SINCLAIR ACTS TO IMPROVE THE STANDARD OF ITS NAMED SOFTWARE

John Gilbert looks at the latest group of cassettes issued by Sinclair and finds that it is now setting the standards.

A new batch of Sinclair Research software for the ZX-81 and Spectrum shows a marked improvement in the quality of programs and a continuation of fine artwork on the cassette inserts.

The reason is that the company is selling programs from other independent companies, such as Melbourne House and Artic, instead of continuing to rely on Psion, Mikro-Gen and ICL.

The Hobbit which takes first place in the new releases for quality and value for money. This adventure game, which the makers claim uses artificial intelligence, is discussed in Mind Games on page 93.

VU-3D, for the 48K Spectrum, is another good offering from Psion. It allows the user to create a three-dimensional representation of an object on the television screen. The object can then be rotated and viewed from any angle. The objects can be displayed as wirework figures or can be shaded. They can also be magnified and reduced.

It is possible to store the figure on tape in a data file and re-load it to view again. The program costs £9.95 but even though it has some good features it still seems over-priced.

Games feature strongly in the new tapes. Sinclair is selling the Artic range of adventures, A, C and D. Adventure A works on the 16K or 48K Spectrum and 16K ZX-81 and is called Planet of Death.

You are stranded on a planet and must return to your spaceship. There is no guide to the keywords but with a little thought you can discover the help command. At times the suggestions can be very unhelpful and it is a good idea to construct a map, as some of the help suggestions may make you retrace your footsteps.

The next adventure so far released is C, called Ship of Doom. It can be run on the 48K Spectrum and 16K ZX-81.

Your ship is captured by aliens who are searching for humanoids to replace their brains with microchips. The object of the game is to escape from the alien craft by breaking the gravitational field. To do so you must find the control room of the alien ship.

The help command is a little more useful in this game and it is easier to get further when playing the game.

Adventure D, called Espionage island, can be used on the 48K Spectrum or 16K ZX-81. You must escape from an aircraft which is about to crash into the Atlantic. You must the reach the island safely, avoid capture, and try to discover the secret of the island. The game is more difficult than the others and many people have not managed to get out of the aircraft, even though there is a parachute. All the adventures cost £6.95.

Leaving adventure games, Reversi, or Othello as it is sometimes called, can be played on the 16K Spectrum or 16K ZX-81. The game has nine levels, from novice to expert, and the computer is difficult to beat. The makers claim that Reversi reflects the strict contemporary morality of Victorian society but we believe that it can traced to Arabic origins. Reversi costs £7.95.

An interesting addition to the range of software is the Artic 1K Chess. It takes some technical wizardry to squeeze this kind of game into the unexpanded ZX-81.

The game can be played using one of two opening moves. Because of the lack of memory, castling, pawn promotion and capturing en passant are not allowed. The game loads in approximately 40 seconds and that is ideal for someone who wants a quick game of chess without having to load from a tape which takes several minutes.

The computer also makes its moves very fast for the amount of memory available to it. 1K Chess costs £4.95.

Super Glooper is an amusing game of Pac-man on the 16K ZX-81. Glooper must paint the maze before the aliens kill him. Unfortunately it is difficult to evade those aliens using the standard ZX-81 keyboard but it is not impossible. Glooper can also pick up one of the shields at the corners of the maze to protect himself and chase the aliens.

On the other side of the tape is Frogs, a game of Frogger. You must get the frogs over the river via the moving boats to the jetties on the other bank. If froggie falls into the river, it drowns.

You score points for each frog you get across the river and you can have eight frogs to send to their deaths. Super Glooper and Frogs cost £4.95.

Another game with a familiar-sounding theme is Through the Wall. It is based on Breakout and is available for the 16K ZX-81. On the other side of the cassette is Scramble, also a familiar theme. Both games on one cassette represent good value at £4.95.

A package for the 1K ZX-81, called 1K Games, has also been released. The games include Jackpot, in which you must try to win the 25 pence jackpot from a one-armed bandit; Etch and Sketch, where you can draw pictures on the screen; and Maze Game, where you must find your way out of the conventional maze.

The release of this cassette, costing £4.95, is a good idea at a time when so many people are buying ZX-81s.

A basic Toolkit is available for the 16K ZX-81. It provides a series of machine code routines to make the job of programming easier. It includes a re-number routine, a search and replace routine, a merge routine to put together two separate Basic programs, and a routine to put a Basic program above RAMTOP and out of the way of the NEW command. The Toolkit costs £5.95.

Two database programs are available in the range for the 48K Spectrum. They are called Collector's Pack and Club Record Controller.

Collector's Pack can be used to store information about coins, stamps or even records. The Club Record Controller will store information about people such as addresses and telephone numbers. It would be useful to schools or even someone who runs a private club. Both packages are easy to use and cost £9.95.

Adventure B, Inca Curse, for the 48K Spectrum is an upgrade of an adventure which Artic wrote for the 16K ZX-81. The adventurer is exploring in the jungle when he finds an Incan Temple. The aim is to go in and drag out all the treasure, or as much a you can carry. It all seems so easy until you enter the game and step into the temple.

The authors have managed to cram a good deal into this adventure and the Artic top score of 3,200 points will take some beating. We must admit that it is not one of the adventures in which we have made much progress. Adventure B costs £6.95.

The latest release of tapes is certainly better than the previous one. The games, utility, and business areas have been covered well but there is still a lack of good educational software. The only tapes available tend to be multi-choice and question-and-answer sessions.

The Psion tapes seem to be the best for quality at the moment and the ones with the most interesting concepts. None of the cassettes reviewed was bad but The Hobbit, Vu-3D, 1K Chess, and Super Glooper seem best.

The Sinclair software catalogue calls this 'a highly impressive modelling program' and in my opinion that statement is perfectly true. The program allows you to create three-dimensional objects by drawing on the x and y planes and then creating the third dimension which is referred to as a z plane, and then you can view your object from any angle. On the reverse side of the cassette, an example of a wine glass and cube are provided to show what the program is capable of doing.

Also provided in the package is the most comprehensive set of instructions I have seen, consisting of a set of nine pages. The first page deals with the basic loading instructions which are common to most programs. The second page deals with the create mode which contains the instructions: OPEN, CLOSE, FIGURE, MAGNIFY, REDUCE, NEXT Z, QUIT, and the cursor movement keys. All the commands are performed by the first letter of the command being pressed, eg 'O' for OPEN and C' for CLOSE, etc.

Once the OPEN command has been used you can begin to draw. First you need to use the START command, and then a cross-hair appears on the screen showing the current position of the cursor; this is moved by the arrow keys and can be speeded up by pressing the Caps Shift key at the same time as the arrow keys. A line can be drawn by use of the LINE command (just the key L) and this will draw a point from the start position to the current position of the cursor. This can be repeated with the resulting lines being drawn from the last position of the cursor; previous lines can be deleted by pressing the 'D' key - however, this deletes one line at a time starting with the last line drawn and working back through the figure. To finish the figure, the 'E' key is used for the END command.

Then some 'depth' needs to be added to the two-dimensional object. This is done by pressing the 'N' key to operate the NEXT Z command. It may have been better if Psion had left the repeat facility on this key because it becomes a boring task to add up to 150 z-planes to an object. Whilst adding the z-planes, it is possible to enlarge or reduce the figure in the x/y plane so it can be tapered off to nothing or be larger than the original. You can then view the object after QUITing the create stage.

The display stage involves the commands: FAR,NEAR, MAGNIFY, REDUCE, QUIT, and use of the arrow keys. FAR or 'F' is used to retreat from the object to make it appear to be further away and this command also changes the perspective effect.

The NEAR command or 'N' allows the viewing point to be brought forward and, if advanced sufficiently, could be positioned inside the object. This command also changes the perspective effect on the object. MAGNIFY performs the same function as NEAR but it does not change the perspective. REDUCE performs the same function as FAR without changing the perspective. The QUIT command returns the program to the main menu.

The picture stage allows the user to choose how the object is represented. Three different options are available: HIDDEN LINE, SHADE and the normal wire-frame diagram. HIDDEN LINE removes all the lines from the wire-frame which would not be seen if the object was a solid. SHADE allows you to define a light source position and then the wire-frame is replaced by dots, the intensity of which varies depending on their position on the object in relation to the light source.

The MODIFY command returns the user to the creation stage of the program. Then the object in the x/y plane can be altered; however, this alteration also needs to be stepped through all the z-planes again.

The KEEP command allows a particular view of an object to be saved onto tape, so it can be retrieved again through VU- 3D and enables you to add three-dimensional objects to your own programs, etc.

The SAVE command allows the whole data file which was created with the object to be transferred to tape for further use. This command also prompts instructions about how to save the program and what to do if an error occurs.

The colour of both the foreground and the background of the object and the commands can be changed by using the COLOUR command which allows any combination of colour to be used.

The PRINT command allows a hard copy of the object to be printed by a connected printer; however, using this command will sometimes crash the program if a printer is not connected, which results in all the data in the file being lost.

In my opinion, VU-3D is an excellent program which would be well suited to any person interested in three-dimensional design and easily justifies its price of £9.95.

GRAPHICS '85

A comprehensive review of the state of the art by Colin Christmas.

As we see this old year out and welcome the new one in, it's a better time than most to stand back and take stock. Looking back land leaving the prophecies and predictions to others! It must surely be agreed that for Spectrum users with an eye on Graphics it has been a most exciting year. I can't speak for other departments but for me, it has been Christmas every issue.

In this issue I want to do something special take a look at the goodies that have come our way. Our way? Who are We? We are the Graphics Grabbers, Artwork Addicts, Design Doodlers. For us the screen is a window on a world of colour, images, line, shape, pattern, design, texture, light and shade. And like a window it opens out into an exciting new visual world. For business, for profit, for learning for discovering or for pleasure. From the weekend dabbler or doodler to the serious professional, from the games enthusiast to the educational user, from beginner to experienced programmer and right across the age range, you will find Spectrum owners who are hooked on graphics.

It's fairly formidable task - covering the range of Graphics Hardware and Software now available lo Spectrum owners but let's get started.

LIGHTPENS

I've had most success to date, with the package from Dk'tronics. The pen itself is rather like a biro or felt tip pen. It is attached by a wire to a control interface which of course comes with the package. The interface is plugged into the back of the Spectrum. A program on cassette is included.

The glass screen of your monitor is the working area and drawing surface, so some consideration has to be given as to whether this is the way you want to work. Then there are practical aspects such as the distance of your screen from your keyboard, and the fact that you have to work on a perpendicular 'face'. The height of the screen is therefore important if you do not want to suffer from muscle fatigue in your drawing arm.

Lightpens give you a physical contact and interaction with your drawing surface if that is important. Calibrating the pen each time may prove a chore, but after that it's plainsailing - within the limitations of the power of the program. Again it's a good way of getting started or the very basics of graphics, of getting into the picture as it were. Sensibly introduced in the classroom it could be useful aid and introduction for children in an educational context. It is limited though in its potential for advanced or complex screen designs. Graphics Tablets give you similar physical point of con tact with your drawing-surface. This time it is horizontal and again a 'pen' is used. There's a review of the Saga Graphics Pad in this issue. So when you are ready look it up. They certainly take you further than the lightpen. But then you pay a lot more for the facilities they offer.

Now for something almost completely different, the Sinclair LOGO pack. Another excellent starter, but as I have hinted, quite different.

This pack has very obvious educational applications and for very young children. The founding father of the LOGO language intended it as a language for children which would develop logical thinking, introduce young minds to computer programming and have very definite terms of reference for the teaching and development of mathematical concepts. Drawing is achieved by moving a small graphics 'turtle' - a triangle - around the screen. This is done by sending through the computer commands known as Primitive Procedures (mostly single words and abbreviations of those words). Your sense of direction needs to be accurate and formulated mathematically. Once you have established procedures for drawing, say, a square, this group of procedures can be assigned a single word or name which LOGO will then understand as a command to repeat the whole set of procedures.

The emphasis or bias is fundamentally mathematical, arithmetical or geometric. You do not just learn to draw a square, you also learn what makes a square what it is and from there the difference bet ween a square and a rectangle or a parallelogram.

It is a language itself, apart from BASIC. Hence learning to use it is learning to program a computer in another language. The graphic aspect being displayed on the screen is part of the incentive and motivation for progressing with the new language.

Two fairly weighty and comprehensive books or manuals are part of the pack. The first book deals exclusively with Turtle Graphics and is an absorbing and refreshingly different kind of programming experience. The second book acts as a reference manual for Sinclair LOGO, The growth, use and development of LOGO by Spectrum owners, especially in schools will, I think, be affected by the cost factor.

When DREAM SOFTWARE released Computer Aided Designer, my own children had not had their Spectrum for long. They, like me were exploring the full graphics potential of the machine when C.A.D. turned up and kept us enthralled for days. Now, still an old favourite, I would recommend it as another in the 'Starter' category. With very obvious educational values and as a springboard for more ambitious projects later in Design.

The manual is simple and very straightforward - alphabetically leading you through the twenty seven commands available in the program. Some forty custom shaped graphics, UDGs can be designed. By giving precise measurements most geometric shapes can be drawn, filled and so on. It remains impressive after all this time, and the potential for drawing in 3D is considerable.

Similarly, another old favourite, VU-3D from PSION.
This has the added and appeal of enabling the viewer to move around the object in 3D. Graphics and Design, pure and simple. High resolution colour and an incredible understanding of perspectives are real bonuses with this program.

Future designers in the Aircraft or for that matter almost any other industry, may have started young with something like C.A.D. or VU-3D.

I doubt if they would have been able to afford the RD Digital Tracer, from RD Laboratories. This is closer to an instrument than anything else I've come across in graphics and design hardware and software for the Spectrum.

It comes in two versions, the Standard and the Professional. Both are fairly highly technical and sophisticated tools. The Tracer consists of a short fixed arm and pivot from which extends a drawing arm hinged at the centre with another floating pivot which moves across your drawing surface area.

The arm is connected to the computer by a length of cable via an interface plugged into the rear port of the Spectrum. A cardboard template and transparent grid overlay are included for calibration purposes, the tracer is a precision instrument. The software cassette contains five programs. The usual options are offered in the first, plotting single points, construction of basic geometric figures, filling, hatching, change of ink, border, paper colour, adding text, UDGs and so on.

The display image can be moved up, down, and from side to side, scaled up and down, and reversed. Multiple screen images including images at different scales and at different positions can be achieved. By adding other BASIC routines and software, the Tracer's capabilities can be extended into the field of statistical analysis. This immediately puts the Tracer into a specialist Graphics and Display category. Although the Tracer can be used with the ZX81 and 16K Spectrum, its full potential can only really be developed on the 48K and then only by competent programmers. It's a versatile instrument for the specialist.

It's the season of Good will and all that, so why not give a last mention for all whose speciality is Games Designing. It's been around for a while, but standing the test of time in lots of ways. I'm referring of course to the High level User Friendly Realtime Games Designer from Melbourne House. Or as it is more commonly known, HURG.

Still a powerful program and a very good manual. How did they do it in those all time greats like Pacman, Donkey Kong and Space invaders? H.U.R.G. will tell you how.

It's a pretty good list of graphics goodies and that other seasonal expression comes to mind. 'There's something here for everyone.' You have no excuse for not knowing how and from whom in Spectrum Graphics, just how to enjoy the graphics power behind those buttons.

Psion
2 Huntsworth Mews, Regents Park, London
48K Spectrum
£9.95

FROM DEEP-SPACE ADVENTURES TO WORLDLY BOARD-GAMES IN MEIRION JONES' SURVEY

Less than a year ago the appearance of Scrabble on disc for the Apple caused consternation among micro owners. The program defeated three-quarters of the humans who challenged it to a dual of words. At least Scrabblers could comfort themselves with the knowledge that they had been beaten by a £750 disc-based system. Now Psion has taken even that consolation away by launching an improved version of the game with a bigger dictionary and better graphics which will run on a £150 system - the 48K Spectrum and a cassette recorder.

This illustrates the rate at which Spectrum software is improving. The latest releases include clever implementations of board- games like monopoly and arcade favourites such as Scramble, long and complicated Adventures with names like Knight's Quest and combinations of arcade and Adventure like Pixel's Trader. While serious and educational material software is still thin on the ground, programs like Hewson's Countries of the World show how much useful information can be packed into the Spectrum.

MORE ORIGINALITY

Unfortunately the standard is not uniformly high. Sometimes imagination is lacking. Bridge software still insists on marketing what it calls "an exciting game for two to six players". Yes, you guessed, it is boring old Hangman.

At other times graphics are weak. Micromega sells a version of Roulette which features a roulette wheel which looks more like a flying saucer on an off day. There is still too high a percentage of unloadable tapes and of tapes which you wished had been unloadable. Davic Games Tape 1, for instance, features a game which has Tooth Monsters instead of ghosts, which is probably the dullest-ever version of Pac-Man. The Tooth Monsters themselves are about as threatening as a pair of jelly babies.

If you want real tooth monsters try Imagine's excellent Molar Maul. This is a real nerve-tingler from the moment that an enormous set of gleaming teeth appears on the screen like something out of jaws. Armed only with a toothbrush and toothpaste you have to defend these dentures from swarms of evil bacteria.

These germs go by the name of Dentorium Kamikazium which allows Imagine to talk about "the DK Menace" - a triple pun partly at the expense of Imagine's Ipswich-based rivals DK'tronics.

Imagine's punsters are at work again on the cover of Arcadia where we are told we are fighting against the "deadly menace of the Atarian empire". Perhaps this explains why Sinclair owners have shown such enthusiasm for Arcadia because the game itself is just a lacklustre version of Galaxians. Much better is Imagine's Schizoids.

If, like me, you have always wanted to be a bulldozer, Schizoids is the game for you. You are a bulldozer in outer space and your job is to push tumbling cubes and pyramids into a nearby black hole without falling in yourself. Perhaps this nearby anomaly in the space-time continuum affects the wavelength of light. At any rate the game itself is only in black and white.

Pixel is another company which cannot resist veiled messages. Trader is part space Adventure and part arcade game. The Adventure, trading commodities between different worlds, is more convincing than the crude skill tests such as finding the right orbit when approaching a planet.

Trader may well be bought as much for its attractive packaging - which includes a survival guide for the would-be Trader - as for the game itself. After buying supplies for your first trip you set out for the planet Psi where the inhabitants - yes, Psions - who look like a cross between Clive Sinclair's beard and a muppet ask you tiresome questions such as "What is the formula for carbon monoxide?" or "What is your first name?". Entering "Clive" as an answer elicits the response "What a strange name". So, for that matter, does any other reply.

If disaster should strike, a caption will appear saying "Is this the end...?" The answer is "No" because Trader is a trilogy so there are another two complete parts to load from the tape. There are many more traditional text Adventures of the "Go south, open door, take gold" variety but the narrowness of the replies they will accept is often irritating.

DOWN THE MINES

Mikrogen's Mines of Saturn starts with a cheery "Have fun" and then proceeds to ask questions like "Tunnels lead N, S, E and W - what will you do?" Attempts to answer "N" or "go N" or even "go n" will not wash. It must be "go North" or nothing. At least Phipps' Knight's Quest has a 120-word vocabulary to help you on your damsel-ridden way to a castle in the air.

Everest by Richard Shepherd Software is more of a strategy game than a straight Adventure. You have to take enough food and rope to climb the mountain and cope with every hazard. I enjoyed the climb but I never reached the summit - partly because the Sherpas are not what they used to be.

When Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Everest for the first time he managed to find a Sherpa called Tensing. The time when you visit a Nepalese hill village to recruit porters you are asked to choose between Sherpas with names like Keith, Brian, Ron, Tim and Paul. Presumably they are ex-hippies, lost on the road to Katmandu.

Things obviously still are what they used to be down at Mikrogen. If Andy Capp sends you into fits of laughter Mad Martha might just raise a smile. It is the same old story, boy meets girl, well, hen-pecked husband meets axe-happy wife - all very predictable. Mikrogen also sells arcade games like Cosmic Raiders - a competent impersonation of Defender with a long-range screen and grabbers.

Melbourne House's variation on the same theme is called Penetrator. The display looks more like the arcade version of Scramble. A training facility to help you build up specific game skills is a good idea. C-Tech's Rocket Raider is yet another competent variant on similar lines.

Artic offers a suicidally fast asteroids game called Cosmic Debris. Still in the arcades, both Elfin Software and Quicksilva produce robot battles which are of the Pac-Man-meets-Tanks variety.

Elfin's Tobor has the more exciting opening titles but loses on points to Quicksilva's QS Frenzy whose exotic science-fiction plot seems to offer a better justification for the game.

Speaking of Tanks, DK'tronics 3D Tanx was one of my favourite programs in the whole batch. You can track you gun barrel from side to side and adjust the elevation as you lob your shells at four lines of moving tanks which can fire back at you. Although the opposing tanks at first appear to be crawling across a structure that looks more like Brighton's West Pier than a battleground, this is one of my four games you might catch me paying to play in an arcade.

JOIN THE PROFESSIONALS

Artic's Combat Zone is another ambitious attempt at a Tank game. Your target and the landscape - a few pyramids on an invisible plane - look like refugees from Psion's Vu-3D program. They are very simple three-dimensional shapes but they change position smoothly and realistically as if you were walking past them in some world inside your Spectrum.

You and your opponents fire fragments of cubist paintings at each other but the abstraction is not so important as the fact that you are playing the first real Spectrum game in three dimensions - Vu-3D itself is a Psion program which allows you to build up three dimensional objects on the screen and then rotate them, or float them towards you and back again. In effect it is a crude version of the mainframe programs which create the effects for films like Tron.

ET makes an appearance too in an Abbex Adventure with voices called ETX. Unfortunately after loading pages of instructions about how I should phone home ending with the advice that I should treat any MI5 man who appeared as an enemy, the tape self-destructed.

This left me with an unnerving impression of "the strength of Britain's security services.

The secret police are certainly important in DK'tronics strategy game called Dictator. The setting is a banana republic. The instructions ominously point out that "your rule is measured in months". You have to balance political factions, army, secret police, peasants, landowners, guerillas and superpowers if you are to survive.

Breaking into embassies would doubtless be all in a day's work for a dictator. So for all prospective saviours of the nation, Sinclair's Embassy Assault will come in useful. It is very much like those maze games which present your view. standing in the maze. Instead of trying to avoid a minotaur, this time you are looking for secret codes and the like.

All this is enough to send you back into the arcades but Jet Pac's creators have moved from the arcades into home computing.

Ultimate Play the Game's Jet Pac puts you into the position of an astronaut who has to build a rocket from the pieces he can find sitting on clouds around the screen. The scenario is not entirely convincing but it makes for a good game. The same cannot be said of the simulations by CCS.

CCS's representations of the oil business, Dallas, running a printers, Print Room, and of international aviation, Airline, may be realistic but they are not very exciting. Although these were originally designed as training for middle management, livelier presentation would not necessarily have made them less useful. Hewson's simulations of air-traffic control, Heathrow, and the Nightflite flight simulator are more convincing.

Board-games seem to transfer particularly well to the Spectrum. Psion's Scrabble has already been recommended. With its four levels of play and 11,000-word dictionary it can offer almost as tough opposition as you could want. There are also two different approaches to that old favourite Monopoly.

Automonopoli offers a continuous display of the part of the board around your current position. This display moves smoothly when the dice are thrown. Do Not Pass Go from Workforce has a less interesting display but at least shows the whole board all the time. Automonopoli allows you to personalise the program with the names of players and both programs give the option of being either a board for humans to play on or of letting the computer join in as a player. In each case the computer becomes a soft opponent once you have reached the stage of building houses and hotels.

If you have ever wandered into a rundown dockland hotel or pub and been confronted by the sort of balding drunk who says he used to sail the seven seas and boasts that he can name the capital of any country you care to choose, I can reveal his secret. At home he has a Spectrum with Hewson's Countries of the World up and running on it.

At the touch of a button it will remind you that N'djamena is the capital of Chad or that Yaounde is the capital of Cameroon. In the corner of the pub someone with probably be playing a video game not unlike Firebirds.

Softek's Firebirds is a Galaxians-type game distinguished by good croaking noises from the birds. Still on the subject of sound effects Workforcé's Jaws Revenge is very noisy and fun. The graphics are great. You are a shark and you are after the divers and- boats which are after you.

Mined Out from Quicksilva is a very strange version of Mines. It is subtitled "Rescue Bill the worm from certain old age" and if you find a way through the first minefield you then have to rescue damsels in distress. Someone at Quicksilva has been playing too many Adventure games and it is beginning to show.

The last words on the cassette packet read "the image fades to soft focus which is replaced by waves falling on a rocky shore, except in Bill's dream there are no waves or soft focus..." It is certainly time that software cassettes carried a government health warning.