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Text File | 1990-09-02 | 32KB | 599 lines

Inner Mission -- A deep space screen saver COPYRIGHT (C) 1990 KEVIN STOKES Welcome to Inner Mission. For a general description of what the program does, see the file IMINFO.DOC. This file contains information on the features and options available, as well as background info. The information is divided into the following headings. 1.) Everyday use - command line examples, and suggestions for use. 2.) Fun keys - What the <cr>,t,y,m,+- keys do when stars are popped up. 3.) Command line options - an extended description of the many IM options. 4.) Possible problems - many difficulties with IM can be readily solved. 5.) General info - about the program itself 6.) Registration info Everyday use ------------ Inner mission has a myriad of options available, some for the visual effects, and some for the behavior of the program. Most of these options are available on the control panel, but some are available only as command line options. If one or more command line options are used, the control panel will not come up unless specifically asked for via the -V1 option. Command line options also can be used if calling IM from a batch. These command line options are invoked by using the standard form for DOS command line options. For instance to get IM to display stars in black&white only, type IM /B, as explained under the 'Command line options' heading further below. Note that many options can be selected in a row, as in: IM /K2 /N8 /S1 /T4 /D (note: '-' can be substituted for '/') Also, you may change any parameter any time merely by typing the command over again. (IE. even after the TSR is memory resident, options can be changed without rebooting.) You may want to experiment to find the visual effect you like the best, and place the IM command line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file so that IM will always be there after your computer has finished booting. If you have a message you would like written in the stars to float by periodically, use the -u0 option with a pipeline to feed in the message from a text file. im -k2 -u0 -s3 < message.txt This would make the program read in the text from the text file message.txt and display it periodically when the stars were popped up. This is fine to put in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. If IM uses too much memory, look at the -e, and -z options. Also try using IMS.EXE instead of IM.EXE. It uses about half the RAM, and has the -e, and -z options also. IM can also be easily removed from memory with the MARK and RELEASE shareware programs. If you don't have these already, they are recommended for any TSR use. If there is a program where you do not want IM to interrupt even if you don't touch the keyboard for long periods of time, you could make a batch which turns off the auto-popup feature when the program is invoked, then calls the program in question, then turns IM auto-popup back on when done with the following text in a batch file. Ex: Contents of MYPROG.BAT: IM -A0 YOURPROGRAM.EXE IM -A1 To use your program, just then type myprog. If IM is popping up when you don't want it to, just press the y key while the stars display is up. This will turn off the auto-popup. To turn auto-popup back on, just hit the y again. Fun keys -------- The following keys do the following things if pressed while the stars display is popped up. <cr> - Enter hyperspace, visual effect of turning on your warp drive. t - Time and Date comes floating slowly out at you from the distance. (Not available in IMS.EXE) m - Message floats out to you if you used the -u0 option. (Not available in IMS.EXE) y - Toggle the auto-popup option, without returning to DOS. shift - Come back from the stars to whatever the computer was doing. + - The plus key on the key pad will increase the star speed. - - The minus key on the key pad will decrease the star speed. Command line options -------------------- -A Disable automatic popup. Stars may now be brought up only by pressing the hot key combination specifed by the -K or -L options. -A or -A0 will turn off automatic popup, -A1 will turn it on again. Default = auto popup -B Black and white option. This applies only to EGA, VGA, and MCGA users, since in the CGA case, a monochrome graphics mode is used. Default = Color -C Force CGA mode. This should be used with EGA cards with only 64k ram, or with mono EGA displays. Default = No force CGA -D Do not disable video. When the computer is not waiting for keyboard input, and yet the user does not hit a key for an extended amount of time, the video is disabled to save the screen from image burn. Stars do not come up because the stars display stops the original program. When this option -D is used, IM does not disable video. -D or -D0 turns off video disable, -D1 turns video disable on. Default = Video Disable on -E If you have expanded memory (and a EMS driver installed) this option will place more than half of Inner Mission in expanded RAM, thereby increasing the amount of space available for DOS programs. To minimize memory use, use in conjunction with -Z (Zap Environment) or use IMS.exe with -E option. Default = No use of EMS mem -F Feline option- Inner mission checks the status of the mouse, so that CAD programs will not be interrupted. If Inner Mission will not stay popped up, and you suspect the mouse is unstable, the mouse checks can be disabled with the -F option. Note that -F1 will re-instate mouse checks. Default = Check the mouse -G! This sequence will unregister a program, thus rendering the program into a form where it may be copied freely. If you use this option, make sure you have a safe copy of your registered version somewhere else, because this option will change your program to an unregistered state. -H This will type out a list of the available options, and a short description of their effect. -In This option specifies popup criteria. Some programs do not get their keyboard input from DOS. ( A good example the the PC-Write program.) Instead they get the keystrokes directly from the ROM BIOS. Therefore, Inner Mission must watch how many calls per second are made to the BIOS, in order to determine if the computer is idle. If there are very few calls per second, a program may be busy, but checking the keyboard occasionally to check for a control-break etc. In this case, you would not want Inner Mission to pop up, because your program would be halted while the stars are displayed. Therefore, there exists an optimum number of keyboard checks per second which indicate an idle computer. This number of checks per second can be set with the -In option. If n=0, popup is most likely, and IM may pop up when a program is busy. If n=9, then IM is least likely to pop up during one of these programs (a non-DOS keyboard caller). If n is set to too large a #, IM will not pop up at all during one of these programs, even if the machine is idle. (However, the screen may blank, because IM does not stop the executing program when the screen blanks.) So if IM is interrupting a program that is not waiting for a key, try -I5 or higher until IM stops interrupting. On the other hand if IM refuses to popup by itself during a program that you know is idle, try decreasing n until it will pop up. Default n=3, 256 cks/sec n= 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 --------------------------------------------------------- 64 128 186 256 350 512 768 1024 1500 2048 -J Jam into reverse gear. This reverses the direction of the stars motion. Use once to look out of back window of the starship, use again to reverse back to normal. This option is obsolete with version 1.6, since you may reverse the star direction by going through zero with the +, and - keys. -Kn This option will set the hot keys to the desired key combination. 'n' is a digit 0-9 which specifies which hot key combo you desire. The following table gives the available key combo's, and their codes. If you have a PC/XT see the problem section below for a note about the key combinations. Default = 0, lft+rght shift n Combo ___________________________________________________________________________ 0 LFT-SFT + RGT-SFT ( left and right shift keys ) 1 RGT-CNTL + RGT-SFT 2 RGT-SFT + RGT-ALT 3 LFT-SFT + RGT-SFT + RGT-CNTL 4 RGT-SFT + RGT-CNTL + RGT-ALT 5 LFT-SFT + RGT-SFT + RGT-CNTL + RGT-ALT ( Not Advised ) 6 LFT-SFT + RGT-CNTL 7 LFT-SFT + RGT-ALT 8 LFT-SFT + LFT-CNTL 9 LFT-SFT + LFT-ALT -Ln This option will set the hot keys to the desired alternate key combination. n Combo ___________________________________________________________________________ 0 LFT-CNTL + LFT-ALT 1 LFT-SFT + LFT-CNTL + LFT-ALT 2 LFT-SFT + LFT-CNTL + RGT-SFT 3 LFT-SFT + LFT-ALT + RGT-SFT 4 SCROLL LOCK 5 SCROLL LOCK + RGT-SFT 6 SCROLL LOCK + LFT-SFT -M This option makes IM run as a normal program. It does not install itself into ram as a TSR. It merely jumps into the stars routine, and exits when any key is depressed. All other options may be used in the same command line, although some such as -E are pointless unless the program is in memory as a TSR. -Nn This sets the number of stars to a preset value determined by the 0-9 digit n. The following table describes the optional number of stars. Default = 8, 768 stars n= 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 --------------------------------------------------------- # Stars= 64 100 128 200 256 350 512 630 768 512 -O Some programs take over the keyboard interrupts, so that the bios routines no longer take care of keystroke input. If this occurs, then IM cannot detect hot keys. Even worse, IM will pop up by itself, and then will refuse to popdown, because IM can't see the keys which signal a return to the original program. Therefore, IM checks the keyboard interrupt vector to see if some program has substituted it's own keyboard routines. If this is true, then IM will refuse to popup. Sometimes programs only keep an eye on keys, but still let the bios do the main work. In this case IM will refuse to popup, but infact it would be fine to pop up. This is where the -O0 option comes in. The -O0 option will turn off these checks. Use this option if IM will refuse to popup only when the computer is running a certain program. If the program really gets its from non-bios routines, then IM will still refuse to popup with the hot keys. If this is the case, then IM simply can't work with that program. Using the option -O1 will reinstate the checks of int9 traps. -P IM continually checks the printer status. If the printer port changes state, IM will not pop up. This -P option turns off these checks, in case there are spurious state changes to a non-connected printer which are preventing the normal operation of IM. Using -P with a non-zero digit following will re-enable printer status checks. Default = Check Ptr Status -R As in the above -P option, IM checks the RS-232 ports COM1 & COM2 for status changes, in order to avoid a IM popup causing a loss of data coming in over the serial port, or interruption of data transmission. Sometimes an unconnected port can generate random serial port status changes, thus interfering with the operation of IM. Therefore the -R option is available to shut off these checks. To reinstate them, use the -R1 option. Default = Check COM1&2 Stat -Sn This sets the speed of travel of the stars to a preset value determined by the 0-9 digit n. The following table describes the optional star speed. Default = (Depends on PC speed) n= 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 --------------------------------------------------- Velocity= 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 512 -Tn This sets the time delay after the last key press, before IM pops up the stars display automatically. The digit n determines which of the follow preset delays (given in minutes) will be used for the delay. Default = -T4 (5 min) n= 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 --------------------------------------------------- # Min = 1/2 1 2 3 5 10 20 30 30 3 -Un This option allows the user to type in a custom message will occasionally float by written in stars, while the stars display is popped up. The n digit specifies the interval, while if no digit is specified (-U ) the message will only appear if the m key is pressed. When IM discovers the -U option, it will prompt the user for the message. A message is one or more lines of no more than 14 characters, followed by empty line ( a line with only a cr, no spaces allowed.) Note the user may send a text file as the input using the dos pipeline character. ex: IM -S3 -U0 < MESSAGE.TXT This will take the text in the file message.txt and display it every 30 seconds when the stars display is popped up. Note that the m key will cause the message to appear immediately. Default = No Message -V This option will disable the control panel from popping up. If you would like to call Inner Mission from a batch file, this will prevent the batch from being interrupted by the control panel. Most of the time this option is not necessary, because if there are any options on the command line, the control panel will no come up by default. If you would like to use both a command line option, and the control panel, then use the -V1 option, which forces the control panel up irregardless. Default = Control Panel on. -W Make auto-popup only occur if computer is sitting in a DOS wait-for key loop. Some programs, (certain versions of Wordstar, for example) do not call to DOS for their keyboard input. Instead, they check keyboard status frequently by calling the ROM routines. Inner Mission checks activity in these ROM routines to decide whether or not the machine is actually busy. In some cases, this checking may be undesirable, since a program may be checking for a cntl-break, and Inner Mission would interrupt to pop up stars, thus causing the program to halted until the user hits a key. Use -w or -w0 to turn off auto-popup unless in DOS wait-for-key. Use -W1 to return IM to normal operation. Default = -W1 -X Type out the registration number of your copy of Inner Mission. -Z Zap the environment- When DOS runs any program, it makes a copy of of the environment for the program. (Environment is just a list of things like PATH=C:\DOS;C:\TC, stuff that is in your AUTOEXEC.) Inner Mission does not really need this, so to save memory space you may free up this space for use by other programs. The only drawback to the -Z option is that the name IM will not show up on any memory listings you type out using MAPMEM or an equivalent program. Possible problems ----------------- IM is popping up with stars during programs that are not infact idle: (This does not apply to screen blanking) There are many ways to prevent this annoying activity. The easiest fix is to just hit the y key when the stars pop up. Then IM will not pop up again by itself. To return IM to normal, popup the stars manually with the hot keys, and hit y again. Check out the description of the -I option in the command line descriptions above, if that is too intense, try some of these other ideas. The easiest thing is to increase the time delay before auto-popup with the -Tn option. If you run long programs without the user hitting keys, another option is -W. This option will prevent the interrupting of programs unless they are truly waiting for a user to hit a key. You may also the the auto-popup feature totally off by using the -A option. You may want to make a small batch file which turns off the auto-pop flag, then runs the feisty program, and then turns the auto-pop back on. For example: MYP.BAT includes the following: IM -A MYPROG.EXE IM -A1 IM bombs when the Windows program is run: Inner Mission is incompatible with windows. It must be removed from memory before Windows is run. IM can be removed from memory easily with the shareware MARK and RELEASE programs. These programs work well, and are readily available on many BBS's. The screen is going blank in the middle of a program: If no keys are typed, after a certain delay, IM will try to popup. If at this time a popup with stars is impossible because the machine is busy or in graphics mode, IM decides instead to blank the screen without suspending the currently executing program. If you are playing a game with a joystick, or are watching a program run without typing, IM may sometimes blank the screen at an undesirable moment. Try looking at the -D option to shut off the video disable. Note that the option can be shut off just during the program in question by using the batch technique described above. IM display will not stay up: This program checks the mouse, printer, and serial port status continually to prevent IM from interrupting data flow to the printer, or to the serial port. If IM refuses to stay popped up, try using the -F, -R, or -P options. There maybe an unused port sending spurious status changes which prevent normal operation of IM. IM will not popdown in response to the mouse: The mouse checking may not work on IBM PS/2's. It is unclear why, there are other programs which dislike the PS2 mouse as well. IM refuses to popup the stars display at all: Remember that Inner Mission cannot pop up if the computer is in a graphics mode, due to the fact that to save the screen would require too much memory. If you would like the screen blanked, holding the hot keys down for more than a second will blank the screen for you, even if the machine is in graphics mode. This problem may also be due to the reasons mentioned in the previous problem solution. ( IE the stars will not stay popped up.) Also see the option -O0 in the options discussion. IM refuses to popup with the hot keys, but pops up automatically, then machine is stuck in stars, or is stuck in blank screen mode: This will happen if a program has used its own keyboard interrupt routine. Then IM cannot detect a pop up command, and after it has popped up of its own accord, IM cannot detect a key to shut it down. In this case, movement of the mouse will still pop it down. The solution is to turn off autopop-up before entering this program. There is only one program which is presently known to do this, a game marketed by Electronic Arts called Populous. EGA screen display is not operating correctly: If your EGA card has only 64k RAM, you must use the -C option to force the program to use only the CGA emulation mode of the EGA. When program returns from stars display, screen is scrambled: Some EGA cards have been known to switch between video and graphics modes with occasional failure. IM simply makes a BIOS call to switch video modes, so if you see this kind of failure, it may be a hardware error. The DOS command MODE 80 sometimes will bring back the video card to the desired alphanumeric mode, otherwise there is the all-powerful reboot. The motion of the stars is too chunky: If you are running IM on a PC/XT, the computer may not be able to run fast enough to give a smooth motion to the stars. Try lowering the number of stars to 350 with the IM -N5 -S7 option. This will louse up the text features (IE logo, time, and user msg). If you do this, you may as well use IMS.EXE instead of IM.EXE, since the text will not come out right anyway. The hotkey combination I set will not work: If Inner Mission works fine with the default hot keys, left shift + right shift, but doesn't popup with the hot keys you select, be aware that any hot key combo which includes a left cntl, or left alt will not work on a PC/XT, since they do not have left and right cntl&alt keys. If you have a PC/XT, use only options which include the right alt&cntl keys. Also, do not try to use the combo's which use the scroll lock key. DOS refuses to delete an old configuration file in the root directory: Use the DOS command ATTRIB -R 3A6B3A6B.3A6 (Or whatever the file name.) first to remove the read-only attribute. Then the file may be deleted normally. The control panel goes nuts all by itself: The computer thinks there is mouse which may not really be there. Try starting up IM with the -F option to make sure the mouse isn't really there. The mouse goes dead when using the control panel: Don't hold the button on the mouse down too long, it has a timeout to prevent an endless loop. If you hold the mouse button down too long IM will decide the mouse is malfunctioning, and will remove the mouseness from the control panel use. You may still use the arrow keys. About the program itself ------------------------ Inner Mission is written entirely in assembler. It is about 50k bytes of code, of which only about 19k remains resident after termination. Of that memory, most is buffer space to hold the xyz positions of the stars for the display. Inner Mission hooks many interrupts in order to be sure of not interrupting a critical section of code, as well the detection of time passage, and user key presses. The multiplex interrupt as described in the DOS Technical Reference manual was used to provide an interface between the resident, and non-resident portions of the program. The stars display section of the program is a straight forward perspective view of a 3 dimensional area filled with stars. The pattern of stars repeats with a period of about 4 seconds. The text which floats past consists of characters which are comprised of stars. There is a font stored in the code. You can see that when a long phrase is floating by the rest of the random stars become very sparse. If you decrease the number of stars with the -n option, there are sometimes not enough stars to display a complete phrase. When the text is past, IM regenerates the used stars with new random stars. Because the characters are written in the stars, the number of characters which can be on the screen at one time is limited by the number of stars. Also, the black lines running through the characters are just the stars seperating as they move closer. Lines are formed because of the finite # of pixels in the graphics display causes a rounding effect in the x&y coords. If you had infinite graphics resolution, the letters would slowly resolve in to points. Star colors were turned off when in letters because they tended to make the stars look spotty. The warp effect is created by merely not erasing the old stars when it's time to update the position of a star. Therefore the stars leave a trail as they pass. The warp effect is the reason why the speed can be changed only by factors of two. If the z-coord increment did not cycle back through the exact same numbers every time around then the trail left by the warping stars will not be erased when the warp effect turns off. The warp effect is disabled if characters are on the screen for a similar reason. If the stars are changed in the middle of a warp, then the screen will not unwarp normally. Inner Mission is a little big for a screen saver TSR, but unfortunatly every bit of that RAM is needed. The minimum possible size for a screen saver which preserves the previos screen while putting up an interesting display is about 5k. Inner Mission uses about 18k due to the storage necessary for the stars and the font. The array which holds the xyz coords of the stars is 7.5k bytes. Another 4k bytes are needed to save the text and color attributes of the screen, so that it is restored when IM pops down. Finally, 1.5k bytes are need for the font for the text display. That leaves the actual code taking up about 5k. When the -E option is used, the screen memory, font and star buffer array are put into EMS memory. The EMS code in IM uses only the basic LIM EMS 3.2 standard. IMS.EXE saves RAM by omitting the font, and shortening the necessary star buffer. Since letters will never be on the screen, the 4 quadrants of the display are repeated. This cut the amount of storage needed for the stars. The font was no longer needed, and in IMS the old text screen is saved in a compressed format=2500 bytes (as opposed to 4k for uncompressed). The disadvantage in text compression is that some screens cannot be saved in 2500 bytes ( if they have many vertical bars of diff. colors). IMS will then just refuse to popup. Inner Mission uses the multplex interrupt 2FH to determine if IM has already been loaded. If so, the multiplex int returns the segment addr of where the resident copy in memory is. If IM is already loaded then the program will not put another copy of itself in RAM, it will merely interpret the command line, and then change the desired variables in the already resident copy. Note that IM & IMS are separate programs, and you cannot use an IMS command line to change variables in a resident IM. You will end up with BOTH IM & IMS resident at the same time. It won't crash, but it is slightly confusing. IM would need 64k of RAM to save some graphics mode screens, so stars will not pop up if the machine is sitting in graphics mode. But since IM is being distributed as a screen saver, it is necessary to at least blank the screen. This is easy with the CGA/MCGA/HGC boards, since you just twiddle a bit in a I/O port. With EGA/VGA boards however, there is no offical way to disable video. IM disables the video by zeroing the PAS bit (bit#5) of the attribute address register (I/O Port# 3C0H). This bit disables the display memory from getting access to the palette. On every EGA/VGA board we have seen, this blanks the video. It is possible there may be some boards which respond differently. The configuration code checks the system date, and encodes the first time configuration code and date in both the configuration file and the IM.EXE itself. Each time IM is loaded from scratch, that is updated and the name of the configuration file is changed. This is to prevent people from putting commands in their autoexec.bat which change the date while IM is loaded etc. The trial period lasts for one week, or 35 runs of the program, whichever comes first. The assembler source code for Inner Mission takes up about 200k. The original program was written in 1987 on an original IBM PC with mono CGA. In December 1989 it was translated in to assembler from FORTH to save enough memory to make it into a TSR. After 6 months of work, IM version 1.5 was released to the public as a shareware program. Registration information ------------------------ Thank you for considering registration. Registration Fee is $5.00 Program works without any configuration file and is never interrupted with more questions. Registration Details: When you configured your program, it assigned to you a registration code. This registration code was then written into the IM.EXE file. A matching answerback code is needed to transform your copy of IM into a registered copy. Each copy of IM.EXE requires its own unique answerback code. To register, you send in your code #, the fee, and a self-addressed stamped envelope. You will then receive a matching reply code and simple instructions on how to transform your copy of Inner Mission into a full-blown registered copy. Warning: DO NOT DELETE THE COPY OF IM.EXE WHICH HAS THE REGISTRATION NUMBER YOU HAVE MAILED. THE ANSWERBACK CODE WILL BE USELESS TO YOU IF HAVE DELETED ITS CORRESPONDING .EXE FILE! (If the trial period runs out before you have gotten a response from Pie in the Sky, you may start another trial period. But be careful not change the registration number when answering the questions.) Please send either cash or a check made out to "Pie in the Sky Software." To register, send your registration codes, the fee, and self-addressed stamped envelope to: Pie in the Sky Software PO BOX 4742 Duke Station Durham, NC 27706 This offer is valid thru July, 1991.