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Frozen Fish 1: Amiga
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LGZ
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lgz.doc
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1988-10-02
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About LGZ
LGZ is not a finished program, nor is it a program that can stand for
itself. Two functions are disabled, and it is too specialized to be useful
to the most people. Then why am I putting it in the public domain? Well,
because it could be useful to a few, because it could provide examples of how
to use various functions, because some may use the fractalish terrain
generator or the file requester, because it could be fun to play around with
your own terrain and mainly because I have put a lot of work in it.
Actually, it's to be used for the Play-By-Mail game 'Let's Get Civilized' by
Malik Hyldtoft, who asked me if I could make a program to store informations
during play. Well, it could be made, and I began with using Chris Gray's
fractalish terrain generator to make the world, and accidentally called it
'Let's Get Ziviliced' or just LGZ. Later on I added various editing features,
menus and saving/loading, and it turned out to be relatively well made, so I
decided to send it to Fred. Much of the code is made with help from Fish
programs, for example the menus and the file requester.
Using LGZ
LGZ will run both from WB and CLI. It opens its own screen and window, and
then generates a 64x64 area terrain, taking some 5 seconds to do so. I made,
after some trial and error, an NTSC version in interlace were the graphics wrer
higher, but I accidentally wrote it over, so now it just goes interlace on NTSC
screens, which makes a little unhandy, anybody who cares are welcome to fix it.
Then it displays it, with colors representing height, from blue(sea) over green
and brown to white. A yellow block in a green area means it is desert, while a
little line of yellow indicates plains and no yellow at all signifies wooden
areas. A gadget shows up in the corner, saying 'READY', meaning only that no
function is being run at the moment and it is ready for user's input. As all
inputs are qeued, one should be careful when selcting menuitems without the
'READY'-gadget visible. It closes, of course, when the closing gadget is
pressed.
Menuitems
Project Menu:
The use of Clear, Open, Save & Quit should be obvious.
Note on the file requester: If you double-click a dir/volume name, it'll
enter the Path specification, if you double-click a file name, it'll
load/save.
About shows who made the program.
Edit Menu:
Pixel let you edit the map pixelwise. You select height or terrain type on
the left and press over the map with the mouse to change an area.
Sink & Lift respectively sinks and lifts the entire map one. This way, even
maps that are only sea at start may be used anyway, as the sea is as
uneven as the land, it just doesn't show up. Cleared terrains aren't
very interesting, they're flat.
Compress divides all heights by two. Do that a couple of times, and it's all
flat. There is NO reverse function, and a lot of data get lost.
Scroll scrolls the entire map one line in any direction.
New Map menu:
Grow grows either new heights, new vegetation (i.e. desert, plains or
woods), or both. Shows here that the growth is made also with the
terrain generator, to ensure that the desert and the woods don't meet.
Vegetation selects whether or not the vegetation should be shown. Note
that if the vegetation is off when you try to put some on, it puts it on
again, redrawing the whole map.
Parameters lets you set the growth parameters for height and growth.
It brings up a requester with the current values and lets you enter
new ones. The uppermost values represent the gross layout of the map,
while the ones at the bottom direct the details.
Entering a value of zero will currently crash the program!!!
Experiment with this and growing new terrain types.
The requester is also available as a DMRequester, double-click the
menu button.
At the moment, the cancel option is unimplemented.
Levelling is a way to make the terrain more smooth without making it flat.
It sets the height of each area to a weighted average of the surrounding
areas. It's currently disabled because it trashes the map and calls forth.
the GURU.
3D-Map is a feature that I have never begun to make. It should show the
entire map three-dimensionally.
The future
Plans for this program goes like: Fix the last bugs, make 3D-Map, and then
make it usable for the game LGZ itself. By then, it won't be as interesting
for the Public Domain as now, because you'll need a lot of rules to use it.
In the end, it should be no more than a helping program, not a game in itself.
Thanks to:
Malik Hyldtoft for giving me something funny to work on without time limits.
Henrik Clausen for advice, debugging (lots of this), and the parameters DMRequest.
Bjarne Fich for good ideas.
Chris Gray for the terrain generator (and Empire).
Peter da Silva for a beautiful file requester.
Perry S. Kivolowitz for some simple programs where I could find understandable
screen, window & colormap structs.
Custom Services for the Menubuilder program.
Fred Fish - so long, and thanks for all the Fish.
Hack this program as wildly as you wish, as long as you don't sell it
without my knowledge, give Chris credit for the terrain generator, and Peter
da Silva for the file requester (I'd like to see it on more programs, it's
nice, easy to put into the program, and good to use.)
If you actually find this program very useful, I could always use a few
dollars, and I would be glad to hear about improvements made on it,
escpecially if someone made a faster drawing routine, as it is rather slow,
and I don't have the time myself. Keep up the good work, everybody, and Keep
Shareware Alive! So, that was all I wanted to say, have a jolly good time
and enjoy the AMIGA.
Lars R. Clausen
Spobjergvej 87
DK 8220 Brabrand
Denmark