Loadstar 205/205.d81/t.mm3 maker

Text File | 2022-08-26 | 4KB | 129 lines

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         MR. MOUSE 3.0 MAKER

         Program by Lee Novak
         Text by Dave Moorman


 [RIGHT TO THE SKINNY:] MR. MOUSE 3.0
MAKER creates Mr. Mouse and Mouse Mate
2 modules to be used in your programs.
This Maker is fully menu driven and
extremely easy to use. For more
specific information on using MR.
MOUSE 3.0 in your software, read the
MR. MOUSE DOCS file.

 Now on with the Blather:

    With the possible exception of
Microsoft BASIC, no eight-bit program
has made as significant an impact as
MR. MOUSE. Before its arrival, only
GEOS people had any need for a truly
proportional mouse on their C-64/128
system. And therefore, our programming
looked like we were stuck in the
mid-80's.

    Then Lee Novak, resident of
"Little Chicago" (aka, Moosejaw,
Saskatchuan, Canada) sent a modest
little module to Fender Tucker. It was
a toolbox, of course -- the kind of
Basic extension Jeff Jones had made
famous. But with this one, all you had
to do was plug a 1351 mouse into port
1. And [voila!] -- your programming
zoomed into the 1990's.

    My first MR. MOUSE exercise was a
bit of tongue-in-chip called
"N-STALL". The idea was to bring some
of the thrill IBM-type computer owners
experienced every time they added a
new program to their hard drive. The
real point was to learn how MM worked.

    I was [dazzled]. I decided that I
needed a mouse-driven screen editor.
Mr. MICK (Mr. Mouse Image Construction
Kit) became the easy way to create
text screens. Later, I used the fully
proportional abilities of the mouse to
revisit Break-Out with Mr.Break-Thru.

    And I was not alone. The mouse
became an accepted, even necessary
peripheral for the C-64/128. And Lee
continued to improve and extend the
capabilities of the module. This also
extended the size. MR. MOUSE 2+
reached a whopping 25 blocks on disk,
some 6400 bytes of precious memory.

    The designers of the C-64 left us
a nice 4 K space at page 192 ($c000,
49152) for machine language routines.
That became something of a standard in
module construction. And while Lee had
slimmed down versions of MR. MOUSE
(some even without the mouse), he saw
a need for a tight, full-featured MM
that would fit in just 4096 bytes.

    Welcome MR. MOUSE 3.0! There are
two versions, 4K and 5K. The one
difference is that the 4K version does
not have the scrolling menu. And
compared to other MR. MOUSEs, MM3.0 is
lean and mean! The STASH and RESTORE
commands use the CUT and PASTE
routines, which are visibly faster
than the old method. COPY MEM is [not]
particularly intelligent as it was in
previous versions. If you set it to
overwrite the copied data, so be it!

    But these are chicken feed,
compared to the useability of MM3.0!
When I design a program, I use a boot
program to push up the Bottom of Basic
to make room for my font at $0800
(2048). Since the next 4K is unuseable
for fonts or sprites, I push up Basic
to page 34, and put MR. MOUSE there at
4096, plus a page for MR.MOUSE Region
Data and a page for 4 sprites.

    This way, I have lost only a bit
over 6 K to Basic (6656 bytes, to be
exact, including the font), and have
everything above free for other uses.

    Lee will tell you what you need to
know to use MR. MOUSE 3.0 in the Docs
file. And be sure to use this MAKER
program to print out the Summary
Sheet. Lee has again packed everything
you normally need to know onto two
pages for quick reference.

    One last note: as mentioned above,
the STASH and RESTORE commands in
MM3.0 function differently than in
previous MM versions (or in any Jeff
Jones toolbox, for that matter). The
only place where this has been a
problem for me is with using MR. MICK
screens. These [must] be converted to
MM3.0 format to be shown by MM3.0. I
have done it quick and dirty -- but we
REALLY need a MICK2THREE conversion
program. I toss that out as a
challenge.

 DMM