[{"TitleName":"Dynamic Graphics","Publisher":"Procom Software","Author":"David Jones","YearOfRelease":"1983","ZxDbId":"0008134","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Crash Issue 4, May 1984","Price":"£0.75","ReleaseDate":"1984-04-19","Editor":"Roger Kean","TotalPages":128,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Roger Kean\r\nConsultant Editor: Franco Frey\r\nProduction Designer: David Western\r\nArt Editor: Oliver Frey\r\nClient Liaison: John Edwards\r\nStaff Writer: Lloyd Mangram\r\nContributing Writers: Matthew Uffindel, Chris Passey\r\nSubscription Manager: Denise Roberts\r\n\r\n©1984 Newsfield Ltd.\r\nCrash Micro is published monthly by Newsfield Ltd. [redacted]\r\n\r\nTelephone numbers\r\nEditorial [redacted]\r\nSubscriptions [redacted]\r\nAdvertising [redacted]\r\nHot Line [redacted]\r\nNo material may be reproduced in whole or in part without written consent from the copyright holders.\r\n\r\nColour origination by Scan Studio, [redacted]\r\nPrinted in England by Plymouth Web Offset Ltd, [redacted].\r\nDistribution by Comag, [redacted]\r\nAdditional setting and process work by The Tortoise Shell Press, [redacted].\r\n\r\nSubscriptions: 12 issues £9.00 UK Mainland (post free)\r\nEurope: 12 issues £15 (post free).\r\n\r\nWe cannot undertake to return any written or photographic material sent to CRASH MICRO unless accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope.\r\n\r\nCover by Oliver Frey"},"MainText":"REMBRANDT & CO\r\n\r\nCan't stand the penetrating smell of oil paints and terpentine? Are you drowning in diluted, diffused water colours? Forget about paint brushes, mixing pots and smeary dirty hands. The canvasses of the future are VDU or television screens and the crayons give way to flexible utility programs. Today the applications are limited by the lack of affordable colour screen printouts, but this is bound to change in the near future.\r\n\r\nEvery artist will confirm that the selection of the right drawing utentils is of prime importance, and we therefore examine four drawing utilities now available to the budding Spectrum artist.\r\n\r\nC.A.D. from Dream Software\r\nDynamic Graphics from Procom\r\nMelbourne Draw from Melbourne House\r\nPaintbox from Print'n'Plotter\r\n\r\nGraphical work on the screen may be subdivided into three main activities:\r\n\r\nBackground and title screen creation\r\nCreation of user definable graphics (UDG)\r\nHandling of moving graphics (Sprites)\r\n\r\nThe selection of the right utility depends entirely on the specific application. Not all utilities provide facilities for all three disciplines: each one excels in one of the tasks.\r\n\r\nSCREEN CREATION\r\n\r\nScreen creating can be a very time consuming job. The basics are simple: set or reset the 49'152 pixels which make up the screen and give the 768 attribute positions the required value. If you provide for every pixel a minimum of 10 seconds for setting or resetting, you will have to work non-stop for five days, 16 hours and 32 minutes.\r\n\r\nThe colouring works out a fraction faster at two hours eight minutes.\r\n\r\nObviously there are alleviating factors which reduce the required time enormously. Not all the screen has to be dealt with on a pixel resolution. Text and fill areas can be handled in character resolution. Nonetheless it is of prime importance that the utility provides an expedient and proficient way of performing screen functions without having to go through any lengthy function select procedures for a simple screen manipulation. Added facilities such as diagonal cursor controls, screen magnification, window creation, scrolling, etc, give the user extra flexibility and can prove a very useful bonus.\r\n\r\nMelbourne Draw scores the highest marks in user friendliness. This program provides the clearest logical procedure: screen and attribute handling are completely separated. The screen may at first be edited by positioning the cursor with the eight direction controls and then putting pen to paper for the actual drawing movement. The picture, including the usual edit area, can be created in 'black and white.' When satisfied the attribute edit mode is selected and the identical procedure can take place for the attribute character setting.\r\n\r\nMelbourne Draw is the only program which allows the attribute cursor to be moved in a non-destructive (pen up) mode. The colour may be selected by simply pressing the correct colour key (ink and cap shift paper).\r\n\r\nMelbourne Draw also provides a screen magnification facility, which can display a portion of the screen four or 16 times enlarged. This proves to be so useful that all the drawing is accomplished on the enlarged scale. The cursor position automatically dictates the screen area displayed and as a further bonus the entire screen may be pixel scrolled to centre the work area. There are no special draw functions such as circle, rectangle, etc, except fill.\r\n\r\nThe text mode includes the useful option of writing text in any of four orientations (l/r, r/l, u/d, d/u).\r\n\r\nThe program is aimed at providing a professional drawing board and proves to be a fast and efficient working tool for the serious user.\r\n\r\nDynamic Graphics allows the creation of a window of any size, which may be positioned, edited and copied anywhere on the screen, thus providing for multiple screens or pattern generation within the screen. Further to this there is a rescale option, which will copy any rectangular area of the screen to any other part with different x and y scale. This can prove to be a very potent feature. Special draw commands such as line, circle and edit are also catered for.\r\n\r\nAlthough Dynamic Graphics is first and foremost a moving graphics utility. Its inbuilt screen creator proves to be an exceptionally versatile drawing instrument.\r\n\r\nPaintbox offers a Kempston cursor control option with its Precision Plotter screen editor. The inclusion of special draw functions such as fill, erase (last command), circle, radial mode and arc together with the option of including any of the 84 UDGs designed with the UDG editor provide for a useful screen tool. The omission of a paper colour control within the screen editor forces the user to go through the lengthy procedure of returning to the main menu for the sake of changing paper colour.\r\n\r\nThe list of options in the C.A.D. program suggest a very powerful drawing tool. However the basic command procedure of C.A.D, proves to be a stumbling block. Every function is called by pressing the appropriate command key, upon which the selected command is displayed in the information window. The user must then press enter for execution. This is even required for positioning the cursor. This all makes for a lengthy procedure, which ultimately takes the fun out of drawing. Apart from the usual cursor control there is the option of using memorised headings, but in practice it is very difficult to make good use of it. The shape creation function, which allows the user to stoe and recall a sequence of drawing commands, proves to be very useful for pattern generation or similar applications. C.A.D. has a complete set of special draw commands, which include among other things triangle, 3D cube and 3D rectangle generation.\r\n\r\nUDG CREATION\r\n\r\nPaintbox offers a complete service for UDG addicts. The program caters for four banks of 21 UDGs which can be called into the UDG area for access. The edit facility is complete and practical to use including inverse, rotating and mirror functions. The UDGs are stored together with a M/C routine for calling the individual banks from Basic into the UDG area. A sketchpad is provided for experimenting with related UDGs (multi-character sprites).\r\n\r\nC.A.D. offers a less elaborate UDG facility. Up to 26 UDGs may be edited and stored.\r\n\r\nMelbourne Draw has no special editing facility for UDGs but editing is accomplished anywhere on screen using the x16 magnification mode. Any of the 760 character positions on the screen may be assigned as any one of the 22 UDGs. Pixel scrolling may position the required shape within the character grid.\r\n\r\nMOVING GRAPHICS\r\n\r\nDynamic Graphics is the only program to actually handle sprites and sprite movement from within a user's Basic program. C.A.D. caters for the creation of up to 40 24x24 pixel sprites (3x3 character), but leaves it to the user to inject any life into the screen. It does not provide any M/C routine for fast pixel to pixel movement.\r\n\r\nDynamic Graphics provides the user with a complete sprite animation facility and must be invaluable for the programmer who doesn't want to delve into the machine code labyrinth but requires smooth animation.\r\n\r\nSix sprites of up to 4x4 characters may be generated and edited with the excellent sprite creator. The six graphic characters are treated as individual frames of an animated film and the user may test the resulting motion by selecting the animated display, which sequences the frames on display to create a living object. The character set may then be saved to tape to be called up for later use.\r\n\r\nTo integrate the moving sprites without any knowledge of M/C, a sprite user subroutine compiler is provided, which creates a sprite positioning subroutine anywhere in normal user memory. This subroutine can be accessed via Randomize User commands from within Basic. Up to 10 different frames may be positioned consecutively on the screen and the result (if handled correctly) is a very smoothly moving object.\r\n\r\nCONCLUSION\r\n\r\nThe four programs under scrutiny all have their individual merits.\r\n\r\nMelbourne Draw stands out clearly as a professional tool for title and background screen creations.\r\n\r\nPaint box provides the most flexible UDG creator combined with a useful screen editor.\r\n\r\nDynamic Graphics is a must for anybody wishing to create moving graphics within their own programs without bothering about M/C handling.\r\n\r\nC.A.D. provides a multitude of different facilities for screen, UDG and sprite editing.\r\n\r\nTHE PROS AND CONS\r\n\r\nC.A.D.\r\nPlus:\r\n\r\n- Multitude of special draw functions: Line, rectangle, square, triangle, circle, parallelogram, 3D cube, 3D rectangular box, fill, erase (last command).\r\n\r\n- Grid display on edge of screen.\r\n\r\n- Assignment of (A-Z) letter labels to 26 points anywhere on screen for 'Draw by letters' facility.\r\n\r\n- Shape creation: 26 preprogrammable user commands will perform a series of draw commands (= draw routines).\r\n\r\n- Sprite generation: up to 40 3x3 character sprites.\r\n\r\n- Sprite generation of up to 40 3x3 character sprites\r\n\r\nMinus:\r\n- Complicated and slow drawing procedure (select command and press enter).\r\n\r\n- Confusing and unpractical heading facility (cursor or preset heading).\r\n\r\nDYNAMIC GRAPHICS\r\nPlus:\r\n\r\n- Two cursor speeds.\r\n\r\n- Special draw functions: Line, circle, arc, fill.\r\n\r\n- Window creation with full edit and positioning facilities.\r\n\r\n- Rescale of rectangular area anywhere on screen.\r\n\r\n- Excellent sprite creation 4x4 character sprite edit facility including animation experimenting.\r\n\r\n- Sprite user subroutine compiler: Creates relocatable M/C routine for handling up to 10 frame 4x4 moving characters from within Basic.\r\n\r\nMinus:\r\n\r\n- No grid overlay for screen creation.\r\n\r\n- Complicated cursor direction controls.\r\n\r\nMELBOURNE DRAW\r\nPlus:\r\n\r\n- Separate screen and attribute editing.\r\n\r\n- Attribute skip (pen up) mode.\r\n\r\n- Diagonal cursor movement.\r\n\r\n- Magnification x4 and x16 of screen sections.\r\n\r\n- Fast screen handling.\r\n\r\n- Grid overlay using Bright facility.\r\n\r\n- Pixel scrolling of entire screen with wrap around.\r\n\r\n- Text can be written in four orientations.\r\n\r\n- Reducing and enlarging of entire screen.\r\n\r\n- Simple UDG creation of any character on screen.\r\n\r\n- Full screen available for drawing (information window relocatable).\r\n\r\nMinus:\r\n\r\n- Complicated fast cursor movement.\r\n\r\n- No special draw commands except fill.\r\n\r\nPAINTBOX\r\nPlus:\r\n\r\n- Two cursor speeds.\r\n\r\n- Kempston cursor control option.\r\n\r\n- Special draw facilities: Fill, erase, circle, radial mode arc.\r\n\r\n- Excellent UDO creation: four banks of 21 UDGs full UDG edit and handling facility from within Basic.\r\n\r\n- Combined screen and UDG facility (Screen Planner).\r\n\r\n- Sketchpad for related UDG display during UDG edit.\r\n\r\nMinus:\r\n\r\n- Long-winded paper colour select.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"96,97,99,100","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Above: Sprite animation avoids delving into machine code in Dynamic Graphics."},{"Text":"Below Left: A boat made from Paintbox's bits and pieces."},{"Text":"Below Left: Zooming in on Smaug and showing Melbourne Draw's mirror image facility."},{"Text":"Below: UDG addicts are catered for in Paintbox."},{"Text":"Left Top: Smaug from The Hobbit with a purple eye."},{"Text":"Left: C.A.D.'s special draw commands include 3D cubes and rectangles."},{"Text":"Lower Right: The title screen of The Hobbit as it should really be."},{"Text":"Right Top: A zoomed in close-up from Terror-Dactyl 4D."},{"Text":"Right: A Ferrari from Paintbox."},{"Text":"Top: A good example of Melbourne Draw's excellent magnification facility."}],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Personal Computer News Issue 58, Apr 1984","Price":"","ReleaseDate":"1984-04-26","Editor":"Cyndy Miles","TotalPages":66,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editorial\r\nEditor: Cyndy Miles\r\nDeputy Editor: Geof Wheelwright\r\nManaging Editor: Peter Worlock\r\nSub-Editors: Harriet Arnold, Leah Batham\r\nNews Editor: David Guest\r\nNews Writer: Ralph Bancroft\r\nHardware Editor: Ian Scales\r\nFeatures Editor: John Lettice\r\nSoftware Editor: Bryan Skinner\r\nPrograms Editor: Ken Garroch\r\nPeripherals Editor: Piers Letcher\r\nListings Editor: Wendie Pearson\r\nEditor's Assistant: Nickie Robinson\r\nArt Director: Jim Dansie\r\nArt Editor: David Robinson\r\nAssistant Art Editor: Floyd Sayers\r\nLayout Artist: Nigel Wingrove\r\nPublishing Manager: Mark Eisen\r\nPublishing Secretary: Jenny Dunne\r\n\r\nAdvertising\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Sarion Gravelle\r\nAssistant Advertisement Manager: Mark Satchell\r\nSales Executives: Christian McCarthy, Marie-Therese Bolger, John Bryan, Laura Cade, Paul Evans, Deborah Quinn\r\nProduction Manager: Nikki Payne\r\nAdvertisement Assistant: Karen Isaac\r\nSubscription Enquiries: Gill Stevens\r\nSubscription Address: [redacted]\r\nEditorial Address: [redacted]\r\nAdvertising Address: [redacted]\r\n\r\nPublished by VNU Business Publications, [redacted]\r\n© VNU 1983. No material maybe reproduced in whole or in part without written consent from the copyright holders.\r\nPhotoset by Quickset, [redacted]\r\nPrinted by Chase Web Offset, [redacted]\r\nDistributed by Seymour Press, [redacted]\r\nRegistered at the PO as a newspaper"},"MainText":"THREE OF A KIND\r\n\r\nSteve McClure scrutinises three of the best Spectrum graphics packages.\r\n\r\nNAME: Dynamic Graphics\r\nPRICE: £14.95\r\nPUBLISHER: Procom Software, [redacted]\r\nOTHER VERSIONS: None\r\nOUTLETS: Mail order/retail\r\n\r\nNAME: Painbox\r\nPRICE: £7.50\r\nPUBLISHER: Print 'n' Plotter Products, [redacted]\r\nOTHER VERSIONS: None\r\nOUTLETS: Mail order/retail\r\n\r\nNAME: Melbourne Draw\r\nPRICE: £8.95\r\nPUBLISHER: Melbourne House Software, [redacted]\r\nOTHER VERSIONS: None\r\nOUTLETS: Mail order/retail\r\n\r\nEach of the graphics programs reviewed here - Dynamic Graphics, Paintbox and Melbourne Draw - has its own merits. But it's none too easy to find out what a program is like to use from a quick glance at a manual. This article should give you an idea of the relative pros and cons of three good programs.\r\n\r\nDYNAMIC GRAPHICS\r\n\r\nProcom Software's package is ambitiously designed and it will take you many weeks to explore all its possibilities. You get, two tapes, one of which has two sides of programming material.\r\n\r\nThe manual claims 'you do not have to read through the instructions before commencing'. Well yes... and no. It's certainly true of the second part of tape 2's program, Drawmaster. This allows you to create full-screen graphics and the menu is self-explanatory. However, when it comes to Tape 1, where you can design animated sprites and user defined graphics (UDGs) you definitely do need the instructions. I found myself staring for rather a long time at six small frames, each containing a picture of a small bird in various stages of flight, with no real idea of what to do next.\r\n\r\nHaving loaded the first part of Dynamic Graphics you see the six frames described above. These are offered as examples of what you can do with the animation capacity of the package. The manual describes how to combine the panels into a brief animated sequence, and very impressive it is too. Needless to say, once you've mastered the 'art' of design and animation, you get immense pleasure from seeing your own creations hop, skip, jump and wriggle across the screen.\r\n\r\nThe first section of the program offers you 11 menu commands to help you create your own characters using 'G' for 'Get character', or 'A' for 'Amend' to' draw a character 'freehand'. This turns out to be a rather imprecise way of creating graphics as you have to repeat the function over a series of boxes which will eventually come together to make up a full image.\r\n\r\nOther handy functions in the first menu are 'clear' and 'reverse', which do just what their names suggest.\r\n\r\n- Menu two lets you play around with the images you've created. In addition to useful functions like 'rotate' and 'flip' vertically or horizontally, you can also move a character about without losing any of the image off the edge of the screen.\r\n\r\nCommand menu 3 deals solely with storing your UDGs for use in your programs.\r\n\r\nThe fourth menu has some pretty spectacular tricks in store: you can swap sprites from box to box, as well as flipping them and rotating them in the same ways as you can their constituent characters.\r\n\r\nSide two of the first tape lets you take any of the six 'sprites' you've constructed and place them anywhere on the screen. Using side one of the tape you will have created a subroutine which can be placed anywhere .in user memory and is relocatable.\r\n\r\nShould you lose track of your masterpieces, there are several blank 'Sprite Planner' pages provided in the manual so you can sketch sprites you've designed.\r\n\r\nTape two of Dynamic Graphics consists of a fairly conventional full-screen drawing program, called 'Drawmaster'. This is a basic drawing program which simply allows you to move the cursor about the screen, drawing pictures. It has the disadvantage that in 'transparent mode' the program changes the colour of those areas it moves over, even if you're not drawing anything.\r\n\r\nOne notable feature of Drawmaster is that you can 'hop' about the screen with the cursor. The function lets you draw at specific intervals and thus gives you a great deal of flexibility if you need to mark-up the screen. Other features include changing the speed of the cursor, drawing arcs and lines between the cursor and any other point, saving images to tape and so on. All in all, this part of the program compares well with similar limited graphics packages.\r\n\r\nUndoubtedly, Dynamic Graphic's best feature is the ability to create and animate sprites. The rest of the package is very good, and well-thought out, but it is in making the unique UDGs that the program excels.\r\n\r\nPAINTBOX\r\n\r\nPrint 'n' Plotter Products' Paintbox also deals with UDGs but no animation is involved.\r\n\r\nThe emphasis in Paintbox is on creating high-resolution characters, starting with a series of pro-defined characters. The novice graphics programmer can choose from a wide variety of subjects, ranging from battleships and aeroplanes to tulips and trees. Of course, you can design your own graphics which are then stored in one of four UDG banks. This adds up to an impressive 84 UDG capacity (168 if their inverse equivalents are included) - not something to be sneezed at.\r\n\r\nPaintbox comes with a demo program which is a good way of getting a quick look at the program's capabilities.\r\n\r\nThe UDG banks can be viewed simultaneously, and this is very useful for keeping track of how you're progressing with the development of a set of characters.\r\n\r\nIN USE\r\n\r\nCreating a character to be stored in a bank is very similar to the process used in Dynamic Graphics. With Paintbox, however, the idea is to create and store a large group of UDGs for later use in your programs.\r\n\r\nUsing the Sketchpad and Drawing Board sections of the program, you set up UDGs in a very neat and precise manner. Sketchpad lets you play around with characters from the UDG banks, arranging them as desired. In Drawing Board, you can modify a character from the Sinclair set, or start with a blank and design your own. Functions like 'inverse', 'rotate' and 'mirror' allow you to alter the character as you like.\r\n\r\nUnlike Dynamic Graphics, there is no facility for shifting the character left, right, up or down the screen edge.\r\n\r\nThe next section of Paintbox is called Precision Plotter. One unique feature here is 'erase', which lets you wipe out the last operation performed, not all previous operations. There are the standard functions of circle, line and are which produce very good curves on the screen; no mean feat when it comes to drawing with the Spectrum. There's also a fill command which paints blocks of colour on-screen without your having to handpaint every single pixel.\r\n\r\nBy far the most interesting section of Paintbox is the part called Planner, where all the work you do in other sections comes together. In essence, this lets you combine the UDGs you've created with designs you've drawn using the full-screen precision plotter. There are possibilities here for creating graphics of great beauty and imagination.\r\n\r\nEach bank of previously designed UDGs is displayed at the foot of the screen, while the rest of the screen area is taken up with graphics from the precision plotter.\r\n\r\nTwo ways of saving your works are listed in the manual which is clear and well laid-out. One way to save what you've done is simply to dump the file to tape using SCREEN$. This is rather slow. A faster way, and one which can be used from within Basic programs, involves dumping the screen into memory as bytes, then calling it to screen via machine code routines. There is also a clear explanation in the manual of how to use the Spectrum to hold as many as five full files.\r\n\r\nMELBOURNE DRAW\r\n\r\nThis is perhaps the most visually appealing of the three programs. It differs from the previous two in that it emphasises almost exclusively a function which forms only one section of Dynamic Graphics and Paintbox, namely the full-screen rectangle across which you move the cursor to create lines and blocks of colour. It does this far better than either of the other two programs.\r\n\r\nMelbourne House has taken a calculated risk in making the package's appeal rest entirely on its capacity to draw full-screen graphics. Of course you can design individual UDGs if you want, but Melbourne Draw is far more useful for drawing graphs and the like. It also lends itself more to purely 'leisure' uses than the other two programs.\r\n\r\nSince all Melbourne Draw's functions are based on the full screen. It makes sense that the window at the foot of the screen is full of well laid-out information. This is a definite plus as the windows of both Paintbox and Dynamic Graphics are somewhat skimpy on information. Different alternatives are also clearly presented as to the colour of ink or paper, degree of brightness and so on.\r\n\r\nIN USE\r\n\r\nIn terms of making your mark on the screen, Melbourne Draw is no different to the other two packages. Where it really comes into its own is the facility which lets you magnify the screen as much as 16 times. Anyone using the program is likely to find this the most appealing and widely used function. It may not sound like much, but when you're trying to create a finely-detailed picture it's an invaluable aid.\r\n\r\nA handy guide as to where you are on the full screen while in this magnification mode is provided by a miniature version of the screen located in the information window which shows your exact position. As you move to the edge of the magnified screen you find the cursor has automatically moved into the next quadrant, the movement being echoed by a corresponding movement in the small version of the screen in the window.\r\n\r\nAnother unique feature of the program is the 'grid' function which is useful for position your graphic designs. It's totally independent of the design you have onscreen at the time and can, like any other image, be magnified up to 16 times.\r\n\r\nYet another bonus is that you can expand or contract the screen as a whole, down by 7/8ths of up by l/7th. This allows a flexibility not found in most graphics programs.\r\n\r\nMelbourne Draw is useful mainly or drawing ontricate backgrounds for title pages of games, although it lets you store UDGs in an efficient way that economises on memory. The manual claims that Melbourne Draw is useful for more specialised applications such as drawing circuit diagrams, and this claim is born out by the high degree of precision that can be achieved.\r\n\r\nVERDICT\r\n\r\nThe three programs reviewed present very different facilities. Of the three, Dynamic Graphics will probably find most appeal, but the other two bear careful consideration. It all depends on what you want to be able to do with the graphics capabilities of your Spectrum.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"46,48","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Steve McClure","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Title screen from the Hobbit, Melbourne Draw."},{"Text":"Many choices from Dynamic Graphics."},{"Text":"A sample screen from Paintbox. Well worth the time and effort."},{"Text":"The character editing section of Paintbox."},{"Text":"Paintbox again..."},{"Text":"Animation sequences from Dynamic Graphics."},{"Text":"Abstract doodles in minutes from Paintbox."},{"Text":"Dynamic Graphics - a series of designs for sprite animations."}],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Personal Computer News Issue 75, Aug 1984","Price":"","ReleaseDate":"1984-08-25","Editor":"Peter Worlock","TotalPages":50,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editorial\r\nEditor: Peter Worlock\r\nSub-Editors: Harriet Arnold, Leah Batham\r\nNews Editor: David Guest\r\nNews Writer: Ralph Bancroft\r\nNews Writer/Sub Editor: Sandra Grandison\r\nFeatures Editor: John Lettice\r\nSoftware Editor: Bryan Skinner\r\nPeripherals Editor: Ken Garroch\r\nHardware Editor: Stuart Cooke\r\nPrograms Editor: Nickie Robinson\r\nArt Director: Jim Dansie\r\nArt Editor: David Alexander\r\nLayout Artists: Tim Brown, Paul Clarkson\r\nPublisher: Cyndy Miles\r\nPublishing Assistant: Tobe Bendeth\r\n\r\nAdvertising\r\nGroup Advertising Manager: Peter Goldstein\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Bettina Williams\r\nAssistant Advertisement Managers: Sarah Barron, Phil Pratt\r\nSenior Sales Executives: Laura Cade, Claire Rowbottom\r\nSales Executives: Claire Barnes, Phil Benson, Mike Blackman, Paul Evans, Tony Keefe, Christian McCarthy, Amanda Moore, Sarah Musgrave, Tony O'Reilly\r\nProduction: Noel O'Sullivan\r\nAdvertisement Assistant: Karen Isaac\r\nSubscription Enquiries: Gill Stevens\r\nSubscription Address: [redacted]\r\nEditorial Address: [redacted]\r\nAdvertising Address: [redacted]\r\n\r\nPublished by VNU Business Publications, [redacted]\r\n© VNU 1983. No material maybe reproduced in whole or in part without written consent from the copyright holders.\r\nPhotoset by Quickset, [redacted]\r\nPrinted by Chase Web Offset, [redacted]\r\nDistributed by Seymour Press, [redacted]\r\nRegistered at the PO as a newspaper"},"MainText":"ART FOUR ART'S SAKE\r\n\r\nJohn Lettice discovers how software houses are catering for Spectrum users with artistic inclinations.\r\n\r\nDynamic Graphics\r\n£14.95\r\nProcom Software, [redacted]\r\n\r\nPaintbox\r\n£7.50\r\nPrint 'n' Plotter Products, [redacted]\r\n\r\nMelbourne Draw\r\n£8.95\r\nMelbourne House, [redacted]\r\n\r\nScreen Machine\r\n£8.95\r\nISP, [redacted]\r\n\r\nThere was a time when I'd look at the title screen of the latest Spectrum game and naively wonder how it was done.\r\n\r\nCertainly, if you sat down and concentrated hard you could see how it could be done, even taking the Spectrum's graphics limitations into account. But what baffled me was why someone, even for lots of money, would go to the brain-bending bother of working it all out.\r\n\r\nBut now the secret's out. In as much as the shelves of computer stores ever bulge, they're currently bulging with Spectrum graphics packages. So much so that you need never again curse your re-INKed characters, or tell yourself 'I must do something about improving that fill routine'.\r\n\r\nGraphics packages usually cover two main areas: they'll produce full screen graphics without a lot of the hassle this would otherwise involve, and they'll also generally provide some form of user defined graphics (UDG) facility. The latter is certainly useful as an adjunct to the software's artistic side, although if it's a full sprite system you want you'll almost certainly have to look elsewhere.\r\n\r\nYou shouldn't put too much emphasis on having a UDG facility within the program unless it has fairly advanced features. The Spectrum, after all, comes with a UDG design program on the Horizons tape, and it's always struck me as peculiar that people will sit down and write their own (often worse) program rather than use this.\r\n\r\nIn the case of Melbourne Draw the extra is the fact that it allows you to save any one of the character positions on the screen you've designed as a UDG. While a routine of this sort is fairly easy to write, simply involving reading the character position and POKEing its details into the correct character, it's useful to have it integrated with a program that will draw that screen. And it's not that easy to knock off something of the calibre of Melbourne Draw.\r\n\r\nMELBOURNE DRAW\r\n\r\nFrom the packaging of Melbourne Draw it looks like The Hobbit has gone to Melbourne House's head. 'In fact with Melbourne Draw the graphics potential of your Spectrum becomes unlimited,' it trumpets modestly.\r\n\r\nIt's probably advisable not to take this claim too literally, because although the package is good, if you reckon it'll do something like batik or silk vinyl finish you'll be sorely disappointed.\r\n\r\nOnce it's loaded the program presents you with the standard Spectrum screen of 32 x 22 character positions. The bottom two lines give you information about the current status of the program, giving you the mode you're in, whether you're editing the screen or the attributes, and the current coordinates of the cursor you use to draw on the screen.\r\n\r\nThe numbering for the latter corresponds with the Spectrum's own PLOT and DRAW coordinate system, with the addition of minus Y coordinates to allow you to draw in the bottom two lines of the screen. These aren't normally available from Basic, but it's possible to POKE attributes into that area of screen memory, and to use them as part of the main screen. Melbourne's way of dealing with the ensuing coordinate problem is certainly a fudge, but bearing in mind that you'll be a lot happier using the coordinates you know, it's an acceptable fudge. You will of course have to shift the report lines in order to use the area for graphics, but this is fairly plain sailing.\r\n\r\nDrawing itself simply involves using an ersatz eight-direction cursor cluster centred around the 8 key on the Spectrum. This moves a small flashing dot around the screen.\r\n\r\nThe keys have a fairly gentle auto-repeat timing of around one second, so you won't find yourself lapping around too fast unless you want to. The cursor moves without leaving a mark while it's in skip mode, while set mode switches pixels on, and reset switches them off. Invert reverses any image the cursor moves over.\r\n\r\nNow close your eyes for a moment (finish reading this paragraph first) and imagine a graphics system that allows you to manipulate individual pixels on the Spectrum's screen. If you stare hard at the screen, apart from getting a splitting headache, you'll realise the difficulty involved in actually seeing what you're doing.\r\n\r\nNever fear, you can magnify the screen by four or by 16, and while you're doing this the magnification indicator in the report window shows you which area of the screen you're on at any given time. You can therefore work on your drawing in detail quite easily, although I'd suggest you rough it up on the full screen first, before tackling the detail.\r\n\r\nThe next obvious problem you'll face with the Spectrum is that of setting colour. You can PLOT and DRAW on individual pixels, but you can only set one INK and one PAPER colour for each individual 8 x 8 character position.\r\n\r\nEye-closing time again - think of a beautifully detailed drawing, the sort of thing that Albrecht Durer would be proud to show his mother. Now think of our hapless engraver rashly deciding to use a PAINT command he's just run up on his Spectrum. 'Aaargh!' he cries. He throws away his Spectrum and decides to open a wurst stall.\r\n\r\nMelbourne deals with this by including a FILL routine, then using a single character position sized cursor that allows you to set INK and PAPER one position at a time. Once you do this you'll probably still have to make amendments, but it should be; obvious what they are.\r\n\r\nAnd there's an even easier way to deal with the problem. You can overlay a grid onto the screen, and with this in place you can't really go wrong.\r\n\r\nThe grid also comes into its own when you're dealing with UDGs. There are only the standard 21 available, but the program has the advantage of tying UDGs into PLOT and DRAW.\r\n\r\nWhen you're just using the Spectrum's standard graphics facilities it's actually difficult to relate the two. User defined graphics are easy to move around the screen, but it's not that easy to link more than two or three of them together without a lot of planning first. Similarly, although it's fairly easy to use PLOT and DRAW for larger illustrations, it's more difficult to move them around the screen, and if you're using UD Gs as building blocks for pictures you don't really have enough to be able to muck one or two of them up.\r\n\r\nBecause of this it really is very handy to be able to virtually page UDGs in and out of memory, copying them to different locations and so on. I have a dream that you could write a program that stored whole screens in the form of individual UDGs, then used some sort of scrabble technique to rearrange the screens into other screens. Umm... I'll write it tomorrow...\r\n\r\nThere's also a facility for saving the UDGs as an area of memory, and thus cutting down the amount of space your programs take up, but as this is in the Spectrum manual it's only reasonable that Melbourne should allow you to do this.\r\n\r\nOverall, it's an excellent package, and I've very few, and very minor, complaints about it. It allows you to scale the picture down by 7/8ths, or up by 1/7th, but doesn't allow you to reverse this feature. It would have been even better if you could, but equally it's nice to have the feature in the first place.\r\n\r\nTHE SCREEN MACHINE\r\n\r\nScreen Machine is allegedly 'the ultimate screen editor'. You can be forgiven for thinking you're in the wrong article at this point, because while we are talking about editing screens here, a graphics design package isn't exactly what the rest of the world generally means by the term. And it's not by Ultimate either.\r\n\r\nIt's less detailed than Melbourne Draw, and will therefore be easier to use. ISP has decided against using cursor-controlled line drawing at all, using instead 19 pre-packaged functions, along with 95 graphics characters (these are in addition to any UDGs you want to use) as building blocks.\r\n\r\nBut having learned this, have a look at page four of the manual: 'Please note: The graphics character set provided with Screen Machine is copyright ISP Marketing Ltd.'\r\n\r\nIf this means ISP wants a piece of the action from any commercial program that uses these characters I reckon the company's pushing its luck - like millions of others, I've programmed some of these graphics myself in the past, and I don't really see how ISP can copyright hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades symbols.\r\n\r\nBesides this, the graphics set is really pretty feeble (like I say, I've programmed some of them myself). Still, I'm looking forward to ISP suing Commodore or one of the other block graphics merchants for breach of copyright.\r\n\r\nAt least there's none of that messing around with cursor-controlled line drawing, is there? Not exactly-say you want to draw a line, you'll find it's automatically drawn from the last pixel plotted or the end of the last line or circle drawn. The syntax D+5, -5 is used to draw a straight line, and this particular example is analogous to the Spectrum command DRAW 5, -5. This latter, incidentally, takes one less key depression. Good, eh?\r\n\r\nPLOTis similarly verbose, using a(x,y) as the equivalent of PLOT x,y.\r\n\r\nFortunately, a few improvements have been made to the Basic commands. PLOT and DRAW commands that would take the Spectrum off its screen will simply be ignored, and circles can be drawn off the screen. But for these marginal improvements the program wouldn't really be worth it. There is, however, a method of creating a margin display, and you can rotate characters (only one character position at a time) in groups of 90 degrees.\r\n\r\nYou can also enlarge. 'A common desire amongst users is to display characters at eight times their normal size.' It's therefore fortunate that 'the Screen Machine Enlargement command will enlarge the contents of any character cell by eight times'. Personally I always thought users were keen on enlarging characters by nine times, but clearly I stand corrected. Again, though, it's just done on a single character basis.\r\n\r\nReally, the whole package seems to me to be far too limited to make it worth using. The initial idea of making it easier than other graphics packages may have been a good one, but the commands used are by no means obvious.\r\n\r\nPAINTBOX\r\n\r\nThe initial claim to fame as far as Paintbox is concerned is the fact that it gives you 84 UDGs using banks of data which are switched in and out of the UDG area as and when you need them. This gives you a much more powerful 'building block' facility than either Melbourne Draw or Screen Machine, and these banks can also, be used from within Basic programs.\r\n\r\nThe drawing facilities are less comprehensive than those in Melbourne Draw, but it's really a case of swings and roundabouts. If you're using more UDGs then you might find it easier than Operating on a pixel by pixel basis. Paintbox also errs more on the side of pre-packaged routines like circles and arcs.\r\n\r\nIn order to combine these facilities you use something called Screen Planner, which allows you to use the UDGs. By switching between this and the drawing mode you can build up quite complex pictures. There is also a facility for saving up to five screens to tape, then loading them back into memory. By paging these in and out you could produce a form of animation.\r\n\r\nDYNAMIC GRAPHICS\r\n\r\nThe salient difference between Dynamic Graphics and the other packages dealt with here is that it allows you to produce sprites for combining with your own programs. The difference here is that you aren't just producing user defined graphics, but rather you're building animated sequences of characters that will shuffle across the screen in whatever way you want.\r\n\r\nThe end result is a machine code subroutine that you can save in memory and call up from Basic programs, so space intruders without tears could well be with us at last.\r\n\r\nThe second tape that comes in the Dynamic Graphics package is Drawmaster. This uses a cursor drawing method, again with eight possible directions. You can also draw arcs and circles, and fill and rescale your works of art. It will also define windows and revise the screen attributes. Drawmaster itself has its good points, but overall I feel that its main advantage is its sprite facility.\r\n\r\nThere are a number of other graphics packages out, and they do seem to be developing in the same sort of way as Dynamic Graphics. The newly-released White Lightning is probably the most notable, being first and foremost a games design package. It is Forth-based, and although geared to games, screen design becomes an adjunct to this. Certainly it takes some getting used to, but the rewards are high, and it looks very much like the next major success story.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"18,19,20","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"John Lettice","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]