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

[Part One was in the Jul'92 issue. There were corrections printed in the   ]
[Oct & Dec'92 issues. See MMEDITOR.ZIP for the full notes and program. 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, 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 ...

o 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.
o 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.
o 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.
o 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!
o L/S : Load/save your creations, the same as last month's.
o 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
predefined 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 use the provided Hex Loader to type in the few lines of
Machine Code (the start address is 62350 and the length is 202 bytes)
and POKE the following parameters ...
o 62346, column of top-left square of window.
o 62347, line of top-left square of window.
o 62348, length of window in attribute squares.
o 62349, height of window in attribute squares.
Then type RANDOMIZE USR 62350 to rotate.

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PLIB!
By the time I get my next load of mail I'll have finished all my exams,
so I'll be in a good mood and ready to give out the princely sum of #50
to whoever sends in the well-ace program of the month to me, Craig
Broadbent, at Program Pitstop, Your Sinclair, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath,
Avon BA1 2BW. And if the number of entries doesn't get any bigger, I'll
have to start printing message scrollers again - you have been warned!
