STOSSER Issue #2 (May 1993)

REVIEW
******

THE GAME MAKER’S MANUAL
***********************

ATARI ST AND STOS BASIC
***********************

This book is a couple of years old now
but is the only book currently
available, apart from the Stos manual,
that is totally STOS related, and so
despite it’s age it is still a very
useful book for all levels of STOS
programmers.

The book is divided into 11 chapters,
each dealing with a different aspect
of games programming, and each chapter
is self-contained and can be read in
isolation from the rest of the book if
required. So if your area of interest
is with one particular type of game it
is not necessary to read the whole book
to discover what you need to know; a
big plus in my view.

Chapter one deals with a variety of
methods employed when designing and
planning a game and introduces the
reader to a number of planning
techniques. The chapter is easy to
read and not at all patronising as it
explains that a great deal of time and
effort can be saved by some initial
planning before STOS basic is loaded
up. The techniques described in this
chapter will obviously be applicable
whatever computer language you are
using but in this case are backed up
by references to Stos.

Succeeding chapters go on to describe
a number of specific types of games;
shoot-em-ups, rebound games,
simulations, role playing games and
adventures. Following some brief but
interesting historical information
each chapter contains working routines
ready for you to type into STOS as
well as explanations of many of the
commands used within STOS. By following
each chapter through from beginning to
end you should have the basic knowledge
and some programming routines to enable
you to produce a particular type of
game. Indeed, many of the chapters end
by suggesting further ideas or areas
where you can extend your knowledge or
programming skills. By typing the
examples from the book into Stos you
will, in many cases, have the basis of
a working program.

Later chapters in the book deal with
subjects such as 3-D games, animation
techniques, sampled sound and
scrolling, again with examples and
explanations as to how you can best
exploit these features within your own
games.

The final chapter covers STOS basic
extensions and the use of machine code.
Both compiler and interpreter
extensions are covered

For those interested in programming
using Stos basic this book is a must
in my view. Although technical when
necessary the book is easily readable
and interesting throughout. No matter
what your level of programming
competence this book will have
something to offer you. As with many
things how much you get out of the
book depends upon how much
you want to program and are prepared
to learn yourself. The book cannot
program for you but it provides you
with techniques and inspiration
throughout; if you supply the
application you could end up writing
games in Stos yourself.

The Game Maker’s Manual Atari St and
Stos Basic is written by Stephen Hill
and published by Sigma Press.
The recommended price is 11.95.

—————————————

SOUND FX v1.5.
**************

SHAREWARE STOS ACCESSORY
************************

BY
**

RICHARD KING
************

REVIEW BY KEEFY
****************

Sound fx is a stos accessory which
allows you to design your own sound
chip effects using the st’s sound
chip. Although it is best used as
an accessory, it can be used as a
stos basic program, but if used in
this way a few of the options are
not selectable. It will only work
on a colour monitor in medium rez,
and needs a whopping 80k of memory
free once loaded, so it’s quite a
hungry little beastie.

Anyway, onto the program itself,
well it’s a complete sound
manipulation utility, allowing you
to load and save sound banks and
grab the sound banks from the
program that you’re currently
working on and set the volume
frequency, tone, envelope speed and
type and even set the st’s sound
chip registers.

It has all the expected options
which allow you play the sound being
edited, stop it, and also play any
of the sounds in the sound bank. It
also allows you to put sounds into
your banks, get sounds from banks,
delete them, create new banks and
also has a printer option wherby you
can send the sound name and settings
to your printer. It also contains a
randomize option which gets the
computer to create a random sound
effect (although most of the time i
found that the results of this were
not particularly good).

Some of the options are
shown on the main screen in
graphical format as well and can be
changed by using the mouse, far
quicker than using the drop down
menus which are used to select most
of the options.

For me, it’s a bit complicated and
could definately have done with a
manual. The program is shareware so
i suppose that you have to register
in order to get it. You won’t
be able to recreate Brahms symphony
or the latest rave record by the
prodigy. But if all you want are a
few little beeps, plunks, blips and
tweets, then this would probably fit
the bill nicely.

Not my cup of tea though, so i’d
probably have to give it 4 out of 10

KEEFY

————————————-

STARS
*****

STOS EXTENSION
**************

BY LEE UPCROFT
**************

REVIEW BY KEEFY
***************

So, you’ve finally finished your next
masterpeice. Your best ever shoot em
up game. You’ve spent weeks and weeks
with sleepless nights, cold cups of
coffee and dried out sandwiches.
You’re just going to give it that
final test before you compile it. So
you run it again and notice that your
scrolling starfeild looks like a
couple of falling breadcrumbs that
move about as fast as a sleeping
sloth.
You’ve tried everything you can
think of but it still looks terrible.
So now what can you do?….get STARS
that’s what. Stars is an extension
for stos that allows you to create
excellent starfeilds with an absolute
minimum of code, the author also
claims that the STARS commands are up
to 20 times faster than when using
normal stos commands. It isn’t just
parralax starfeilds you can create
though, you can also create one that
gives the impression that youre flying
through it. This one would be
particularly beneficial when using
stos3d.

Stars comes in the form of a
basic listing which you simply load
and run. The program then
automatically installs the stars
extension into both your stos and
compiler folders, simple as that. The
program even allows you to specify the
letter of the alphabet you want to use
for your extension.

There are four new commands in
all and they are SET STARS, GO STARS,
WIPE STARS ON, WIPE STARS OFF as
simple as that. But they are all very
powerful little commands and allow you
to define virtually everything about
the starfeild you could ever want. All
four commands are fully explained in
the doc file that accompanies the
basic listing.

If you’re into coding
shoot-em-up games then stars would be
well worth having, simply because of
how simple to use it is, and how
powerful and fast the commands are.
The results are really quite
impressive. In my view STARS is a
worthwhile addition to any stos
folder, and if your’re really lucky
Tony might have you a copy of it with
this issue of STOSSER. Make sure you
say please though. Marks out of ten,
i’ll have to give it 7 out of 10

keefy

—————————————

STOSSER
CONTAX.

The following are names and addresses
of STOSSERS who wish to contact other
STOS users.
If you would like your details in
this section then please write to me,
Tony.You will find my address on the
menu screen. All names/addresses will
stay in this columm every month until
I am informed otherwise.
As always, this is open to anyone,
any age, any sex, any country, etc.

So, in no particular order we have:
*************************************
*************************************

Steve Gooding
141 Fawcett Road
Southsea, Portsmouth
HAMPSHIRE, PO4 0DQ.

*************************************
*************************************

Matthew Green
Starlight
Snow Hill
Crawley Down
WEST SUSSEX, RH10 3HA.

**************************************
**************************************

Ian Holden
17 Wilworth Crescent
Blackburn
LANCASHIRE, BB1 8QN.

**************************************
**************************************

Fred Darlington
33 Winckley rd
Broadgate
PRESTON PR1 8EL
LANCASHIRE

**************************************
**************************************

Martin Cubitt
14 Deepdene Ave
Rayleigh
ESSEX SS6 9LG

*************************************
*************************************

William Morrison
47 West end lane
Rossington
Doncaster
SOUTH YORKSHIRE DN11 OPQ

************************************
************************************

Wanted Contact’s in the Coventry
area to talk ST Speak..contact

Keefy ( 0203 ) 715921

************************************
************************************

————————————-

STOS PROBLEMS
19 04 93

Hopefully, in this section, all your
problems will be answered, if not by my-
self, then by other readers. I will print
the problem in this section, asking
others to write in with the answer.
Anyone sending in a problem, please
state whether you wish your name and
address published – with the option of
fellow readers writing directly to you
with the answer.

Well it’s issue two and no problems yet
so you must all be absoloutely brilliant
programmers !! ho yeah
More likely its the fact that at the
time of writing this no one as yet got
issue one so i would say by next month
issue three i should have some in

THAT’S IF YOU WRITE TO ME ?????????

END OF PROBLEM SECTION

WRAP
—————————————–

WANTED and SWAPS
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ

Well, the first thing wanted is your
adverts for this section. You can adver-
tise anything computer related, but I’m
sorry, no adverts for selling things
will be accepted.
Send all adverts to keefy , at the
usual address that can be found
somewhere on the intro screen.

WANTED: Anybody who is any good at
art on the ST. In fact, you don’t even
have to be that good. There are quite a
lot of people out there who can code,
but you will find few who can do the
graffix as well. If you send me your
name and address I will publish it and
you will almost definetly get STOSSERS
writing to you for some pictures or
sprites, etc. If you include a couple
of pics or sprites I will publish them
for others to admire.

WANTED: Can anybody write an article
about anything STOS related for this
diskzine? This is an urgent WANTED ad.
All entries must be in ASCII form. Then
I can put them straight into the
diskzine.

WANTED: Your problems. There must be
a lot of them about. I know that when I
am stuck on something there is nowhere
to turn.
Send me your questions and I will try
to publish the answer by the following
issue (depending on when I receive your
problem).
Also, let me know whether you want your
name and address printed, with the view
to other users contacting you. If you
don’t, then I won’t print your name,etc.

WANTED: Routines. Anything that makes
life easier or you think may help
others. Perhaps one you have made
yourself and are proud of. Send it to
me,then others can benefit.

***************************************

Wanted WINGS OF FURY
Will swap for sensible soccer ( orig )

Ive been after this for ages but it is
no longer being produced , ill swap for
the above original version or any other
i may have, it doesent matter when you
read this as i’ll probably still be
looking for this next year

Tony Greenwood
29 Paxton Street
Accrington
LANCASHIRE BB5 1QQ

*************************************

WANTED: SHUTTLE \ WIZBALL
(Must be original)
Contact Jon on ( 0202 ) 670162
After 7 pm…. or write to me at

12 Shipstal close
Hamworthy
Poole , DORSET BH16 5AU

*************************************

WANTED: DELUXE PAINT

Contact Colin on ( 0705 ) 588843
or write to

31 Mantle close
Gosport , HANTS PO13 9QS

************************************

WANTED: GOOD BOOK ON LEARNING BASIC
And i do mean good as it’s for a
complete thicko!
ALSO WANTED 2 MEG UPGRADE FOR
STFM TOS 1.4. or EXTERNAL DRIVE
Contact Keefy on ( 0203 ) 715921
or write to

57 Hearsall lane
Earlsdon
COVENTRY CV5 6HF

***********************************

WANTED STOS MAESTRO
Willing to buy or swap for various
games , Please state preferance

Contact Fred Darlington
33 Winckley road
Broadgate
Preston
LANCASHIRE PR1 8EL

**********************************

End of wanted/swap section.

W R A P

—————————————

STOSSER ISSUE 2

LESSON 2 By Tony Greenwood

Hopefully you have finished lesson one
from issue one and can now print to the
screen and change the pen and paper
colours , You should also have a pretty
good idea how to use the editor ie: cls
, list , etc etc

To get full benefit from this tutorial,
it’s probably a good idea to print it
out first before embarking, as you
will then be able to continually
refer back to this text without having
to leave stos and start over again each
time you’re not sure of something. If
you don’t own a printer, then you will
still be able to use this tutorial.But
it will probably be a good idea to make
notes and then stop at regular intervals,
ensuring of course that you have already
saved any previous work as a”*.BAS” file.
I sincerely hope that if you are reading
this that you know how to do this. If
not it would be advisable to refer to
your stos manual (usually on page 23).

I presume you have loaded stos as that
is the basic language we are going to
concentrate on. After all what’s the
use of a beginners guide to STOS if you
aren’t using STOS.

Always start with a CLS to clear the
screen And don’t forget to press
<return> at the end of each line!.

Firstly i would like to show you a
little short cut that we will be using
in this lesson, As we will be using the
print command quite a bit we can shorten
it by using a question mark instead ?
so instead of writing the word PRINT
just press shift and the last key on the
bottom line ( found it ) and a ? will
appear , but when you list the program
it shows up as the word PRINT,,,,,,

VARIABLES
A variable is like a secret code,,,Every
program ever made uses variables and
once mastered you are in full control of
the computer , you MUST understand this
lesson before proceeding to the next,
therefore dont just copy the examples
in this file, Try changing the numbers
about to see what happens as that is the
best way to learn , try making up your
own little routine similar to the ones
shown, also try reading the inside stos
article from issue one ( but only after
you have done this lesson

type in the following.

10CLS
60P=5
70PEN P
80PAPER 12
90LOCATE 15,3
100?”HELLO”

Run this and HELLO will be printed in
pen 5. We didn’t have to use a P we
could use any letter.Or in fact we could
have used a word. So long as the
word is not the same as a command
ie: PRINT : LOCATE : PEN : etc ,also if
you use a word as a variable it must
not have a command in the word ie:
YPRINTHY :the word PRINT is amongst that
word and therefore is not valid.

Enter the following and change line 100

50 A=15
55 D=3
90LOCATE A,D

Now read what you’ve done so far, are
you following it okay, if there is
anything you don’t understand in the
listing you have on screen. Then you
must go back and try again otherwise you
will get yourself caught up later. When
you are absolutely sure that you have
understood everything above,you can then
continue.

So a variable holds information. We will
see later that a variable can be changed
by yourself while a program is running.A
command cannot be changed while a
program is running

Have a mess about changing a few
numbers, can you tell what’s
going to happen before you run it?.

Happy ??????

Hopefully now we know how to use a
variable for numbers.

We also use variables to hold text
( string )”HELLO” is a string, Type
line 40 and change line 100.

40 K$=”HELLO”
100 ? K$

If you are using a variable for a
string then it must have a $ (dollar
sign) after it and the same rules ie
command words applies.
Dont type the following just make sure
this is what you’ve got by typing

LIST

is this what you got?

10CLS
40K$=”HELLO”
50A=15
55D=3
60P=5
70PEN P
80PAPER 12
90LOCATE A,D
100? K$

Once the computer has read the line
with the variable in, it doesent
need to be reminded ,,,,,therefore if
you were making a loop ie:you wanted
to keep printing HELLO ,you would only
have to go to line 90

You see when it prints the cursor goes
to the next line so you do have to
remind it where you want it to print or
it will go off the screen.
*************************
Dont run yet just enter these new lines

30 C=0
31 A1=15
32 D1=4
110LOCATE A1,D1
115INC C
120 ? C
200 GOTO 90

Line 30 c is a new variable wich holds
the number 0
Line 31 and 32 a1 and d1 hold the
position to print c
Line 115 will print whatever c means
Line 110 you should know by now
Line 200 loops back and repeats line
100,etc ,,,,this is why we
dont tell the computer whats in a
variable inside a loop :because
you wouldn’t be able to change it,,
every time you try to change it ,it
would revert back

Line 115 inc c means add 1 to c
therefore everytime the computer
reads line 115 it will add 1 to c : line
120 will then print the number one and
the next time it loops it will print
number two instead: if we hadn’t used
the locate command it would leave the
screen now run it and you will see what
i mean (hopefully)

So inc is short for increase : but it
only increases by one

115 C=C+2

This will increase c by 2 change it to
any number you want and run a few times
until your happy

Now the opposite is dec

115 DEC C

This will dec c by one

115 C=C-2

Try this with a different number or two

115 C=C*2

If c=0 then nothing will happen(you cant
times nothing) * means times

30 C=5
115C=C*3

Now take some time changing mathematical
function !! do not proceed unless you
are totally aware of whats been done so
far !!

*************************************
I think thats enough for now i hope you
followed it.It is important that you know
about variables before we continue.

GOOD LUCK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HAPPY STOSSING SEEYA NEXT MONTH

THIS IS Tony Greenwood signing off bye

———————————————

STOSSER ISSUE TWO
MAY 93
GIVE AWAY’S

Well i have some nice stuff for you
this month, even better than issue one
theres allsort’s
First there is a music folder in which
you will find various MAD MAX tunes plus
a bas file made by myself ( Tony )to
show anyone who doesn’t already know
how to play them from within STOS , it’s
really quite easy and only need’s about
three lines of command’s to run any tune

As you will no doubt be aware the
biggest problem you could ever have is a
virus, personally i had the GHOST virus
three times , The problem is using STOS
or any other language disk , plus art
packages etc you need to have your disk
unwrite protected which leaves you open
to virus’s , Therefore it is a good idea
to use a protection program on your disk
there are a few available through P D
libraries , they are simple small
programs that copy themselves to the
bootsector of your disk and display a
message on bootup that you are virus
free, if however you have managed to get
a virus it wont load and will show a
message warning you and where possible
even tell you what virus is in memory.
the only way to run your disk is to
switch your computer off , and as we all
should know that will kill any virus
outright that is in memory, you then
reboot and every thing is okeydokey !!

So you will find on this disk my
favourite and the one i always use (
check this disk out on loading to see it
in action ) it’s the MEDWAY 4 (
improved by the BBC ) and is excellent,
to install it into your bootsector just
run the MEDWAY PRG and insert the disk
you want protecting , press C as
intructed on screen and a second later
it’s done ,,,,,this is not a virus
killer it is a protector and should be
used on all your disk’s, DO NOT try to
use it on a commercial game as they use
funny bootsectors etc and you will more
than likely ruin the program, I have
used it on all my programs but if you
have a problem dont come to me as i am
just giving it to you and not
guaranteeing it ,,,so there

I have also included on the disk STARS
EXTENSION and SOUND FX.ACB to go with
the reviews by Keith Dunn

Next you will find a folder containing
various fonts all in BIN files and the
correct size ready to copy to your stos
folder ( and compiler if you have one )
these will totally change the look of
your program , i find the default font
boring and these add a bit of something
to programs, all these fonts were sent
in by Martin Cubitt

Well anybody who is still under the
illusion that STOS is just for making
games can think again and check out some
of the routine’s in the SOURCE.4U folder
for a start theres disc copiers ,
bootsector checkers , but by far the
best and most suprising ( as far as im
concerned ) is the sector editor , i was
not aware that it could be achieved from
within STOS ,but it can and it’s good

In the source folder you will find the
source to last months STOSSER and every
month i will be giving away the source
to the previous months issue , also you
will find some handy little routines in
there similar to last month, most of
the small routines from last month and
this were sent in by Ian Holden and they
are even better this time

Theres also a load of ACB’s for you , i
gave you some last month and theres load
s in the ACC folder this time , but i am
afraid thats it unless someone sends me
some in cause i’ve run out boo hoo

Well thats about your lot but as usual
i will be putting as many freebies as i
can on this disk

Tony Greenwood

END OF GIVE AWAY’S SECTION

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

      

About author View all posts Author website

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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