PROGRAM PITSTOP
Your Sinclair, July 1992

Dashing young gent CRAIG BROADBENT (hey, that rhymes!) is very happy this
month. Why? Cos he received so many programs of course. (Small things ...)

I've been trying to come to terms with my new Amiga this month. My
advice to you lot is to stick with your Speccies! There! That's my
contribution to the Save Our Speccy campaign. I had tonnes of Pitstop
programs this month, in fact there were so many that I could only fit
in two halves. This means that next month 5 Pitstop is already
completely sorted, which means I can go about more important business.
Like sun worshipping! First! I'll go and dig out that old Mr Frosty
and make up some ice lollies. Ta-ra!

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MANIC MINER EDITOR 
part one
by Richard Swann

[Including corrections from Oct&Dec'92 issues. JimG]

Now, this is class! After years of constant helping-out in Dr Hugo's
Clinic, Dicky (or Rich, as I believe he prefers to be called) of sunny
Camberley, has decided that Pitstop could also benefit from his magic
touch. And this is what all Manic Miner fans have been longing for for
years - it enables you tb customise each of the original 20 screens,
and also lets you change the sprites, so that you can have a
completely new set of baddies. The editor is split into two distinct
parts - this is the screen editor, and the sprite editor will follow
next month [Actually September. JimG]. However, the clever thing is,
each program is self-supporting, so you can run the screen editor, and
play your new screens, without waiting until next month for the next
bit! I'm just so considerate!

How to Do It
Type in the delicious BASIC listing and save it to auto-run with SAVE
"filename" LINE 1. When run, the editor asks you to play the Manic
Miner tape. The actual bit it's looking for is the main chunk of code
called "MM2", which is the bit that comes after the "title screen"
loader. Once loaded, you will be asked which level to edit, and then
you'll see a representation of the level, and, hiding down there at
the bottom ...

* The Main Menu.

1: This option enters the actual editor itself - study the symbols
closely (a knowledge of the actual level will help here) and decide
whether you want to add floor, wall, poison pansy or whatever.

* Press o, and enter the character corresponding to the bit you want
to add, eg. $ for a conveyor, or a blank space for nothing. You can
then move the cursor around the screen using 5, 6, 7 and 8, pressing 0
to insert your chosen feature, be it a poison pansy, a collapsing
floor, or whatever.There are three other features which make up the
editor.

* Pressing l lets you type in a new name for the level; however, be
wary - as the name is poked into memory rather than assigned to a
string, you'll need to type in enough characters (and spaces if
necessary) to take it up to at least the length of the original name.

* Pressing k lets you change the position of the keys (shown as red
stars on the screen). You're asked for new X,Y co-ordinates, but be
careful here, as when I gave a Y value of 8 the program stopped with
an error message. If this happens to you, just type GOTO 15 to try
again (what do you want, perfection?).

* Finally, pressing s lets you change Willy's start position (shown by
two cyan arrows) - enter new X,Y co-ordinates as before.

When you've finished editing, press SPACE to get back to the main menu.

2: This option lets you swap between levels - note that you don't have
to save before you swap.

3: The File-handling menu. From this you can save your levels, load
ones you made earlier, or print the current level out. There is also a
Test Game option, but bear in mind that you can't get back to the
editor after selecting this, so save your levels first, eh?

To play your levels simply start loading Manic Miner as normal, and
when the horrible flashing loading screen comes up, swap the game tape
for your saved levels, and play that instead. One thing I noticed when
having a brief trial run, was that my repositioned key in Central
Cavern was made invisible. Is this a one-off or does it happen all the
time? (I don't know). And if it is a regular occurrence, does anyone
know how to get round it? All suggestions gratefully received. Of
course, some people might see invisible keys as a good challenge;
other, more cynical people might call it dodgy programming. I,
obviously, wouldn't dream of such a thing.


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PROGRAM PITSTOP
Your Sinclair, September 1992

There's a whole world at your fingertips. Sit back and listen to CRAIG
BROADBENT as he tells you how to manipulate the Universe. Sort of.

Express 3 sin x + 2 cos x in the form r sin (x + y), where r and y are
constants, r > 0 and 0 < y < 90 ... Er um ... Oh, well, it's only
worth seven marks, I'll do the next one instead! Right, enough of that
- there may only be six days left until my first Maths A Level exam
(as I write this), but I know where my priorities lie - while my
friends are busy revising I'll be sitting here compiling this month's
Pitstop and facing the fact that in all probability, I will almost
certainly fail Maths. Ho hum.

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MANIC MINER EDITOR 
part two
by Richard Swann

[The Sprite Editor as listed in the magazine crashed with a "4 Out of memory"]
[error at the start, so I changed the grid routines to use loops rather than ]
[specifying every PLOT&DRAW individually. In MMEDITOR.TAP, "M.M.S.edit" is   ]
[the original and "M.M.S.modf" is the alteration.                        JimG]

Given that z = 3 + 4i, find the argument of 1 / z, giving your answer
in degrees to one decimal place ... Oh, this one's easy - you just
realise the denominator, er, then find the arctan er, or something ...
I know, let's have a look at the second instalment of the Manic Miner
editor instead! Infinitely preferable, I think. This here is the
Sprite Editor, which follows on directly from last month's instalment
[July's instalment, actually. JimG], but runs independently, giving
you a perfectly customised version of the ancient classic. As usual,
type it in and save it with SAVE "filename" LINE 1. Run it, and you
can either load in the new levels you created last month, or you can
start from scratch by loading the original tape in, and do the levels
later. The instructions, I'm sure you'll be pleased to know, are much
less complicated than last month's, so here they are in their entirety
...

* 1/Z: Move memory pointer up/down by 8 bytes. This is equivalent to a
"coarse tuning" control, and you use it to scan through the memory
looking for sprites.
* Q/A : The "Fine Tune" control - this moves the memory pointer up or
down by just one byte, for if you come across an incomplete sprite.
* X : Switches between viewing sprites as 8x8 or 16x16 types. There
are some of each, and generally speaking, the 8x8 sprites tend to come
before the 16x16 sprites every level.
* E : Edit the sprite at current location. Use the cursors (5,6,7,8)
to move around the grid, 0 to set a pixel, and 9 to reset it. Space
stops the editing and writes the new sprite into memory, but BE WARNED
- editing data that isn't an actual sprite may well corrupt the game,
so make sure you recognise the sprite first!
* L/S : Load/Save your creations, the same as last month's.
* 2 - Lets you select an address at which to look for sprites.

And it's as simple as that! Have fun, and I'll expect to see Manic
Miner 2 in the shops before Christmas! (Somehow, I think not. Ed)

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ROTATE
by Pedros Davakis

Foreign correspondence this month comes courtesy of Mr Davakis of
sunny Greece, who sends me this nice little routine which flips a
pre-defined window about its horizontal axis. The effect is
instantaneous, so it'll be of more use as a programming aid rather
than as a fancy display. There's absolutely no BASIC to worry about,
so just POKE the following parameters ...

* 62346, column of top-left square of window.
* 62347, line of top-left square of window
* 62348, length of window in attribute squares.
* 62349, height of window in attribute squares.
Then type RANDOMIZE USR 62350 to rotate.
