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Atari Mega Archive 1
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Atari Mega Archive - Volume 1.iso
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space.txt
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1991-08-22
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21KB
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452 lines
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Greetings and welcome to the Shareware release of Colourspace.
This program is Shareware. If you enjoy it, please take the
trouble to register with us. The shareware fee is five pounds,
and for the dosh you will receive our newsletter, a complete
manual for Colourspace detailing all the funky stuff you can do
with it, and a distinctly cool and spiffy folder to keep your
manual and disk in. Please send yer dosh to us at
LLAMASOFT, 49 Mount Pleasant, Tadley, Hants RG26 6BN.
(That's a UK address for those reading this in Foreign Parts!)
Please make cheques payable to Llamasoft and if you want to
use a credit card, we can handle the main cards, mail or phone
your card number.
Enough money talk already! What is this weird Thing lurking
on the disk?
ABOUT COLOURSPACE
"In the beginning was PSYCHEDELIA on the C64, which begat
COLOURSPACE on the 8-bit Atari, which led to this version,
COLOURSPACE ST, which is the direct ancestor of TRIP-A-TRON".
COLOURSPACE was the first ST incarnation of the light-synthesiser
concept. The lightsynth idea is one I have been playing about
with since 1984. The basic idea is simple: the light-synthesiser
is an 'instrument' which produces dynamic patterns and colour
sequences under the direct control of the operator. The lightsynth
is generally used in conjunction with music; it's nice to sit down
and mellow out with your favourite sounds and use the lightsynth;
yer mates can watch too.
COLOURSPACE was one of the first ST products, appearing in 1986.
It was succeeded a couple of years later with TRIP-A-TRON, which
is still selling well to this day. We have decided to release
Colourspace as shareware for a number of reasons - not least
because it serves as an excellent advertisement for Trip-A-Tron.
You see, the trouble with a lightsynth is that it is very difficult
to describe one to someone who has never seen one. Screen shots
cannot do it justice as the essence of the lightsynth is in the
way it moves and flows. Describing it in an advert is equally
difficult. People don't quite know what it is and are therefore
reluctant to part with their wedge for some weird thing they don't
know they're going to enjoy.
Colourspace, although old, serves as a good entry-level lightsynth
system. It provides a good sample of simple lightsynth effects.
If you like it, register and we'll send you the manual so you can
get the most out of it. It is compatible with all STs (it even
runs on the TT). If you really like the idea of lightsynth, instead
of registering 'Space, you can get full-blown Trip-A-Tron from us for
the special price of 20 quid (it's normally 30!). TAT contains
a heap more effects, completely user-definable keyboard layout,
graphics and picture manipulation stuff, a proper user interface
with icons and stuff (unlike the admittedly arcane 'Space system
control commands - hey! this was my first-ever program on the ST,
first-ever 68000 code, and in those days there were no guru-books
to help you figure it all out!) - and even its own graphics creation
and system control language KML. TAT comes in a severely optimal
ring-bound manual (180-odd pages) which is the main reason for the
high price (high for us, that is - if I was writing it on the PC
or Mac II I could probably sell it for $100 and have you seen the
prices they get away with for 'serious' software? but anyway that manual
costs quite a bit to produce). Anyway, if you like this a lot, then
you can get TAT for twenty quid from us (if you like this you'll
be in pixel heaven with TAT).
Okay, okay, end of plug. You want to know how to get up and grooving.
HOW TO GET UP AND GROOVING:
Method 1: Go out to a really good gig or rave and boogie yer
brains out.(Anyone fancy the Shamen Progeny all-nighter at
the Brixton Academy 11th October? You may well see a Mad Shaggy
Being there!).
Method 2: If you got this off a BB or something, make a Colourspace
disk with the .PRG and files on it. Everything should be in the
root directory! It's important that nothing should be in a folder!
Put your Colourspace disk in drive A and get your ST
into low-rez. Make a nice cup of tea and put it somewhere you
can reach it while you're at the computer. Get out some of your
favourite sounds and put them on your audio system. Reduce the
ambient light level in your computer room and adjust your display
so the colours are bright and the contrast is good. Run the
program file on the Colourspace disk. Have a drink of tea while
it's loading.
After the disk has finished mungeing, you will see the Colourspace
title screen with a starfield behind it. Press the '[' key, which
will remove the background picture so you can see what you're
doing. Grasp the mouse firmly. Wiggle the mouse and notice the
way the little white dot moves. Now, hold down the left mouse button
and move the mouse around, whilst listening to the music. Remember
to stop and have a drink of tea occasionally, or it'll get cold.
Experiment with the mouse and patterns for a while.
Now try pressing any of the keys ZXCVBN. They control symmetry.
There is an 'extra symmetry' mode you can toggle on and off with
key W. Experiment with the symmetry.
There are different pattern shapes available on the keys ASDFGHJK.
There are also some different modes on L,E and R. Play with them.
Use the numbers on the numeric-pad 1-9 to choose different palettes.
There are 20 preset Colourspace modes programmed in when you load
up the system. To see them, press any of the function keys or any
of the number keys 0-9 on the main keyboard. The presets show
various Colourspace effects and the use of NeoChrome images as
foregrounds and backdrops.
You can design your own pattern shapes, starfield effects and
palette selections and assign them to one of the 20 Preset slots.
Banks of presets can be saved to disk. You can record and play
back mouse movements. I'm not going to describe how to do that
here - for one it's a lot of typing, and for two it's a further
incentive to register and get the manual! However, here's a brief
summary of some of the commands you'll want to play with. I
recommend you print this out or write it down on some paper or
something and keep it handy.
SYMMETRY: Keys ZXCVBN, W for extra sym on/off
PATTERN SHAPES: ASDFGHJK, LER extra modes
STARFIELD ON/OFF: Key ;
STREAKS ON/OFF: Key '
CHANGE STARFIELD MODE: Key Delete
CHANGE STARFIELD SYMMETRY: Key # (\ on US keys)
GRAVITY ON RADIAL STARFIELD: Key Insert
PIXEL SIZE TOGGLE: key Backspace
PALETTES: Keys 1-9 on Numeric Pad
SINGLE STROBE: key Q
CONTINUOUS INSTANT BRAINDEATH STROBE: key T for on/off toggle
TOGGLE BACKGROUND ON/OFF: key [
TOGGLE FOREGROUND ON/OFF: key ]
SELECT PRESETS 1-20: F1-F10, keys 0-9 on main keyboard.
Some keys are used to prefix disk save and load operations.
Once pressed, these keys disable the usual keyboard commands
and use subsequent keystrokes to get information about what to
save and load. If the system seems to go away and not do what it
should it could be that you pressed one of these keys. We recommend
that you avoid pressing them until you have the manual and
know what's going on. They are UNDO, numeric-pad ( and ), main
keyboard -,+ and underline.
One of the UNDO commands that you can use is UNDO-M-<drive letter>,
which sets the drive that 'Space reads its data from. Usually it
expects to be in drive A. 'Space is very primitive in its disk
handling; although you can tell it to read different drives, it can
only read the root directory in each! (Whatever was I thinking of
doing it that way???).
We recommend that you make a copy of your Colourspace disk straight
away, just in case during fiddling about with the system you accidentally
bosh the default presets or