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link_rev.doc
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1993-08-20
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"THE MISSING LINK" EXTENSION REVIEW
Probably one of the most exciting things that can happen to an avid
STOS user is the release of a new extension, and the Missing Link is no
exception. I first heard about it from Goodman International P.D. and I
made an order straight away!
When booting up the disk, I was taken to the desktop with several
programs and five folders. I loaded up the first program called BALLS.
I was then presented with a rather impressive 'asteroid' game, with
your spaceship flying around, a large 32x32 ball, and a relatively
smooth full-screen multi-directional scrolling background! Sampled
sound is included (not noticeably slowing the game down) and the ship
could fire up to about six bullets.
"OK...quite impressive" I thought to myself as I completed the first
few levels. By the time I got to a later level, there were five or six
32x32 balls flying around, a full-screen multi-directional scrolling
background, your ship, up to 6 bullets AND sampled sound at the same
time, and running at the same speed as level 1 !!!
I quitted that program and loaded the next one up. This was an overhead
game where you control a little man who can shoot bullets and some
attacking bees or something. Again, the screen scrolls smoothly, and a
large amount of bees and bullets seemed to do little to slow down the
gameplay.
The next game was a side-on vertically-scrolling platform game. You
control a large car sprite in a quest to collect the coloured dots on
the level. Yet again, the scrolling was smooth and very fast (I think
either 1 or 2 VBL's to draw out the car and the tiled background!)
Then there was a typical shoot-'em-up, with you as a spaceship trying
to shoot down the flying saucers with your rockets. This had sampled
sound, and yet again, about eight 32x16 aliens, the ship, and lots of
bullets were easily catered-for.
Next was a vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up. You start off very slow,
and you can only shoot two bullets at a time. Smooth scrolling.
Samples. Lots of aliens. Every now and then, a destroyed alien would
release a power-up which either made your ship go faster, or increased
your firepower.
The penultimate game was a side-on horizontally and vertically-
scrolling shoot-'em-up, with plenty of aliens and a large ship sprite.
Lastly, there was an overhead game, with you controlling a ship flying
over a multidirectional background shooting the little metal spheres.
After playing these small demonstration games, I had to admit, I was
very very impressed with what I had seen. The games seemed to run many
times faster than what I had thought they would if someone was to
describe them to me. Little did I know...
I opened a folder and loaded yet another demonstration game. This was
called FRANK AND THE LOST AUBERGIENE. It was a side-on multidirectional
(again!) platform game with you as a little man who must collect the
dots and the key to the exit door. The sampled sound was good, the
graphics not-so-good...but the graphics aren't on review here! You
could lay sticks of dynamite to destroy the daleks and little men that
got in the way. This game would not have been recognisable as written
in STOS. But, there is still better to come...
The next game was called THE RACE and in my opinion was the best game
of the disk. The graphics, music, gameplay were are of a very superior
quality. The game itself was just like something out of SUPERCARS,
without the violence. The screen was split horizontally down the
middle, and involved three cars racing around a VERY smooth and fast
track in a race to see who can make three laps. One car is always
computer-controlled, but there is a two-player option where a friend
can plug in another joystick and race as well! There are 20 tracks, and
you can get your hands on the track construction kit for a small
registration fee.
The last game was called VIOLENT DEATH. This is a one or two player
horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up, where you fly through some caves
and generally blast everything you can see!
Once I has tried out all of the games, I concluded that they all had
some things in common. They were all VERY fast, they were all VERY
smooth, they all could handle tens of sprites easily, most of them had
sampled sound or impressive 'decent' chip-music, and they all generally
were outside the limits of STOS. The reason? Because they all used
commands from the new MISSING LINK extension!
One of the programs writes the documents, example basic files, world
construction kit, and of course, the extensions themselves to a blank
disk. Rather excitedly, I read through the document...(which was rather
large!)
So...what new commands are there, then? Well, I will start off by
telling you that there are 59 of them! These are split into the
following categories: SPRITES, MAPS, TEXT, GRAPHICS, PALETTES, FILES,
SOUND, JOYSTICK, and MISCELLANEOUS.
There are two new and different kinds of sprites, oddly-named BOBS and
JOEYS. According to the document, the BOBS command can handle over 25
16x16 sprites in 1 vbl! And, by the look of some of the example basic
files, I wouldn't doubt it! Things that are run directly from STOS look
as if they have been compiled. There are a total of six sprite
commands.
The next section consists of MAP commands. These are used to quickly
and simply draw up a map of a level at a certain position. The twelve
map commands allow for: setting window size, drawing maps regardless of
16-word boundary, drawing maps locked onto 16-word boundary
(landscapes), limit testing, toggling between maps and landscapes,
placing, erasing and checking blocs. There are two different types of
map. WORLDS are used for multidirectionally-scrolling games, because
you can draw from ANY point on the screen (-2,-3). LANDSCAPES are
identical to WORLDS except for they are locked onto the last 16th pixel
(as usual). This is marginally faster than WORLDS, and is ideal for
vertically-scrolling games, or to just draw out a section of a level.
There are two TEXT commands. One simply places some text on the screen
at X,Y in a certain font. The other is a faster version of STR$.
The GRAPHICS commands are the most powerful of the Missing Link
commands. WIPE clears a whole screen (or any 32K area of memory). TILE
fills the whole screen with a 16x16 graphic, at any X co-ord. MOZAIC is
the same as tile, but within a predefined window. SPOT is a faster
version than PLOT. REFLECT produces an impressive 'river' effect at any
point on the screen - reflecting any graphics above it. WASH clears
part of a screen. BLIT is a faster version of SCREENCOPY. M BLIT is
identical to BLIT, but merges over graphics - like SCREEN$=SCREEN$. And
finally, DISPLAY PC1 unpacks a DEGAS .PC1 picture to any screen (within
half a second!)
The PALETTE commands are also impressive, and one or two are VERY
useful. The first is =PALT. This automatically grabs the palette from
ANY bob, joey, tile, world, landscape, or sprite bank. PALSPLIT sets up
a palette split down the screen, allowing well over 16 colours at a
time, and, used in conjunction with REFLECT, can give a great
impression of a river at the bottom of the screen. FLOODPAL is a very
handy command. It floods the palette with a colour stated after the
command, so, FLOODPAL 0 sets all 16 colours to 0. Puts to rest those
PALETTE 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 nightmares! =BRIGHTEST returns
the brightest colour at a certain address. This prevents any barely
visible displays during a game with colours constantly changing.
The next set of commands are the FILE commands. First, there is DLOAD
and DSAVE. These are like binary loading/saving, except you can load
from or save to any part of a file on the disk. Other commands include
the returning of the depacked lengths of files, and bank copying
commands.
Next come the SOUND commands. DIGIPLAY replays a sample of a specified
length, at a specified frequency, and either looped or singular.
SAMSIGN is a handy command which 'inverses' a sample. For example, you
have to press CONTROL-S within some samplers to convert it so STOS can
use them proporly. This simple command does it for you if you forget.
=MUSAUTO automatically plays some 'decent' music. When I say decent, I
mean MAD MAX, COUNT ZERO, BIG ALEC sort of music, not that crappy STOS
MUSIC ACCESSORY music. It understands 19 different formats. MUSPLAY
allows you to play music manually, and can also handle special sound
effects.
The JOYSTICK commands allow you to read BOTH joystick ports!
Finally, there are six commands in the MISCELLANEOUS section. The first
one, which is rather impressive, unpacks files that were packed with
ATOMIK 3.5 - ICE 2.4 - FIRE 2.2 - AUTOMATION 5.1 - SPEED 2 - SPEED 3
packers. Just one command does that! One command returns whether the
program is compiled or not. One relocates program files, so they can be
run from anywhere in memory. One quickly rounds a number down to the
nearest 16. One detects a collision between two defined boxes. And
finally, one forces a HARD RESET!
Whew! There we are! The MISSING LINK extension. This is just the
unregistered version of the extension. Unfortunately for TOP NOTCH
SOFTWARE, not many people registered for the MISTY extension, and so
they decided to put 'one or two' limits on the extension. Firstly, an
annoying message appears every now and then telling you to register!
Secondly, none of the compiled versions of the commands work! Once you
register, you get the correct extensions.
So, the conclusion. The MISSING LINK extension has helped to boost STOS
even further into the world of high-quality games. Virtually every
command is 'useful' and can be used to extend the programmer's
abilities. Each command is either faster, smoother, simpler, or just a
damn sight better than their STOS counterparts, and the extension is so
big, it has to come in two parts!
Unfortunately, there are a few black linings to the silver cloud (??
hang on!) The annoying thing is, that when entering any text, like
filenames, you cannot enter them directly (eg. BLOAD "STOS.DAT").
Instead, you have to set up a string containing the text or filename or
whatever, add a terminator (!) at the end, namely CHR$(0), and then
find the address of the text using the VARPTR command! So, here are two
versions to compare:
Normal: BLOAD "STOS.DAT"
Link: F$="STOS.DAT"+chr$(0)
DLOAD varptr(F$) etc etc...
Oh well...I suppose there IS a price to pay for such excellent
commands. Another problem that existed in the MISTY extension, is that
whenever you copy graphics either DOWN or RIGHT, instead of getting
just the one copy, the whole screen fills with them!!! Never mind...
On top of all that though, the MISSING LINK extension is superb, and
the attention that was paid to the example programs and games gave a
good idea of what can be achieved with the package. I am sure that
there will be some great games springing up soon!
ADDENDUM:
I have just recently received the complete version of the extension.
You get one disk packed with archived source, programs, music, and
whatever - and takes up four disks when unarchived! The stuff you get
on these disks is amazing - not to mention the 20 extra commands!
Several of these extra commands are similar to the world commands,
except they can be used inside a window and not just the whole screen.
One very useful command is called 'BULLET' and places a small 2x2 pixel
on the screen at a defined co-ordinate in any colour. There are some
more complicated commands, such as the 'MANY' commands. MANY ADD, MANY
SUB, MANY INC, and MANY DEC are used to increase or decrease a whole
list of numbers at the same time, a lot faster than:
for T=1 to 20 : A(T)=A(T)+3 : next T
Here is the MISSING LINK version:
MANY ADD varptr(A(0)),varptr(V(0)),20,0,200
The array V() holds the numbers to add, 20 is the number of elements, 0
is the lowest number, and 200 is the heighest number. If MANY ADD
increases a number over 200, it returns to 0 (or whatever you specify!)
MANY BOB and MANY JOEY are similar to BOB and JOEY except they are
used, as above, to draw out lots of sprites in one go. Just to show the
complexity and flexibility of the MANY JOEY command, here is the
syntax:
MANY JOEY scr,gadr,imgadr,xadr,yadr,statadr,coladr,xoff,yoff,num,0
MANY BULLET is a cross between MANY JOEY and BULLET. So is MANY SPOT.
This next command has to be the longest of them all. It is called MANY
OVERLAP and has 13 parameters!
r=MANY OVERLAP(x1,y1,xadr,yadr,wid1,hig1,wid2,hig2,statadr,imgadr,
stval,imgval,num)
It is used to check lots of coordinates to see if some overlap. =HERTZ
and SET HERTZ are used to read or set the frequency. RASTER is similar
to PALSPLIT, except it only splits one colour, making it simpler and
faster than PALSPLIT. Finally, a command called MOSTLY HARMLESS rids
STOS of the registration message!
To conclude yet again, it is well worth the 10 pounds to register and
receive an update!
Article: BLACK EAGLE 31/5/93