a good menuing
system. Here is some other data;
London 12:00
Adelaide 21:30
Brisbane 22:00
Canberra 22:00
Darwin 21:30
Hobart 22:00
Melbourne 22:00
Perth 20:00
Sydney 22:00
Catalogue Information Was useful. More on these sort of
things please. Maybe how graphics are
stored in each mode and a routine, or
how to write a utility, to convert
between any graphics mode.
Presenting Programs Pt.2 Interesting to see other peoples ideas
and solutions. Also a good way to
observe other peoples programming
styles and tricks. Continue the series
if possible.
RAM Disk
Excellent. This is the first
implementation I have used that has
worked faultlessly. The only
improvement that I can think of is to
make it View wordprocessor compatible,
if this is possible.
Picture Gallery V2 Quite useful for displaying a file if
the mode is unknown. Saves a lot of
time trying differnt modes. Perhaps it
could be modified to cope with
compressed files also.
Bank Manager Quite well done. Should provide useful
as an educational tool for creating and
solving mathematics based problems.
3D Demo Rather impressive. Although the
routines were intended for use with
monochrome monitors I beleive that with
the right colour combinations, that
they work equally well for colour
screens. An example is the use of the
3D effect in the shareware game by Lars
Osterballe, 'Panthenon'.
Patience
I found this a very compulsive, 'just
one more go', type game. I have only
managed to complete it twice, having
played it many times. Other card games
have been implemented on the Beeb
before, but they have been missing
simple instructions and have been
graphically boring or unstimulating to
say the least. Patience has overcome
these obstacles and provides a great
game. Well done Carl Wheat.
From : 20G (Roy Dickens)
Program: Comments Issue 26
Archimedes Debate 1,2 and 3 I'm finding these debates interesting
as I have only the Beeb and thinking of
upgrading.
ADFS Debates
Also interesting as I don't have ADFS
and wonder if I should.
Editor...... See Daniel's note.....
Short Game Theo's game certainly shows what can be
done, not only short but fast.
Envelope editor and Sound envelopes
These two from Chris and Silas gives us
plenty to work with and study. Thanks.
Joker Certainly better, now its a lot faster.
The funny side of this is we cant wait
for a laugh so keep the shaggy dog
stories out!
Mortgage calc
I like these type of programs, bags of
info. But may I suggest an idea to help
it be a little more user friendly?
Such as at line 160 if you accidentally
press return without entering the
'Desired Mortgage Term' an error will
show up 'Division by zero at line 230'
and the whole lot packs up. If you put
something like
n%:IF n%<1 THEN 160:
This would keep asking for an input
until n% was more than zero.
Better still, you could print a little
message stating what the user is doing
wrong.
Wordserch
Another clever program from Miroslaw
always neat and well presented.
From : 3SQ
Program: Various
Dir Lock .... absolutely Brill! I can now put
all my 8BS Discs onto my hard Disc in a
Directory set aside for 8BS disc's,
without the impossible task of having
to track down the countless *DIR $
commands wherein, is it possible to
make the DirLock code remain after
pressing the Break key this would then
make it even better.
ADFS Directory Reader
I have been looking for a program to do
this sort of thing for ages, a very
similar program from Fast Access has
been proving very unreliable of late,
just when I really needed it. now I
have 8BS who needs Fast Access? I would
now like a very similar program to do
the same job on DFS Disc's, please C J
Richardson can you answer my plea ? Or
perhaps it is just a simple matter of
changing or adding a few extra lines
into the existing program ?
......Editor.... Well, maybe when I'm
not so busy, but could someone else do
it? It will be far simpler than the
ADFS version as there are a limited
number of files. All can be viewed in
one mode seven screen. The file info is
all stored in one place, dead easy! Go
on! Go for it, get the manual out!
From : 176
Program: Various
Text files I found the Environment section very
much in line with what my wife and I
think, the Humour amusing, the
Questionnaire no bother at all.
Catalogue printer I found that by using *DISC I could
catalogue both sides of a DFS disc but
after changing *DRIVE to *MOUNT I
could catalogue only one side of an
ADFS disc. In DFS, my Citizen 120D
printer would not feed backwards but as
sometimes, the paper sensor catches on
the perforations, it was preferable to
wind the paper back by hand. The
condensed print was perfectly legible.
.... Editor ..... ADFS formatted Large
sees both sides of the disc as one!
Envelopes Very lucid explanation and interesting
examples.
Function key utility
I liked the label catalogues!
ADFS Text file reader Works well.
Archimedes My daughter is a School Teacher and
moved from BBC B to Archimedes but now
has a Master 128 (as have I). It's
really a question of Horses for Courses
isn't it.
DFS/ADFS The follow on from this, as per
Editor's Comments, is that ADFS not
only accomodates more files on a disc
but also allows more letters in a
filename to assist in recall.
From : 4G7
Program: Function Key Programs
Many thanks for the suite of programs,
in particular those by R.Sharman for
use with Inter-Word. Those are just
what I need to save having to use
the embedded command menu with all that
entails. I should mention that the F
/keys can only be used in conjuction
with Ctrl/Shft as the functions
provided by the rom will override them.
I have now compiled a short program
incorporating them and CHAIN it from my
!BOOT file.
Has anyone come up with similar one
-liners for Super-script and Sub
-script, also for use on Inter-Word?
At line 910 of your suite, the function
to atalogue a disc. This was
originally published in BEEBUG Magazine
Volume 6 Issue 8 - Jan/Feb 1988. and
submitted by David Lee. The hint
suggests that the addition of a number
after *CAT will catalogue the files on
that drive and that the printout will
be in super-script on a label 89mm x
49mm. It does work as I use it on discs
which are full, placing the labels on
the disc covers, front and back.
This got me started thinking of ways to
utilise the function keys in
conjunction with other programs in the
Inter suite. I use Inter-Sheet a lot
and have found that moving around the
whole sheet is a wearing process,
having to look up printouts to find the
cell ref. of a particular section. I
have now programmed the F/keys with /G
(cell ref.) via a !BOOT file and this
now works a treat, using Control/Shift
in conjunction with the Function key.
Printing out a keystrip puts the
finishing touch to the idea.
From : 15A (Steven Flintham)
Program: Reader
A useful little utility. How about
adding an option to only *TYPE those
files which have the load/exec
addresses typically associated with
text files (&XXXX0000 and &XXXXFFFF in
either the load or execution address) -
this would help to avoid too many non-
text files being *TYPEd. Also, what
about writing a simple routine to
replace *TYPE - if non-text files are
*TYPEd they can sometimes switch the
printer on and mess everything up.
Something along the lines of:
DEF PROCtype(filename$)
LOCAL chan%,byte%
chan%=OPENIN(filename$)
REPEAT
byte%=BGET #chan%
IF byte%>=32 AND byte%<=126 THEN VDU
byte%
IF byte%=13 THEN VDU 13,10
UNTIL EOF #chan%
CLOSE #chan%
ENDPROC
BLAM!