USE CURSOR KEYS TO SCROLL TEXT. USE CURSOR KEYS TO SCROLL TEXT. 8 BIT SOFTWARE Reactions Reactions Constructive comments on programs published by 8BS are always welcome. Here are a few: From: K2F (JOHN DAVIS) Program: VARIOUS MINESWEEPER AND PUSH THE BALE ARE EXTREMELY GOOD STRATEGY GAMES - I'VE WASTED MANY MORE HOURS OF HAPPY AGGRAVATION THAN I'D INTENDED TRYING TO CRACK THESE TO A DECENT LEVEL. IF ANYONE DID MINESWEEPER IN UNDER 400 SECONDS, WOULD THEY PLEASE BRAG ABOUT IT ON THE MESSAGE SYSTEM, AS THE BEST I COULD MANAGE WAS 415. HELPFUL HINT:- IT PAYS TO KEEP RESTARTING THIS GAME TILL IT GIVES YOU A GOOD STARTING SEQUENCE, SINCE GETTING BOXED IN AT THE START IS A HOPELESS POSITION. IF ANYONE KNOWS THE CORRECT OPENING FEW MOVES TO ANY, OR ALL, LEVELS ABOVE LEVEL 10 OF PUSH THE BALE, IT'D BE NICE TO HEAR ABOUT IT, AS THAT'S WHERE I GOT STUCK. HOW ALL THESE LEVELS WERE SO CLEVERLY DESIGNED IN THE FIRST PLACE IS A GREAT MYSTERY - THE WORK OF A FIENDISH GENIUS. THE SCENARIO COULD HAVE BEEN A BIT MORE EXOTIC THAN BALES OF STRAW IN A WAREHOUSE - PERHAPS AN OLD MISER PUSHING CHESTS OF LOLLY INTO STRONGROOMS IN AN OLD MANSION... THE CHRISTMAS SNOWMEN WERE CUTE 'N' FESTIVE, WITH GREAT ARRANGEMENTS OF THE MUSIC. IF THIS IS REVISED FOR NEXT YEAR, THE OTHER MUCH BETTER TUNE TO "LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM" WOULD BE APPRECIATED - YOU KNOW THE ONE - B B B A# B D C E, BY LEWIS REDNER. ALSO "MIDNIGHT CLEAR" BY RICHARD WILLIS - F D A C BFLAT G F G F - WITH SOME NICE HARMONIES, WOULD GO DOWN A TREAT. THERE'S ALSO AN INFERIOR TUNE FOR "MIDNIGHT CLEAR" WHICH SEEMS TO GET USED MORE OFTEN THAN THE GOOD ONE - CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN THIS? ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: CCC From: 3SQ (Tim Parsons) Subject: MESSAGING I find it much easier to transfer the Relevant files to my next (submission) Disc, these are SendMes and SendMC, with a simple Boot file to Boot the disc, I am sure you will find it easy to input even more messages and with a keystrip, I have now progressed to using colour, next issue, who knows I shall be doing graphics !!. I also thoroughly approve of the Menu printout program. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: K2H (RON BOYCE) Program: ISSUE 32 As usual, this Issue was well up to 8BS standard and contained a lot of very useful material. The Menu Printer/Reader will be most useful, and some of the games were more than a little thought-provoking! The NOUGHTS and CROSSES game in the ADFS Extra section provided me with several hours of programming experience. Being something of a perfectionist I amended this Program to use names instead of 'Player 1' and 'Player 2', a running total of games played and games won by each player, a final 'score' table after 9 games and large type for the X's and O's! Some might think it a pretty useless exercise but it certainly passes the time, keeps the brain fairly active in retirement, and is better than doing crosswords! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 15A (Steven Flintham) Program: MenRead This seems like a very good idea. I have only two suggestions. Firstly, how about providing an option to spool the list produced to a disc file, appending the text to the end if the file already exists. That way the file could be loaded into a wordprocessor and tidied up slightly before printing, or possibly even used a part of some customised database to search for items on 8BS discs. Secondly, the program only gives the full path when this is included in the filename. The menu program also has a separate entry in the DATA lines for a directory to be selected before running the program - if this was appended to the front of the filename then all files would have their full path displayed. EDITOR.... Thanks Steven. No sooner said than done. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 15A (Steven Flintham) Program: Shoppin Brilliant! Possibly the most original program I've seen in ages. What more can I say? ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 15A (Steven Flintham) Program: Catalogue printer Just a small comment for the sake of being awkward. Why not ask whether you want a printout BEFORE asking how many copies, because if you are just looking on screen you are unlikely to want more than one copy and the question could then be avoided. However, apart from that I am unable to find any fault with the program at all and it's certainly much better than just a plain text file. EDITOR.... Thanks Steven. No sooner said than done. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 20G (Roy Dickens) Program: Noughts and Crosses(ADFS) Barry Maslin (K2L) shows us another way to display N & C. As the ED. said Barry has put a lot of effort into it. I would like Barry to just study Steven Flintham's (15A) article on the same disc 'Presenting Programs'.It is about using GET$ instead of INPUT. The use of GET$ for the Y/N may avoid the problem that I had when I pressed two Y's then RETURN by mistake and the program treated it as a NO instead of a YES. Keep up the good work Barry. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 20G (Roy Dickens) Program: CATER (L1M) A jolly good looking caterpillar and a pretty plant. A change to have a cater. instead of a snake. I found the H J U N keys a bit awkward to use and the cursor keys a little better. I kept biting myself! I would rather have A Z * ? keys for the 'this way and that' input. I did manage to turn into a butterfly though. Very nice. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members)+483 From: 20G (Roy Dickens) Subject: Our former ED. Daniel It was nice to see Daniel in full flow again with lots of feed back helping other members. Also very good and detailed article about the Archimedes and choice of computers. May I also thank him for his comments about programs. Its nice to hear from someone with a comment, because if we write a program and hear no more about it does it mean 'no news is good news' or 'its not worth the effort to put finger to keyboard'? Do you remember a few months ago in an article Daniel said 'Dont buy a ACORN yet because the price will be slashed soon'. He was spot on and may have saved some members a hundred or so pounds. It pays to be a member. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 0E7 (Fred Nevin) Program: 8BS Messaging System Congratulations to 15A(Steven Flintham) on his improvement on his excellent program.I also like the new fKey strip printer. The line Provide/Delete facility is a big step forward as is also the word wrap. This latter will be appreciated most of all I think. I have discovered what I think is a problem. If on completion of writing some text one is browsing through it it is possible to scroll the text without the use of the cursor keys by pressing RETURN. This works fine but with the disastrous results that all the various text colours disappear to become the same colour as this text. Can this be resolved please?. EDITOR.. This is caused by the automatic placing of text colours when pressing RETURN for a new line. It is probably simplest just to not press RETURN unless you want to start a new line. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 0E7 (Fred Nevin) Program: 8BS Menu Reader A great idea Chris. Saves one having to power up the computer and sort through discs to find a particular program. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 0E7 (Fred Nevin) Program: VeroBoard Designer. This is I think a very handy program for any one into electronics.The big advantage is the printout available. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 0E7 (Fred Nevin) Program: OCTAGRAM Another superb program. Could I please have some instructions on how to solve the problem. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 0E7 (Fred Nevin) Program: Caterpillar. Nice clean Graphics which makes a pleasant change.I like it very much as everything moves at a speed I can control.Also a very nice Butterfly at the end. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 0E7 (Fred Nevin) Program: Counter This could be adapted for various uses and is a useful program to have on Library file. I like the screen/printer print out. The only improvement I can suggest is that only the numbers selected be displayed. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 0E7 (Fred Nevin) Program: Hints & Tips Reader Thank you very much indeed Chris for this excellent piece of coding. I feel like Aladdin felt when he rubbed the lamp and the Genie appeared.Yes it is indeed MAGIC. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 4MD (Graham Gallagher) Program: 8BS MESSAGE KEY STRIP A useful addition by Steven which will ensure that full use is made of his messaging system. The word wrap improvement is also much appreciated. Thanks for making things easier. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 4MD (Graham Gallagher) Program: GAMES GENERAL GAMES GENERAL The games on issue No.28 were each tried out by my two children who have since returned to play CATERPILLAR, OLD DREAMS and have had various attemps at solving the OCTAGRAM puzzle. The latter is an excellent educational game. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From: 4MD (Graham Gallagher) Program: 8BS Menu Reader BRILLIANT ! BRILLIANT ! I'll certainly use this utility for every future issue and the listings for the issues back to No.28 will be a good easy reference. Every member should make use of it. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, BLAM! PRESS BREAK PRESS BREAK