Description
Issue 18
| Item | Author | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Menu | Simon Cooke | |
| Magazine | F-16 Combat Pilot binned, details of LERM Samdisk update | |
| Letters | Editor of public, The shortcomings of PD | |
| Draughts | Paul Milner | MC version of the classic board game |
| Childish demo | Dennis van Berkel | Demo/advert for Challengers PD |
| The Axemen | Ian Slavin | Top-notch humour from Ian Slavin |
| HTBA CP | Ian Slavin | Zeb green tries programming |
| MC pt 12 | Steve Taylor | Search: “MC 12” More graphics routines |
| Database | Colin Borland | Database |
| Base-X | Andy Monk | Database |
| Life anim | Paul Milner | The famous on/off cell thing |
| Demon anim | Paul Milner | Vaguely similar in concept to life |
| Wireworld | Paul Milner | Enter the scary world of electronics |
| Gizmo demo | Robert Smith | Adventures of the Gremlins star |
| Creator | Dennis van Berkel | Game list creator |
| Yahtzee 2 | Dan Dooré, Simon Cooke | Additions to the game on Fred 17 |
| The blues | Dennis van Berkel | A spot of music |
| Fonts 2 | Ian Slavin | Large collection of fonts |
| Daft demo | Colin Borland | You’ll like this one! |
| Exclusive | Colin MacDonald | Not really a demo of Batz 'n Balls :-) |
Magazine
Editorial
Happy New Year to everyone!! It's 1992 - the year of the FRED.
Well... Lets hope it's a good year anyway. To start off the
year which is the start of Europe and "the end of the recession"
here's a little warning : no more Amiga owner jokes OK? I don't
mind Amiga USER jokes, but not OWNER jokes. The thing is, at the
last London AFCF (All Format Computer Fair), there were a lot of
Amiga A500's on sale for rather low prices, being the traitorous
person that I am, I bought one. I have been to confession and
said ninety seven Hail Marys and all that but it's no good, I've
still got it. So, you might be calling me a traitor right at
this very minute but if I said I had absolutely no plans to
leave the SAM but instead start using the Amiga to convert games
FROM, I think you should be giving me a round of applause.
Sadly, as per usual, I can't give ANY details of games I plan
to convert so PLEASE don't plead with me to tell you when you
phone me - 'cos I won't!
Editorial
On the brighter side however, Impatience has now covered it's
costs although I don't have the XR2 yet. And you all know what
this means don't you? Yes, it means that ol' Col's got more
projects being developed (I would say right at this minute but I
just phoned one programmer and he's out and apparently won't be
in a fit state to talk to me until late tomorrow afternoon !).
The first thing that most people have asked for is ..... extra
levels for Triltex. And so, they are being done at the
moment. The packaging is not definite as yet, but I am hoping to
case it in the small plastic casing you see 16-bit budget games
in, but there should be more than simply a disc with a label.
The price? To my loving FRED readers it's only £4.99. A measely
price to pay for hours and hours more of bafflement AND a new
logo thingy! Yup, you'll need your original Impatience disc to
load up Triltex and then you can load in the new data !!!
Fantastic isn't it ? We (as in me and the various people working
on it, although it's Mr Taylor that's doing all the coding and
designing again) hope to release it hopefully in about a month
to six weeks time so don't place your orders yet as there'll be
Editorial
more news next month on the final release date unless we
encounter some MAJOR (beggin' your pardon, John) problems.
As you will already have guessed, "Triltex, The Later Levels"
is not the only FRED release planned, no siree, FRED has several
other programmers lined up for games. Sadly, things are a bit in
the early stage so there aren't any contracts signed yet so I'd
better not say anything. However , what I will say is that I
hope to have about FOUR releases by the Summer, hopefully at
least one of them will "hit the shops" by Easter but no
promises! Whatever gets released, you'll hear it first in FRED
and wherever possible, FRED readers will get a demo to boot.
As FRED Publishing expands, you will see larger write-ups in
magazines with advertising in some of the "glossies" and
naturally, some bigger and better compos! If anyone has ideas
for compo prizes I'd love to hear them (but I won't be able to
afford another "lifetime sub to FRED" again for a while).
More Pleas
On the subject of this sort of thing : if you know someone who
can programme the Z80 to make it do things that would make a
toaster jealous (ie if they've got a Speccy or SAM and can do
m/c pretty well) then get them to give me a ring and we can have
a chat about things like ROYALTIES and COMMISION and MONEY in
general - and with any luck, some of it could disappear from my
bank account into someone elses pocket! Give me a ring, send a
demo, petrol bomb my Amiga, just let me know that you exist -
that these Z80 programmers aren't just a figment of people like
Clive Sinclair's imagination (and what an imagination that was
ladies and gentlemen, I mean he actually thought people would
drive about in his C5 instead of using it as a heated slipper
while watching late night TV). I must apologize, it's one of
those "Oh my God, I think I'm about to explode moods" !!!
Actually, instead of just pleading for coders, I'm still
looking for game ideas so if you've got a few faves you want to
see on the SAM or if you've just invented the mega-game of the
year, get in touch and we'll em... do something with it?
NEWS
Ahem...there doesn't seem to have been very much happening
lately, SAMCo have finally gotten The Sound Machine, Splat,
Hexagonia etc etc released but don't yet have plans for future
releases other than those that are still under development like
Manic Miner.
You will be disapointed to hear that Alan Miles recently told
me that F16 Fighter Pilot has been scrapped due to the
unreliability of the programmer. Naturally, refunds are in order
but contact them on [redacted] for details. Will FRED step in
and save the SAM Flight Sim fanatics?? You'll just have to stay
tuned and wait and see !!!
You will have noticed the company Noesis mentioned in the menu
credits, well this is actually a software house. The first title
should be finished by now and is SAM PRINT. This enables you to
design posters, letter headings etc and dump it out to your Dot
Matrix printer. A review will appear shortly with full details.
Misc
As I mentioned last month, ZAT's Dave Ledbury has gone done to
SAMCo. Anyway, ZAT's address has changed, so DON'T SEND
ANYTHING TO THEIR OLD PO BOX ADDRESS 'COS IT WON'T GET TO THEM.
The address to send your subs etc to is :
[redacted]
Sinclair User managed to cock up the Impatience review
totally! By reviewing Triltex and Viking as two seperate games
they were awarded 81% and 69% respectively which in my mind
gives Impatience 150% !! The highest rating SU have ever given !
Along with this, old Garfy said things like "the bombs don't
even blow up" which is not strictly true, well, it's more like
a blatent lie as I'm sure all Impatience owners will agree.
Never mind, the CRASH review should appear soon.
Misc
While I'm here I guess I'd better do some apologizing in
advance : for the lack of text and screens on this issue and for
the possible delays you might encounter when ordering from FRED
in the following 3 weeks. These are, as usual, due to exams
(plus the fact that I don't have enough memory for many screens
this month!) however they SHOULD be over by next issue by which
time I can get my Amiga printing out disc labels, my SAM
perfected at printing out address labels and should have a lot
more time to do FRED in... unless some wonderful project gets in
the way...... !
I was going to put some samples by Jon Hampton on this month
but I couldn't get them to run in SAMDOS! If I think I can use
them in FRED19 I'll get in touch Jon!
As reported last month, Adrian Parker (MD of Blue Alpha) is
now employed by SAMCo and it is now official that PBT
Electronics have purchased the rights to all their hardware.
Details of any possibilities of price changes etc are not yet
available.
Misc
A recent press release from LERM Software tells of numerous
new and improved features in their SAMDISK, including :
* Improved REPAIR and COPY features
* Format a disc with or without verifying
* A super fast Duplicator thingy which, with two drives, copies
a disc "very quickly" because it only copies the relevant
tracks - not the empty ones! If I remember correctly, there was
a poke way,way back that let you do this...?
* The "File Information" now also tells you what MODE of SCREEN$
the file is (if it's a SCREEN$ file obviously!)
* You can now rename the disc AND rename files.
The price wasn't given but apparently it costs £7.50 to upgrade
from Version 1 to 2. Having never seen the original, I wouldn't
know if it is worth spending that sort of money on a few extra
and improved features but if you decide not to, just save up an
extra £2.49 and you can buy a copy of Impatience! (well, it was
worth a try you must admit!)
Calling all Scotch folk
There has been call for a Scottish SAM user group to be
organized recently so myself and another fellow Scot have
decided to see if we can get something going. At present the
idea is to book a hall say once a month and have a mini-Show to
help cover costs eg small companies book stands for a small fee
and the rest of the hire cost would be made up by an entrance
fee if necessary. The first hour or two would be allocated "Show
time" to allow the companies to regain their expenses and then
the rest of the day would just be spent as a get-together sort
of thing, still in the hall but with numerous SAMs set up giving
plenty of oppertunity for meeting new SAM owners and finding SAM
owners in areas near to you that you never knew existed before!
Obviously this is just one idea of how it could be organized
but if you are interested, tell me and you'll get a
"Scottish SAM Group" newsheet or something similar. If you have
any ideas or suitable venues you know of then please get in
touch.
It's hear at last!
My printer has finally arrived and I've almost gotten used to
it already (only 4 weeks later!). Hopefully, you could have
already told this by the label on the front of your envelope
this morning.
If your address is wrong in any way then please tell me what's
wrong so I can correct it for future issues. To save me trying
to remember who's subscription runs out on what issue, there
should be a number either after or under your postcode, the
first four digits are your FRED subscription number, the last
two are the issue your subscription runs out on - clever eh? If
things go wrong and there is only a 2 digit number instead of
the 6, then that'll be the issue your sub runs out on.
While I'm talking about subscriptions, I'll tell you the
fabulously cheap rates you can aquire FRED at :
£15 will get you the following 12 issues, a saving of £3
£8 will get you the following 6 issues, a saving of £1
Impatience
Here's what the three Sinclair magazines said about Impatience :
SU - "fantastic pointer-driven gameplay, brilliant stereo sound
and addictiveness on both games"
"excellant gameplay...involving...superior graphics"
When reviewed separately, SU gave Viking 69% and Triltex 81%
CRASH - "presentation is great, with slick, well-drawn graphics
and music that begs to be turned up!"
"Impatience is a good purchase...I'm sure there's room
for both in your software collection" 74%
YS - "knuckle-gnawingly hard! It's also incredibly likeable
with presentation buffed to a shine and loads of
friendly features."
"So there you have it. A sizzler and a fairly good
supporting act - a lot for your crumpled tenner. It's
got to be a Megagame. And it is. Hurrah!" 90%
Impatience
As you've already gathered, Impatience has TWO games on it!
Both games work with redefineable keyboard (the first m/c game
to have redefinable keys!), joystick, Joymouse or SAMCo's mouse
(the first piece of software to work with it and still the ONLY
commercial game that uses it!).
Hundreds of people have bought Impatience so far and have
been "delighted", "very frustrated", "immensely pleased" and
even "infuriated" with their purchase! With over 20 baffling
levels on Triltex to keep you burning the midnight oil, and head
to head battle on Viking against a friend during the day! Simply
send a cheque/PO to FRED at the usual address for your very own
copy of this "amazing" game!!!!
Impatience is available from your local SAM dealer (if they
don't stock it, send me their details and they soon will!), from
SAMCo, or from FRED itself! The cost is a meagre £9.99, how many
times to you see a game which is a first in many areas for under
a tenner? Not often - but here you get TWO games!
Cheat modes!
As many of you will have guessed, there is a cheat mode to
Triltex - but if you think you can con me into telling you what
it is then you're barking up the wrong tree, mate.
However, I would be very interested if anyone came up with a
cheat for Prince Of Persia - Chris White swears their isn't one
but all the other versions had one and he said it was a true
conversion...
If you're stuck on the very last bitty of Prince when you have
to fight yourself then here's how to do it : Drop your sword by
pressing fire and down, then simply merge with him!! Run off to
the left and you've nearly completed the game! Simple once you
know isn't it.
Naturally, if you know of any other cheat modes that havn't
yet been published then please get in touch - there may be
hundreds of people crying themselves to sleep at night wishing
they knew what it was...
The Puzzle Corner no.2
Right then puzzle freaks here's the answers to last months
puzzle corner, as if you need them!
Answer to (1) You probably had some difficulty in doing this,
nobody claimed the prize. The answer is... there isn't one! It's
impossible, there's always one last connection that will not
work. Give yourself a pat on the back for trying.
Answer to (2) Fortunately this one is possible, how many of you
said 4 rungs? The answer is, of course, the water covers no more
rungs at all. When the water level rises so does the boat, and
if the boat rises the ladder rises with it!
Answer to (3) Another trick question. The two coins are a 50p
piece and a 5p piece. One is not a 50p piece but the other is!
Answer to (4) If only one statement is true then the rest are
false so the answer can only be (d)
Puzzle Corner no.2
Answer (5) to The obvious answer is 5 cigarettes but when the
tramp smokes these he has another 5 cigarette ends left which he
makes one more cigarette out of. 6 is the correct answer.
Which is more accurate a stopped clock or a clock that is 5
minutes fast? The stopped clock is more accurate, it displays
the correct time twice a day, the fast clock never displays the
correct time.
After you've finished kicking yourself, on with the next lot of
brain teasers.
(1) Bad news, a group of Tibetten monks have predicted that the
end of the world shall happen when New Years Day is a Sunday. Oh
dear! how long have we left? ( You might want to write a little
program to solve this! )
The Puzzle Corner no.2
(2) A bit of a tongue twister this one; "Round the ragged rock
the ragged rascle ran, say how many R's in that and your a
clever man".
(3) What is the next number in this series? 3 1 4 1 5
But don't give the most obvious answer, give the second most
obvious answer. And remember its as easy as pie!
(4) In my hand I have a long length of material. I cut clean
through it. I have not created two pieces with four ends but one
piece with only two ends. How is that possible?
This months classic puzzle is that age old question "how long is
a piece of string?".
CM : ON THE SUBJECT OF THE ACCURATE CLOCKS - DEPENDING ON HOW
FAST THE FAST CLOCK IS, IT COULD DISPLAY THE CORRECT TIME
SEVERAL TIMES IN A DAY ??? NOT THAT I'D BE PICKY !!
MORK!!!
On the subject on nicknames. I haven't really taken to the one
Colin gave me, "The Smarty". I just can't relate to it. I don't
particularily like the nickname I get called at school, "Wully",
either so I have decided what I want to be called. Have any of
you ever seen "Mork and Mindy" on TV? well that's what I want to
be called, No! not "Mindy", "Mork". From now on I will not
respond to the name "William", I'll just shrug my shoulders and
say "who's he?", from now on call me "Mork".
CM : OK, so it wasn't very constructive to say the very least
but never mind, Mork seems fine to me! Now, how about one for
other people that don't have a nickname yet? I'm not asking
anyone in particular nor am I refering to anyone specially but I
hate mentioning names in scrollies, and I'm sure you lot do too
so if you've got a groovesome (as CRASH would say) name then get
in touch and IF I remember I'll put your name in.
I guess you'll all want to know what's on the disc...?
OK then, I suppose I can tell you.
Firstly we have another 100% machine code game, this one is by
Paul Milner and is the game of Draughts. It's one player and you
simply enter the row followed by column characters to move a
piece. It's very straighforward - the only snag is that you
can't do double (or even triple!) jumps ie you can only jump one
of the computer's pieces at a time.
Great demo makers, the DVB recently did a great advert for
Challengers PDL. As I hadn't seen it anywhere else I thought
FRED readers might be interested in it. The demo features no
less than THREE great tunes - one is a rendition of Sweet Child
O' Mine by G n R !!!
Uh oh! The AXE is back!! Firstly, we've got three amusing
demos featuring different characters - these load one after the
other and are guarenteed to get you smiling (well, almost!). The
further adventures of Zeb Green are also entailed in the How To
Be A ... Computer Programmer. Ask anyone - it's much more
realistic than you would think!
On the Flip Side is...
Steve Taylor takes a break from designing Triltex levels to
give you another insight into the stange world of Machine Code.
Now, here's a real choice for you : There have been two great
databases sent in and because I'm so indecisive, I thought I'd
leave the chosing up to you. Each one has it's plus points and
they're both extremely usable but you have to chose between
Colin Borland's user-friendly ness or Andy Monks (EXTREME)
flexibility and pesentation... Oooh it's a tough choice!!!
Mr Paul Milner has been very busy at the assembler this month
- not only did he do the great draughts game BUT there's also
THREE fascinating cellular animations. The name sounds dull but
believe me, they're not. LIFE is a SAM representation of the
famous on/off cell thingy, DEMON, my favourite is all to do with
colours and can keep you gazing at the screen all afternoon!!
Wire-World is a very interesting concept - you can now watch the
little electricity pulses travelling along wires! And you can
even define your own circuit! Full instructions are included in
all three of these so I'll leave you to enjoy them.
Still on the flip side is...
Here's another Gremlin demo by Robert Smith. Watch Gizmo spawn
Gremlins, do excercises and finally kill off the evil Gremlin.
It's all neat stuff, what I do recommend is that you might want
to hold down a key during parts of it to speed it up.
And now the interesting bit! Firstly, I'm proud to announce a
fabulous EXCLUSIVE demo just for FRED - and I'm not even going
to tell you what it is!! But if I said it had something sort of
to do with Arkanoid and programmed by a certain LORD I think
you'll all get very excited.
The DVB have also done a few other little proggies for your
consumption : a nifty little CREATOR to store a list of all your
programs which comes in handy as well as a Blues tune which may
appeal to some of you.
AXE pops his majestic head up again with even more FONTS!
Cookie and Banzai both come up with different additions to
last months Yahtzee game.
And lastly, Colin Borland has done a rather...em..daft demo.
Screens by Allan Norton, Mike in Sheffield and
Credits
FRED thanks go to :
Paul Milner AXE Wizard
The DVB Challengers Banzai
Extreme Colin Borland Robert Smith
Allan Norton Mike & Roger H. Noesis
SAM Tech SAMCo PHS
Grafix Wizard Mork M.o.M.
Simon Scott (snigger, snigger....Ha Ha Ha Ha - sorry everyone!)
Okay Dokey, FRED 19 (gosh it seems like only yesterday it was
FRED 2) will be out sometime in the first week of February at
the usual cost of £1.50 (NB : FRED costs £1.50 per issue or £15
for 12 months, not £1, £1.75, £2 or £2.20 people seem to think!)
Usual address : [redacted]
Letters & Reviews
Hello Again!
As I've said earlier, there isn't many letters this month so
you'll just have to make do with what you get given.
Oh! A letter from....me! Ha! Fancy that.
Dear readers,
some of you appear to be under the great dillusion that :
a) FRED is good
b) I am not really a Russian spy
c) I get hundreds of letters every day waiting to be published.
Now, I can't comment on the first two BUT I hardly ever get any
letters for publication - if you want pen pals, a game, a chat
to hundreds of FRED readers or just have a technical query then
please send it to me (on disc) and it'll probably be published.
I have been led to believe that the lack of letters to date is
because you all think I get dozens of letters.Well you're wrong.
Public
Dear Colin,
I am the editor of the new disc magazine PUBLIC. It is a
"different" magazine in that it relies heavily on the Coupe
using public for contributions (sounds suspicially familiar to
FRED - Ed), hence the name. The price is minimal, £1. Issue 2 is
already started and is looking extremely promising with articles
by Thorsten Gudmundsen (WHO? - Ed) and also some foreign demos.
Also included will be; news, reviews, previews, PD scene,
screens, letters, samples, scrolly, sound aid to name but a few.
[redacted]
CM : I HAVN'T HAD A CHANCE TO LOOK THROUGH THE PREVIEW DISC BUT
FOR A QUID IT LOOKS PRETTY GOOD. TRY IT AND SEE IS MY ADVICE!
Roger Hartley
I've been having trouble with my picture recently. It keeps on
fading to black and white, then fading back again. It only seems
to happen when I'm using SAMSCRATCH, but it is really annoying.
Does it sound like my graphics chip, TV, modulator or something
totally different to you? When I tried it on another telly
there didn't seem to be any problems, but it does only happen
occasionally.
CM : How come I get all the tough ones? It does sound a bit like
your telly but if it doesn't happen too often I don't think you
should worry about it. There are however two possibilities you
may have overlooked -
1) Your TV may be allergic to SAMSCRATCH
2) If you plot a graph with the exact time and duration of
these little "black and white" outs against the time since your
computer has been switched on for, you'll not only keep out of
everyone's way for a few weeks but you'll probably pass all your
Maths exams - dunno 'bout yer telly tho'.
[redacted]
I've got to agree with Brian in Enceladus 7. Fastline
especially produce very little exciting PD these days (from what
I hear they aren't producing any PD at all in fact!) Their
latest discs seem to consist of film demos, digitised screens
and more film demos. I know not a great deal of work can be
going into these, and I for one am getting very bored with them.
Yes, it was a good idea, and I should imagine it was pretty
successful. I have Robocop, Aliens (2 discs) and various
others. But, there are tens of them now, and they aren't really
getting any better. I haven't seen Terminator yet, but I hear it
may be what I am looking for. What I am looking for is quality
to be improved. I want demos to use 512K, or even the 1 meg.
Crunch them down, so you can get more of them on one disc. Put
some M/C into them, rather than just use a big chunk of graphic
code, and PUT it in BASIC. Some sound (music even) wouldn't go
amiss either. Look at Lord Insanity's demos, swift, great music,
and a lot going on at once. Silly demo only used 11K, and look
at that! It was amazing, and in my opinion one of the best
pieces of PD coding I have ever seen on the SAM. I have seen
Roger H. (again!)
many Amiga (spit!) demos, and for quality in every way they are
more than ten times better. Why not put together mega demos,
with various animations, music demos and even both at once. It
may even be that you have to charge more than usual, but I
wouldn't mind.
I know a lot of people will now call me a whinger, and I can
see all these death threats coming through my letterbox now. I
don't care! Hopefully you might be hearing more from me soon, it
just depends on Colin. I'd like to hear from anyone though,
especially people who live local. I'd prefer it if you send your
letters on disc, but I'll try to read any handwriting. After
all, none of you have seen mine!
R. Hartley
CM : No comment. .
