STOSSER Issue #1 (April 1993)

MISTY EXTENSION

A Review By Tony Greenwood 25/03/93

 

Before I begin, I must tell you I am giving this amazing extension a score of 100 … and that’s out of 10!

MISTY is by Billy Allan & Colin Watt or TOP NOTCH.

I can’t believe that you have never heard of MISTY, but have you tried it? The doc file can look a bit daunting to the inexperienced programmer (like me), but, as with all good things, you need to give it a try. The SKOPY command and similar looked too much for me to understand at first, but as soon as I typed in the in doc routine and ran it I was hooked. I soon started changing various numbers, etc. and got some startling effects. Easy-peasy when you get going. I recently read a review in one of this month’s main ATARI mags and they said you would really need an idea of how the Atari screen is set out to be able to use the various screen copying commands. ROT, etc. Although this sort of knowledge would help, you don’t actually need it. You can do as I did if you don’t fully understand why it’s happening. So what! So long as it is happening.

But it’s not just screen commands, there are new, easy to use commands for
copying disk sectors, etc. and saving them.

There is a simple, but highly effective, MOUSE OFF command that does just that. I have used this in two programs that have recently been released. The hide command only hides the mouse, whereas MOUSE OFF kills it completely or until you MOUSE ON again. If you have ever made a scroller or used STOSSPEAK in your programs, then this is a Godsend.

There are also some useful commands, such as NDRV, that tell you how many drives are attached to the computer. RESVALID checks the bootsector for anything that shouldn’t be there, such as a virus or picture ripper. There are commands for the REAL TIMER and the BLITTER, oooer and loads more.

A very good one, I found, was AESIN. IF AESIN – this checks to see if the program has been loaded from the desktop or from an auto folder. Very handy if your prog takes up a lot of memory. As we all know, if a program is booted from GEM, it takes up a lot of valuable memory. You knew that.

There’s something for everybody, but by far its strongest points are the screen handling commands – very fast. Some do the same job as the STOS equivalent, but do it faster and some do totally new things that STOS can’t do without MISTY’S help.

It’s going to cost you nothing to try it out, but if you like it and use it then register because it’s SHAREWARE. A measly five pounds. Now I know what your thinking … it sounds like I’m on commission or something. The truth is, I registered and was so pleased with the stuff I got back for my fiver, I had to take this opportunity to tell you what a great piece of work the MISTY EXTENSION is.

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Neil Halliday

Neil started coding in STOS in 1989 just after it was released in the UK.

During those 31 years he has written numerous demo screens, routines, games and extensions, most of which are now lost due to a massive hard disk crash. What remains on floppy disk is still being discovered and posted on the STOS Coders website and stored in the cloud for everybody to enjoy (or laugh at).

Neil is the author of the GBP Extension which added some pretty cool commands to STOS, along with the "Development" extension that enabled enhanced STE functionality, including probably one of the simplest hardware scrolling routines around.

Along with Bruno Azzara, Geoff Harrison and Mike Halliday we had loads of fun back in the day trying to push STOS to it's limits. We are all now enjoying bringing our knowledge to a new generation of STOS Coders.

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