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Wrap

Text File | 1995-06-14 | 28.4 KB | 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! *