Labels:text | screenshot | font | black and white OCR: EnSort The Frame-by-Frame Hard Disk ANIM 5 Spooler EmSpool Instructions -1995-6 Jamie Montgomerie One day my friend John said to me "On 'Bad Influence' last night there Introduction was a screen blanker on a PC which played animations from Star Wars. wish I could get it for my A600.' 'Yeah," I said, "but what would be really good is a blanker which could play any animation you wanted, then you could even make your own blankers in DPaint." 'Wouldn't that take up a lot of memory though?" 'I suppose so ..., " Then Inspiration hit! "What if it could spool the animation from a hard disk, then it would only need enough memory for one frame!" "Yeah! that would be great," John seemed to like the idea, "it's a pity you can't get one." 'Mmm . . . I wonder if I could program one in AMOS" 'Do you think you could?" 'I don't know, I've never really used the ANIM commands properly before." So that night I started on my months-long quest to make an ANIM 5 spooling screen-blanker. However, somewhere along the way the blanker part seemed to be sidetracked, so here is a hard-disk ANIM spooler. It is basically the ANIM-spooling blanking module from the forthcoming EmBlank screen blanker (which could perhaps be released as Licenseware) with extra CLI parts added and the play-stopping routine changed a bit. What it Does Exactly what the box at the top says! It should spool any ANIM 5 file from hard-disk (it will work from floppy, but playback is amazingly slow). Multi-Palette anims don't work too well though, as it just uses the palette from the first frame for all the rest, sorry about this, but it's one of the (many) limitations of the AMOS Pro NIM playback routines. EmSpool is CLI Only I'm afraid. (But it's very easy to use, so don't łow to Use it give up yet cli-phobes!). First thing to do is to copy it to your boot partition's C: directory. For usage instructions (if you're the forgetful type) type "EmSpool ?" at the CLI prompt (without the quotes). This will bring up the following text: EmSpool - The Frame-by-Frame Hard Disk ANIM 5 Spooler Usage: EmSpool <Anim File> [-L] [-R#] L : Play in endless loop. (Default) -R# : Repeat # times. (-R1 plays once only). While Playing: Right mouse button quits. Left mouse button pauses (press again to un-pause). for people who find this hard to understand here's a tip, though I'm not sure if it'll work on pre-WB2 machines. At the CLI prompt type "EmSpool 'requestfile'" and press return. (to get the character - on a british keymap at least - press Alt and the key below Escape with the ~ character on it). This should bring up a file requester to make the dirty work of finding your anim path easier. The ToolsDaemon way: (if you don't have Nico Frantois' ToolsDaemon you're missing out on a great program. your PD library now!) order it from On the ToolsPrefs program make a new menu item called "EmSpool" (Press the N, then type "EmSpool", and press return), next, make a CLI command and type "c:EmSpool []" (Press A, and type "c : EmSpool []" then make sure the rollo gadget next to where you are typing says Click 'Save', now to spool an ANIM file all you need to do is CLI'. If it says `WB' click on the rollo arrow once. Press Return). highlight the icon and use the pull-down menu to select "EmSpool". It's that easy. Other Bits EmSpool' was written an an Amiga 1200 with the standard 2 meg of RAM, one external disk drive (Amitek, very reliable, but for some reason only came with two rubber feet instead of four, so it can rock about a bit) and a 130 meg hard drive. It was written with Frantois ionet's excellent AMOS Professional with the CRAFT extension. This doc was produced on QED 0.19 (Has the author written a MagicWB-fonts compatible version yet?) and will be spell-checked on AZSpell once ve finished writing it. It should be compatible with most (if not all) Amiga computers. EmSpool' is -1995-6 Jamie Montgomerie and is freely distributable providing this document is distributed with it and that no changes are made to the program or this document. Only a nominal fee may be charged. It may though be archived, packed etc and put on BBSes or compilation disks, but if it it distributed on a magazine overdisk I ask to be notified prior to the publication date. This software and documentation is provided As Is' and I will not be held responsible for any damage to hardware as a direct or indirect result of using EmSpool. The End Bit I hope you enjoy using 'EmSpool' and find it useful. (If you do, all gifts are kindly received! ) my enquires about the programs mentioned above or any gifts (a postcard would be nice) to this address please. Jamie Montgomerie 5 Thornfield Crescent Earlston Berwickshire TD4 6EA Scotland
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