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/------------------------------------------\ | SFskyedit | | Star Fighter 3000 sky colours editor | | © Chris Bazley, 2001 | | Version 1.24 (7th November 2003) | \------------------------------------------/ N.B. This text is best viewed at a display width of 77 columns. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Introduction and Purpose ======================== SFskyedit is an editor for 'Star Fighter 3000' sky files. Since 'Star Fighter 3000' is a very tiresome name to type, from this point onward, I will refer to the game as 'SF3000'. A SkyCols file (in "Landscapes.Sky") contains the colours used to paint a particular type of planetary atmosphere (e.g. sunset, morning, night, gas clouds etc). This application allows you to edit these colours or define colour shades for new skies. SFskyedit is one of a number of tools currently under development for use with SF3000, which will eventually also include a complete map/mission editor. When these tools are finished, they will be distributed as a suite of complementary utilities. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 Requirements ============ • RISC OS 3.10 or better. • The so-called 'nested Wimp' (softloadable as part of Acorn's universal !Boot). • The new (C99, APCS-32) shared C library and up to date versions of other modules required by the C run-time environment. • The Toolbox modules (in !System, or in ROM with RISC OS 3.6). If any of the above facilities are unavailable then the program will fail to load, with an error message describing the problem. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 Quick Guide =========== Load the SFskyedit application. Open your !Star3000 game directory and locate the subdirectory "Sky" in "Landscapes" or "Disc2.Landscapes". Drag a file from this directory to the SFskyedit icon on the iconbar, and an editing window will open. (If you choose "Earth" or "Earth2" you may get a warning message. This is nothing to worry about.) Within the editing window will be a stack of coloured rectangles, these are numbered 0-62 (though you can't see this yet). These represent the colour bands currently in the file. There will be a red bar below the bottom- most colour band. This is the caret. Click SELECT to position the caret or drag SELECT to make a selection. Click or drag ADJUST to change the extent of a selection. Selected colour bands are highlighted with a border and whatever the number of that band (0-62). To deselect all selected bands, press Ctrl-Z or click SELECT outside the selected area. The caret and selection are mutually exclusive (e.g. only one may exist at a time). To change the colour of all selected bands, press Ctrl-E and choose a colour from the palette, or follow 'Effect'>'Set colour...' on the pop-up menu. To move selected bands drag SELECT from within the selection, or Shift- drag to copy. Position the bands at their destination using the ghost (orange) caret. There are two quick ways to create a high quality sky file: 1) Insert consecutive areas of plain colour ('Edit'>'Insert bands...'), select all the new areas plus some black, and smooth the finished product ('Effect'>'Smooth transitions'). 2) Insert consecutive gradated fills, with the final one fading to black. Which method you use is a matter of personal preference, but they are largely incompatible since you cannot successfully apply smoothing to gradated fills. Finally, to see the results of your handiwork in real time, press Ctrl-P or select 'Preview...' from the pop-up menu. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 User Manual =========== 4.1 Jargon ------ "Colour band" - the building blocks of a sky file that are represented as coloured rectangles in the editing window. There are 63 bands in a file, each of which may be any colour of the standard mode 13 palette. "Shade" - actual pixel data that will be plotted to the screen by the sky renderer. There are 126 shades in a file, each consisting of a 4-pixel pattern. Shades are not directly editable by SFskyedit. "Caret" - as in a text editor, this is a positionable marker at which data may be inserted, and from where selections may be made. In SFskyedit the caret looks like a horizontal bar with uprights at either end. It is normally red, but turns grey when the editing window loses the input focus. "Ghost caret" - this is an orange bar that follows the mouse pointer during a drag operation, and shows where the bands being dragged would be inserted if dropped. "Clipboard" - an invisible area of temporary storage that is used when copying or moving colour bands. SFskyedit doesn't support the global clipboard protocol but the internal clipboard may be used to transfer colour bands between different editing windows. 4.2 Data input and output --------------------- Not only input and output via the desktop Filer are supported, but also drag-and-drop interaction with other desktop programs. At the moment the only other app that supports direct transfer of SkyCols files is FednetCmp. RAM transfer is not supported because the decompression module insists on loading data directly from file. Files are verified for consistency upon loading. Certain of the game files do not quite conform to the strictly defined editing model, bringing up a warning dialogue box. In practice this is nothing to worry about (see section 5.4 "Editing model"). To disable the warning message for the remainder of a session, click on the "Disable warning" button in the dialogue box. To disable it permanently, add the command line switch "-nowarn" to the !Run file. 4.3 Editing model ------------- The editing model used by SFskyedit is not strictly speaking appropriate, but I have adopted it to make the program easier to use. Within this manual you will find many references to 'insertion' and 'removal' of colour bands, implying that a sky file is (like this text file) a sequence of data of arbitrary length. In fact, a sky file is of finite length (63 colour bands) and cannot be extended. This means that inevitably whenever bands are 'inserted' some bands are pushed off the top. This is very unlikely to be a problem, however, as there is loads of space in a file (no Fednet sky goes above band 35). All the bands at the top are likely to be either black or rubbish that you forgot to delete. 4.4 The iconbar ----------- Drag SkyCols files to the SFskyedit icon to edit them. SkyCols files may be identified by the filetype &404 and an icon showing a blue/yellow sky with dark hills. If an editing window is already open for a dragged file then this will be shown instead. Click SELECT to create a new sky file. All colour bands will be initialised as black, and the minimum sky height and stars start height will be zeroed. Click ADJUST to bring all open windows to the front, e.g. in case they are hidden behind other windows open on the desktop. Click MENU to bring up the main application menu: 'Info'> Leads to a standard 'About this program' window. 'Help...' Opens this text manual. 'Files'> This submenu lists all open editing windows, by file path. Clicking on one of these menu entries brings the corresponding window to the front of the stack. 'Quit' Before quitting, SFskyedit will check whether there are any files being edited that are unsaved/modified. If so then you will be prompted to confirm that you wish to discard any changes. 4.5 Main editing window ------------------- The main section of the editing window is occupied by a huge vertical stack of coloured rectangles. These are the 'colour bands', numbered from 0 (bottom) to 62 (top). When selected colour bands are highlighted with a border and whatever the number of that band. The caret looks like a red horizontal bar with uprights at both ends. When a file is first opened it appears below band 0, but may be moved up and down using the arrow keys. When it reaches the top or bottom edge of the window the view will scroll automatically in that direction. Use of the caret is described further in the next section of the manual. When you scroll the editing window the caret will automatically be moved so that it remains inside the visible area (this behaviour is configurable using the 'Trap caret' menu option). The Home/End and PgUp/PgDn keys may also be used for scrolling. At the top of the editing window are two writable values, 'Min sky height' and 'Stars start height'. These reflect the current state of these values in the sky file header, and may be altered by typing into the writable field or using the bump up/down arrows. 'Min sky height' is an offset that changes the way that the sky is rendered - higher values make the sky look more 'compact' at ground level, with narrower colour bands. In other words exactly the same effect as you get by flying high, hence the name. 'Stars start height' is the height at which the game begins to plot stars in the sky, so you should set it to the height at which you want the atmosphere to appear to be thinning. Rather than typing numbers, it is much easier to set these values by eye. This can be done using the interactive preview window, of which more later. 4.6 Mouse actions on editing window ------------------------------- SFskyedit uses the standard RISC OS selection and drag & drop model, which should be familiar to anyone who has used a text editor. Selections are contiguous, meaning that only neighbouring bands may be selected - no gaps allowed. The caret and selection are mutually exclusive (e.g. only one may exist at a time). To position the caret click SELECT on the editing window (clicking on a selection has no effect, to allow drag & drop to function). To select bands, position the caret at a starting point and (holding SELECT) drag out the selection. The end of the selection will follow the mouse pointer, expanding or contracting until you release the mouse button. The editing window will scroll up or down automatically when the mouse pointer nears the edge of the visible area. Alternatively, clicking ADJUST will instantly select all colour bands inbetween the caret position and the mouse pointer. An existing selection may be modified by clicking or dragging ADJUST, to grab the nearest end point of the selection and move it to the current pointer position. Copy and move operations may be done using the mouse rather than using the clipboard method described later. Selected bands may be dragged within the file or to another editing window. Editing windows will scroll automatically when the pointer approaches the top/bottom of the window. Dragging selected bands within a file will move them. To copy them, hold SHIFT when starting the drag operation. These actions are reversed when dragging to another file (SHIFT-drag to move, drag to copy). Summary of mouse operations: SELECT click On selection: Do nothing, unless held for drag. In clear: Set new caret position, clearing any selection. SELECT double-click On selection: Choose a new colour for the selected bands. SELECT drag In clear: Drag out a new selection from the caret position. On selection: Move or copy the selected colour bands to the drop location. MENU click Open pop-up menu to allow operations on the selection or insertion of colour bands at the caret. ADJUST click If selection: Set nearest end of selection to click position. If no selection: Create new selection from caret position to click position. ADJUST drag If selection: Drag extend/contract the nearest end of the selection. 4.7 File operations --------------- 'File'>'Info'> This leads to a standard 'About this file' window, which gives information about the file being edited: Size, type, whether it has been modified since it was loaded/saved, and the time and date of the file. The date is generally taken from the date stamp of the file, except when the data is received directly from another app (in which case it is the time of transfer). 'File'>'Save'> This leads to a standard savebox. Type a file name and drag the icon to a directory display, or type a full file path and press Return. 'File'>'Close' This is equivalent to attempting to close the editing window. If you have unsaved changes then you will first be prompted to save or discard them before the session is closed. 4.8 Editing operations ------------------ 'Edit'>'Insert bands...' This brings up a dialogue box that allows you to set up an insertion operation. The number of bands to insert is set by typing into the numeric field at the top of the window, or using the bump up/down arrows provided. When doing a gradated fill this number also dictates the smoothness of colour transition that can be achieved. If you wish the new colour bands to be a plain colour, set the "Plain fill" radio button, and select a colour from the pop-up palette. This fill colour will be retained across multiple insertion operations until it is superseded. The facility to do a "Gradated fill" is essentially another interface to the 'Interpolate' function described above. Using a sequence of gradated fills you can quickly build up a high-quality sky file without lots of fiddling. The default start and end colours for a gradated fill are those immediately above and below the current caret position. At the bottom of the file there is no preceding colour, so the start colour is set to white. You can select alternative colours from the pop-up palettes - doing so will automatically set the corresponding 'Include...' option button (see below). The 'Include start colour' and 'Include end colour' options allow you to do a gradated fill without actually including the initial and/or final colour. This is useful for interpolating between pre-existing adjacent colour bands and for merging consecutive fills. Normally these options are set automatically depending on whether the start and end colours correspond to the colours adjacent to the caret, but you can also set them manually. By default neither start nor end colours are included, except at the start of the file where inclusion of the start colour is sensible. To reset the dialogue box ADJUST-click on the 'Cancel' button. Clicking 'Insert' will insert the specified number of new colour bands and move the caret up by the same amount. If you click with ADJUST rather than SELECT then the start and end colour will be updated for another insertion and the dialogue box will remain open. (This is useful for doing consecutive gradated fills.) 'Edit'>'Cut' Discard any previous contents of the clipboard, and copy all selected bands to it. The original colour bands will then be removed from the file, giving the impression that the bands have 'moved' to the clipboard. The bands above the removed chunk will shuffle down to fill the space, with new black ones appearing at the top. 'Edit'>'Copy' Discard any previous contents of the clipboard, and copy all selected bands to it. The original colour bands will be untouched. 'Edit'>'Paste' If the clipboard is not empty then this operation will paste any colour bands on the clipboard to the editing window. These will be inserted at the current caret position, causing all bands above the caret to shuffle upward (at the very top some may be lost). If there is no caret then the clipboard contents will instead replace the the current selection. 'Edit'>'Delete' As 'Cut' except that the clipboard contents are untouched. 'Edit'>'Select all' Select all the colour bands. 'Edit'>'Clear selection' Deselect any colour bands that may have been selected. 4.9 Effects on a selection ---------------------- 'Effect'>'Set colour...' Clicking this menu entry brings up a colour picker dialogue which allows you to choose a colour from the standard 256 colour palette. You can revert to the original colour at any time by clicking ADJUST on 'Cancel'. When you are happy with your choice (displayed in the bottom left of the dialogue box) click OK to confirm. All the bands selected in the editing window will be set to the chosen colour. 'Effect'>'Interpolate colours...' This brings up a dialogue box that allows you to set up an interpolation between two colours. You give the routine a start and end colour and it will calculate the colours that (when applied to the intervening bands) will most closely approximate a smooth transition. By default the start/end colours used will be the first and last bands of the current selection, but you can choose alternative colours from the pop- up palette. To return to the default colours ADJUST-click on the 'Cancel' button. When you click 'Interpolate' the finished colour gradient will overwrite the current selection. If you want to *insert* a colour gradient then you should instead use the 'Insert bands' facility described earlier. 'Effect'>'Smooth transitions' This facility will attempt to smooth abrupt changes from one colour to another, within the selected bands. Unfortunately SFskyedit is unable to determine which the key colour bands are and which are just intermediate colours. For this reason smoothing will only really work where there are large blocks of contiguous bands all set to the same colour. The routine attempts to find the centre point of each block of colour (or uses the start and end of the selection for the first and final blocks). Then, it changes all the intervening bands to make a smooth gradient between the various mid-points, which remain unaltered. Basically, this is a one time only option, since almost by definition there will not remain any large blocks of contiguous colour after a smoothing operation. Not amazingly useful... 4.10 Preview window -------------- A preview may be opened by selecting 'Preview...' from the editing window menu. Each individual editing window may have its own preview. If in doubt which is which, the title of the preview window shows the name of the file that it is associated with. The window shows an interactive view of how the sky file would look if it were rendered by the game. The view is real-time, updating as the file is edited or when the height slider is dragged. The only difference between this and the game is that distant planets and stars are not rendered in the preview. The viewing height is controlled with a slider attached to the preview window, with a numeric display below to show the current height. The numbers displayed show the height RELATIVE to the current minimum sky height. Thus the rendered view will change in appearance if the MSH is changed, though the viewing height remains constant. The MSH is a purely cosmetic adjustment. Two useful options are available from the sky preview menu: 'Set min. sky height' Will take the current view and reset the MSH so that this is how the sky appears from ground zero. The viewing height will also be reset to 0, so no apparent change will be visible. Mathematically what happens is: MSH = MSH + viewing height viewing height = 0 As should be obvious from the calculation above, whilst you can increase the MSH by this method it is impossible to reduce it. To do this you must go back to the editing window and change the value by hand. 'Set stars plot height' Will set the height at which stars begin to come out to be that of the preview. This value is taken directly from the viewing height since the SPH is also relative to the MSH. It would be particularly difficult to set the SPH without the sky preview, but it should be easy to do by eye. Although having the stars plotted at a relatively low level can look groovy (giving the appearance of a thin atmosphere) don't forget that they won't show up very well against bright colours. 4.11 Keyboard shortcuts ------------------ In dialogue boxes: Return - Select default action (the button with a coloured surround). Escape - Select cancel/abort operation, "run away!" Main editing window: F1 - Help (i.e. open application manual). F3 - Open savebox to allow sky file to be saved. Ctrl-F1 - Display file details, including date last saved and size etc. Ctrl-F2 - Close editing window (gives discard/save/cancel prompt if appropriate). Ctrl-P - Open an interactive preview showing the sky as rendered in the game. PgUp/PgDn - Scroll view vertically by one page at a time. Home/End - Scroll view vertically to top or bottom. Ctrl-T - Toggle option to trap the caret within the view area. Up/Down - Move the caret. Effects on selection: Ctrl-E - Set colour of all selected colour bands. Ctrl-S - Attempt to smooth abrupt colour transitions within selection. Ctrl-I - Open 'Interpolate' dialogue (make gradated transition between two colours). Editing operations: Ctrl-A - Select all colour bands. Ctrl-Z - Deselect any selected colour bands. Insert - Open 'Insert bands' dialogue box (insert plain colour or gradated fill at caret). Ctrl-X - Cut selected bands to the clipboard (as copy, but removes them). Ctrl-C - Copy selected bands to the 'clipboard' (temporary storage). Ctrl-V - Paste bands from the clipboard, inserting at the current caret position (or replacing the selection, if any). Ctrl-K (or Delete) - Remove selected bands from the sky file. On Preview: F1 - Help. Ctrl-F2 - Close preview window. Ctrl-M - Set minimum sky height so that view shown is new ground zero. Ctrl-S - Set stars plot height to current viewing height. Up/Down - Increase/decrease viewing height in steps of 10. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 Technical details ================= 5.1 Where to find sky colours files ------------------------------- Sky colours files can be found inside the !Star3000 application, in "Landscapes.Sky". Depending on your installation, the main Landscapes directory may be inside a directory "Disc2". So far as I know, this file format is unique to SF3000. 5.2 File formats ------------ The tables below show the sky colours file format, when de-compressed (though you shouldn't have to worry about this). Sky colours file (512 bytes) ---------------- Word Data +0 Min height of sky (cosmetic offset for rendering) +4 Start height of star plot (actual height) +8... Sky data (126 shades) : +8 Sky shade 1 (4 bytes are mode 13 colours, may be dithered) +12 Sky shade 2 +16 Sky shade 3... The rules by which SFskyedit generates shades data are described separately under the heading "Editing model", since the basic file format does not preclude other methods. 5.3 Filetype -------- The filetypes used by SF3000 are highly non-official. Presumably they thought that this wouldn't matter for files used internally in the game. I already know of some clashes (none serious) with other filetypes, but I can't really alter them retrospectively. &404 - SkyCols 5.4 Dithering rules --------------- SFskyedit has been written to allow sky files similar to the Fednet originals to be created and edited. To facilitate this the editor deliberately imposes quite strict constraints on the shades data. These constraints have been derived from the existing sky files. [*] Rather than allowing literally any sequence of 126 quad-pixel patterns, SFskyedit allows only every other shade to be edited. These editable shades must be unpatterned pixel spans of a single colour, with the intervening shades available for dithering colour transitions. This gives 63 editable colour bands rather than the actual 126 shades. The plain shades are odd-numbered and the dithered shades even-numbered (counting from 0). Since the first colour cannot be sensibly dithered with a preceding colour it is one shade wider than other colour bands: Shade Pattern Role ----- ------- ---- 0 0000 Clone of shade 1 1 0000 Plain colour band 0 (editable) 2 1010 Dithered 3 1111 Plain colour band 1 (editable) 4 2121 Dithered 5 2222 Plain colour band 2 (editable) If the shades in a sky file do not follow the conventions described (e.g. if outlandish patterns are used, or there are many contiguous dithered shades), then SFskyedit may badly misinterpret them. I make no apology for this, since I have no reason to suppose that any such files exist or ever will. [*] Violations: A couple of the Fednet sky files contain isolated peculiarities that violate the strict rules set out above: The final (non-black) shade of both "Earth" and "Earth2" consists of the preceding blue dithered with another blue rather than the black of the following shade. In practice this doesn't really matter, though the oddity could be rectified by using SFskyedit to reset the black colour band and consequently the dithering on the transitional shade. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6 Program history =============== 1.00 (15th August 2001) ----------------------------------------------------- • First version (though it inherits much of the structure and features of SFcolours). 1.01 (17th August 2001) ----------------------------------------------------- • Had forgotten to RMEnsure the nested Wimp in the !Run file, to safeguard use of 24-bit icon colours. 1.02 (19th August 2001) ----------------------------------------------------- • Fixed code that passes input focus back to main window - no longer gives error when it is already gone and child windows are closed. • Closes interpolate/insert dialogues and preview window when parent editing window is closed. 1.03 (19th September 2001) -------------------------------------------------- • Fixed bug in Loader component regarding multi-stage RAM transfers. 1.10 (24th December 2001) --------------------------------------------------- • Total overhaul of sourcecode from the ground up, with many improvements and fixes not really externally visible. • Now uses flexlib rather than the C library heap, for storing large data blocks. This means that the Wimpslot expands and contracts as necessary. • ADJUST-clicking the close icon of a document window now opens its parent directory, as proscribed by the Style Guide. • Added warning beeps for failed actions (e.g. copy when no selection). • Menu options now grey/ungrey appropriately when hot keys are pressed in main editing window. • Clicking editing window closes Insert/Interpolate dialogues if open as children, to give impression of transience. • Preview images are now scaled correctly for screenmode eigen factors. • Fixed a number of embarrassing memory leaks. • Fixed bug in Loader component with !Scrap transfer from other apps, where suggested leaf name was shorter than "<Wimp$Scrap>". • Corrected 'SFsky' menu titles, left from before I'd decided on the name. • No longer get weird colours by clicking at very edge of palette. 1.11 (8th January 2002) ----------------------------------------------------- • Fixed "Invalid Object Id" bug on start-up, where app had been launched by double-clicking on sky file. • Minor improvement to handling of ADJUST-clicks on action buttons in palette dialogue. 1.12 (3rd May 2002) --------------------------------------------------------- • New 16 colour & 256 colour sprites. • Verifies format of sky files on loading. Added '-nowarn' command line switch to disable this. • Other internal improvements including more efficient code (!RunImage actually smaller). 1.13 (11th November 2002) --------------------------------------------------- • Further improvement to error-checking macros. • Corrected mistake in !Run file where the CallASWI module was not being loaded on RISC OS 3.6, despite being required on all OSes prior to 3.7. • Recompiled using the official Castle release of 32-bit Acorn C/C++. 1.14 (11th April 2003) ------------------------------------------------------ • Fixed bug where auto-scrolling stopped when pointer reached edge of window (only manifested in modes with non-standard eigen factors). • Auto-scrolling is now constant rate, since it adjusts itself to the elapsed time between null polls. • Changed key shortcuts for close window to ctrl-F2, as per the style guide. • Slightly more verbose error messages for situation where a file can't be opened. • Moved "Help" entry to top of iconbar menu, as per Castle docs. 1.20 (13th June 2003) ------------------------------------------------------- • The current selection is now highlighted using a dark background colour in addition to numbering the icons and giving them borders. • You can now double-click on selected bands to change their colour and ADJUST-drag to alter the extent of an existing selection. • Paste from clipboard now replaces any selection, rather than being disabled except when there was a caret. • Implemented full keyboard control of the caret, and added 'Trap caret' option to keep the caret inside the view area when scrolling. • Redesigned the 'Insert' dbox to provided more complete control over inclusion of start/end colours and the starting colour for the fill. • All dialogue boxes can now be reset by ADJUST-clicking on the 'Cancel' button. This allows a simplified design for the 'Interpolate' dbox. • Reorganisation of the menu structure and other tweaking to the user interface after reference to the Style Guide. • The caret no longer disappears entirely when editing window loses the input focus. This helps when using the 'Insert' dbox. • When closed, transient dialogue boxes that claim the input focus now restore it to the previous owner. The 'Insert' and 'Interpolate' dboxes still pass the focus to the main window, but now only do so if they own it. • The 'Insert' and 'Interpolate' pseudo-transient dboxes no longer have back-icons and will now be dismissed by a variety of mouse clicks - not just those on the parent window. • File paths are now canonicalised before being displayed or compared (i.e. "IDEFS::Tamzin.$.!Boot.Choices" rather than "<Choices$Write>") • Now uses the Toolbox's standard 'Quit' dbox object rather than a custom dbox. The default action is now 'Cancel' rather than 'Quit'. • Removed COPY and ^H as alternative key shortcuts for delete, and implemented HOME and END keys to go to top/bottom of sky file. • Fixed a redraw bug in the palette dbox, though this was only evident in screen modes with a y eigen factor of less than 1. • No longer gives repeated errors and loses the caret off the top when an insertion overruns the end of a file. • The caret is now relocated to the base of a removed area on a cut or delete operation, rather than appearing in an unrelated position. • Fixed bugs with drag-and-drop: When moving a selection to a higher location in another file the insertion point was incorrect, and a drop on the site of a former selection would replace those bands. • Fixed bug where the caret was not drawn if Ctrl-Z was pressed to clear the selection and it was not within the selection redraw area. • Can no longer crash the program by entering rubbish values into the 'Min sky height' and 'Stars start height' writeable fields whilst the preview window is open. • Integrates much better with the pinboard - any iconised window icon is removed when that window is re-opened independently by the application. • More sensible response to error on Toolbox_Initialise (doesn't rely on messages file, which isn't open). 1.21 (19th August 2003) ----------------------------------------------------- • Even if there is no unsaved data when a PreQuit message is received, we now wait for the Quit message rather than dying prematurely. • Where possible, changed to use SWIs instead of Star Commands for file access. This is faster and also reduces code size. • Now demands version 5.43 of the shared C library, since this is the earliest version documented as supporting C99 functions (some of which are used). • Formatted the manual text for a fixed-width 77 column display (Zap's default). 1.22 (13th September 2003) -------------------------------------------------- • The program now directly incorporates compression code, hence it is no longer dependent on the Comp and Decomp modules from !FednetRes. • Released with source code under the terms of the GNU G.P.L. 1.23 (23rd October 2003) ---------------------------------------------------- • Internal changes. 1.24 (7th November 2003) ---------------------------------------------------- • On shutdown, no longer quits immediately that 'Quit' is selected from the quit confirm dbox. Instead all editing windows are closed and we wait for a Quit message (analogous to what Paint, Edit & Draw do). • Now restarts desktop shutdown by sending a keypress event to the task that sent us the PreQuit message (as recommended by the PRM), instead of using SWI Wimp_ProcessKey. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 Licence and Disclaimer ====================== This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the Licence, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public Licence for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public Licence along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. If you did not receive source code with this program then you can download it from http://starfighter.acornarcade.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8 Credits ======= SFskyedit was designed and programmed by Chris Bazley. This program uses CBLibrary, which is (C) 2003 Chris Bazley. This library and its use are covered by the GNU Lesser General Public Licence. You can obtain CBLibrary with source code by downloading it from http://www.bigfoot.com/~chrisbazley/ This program contains a small but important section of code written by Fednet themselves. The routine is used to render the sky preview, with minor modification to conform to the APCS. Much credit goes to David O'Shea and Keith McKillop for working out the Fednet compression algorithm. David wrote a DeComp module for use with the Stunt Racer track designer, which earlier versions of SFskyedit relied upon. The code incorporated into this application is heavily based (with permission) upon his. Olaf Krumnow and Herbert zur Nedden of the German Archimedes Group wrote the ResFind program I use to find the correct resources for different languages. Thanks to the denizens of comp.sys.acorn.programmer for their advice - in particular Kevin Bracey, Richard Murray and Stewart Brodie. Thanks to my brother Martin for his bug-spotting! The application name "SFskyedit" (including associated sprites/system variables) has been officially registered with RISCOS Ltd. The game Star Fighter 3000 is © FEDNET Software 1994, 1995. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9 Contact details =============== Feel free to contact me with any bug reports, suggestions or anything else. Even if you think that my programs are crap, I'll be interested to know! Mail: Mr C.J. Bazley 43 Wilton Grove Wimbledon London SW19 3QU Email: mailto:chrisbazley@bigfoot.com (preferred) mailto:chris@bazley.freeuk.com WWW: http://starfighter.acornarcade.com http://www.bigfoot.com/~chrisbazley/