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Text File | 1990-09-07 | 32KB | 629 lines

Sewer Software thanks DR. J A L L A B O A R D ! TOY TOURING TRAIN GEE-WHIZ IT'S FROM BAY CITIES SOFTWARE FUN, FUN, FUN, that's what ALL ABOARD! is. It's NOT an adventure game or a strategy game, it's not a game at all, IT'S A TOY. A wonderful toy for the young part of us all. It's endless hours of fun for every age, from the smallest child, to the adventuresome who wish to tackle designing their own trains or scenery with the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. There is simply no end to the fun and creative adventures that ALL ABOARD! can provide all ages. THE FIRST THING TO DO AFTER OPENING THE ALL ABOARD! PACKAGE IS TO MAKE A BACK UP COPY OF THE PROGRAM DISK AND SET THE ORIGINAL ASIDE. (See your Atari Owner's Manual if you are not sure how to do this.) There are two programs and several other files on your ALL ABOARD! disk. The two programs on the disk are TRAIN.PRG and TR_EDIT.PRG. The TRAIN.PRG is the main program, and the one we're going to cover first. The second program TR_EDIT.PRG is the editor program for those who wish to design their own trains and scenery. The editor will be discussed in the second part of this manual. Half the fun of a new program is booting it up and trying to figure out what it will do without reading the manual. And if you're of that school, be our guests and have a great time. But for most of us, nothing is quite as useful when getting to know a new program as a walk-through, or in our case a drive-through. So boot up ALL ABOARD! (in low-resolution, please), stroke the engine, and get set for our tutorial tour of a toy touring train. After the program is loaded, there is a brief flurry of activity while the opening screen presents the ALL ABOARD cast of characters. This is climaxed by an explosion, followed by the appearance of the mouse cursor. Click the mouse anywhere on the screen and you're off on your tour. DEFAULT SCREEN & ITS CURSOR The initial ALL ABOARD! screen (or "default" screen) displays a combination of track and scenery where you will be running your trains. If you look around the screen you will find a very very small red flashing cursor. This is your mouse pointer while you are in the main screen. Move it around a little and get the feel of it. It moves a little differently than a normal mouse; it moves in increments of eight pixels (screen dots) at a time. This is because the entire screen is really a series of small pictures that are 16 by 16 pixels in size, so moving in increments of 8 helps you know exactly which picture your cursor is on. FINDING AND LEAVING THE MENU When you find the small red cursor, pull it down to the bottom of the screen until it enters the ALL ABOARD! title area. The menu will then pop up. To exit the menu again move the mouse pointer up off the top of the menu, or click on the right mouse button. MOVING OBJECTS FROM MENU TO MAIN SCREEN Most of the small pictures in the menu are pieces that can be carried onto the main screen for placement. When you click on them they become free moving objects that can be positioned on the main screen. But if you change your mind about an object before you set it down, either pull it back down into the menu, or click the right mouse button. Either action will remove the object. STARTING A TRAIN There wouldn't be much fun in a train set if you couldn't run trains, so let's get one going. There are eight train cars positioned along the bottom of the menu, four with left-facing arrows, and four with right-facing arrows. These arrows represent the direction the train will go when set on the track. Thus a car with a right-facing arrow will start off towards the right when placed down on the track. Now, move the pointing finger to any one of the engines and click. Instantly the train will become a free floating object. Move the train onto any horizontal (running from left to right not up and down) track on the main screen and click. You now should have a train chugging along the track (don't forget to turn up the volume), but if you happen to miss putting the train down on the right kind of track, a dialog box will appear explaining exactly what kind of track to put the train on. ADDING ADDITIONAL CARS TO A TRAIN Once you have the first car running, it is a simple matter to add new cars to the train. Each car is its own motor and is not dependent upon the engine, but if you wish to connect the cars together, select a car that is going in the same direction, and place it behind the engine that's already there. ALL ABOARD!, knows what you're trying to do and, within reason, will connect the car for you. So just place the car roughly on top of and behind the car you wish the new car attached to and click. REMOVING CARS On the bottom right of the menu are two boxes containing the letters CLR LST and CLR ALL, that stand for "CLeaR LaST train put down," and "CLeaR ALL trains on the track." If you wish to remove the last train put down on the track, click on CLR LST, and that car will vanish. In fact you can continue to click on CLR LST and each car on the track will disappear in the order you set them down, until no cars are left. But a faster way to remove all of the cars on the screen is to click on CLR ALL, which removes all cars at once. CAR LIMITATIONS There are no limit to the number of cars a train can pull, but like a real train the extra weight will slow it down and cause problems when turning small loops. But then explosions are half the fun of ALL ABOARD!. SO HAVE FUN! INCREASING AND DECREASING SPEED The default speed coming into the ALL ABOARD! program is about 15. This speed can be increased up to 25, by holding down the right mouse button anywhere on the main screen except over a switch (which we will discuss in a moment). Likewise, the the speed can be decreased all the way to zero by holding down the left mouse button. RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON = SPEED UP LEFT MOUSE BUTTON = SLOW DOWN REVERSING DIRECTIONS By holding down the left mouse button all of the trains will eventually drop their speed to zero and stop. When this happens the engines will reverse, and when you increase the speed again, the engines will begin pushing the cars in the opposite direction. When the cars are being pushed, no new cars may be added to the train. Since ALL ABOARD! has no way of knowing where you want the new car to be placed in relation to the engine, it simply disallows new cars while the train is in reverse. At times if you are running single cars, such as a trolly, you may not know you are in reverse, but ALL ABOARD! will remind you to turn the car around before adding new cars. ADDING NEW TRACK AND SCENERY Hopefully, you are able to distinguish the pieces of track from the pieces of scenery. The top line of eight pictures are the track pieces, the next row of eight are switches, and the following two rows are scenery. Move the mouse pointer over a piece of scenery, and click on it. Then move it around the screen until it's over another piece of scenery or a blank space. Click the mouse and the new piece will become part of the main screen. The same procedure works for track and switch pieces, except it is best if the track pieces match up to form coherent a track layout. Although even this is not necessary if you don't mind your train exploding all of the time. Some of us might even put a tree in the middle of a track to watch what happens. ADDING & REMOVING TUNNELS On the right side of the menu are two rectangular filled boxes, one normal and the other crossed out. These are the symbols for placing and removing tunnels. To place a tunnel on the screen, click on the un-X-ed tunnel and place it on the screen. All trains will then go through the tunnel (if it is over a track, of course). To remove tunnels, click on the X-ed tunnel symbol for each tunnel you wish removed, in the reverse order in which they were placed on the screen. A note of warning about tunnels. Tunnels can drastically slow down the trains, so keep them to a minimum. Also, note that tunnels will not be on the screen unless a train is running. So you will not see the tunnel the instant you put it down, unless a train is running. ERASING UNWANTED TRACK AND SCENERY On the top right of the menu is a blank box. This is the eraser. It is used exactly like any of the other track of scenery, except it removes whatever it is over when you click it down on the main screen. To remove a piece of the main screen, click on the eraser box, then position the eraser over the object you wish removed from the main screen and re-click. Instant oblivion. SWITCHING SWITCHES Switches can be found on the main screen by their red stop lights. These lights indicate the unused track direction by blocking it. The second row of track pieces in the menu are the switches, and they are moved and placed on the main screen exactly like any other track. To switch one of the switches, move your flashing red cursor over the switch and hold down the button. ALL ABOARD! wants to make sure you know that you're switching track, so it will pause a moment before it switches the track. In other words, holding (rather than clicking) the left mouse button is the proper action for switching a switch. Note: a train will always travel the straight part of a switch successfully, even if the switch is set wrong. This is so you can run unattended loops. INTERNAL TRACK SETS Running down the top left side of the menu are five small boxes. Each of these boxes represents a different predefined internal track layout. To change track layouts, click on any of the boxes. Your current layout will be lost when you switch layouts, so ALL ABOARD! will warn you first. If you click on one of the top four layouts, a new track will be displayed. Click on the bottom empty box and the screen will be cleared completely so you can build your own track layout. SAVING TRACK LAYOUTS If you have created a particular track configuration that you like, you can save it to disk to be loaded later on. Move your mouse pointer up to the very top of the menu, and click on the long box marked SAVE. A file selector will appear, and you will be allowed to name your track layout. The default file extender for track layouts is .TRN. If you forget to add the extender, the default .TRN will be added by ALL ABOARD! automatically. Of course you don't have to use the .TRN extender, but that is the extender that the file selector will look for when you load your layout back into ALL ABOARD!. LOADING LAYOUTS, SCENERY, AND TRAINS The only thing that can be SAVED from the main ALL ABOARD! program are the track layouts. But layouts, scenery, and trains (created with the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR) can be loaded into the main ALL ABOARD! program by clicking on LOAD. A small dialog box will appear asking if you wish to load TRACK, SCENERY, or TRAIN. Click on one and a file selector will appear displaying the files with the extender that match your selection. Scenery has the extender .SCN Trains have the extender .CAR Layouts have the extender .TRK Choose the name of the file you want loaded and its items will be displayed in the menu. It is not always advisable to allow trains or tunnels to remain on the screen when new files are loaded. For example ALL ABOARD! has no way of knowing if your new track layout is compatible with where your old trains were on the screen. As a result, all trains and tunnels are automatically removed when a new track layout is loaded. Likewise, all trains are removed when a new train set is loaded, as the new train may be a single car such as a hand cart, and hand carts don't look their best strung together like box cars. A final note on loading files is that they install their own set of colors. We will be going into the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR in depth in the second section, but, the colors that are in use when a file is saved from the EDITOR are the colors that are loaded into the main ALL ABOARD! program when you load a file. LIGHTING Trains run 24 hours a day, and with ALL ABOARD! you can adjust the lighting. Along the bottom left of the menu is a box marked LIGHT. This is the lighting control. Click on one of the smaller boxes below the lettering and the lighting will change. Now, hold down the mouse and move it back and forth. See how the lighting changes to reflect a particular time of day. EXPLOSIONS If you haven't figured out anything else, you have probably found the explosions by now. They are half the fun of ALL ABOARD!. But, if you haven't, try one of the following, just for fun. 1. Allow two trains to collide into each other. 2. Allow a train to run off the edge of the screen. 3. Allow a train to run into a piece of scenery. 4. Allow a train to run into a black space. A L L A B O A R D ! E D I T O R For the adventuresome who wish to take control and design their own scenery or trains, there is the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. When you first boot up the editor it may be slightly confusing. But don't worry. It's really just a simple program to clip pieces of DEGAS, Neochrome, OR CYBER PAINT pictures, and turn them into ALL ABOARD! files. Everything else about the editor simply allows the clipping of pictures to be done more easily. Perhaps a better name for the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR, would be the ALL ABOARD! PICTURE CLIPPER, as no actually drawing is done in the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. All drawing of scenery or trains is done in DEGAS, Neochrome, or CYBER PAINT then clipped from their pictures by the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. Below is a step by step walk-through of all of the features of the editor, but before doing the hands-on walk-through, it is recommended that you read the following information first, just to acquaint yourself with the editor SNAPPING & UNSNAPPING THE CURSOR The large boxed cursor used in the main screen of the editor is a little larger than the normal cursor, with a rectangular hole in the middle that is exactly the size of a ALL ABOARD! picture (16 by 16 pixels). Which is very nice if you're going to be clipping ALL ABOARD! pictures with it. The other thing you will probably notice about the cursor is that it jumps from one screen location to another. This is called snapping, because the cursor snapped from one location on the screen to the next with no movement in between. The point of the SNAP feature, will be come obvious in a moment, but for now pop up the menu, click the box that says SNAP ON and change it to SNAP OFF. Now try moving the cursor around the main screen. Much smoother isn't it. The snap feature is now off allowing normal movement. MENU TRAIN & SCENERY HOLDING BOXS In the menu area of the editor are 16 scenery holding boxes and 20 train holding boxes. This is where you are going to store your small clipped pictures before you save them as a file. Simply move your cursor around the main screen until you have what you want inside the cursor, then click. Now, move your catch down into one of the holding boxes and click again. If you change you mind and want something different in a box, just move a new picture into it to replace the old. Please note that the holding box areas of both the train and the scenery have a snap of their own that allows for exact placement of pictures in the holding boxes. This snap is permanent and can not be turned off. THE PICTURE FILES FULLGRID.PI1 NUDEGRID.PI1 FULLGRID.NEO NUDEGRID.NEO As no actually drawing is done in the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR, four picture files have been provided on your ALL ABOARD! disk: two DEGAS pictures, and two NEOCROME pictures. Any of them can be loaded into their parent program (DEGAS or Neochrome) and edited before loading into the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. The FULLGRID.PI1 and FULLGRID.NEO, files are identical grids of predrawn pictures that can be clipped in the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR, and saved as ALL ABOARD! files. The NUDEGRID.PI1 and NUDEGRID.NEO, files are identical empty (16 by 16) grids for drawing your own scenery or trains in either DEGAS, Neochrome, or CYBER PAINT. NOTE: We strongly recommend that you make several copies of the NUDEGRID files for future use. The grid is especially designed to work with the snap function in the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. LOADING FILES INTO THE EDITOR There are three kinds of files that can be loaded into the editor: PICTURE, SCENERY, and TRAIN. PICTURE files are standard, full screen DEGAS or Neochrome files. SCENERY and TRAIN files are special ALL ABOARD! files (the same kind you load from the ALL ABOARD! program). To load any of the three types of files, click on LOAD. A dialog box will appear, and you will be ask to select the type of file you wish to load. After you have selected the type of file you want, an appropriate file selector box will appear. Chose a file, and it will be loaded into the editor. PICTURE FILES Any Neochrome or PI1 DEGAS picture may be loaded into the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR as a PICTURE file, but it is strongly recommend that you use one of the four picture files provided. This is because the grids of all four files are laid out so that when the SNAP feature is ON, the cursor in the main editor screen snaps precisely from one picture to another. And by doing this, it automatically aligns the cursor around a picture so it can be clipped. To load a DEGAS or Neochrome file, click on LOAD in the menu, and answer PICTURE for the type of file to load. The screen will blank momentarily, and the picture and its colors will be loaded into the main screen. SCENERY & TRAIN FILES SCENERY and TRAIN files are loaded in the same manner as PICTURE files, and will be displayed in the SCENERY and TRAIN window of the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. You can then replace certain of the boxes from the main PICTURE before resaving the new SCENERY or TRAIN files, which are loadable from within ALL ABOARD!. You can only save SCENERY or TRAIN files from the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. Since you can't alter the PICTURE files from within the editor, there would be no point in saving them. CLEARING HOLDING BOXES To remove all pictures in the scenery or train holding boxes, click on CLEAR and you will be asked if you want the scenery or trains cleared. Choose one, and that set of holding boxes will be cleared. AUTO SCENERY & TRAIN The last feature we need to discuss, before a step-by-step walk-through of the EDITOR, is the AUTO feature. There are three states to the AUTO button: OFF, SCENERY, and TRAIN. Once AUTO is moved from the OFF position to SCENERY or TRAIN, each picture you select from the full screen will be automatically placed, sequentially, into the appropriate holding boxes. Once the selected area is full of pictures, the AUTO is set back to OFF, and you are ask if you wish to save the file or return to normal operation. If you select to save, a file selector box will appear. But if you wish to continue editing, press [Return] to return to normal EDITOR functions. WALKING THROUGH THE ALL ABOARD! EDITOR Think of this walk-through as tape-recorded tour of a museum, where you walk through exhibits, holding a tape recorder and doing as the speaker suggests. The recorder is this manual, and the museum is, of course, the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. MOVING PICTURES FROM MAIN SCREEN TO MENU Once you have your EDITOR booted up, make sure both AUTO and SNAP are in the OFF position. Move up to the main screen and place the mouse cursor over a piece of the lettering toward the top of the screen. Left-click to capture the piece of lettering. Move the mouse toward the bottom of the screen so the menu pops up. As you move the captured image over the holding boxes, notice how the boxes act like magnets sucking the picture into their middles. This is to help you know exactly what box you're putting a picture into. Ok, move your picture into the first scenery holding box and left-click. Instantly, the image is snatched by the box and you're returned to the main screen. Pick up another piece of screen. This time, instead of moving down to the menu, click the right mouse button. What happened? No image! That's right, by clicking the right button, you told the editor you wanted to dump the image and get the cursor back. This right mouse button trick also works in the menu, as long as you haven't yet clicked a picture into a holding box. LOADING PICTURES We could keep loading pieces of text from the main screen into the holding boxes, but they wouldn't make very good scenery. So click on LOAD, and select PICTURE when you're ask what kind of LOAD you want. When the file select box appears, choose either FULLGRID.PI1 or FULLGRID.NEO -- it really doesn't matter which, they're identical pictures, except for the file format. The new picture will appear in place of the old lettering. USING SNAP The first thing you should notice about this new screen is that it has a lot of small pictures. Try centering your cursor around one of the pictures so nothing is cut off. Difficult isn't is? The second thing you might notice about the new main screen is that the pictures are evenly spaced in a grid. Well, this is exactly what the SNAP is for. Move down to the menu, and set SNAP ON, then move back to the main screen. Magic isn't is. The cursor moves from around one picture to around another with no effort at all. Now trying filling up your scenery holding boxes with pictures. It shouldn't be hard since the program is centering both the source and destination for you. Just click on the main screen, pull the picture down to the menu, and click it into one of the scenery holding boxes. If you don't like the picture you have in a holding box, drop a different one in its place. SAVING SCENERY Once you are completely and absolutely sure you like the selection of scenery you have chosen, you can save it as a file to be used in the main ALL ABOARD! program. Just as in loading, saving is a three step process: 1) Click on SAVE. 2) Select SCENERY when asked what to save. 3) Type a name in file selector box. AUTO SCENERY Creating a scenery file can be done faster by using the AUTO function. But first, it would be best to clear the scenery holding boxes that we just filled so we can see what we're doing. Click the CLEAR button, and when the dialog ask you what to clear, choose SCENERY. Move your mouse to AUTO, set it to AUTO SCENERY, and return to the main screen. Now, as you select each image for your file, they are automatically put into the scenery holding boxes one right after the other, until all 16 boxes are filled. Then the AUTO will be set to AUTO OFF, and you will be asked if you wish to save the file or return to normal operation. If you don't save the file, you can change the contents of the holding boxes and save the file later. It doesn't matter when you save a file. The saving function always saves the contents of the 16 holding boxes -- even if they are empty. CREATING A NEW TRAIN The only difference between creating scenery files and creating train files has to do with the drawing animation "pairs" of each car, and setting their "direction" by placing them correctly in the holding boxes. TRAIN ANIMATION Each train car always has an animation sequence of two images. For example, in the Red Devil train, which appears when you first boot ALL ABOARD!, the caboose has a top portion that pops up and down as the car rattles along the track. This animation is a result of two alternating images that go together to make up the animation. One image has the top up, and the other has the top down. By putting one picture and then the other on the screen, the caboose looks like its top is going up and down. This two-frame animation sequence is true of each car in any train set, including the engine. TRAIN DIRECTION Remember that, in ALL ABOARD!, the trains can go in either direction. When you draw any car it's only necessary to create a pair of animation images pointing in the direction you see in the sample FULLGRID picture. (Engines are the exception and require two images. See below.) ALL ABOARD! will do the rest -- but the placement of each car image in the holding boxes is very important. The exact order in which the trains are placed in the holding boxes is so important that it is best to either alter the existing trains on the FULLGRID picture file, or fill in around the existing wheel on the NUDEGRID picture file, which has arrows indicating the cars' direction. Then, after the cars are created, be sure to move the train pictures into the holding boxes in the exact order in which they were in the original picture. Load one of the train files on your ALL ABOARD! disk as an example. The cars are ordered as followed. 8 ENGINES PICTURES 2 left animation frames 2 right animation frames 2 up animation frames 2 down animation frames 4 PICTURES MIDDLE CAR 1 2 left & right animation frames 2 up & down animation frames 4 PICTURES MIDDLE CAR 2 2 left & right animation frames 2 up & down animation frames 4 PICTURES FINAL CAR, OR CABOOSE 2 left & right animation frames 2 up & down animation frames Engines require twice as many images as the other cars because engines are drawn to have a distinct front and rear, whereas all other cars are animated by using the same set of two cars for either direction. Thus, ALL ABOARD! must animate a different set of engine images for going left than it does for going right. DRAWING YOUR OWN TRAINS The easiest way to begin drawing your own trains is by first altering the exiting ones on the FULLGRID picture. Load the picture into a compatible paint program and get creative! Save the picture under a different name, then load it into the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. Move the new cars into the train holding boxes, save the TRAIN file, then play with your new cars in ALL ABOARD!. Once you get the hang of editing FULLGRID, load NUDEGRID into your paint program, and use the existing wheel as the basis for your train. There are three important things to keep in mind if using this method. First, that the first two pictures, and each following pair of pictures are animation sets. (For example the first picture might have a stroking piston on the wheel, and the second picture a pulling piston to create the animation of a moving piston.) Second, that first eight pictures are the four directions of the engine, followed by three sets of four car pictures. And third, that the arrows indicate the direction or directions of the car in that cell. SAVING COLORS The color set saved with a DEGAS or Neochrome picture, will be loaded into the ALL ABOARD! EDITOR. Then, when you create a file in the editor the colors will be saved in that file, and finally loaded into ALL ABOARD! with the file. This is not to say that altering colors is a bad thing, just know that it will also affect your scenery. SOFTWARE ETHICS The retail purchaser of this computer program does not have the right to exercise any of the exclusive rights of copyright reserved by the author of this program, which include: (1) the right to reproduce or otherwise make copies of this program, other than an archival copy (as described below); (2) the right to distribute copies of the program; (3) the right to prepare derivative works based on the program. (Section 106, U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, as amended, Public Law 94-553, Oct. 19, 1976). In accordance with Section 117 of the Copyright Act, the purchaser has a limited right to make a copy of this program only in the following two situations: (1) the new copy is created as an essential step in utilization of the program; or (2) the new copy is for archival purposes. All archival copies must be destroyed in the event that the original purchaser ceases to own the original copy of the program. Section 117, U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, as amended by Public Law 96-517, dated Dec. 12, 1980. The propriety of respecting the copyright owner's rights in his creation (after all, that's how he earns his living) is reflected in the range of penalties that the law affords to the copyright owner, which include: injunctive relief (Section 502); forefeiture of all infringing and contributorily infringing items (Section 503); monetary damages (Section 504); and criminal sanctions, including imprisonment (Section 506). The holder of the copyright of ALL ABOARD! is Paul Pratt and Steve Everman.