FRANCO FREY EXCHANGES THE QUILL FOR A BRUSH...

Program: The Illustrator
Supplier: Gilsoft
Retail Price: £14.95

It is seldom that a utility program which is readily available to the end-user is taken seriously and put to earnest use for creating marketable software, but Gilsoft's The Quill is a remarkable exception and has proven to be a very popular professional tool for creating exciting text adventures. To the dislike of many traditional adventure players the market is swinging towards the more popular graphical adventures, not to speak of the rogue arcade adventures, and this has caused some concern to the bequilled software writers. Many of these have already extended the Quill's facilities with their very own in-house graphics utilities, but now Howard Gilberts has released the official Quill graphics creator, The Illustrator. This program links up to the Quill database and provides full picture editing facilities. The Illustrator combines the graphics with the database of The Quill and saves these in such a way that using LOAD "" from Basic will cause an autorunning graphic adventure to load into the Spectrum.

POSSIBILITIES

The Quill/Illustrator combination enables the creation of a graphical adventure with full-screen (255 x 175 pixels) pictures. Up to 254 pictures may be created. The program can be set to normally draw the picture only on the first visit of a location (Flag 29 is scanned by The Illustrator interpreter and if SET the picture is drawn and the flag cleared). The picture may be recalled whenever REDESCRIBE is used by the player (The REDESCRIBE entry in the Event table has to be altered for this). Split screens, i.e. combining picture and text, is not possible. The amount of pictures in the adventure is only limited by the free memory space, in theory every single location may have a picture, but under normal circumstances graphics will have to be limited and the interesting locations chosen, which are to contain graphics. The Illustrator is designed to add graphics to a C-series database, i.e. a database saved from a C-series Quill. The serial type of the Quill can be gleaned from the opening screen (A03, C02). A-series databases may be however converted to C-series with a special conversion routine "A-CCONVERT" provided on the cassette provided there is at least 990 bytes of free memory.

BASIC PROCEDURE

Starting point is the Quill. The adventure is designed in the normal way and suitable graphical locations pinpointed for later creation. The REDESCRIBE entry in the Event table may be modified to enable the redrawing of a picture on call-up when re-entering a previously visited location. The created database is then saved from The Quill with the name of the final adventure. Using The Illustrator, a suitable blank graphic database is created with the LOAD database facility. The pictures are created using the Graphics Editor of The Illustrator. Any locations which do not have graphics are defined as subroutines and the graphics database saved to tape. The Quill database and the graphics database are combined with the SAVE Adventure routine of The Illustrator, which also finally saves the adventure as an independent game to tape. All that is left to do is the final testing of the game to make sure it is absolutely bug-free.

THE DRAWING TECHNIQUE

As memory space is restricted, the graphics are not stored as voluminous screens in memory. The technique used in The Illustrator is that of storing a string of drawing commands, which the Graphics interpreter lodged within the final game will recognise and execute. The picture will therefore be drawn by invisible hand the same way it was programmed within the editor, but at a much faster speed. The graphics editor provides all the necessary operations such as setting paper and ink colour, moving and positioning the drawing cursor, plotting individual points, drawing lines and filling areas or spaces with solid colour or texture. Once the basic picture is programmed, corrections and additions may be made with an ingenious editor facility. The editor single steps through the existing drawstring and executes each command step by step. At any given point new commands may be inserted with the remainder of the picture to follow. A special subroutine is provided for drawing repetitive objects such as doors, windows etc. and these may be called up within the drawstring with a simple command. To make this facility more useful, the object may be drawn at up to 8 different scales to accommodate the specific circumstances.

THE MAIN MENU

The Illustrator has to perform several tasks and the function blocks may be accessed via the Main Menu. Following the required sequence LOAD database (option G) loads the first few bytes of the Quill database in order to know how many locations are contained in the adventure and to establish the whereabouts of the first free memory locations. The required number of graphic locations will be initialised. This is either required for setting up a new adventure or to amend the graphic database if changes have been made to the original Quill database.

Graphics Start Table (option B) is used to set the status of a picture. The initial Global background colours have to be set up. All locations in the adventure which do not require a picture should be Amended as a subroutine. The status of the pictures can be printed to the screen or to the printer.

Bytes Spare (option C) displays the number of bytes between the end of The Illustrator or the end of The Quill database and the bottom of the graphic database.

Graphics (option A) leads to the major work area, where the picture is created using the Graphics Editor. Pictures may be inserted, amended, printed or have their length calculated.

SAVE Graphics (option D), VERIFY Graphics (option E) and LOAD Graphics (option F) provide the facility of storing the partly or fully completed Graphics database to tape and to reload for a further work session.

THE GRAPHICS EDITOR

The Editor provides four groups of commands; Editing, Drawing, Colour and Subroutine commands.

The Editing commands position of the drawstring pointer within the drawstring. S (START) puts the drawstring pointer at the start of the drawstring. N (NEXT) executes the next available drawstring command; if there isn't one the command is ignored. 9 (PREVIOUS) moves the drawstring pointer back one command and updates the screen. Shift & 0 deletes the previous command in the drawstring and re-establishes the picture to the condition prior to the deleted command. This 'rubber' feature enables comfortable experimenting of draw commands. Shift & N deletes the next command if there is one. Extra to these editing commands there is the Y (GRID) command which toggles an attribute or character grid on and off. This allows accurate positions of colour boundaries to be taken account of while drawing.

The Drawing commands operate with a two cursor system. The Base Cursor (BC) shows the last point plotted, moved etc., the Rubber Cursor (RC) shows the next position of the Base cursor or the point for a fill. The Rubber cursor is moved around the screen using the keys grouped around S. It moves a pixel at a time and can be speeded up by pressing Shift at the same time as a direction. At the bottom of the screen is the Status Box which contains the current X and Y co-ordinates and the number of the location currently being edited. The bottom row displays the current values of INK, PAPER, FLASH, BRIGHT, INVERSE and OVER. P (PLOT) sets the pixel at the position of the Rubber Cursor according to Inverse and Over. M (MOVE) moves BC to RC without affecting the screen. This is coded as a relative offset from BC and therefore care must be taken not to insert draw commands at a later date as it will affect the outcome of the picture. L (LINE) draws a straight line from BC to RC. F (FILL) causes the area which contains RC to be filled with set pixels. No notice is taken of Inverse or Over. T (SHADE) allows areas to be filled with one of 255 shading patterns. No printout is available in the manual, so some experimentation will be necessary. Shift T will affect also the boundary area (covers the outline). H (BLOCK) causes a block of the currently selected colours to appear between the BC and RC character positions. R (FREEHAND) toggles the freehand facility on and off. The cursor movement is treated as a pencil movement and each pixel plotted according to Inverse and Over. The FREEHAND feature should be used very sparingly as it eats up a lot of memory. The aforementioned draw commands should cover most needs, although what does seem to be missing is a CIRCLE command. This is a shame, as the only way around this shortcoming is to imitate a circle with a polygon or with memory-expensive freehand drawing.

The Colour commands are straightforward. The current INK is set to the value of the key pressed and includes INK 8 which causes all ink to be taken from the existing screen. The current PAPER is set in a similar fashion to INK, but with SYMBOL SHIFT. Paper 8 as in Basic. V sets a new FLASH value, B a new BRIGHT value (0,1 or 8). I and O toggle INVERSE and OVER on and off.

The Subroutine command requires a picture number and a scale value. This can be from 0 (No scale) to 7 where the number indicates the size of the picture in eighths. Scale only affects certain draw commands. These are MOVE, LINE, FILL and SHADE. BLOCK and FREEHAND commands will not be scaled or relocated and should generally not be used in subroutines. Subroutine calls can be nested to a level of ten.

PRACTICE

The introduction to the working technique of The Illustrator is very clear and easy. The manual, which consists of a 28 page A5 booklet guides the user through a working session with the aid of the well known DEMO adventure encountered in the Quill. A partly completed Graphics database GRAPHICS is contained on tape and may be loaded, the missing picture of the hall designed following the instructions carefully and the two databases combined and stored to tape via the SAVE Adventure facility. This example should introduce the user to the general procedure. The detailed description of the individual utility blocks such as the Interpreter, the Graphics Database, the Main Editor and the Graphics Editor follow in the next section and should give an answer to any pending question. Listed are also all the Editor error messages which can be encountered. In the Appendix there is an explanation on the required Series conversion and a general approach to the design of a location picture. A summary of the Graphic Editor commands provides a quick reference.

ILLUSTRIOUS ILLUSTRATOR

The Illustrator extends the capabilities and applications of The Quill. It provides a very easy means of creating graphics and combined with the excellent Quill enables a lot of people to design outstanding adventures without too much technical knowledge. It is perhaps this feature which has made the Quill such a success in the text adventure market, where writers with a flair for intrigue and mystique have been able to create characterful adventures without the fuss of having to handle machine language. Perhaps the Illustrator's only disadvantage is that it could lead to a plethora of repetitively styled adventures due to it's relatively inflexible display format. It will be up to the adventure writer to avoid this pitfall and to demonstrate the inbuilt versatility of the system.

When Gilsoft first brought out The Quill, text-only adventures were the norm. Now they have come up with The Illustrator which allows you to add full screen graphics to Quilled adventures. You can then save the game independently of both The Quill and The Illustrator.

When the program's loaded, a largish menu appears listing the various options open to you; normally the first you'll choose is "LOAD DATABASE". This loads in the first few bytes of a previously created Quill database. Then The Illustrator finds out how many locations there are and how much space is available.

Now comes the creative bit. Once you've told the program about your game you can get on with the business of drawing pictures. Each piccy is stored not as a series of bytes like a Spectrum SCREEN$, but instead it's kept as a series of commands that recreate the original when you play it back. This saves one hell of a lot of space but it does mean that you've got to start with a pretty good idea of what the final picture will look like. And although editing facilities are provided, any mistake can mean going right back to square one.

There are commands for point plotting and line drawing as well as several fill routines and an excellent shading command that lets you produce a stipple effect. You can also define pictures as subroutines and use them over and over again. If I have a niggle it's the lack of circle and arc drawing commands though this can be got round.

All in all, The Illustrator is an excellent companion to The Quill. It'll produce some very good pictures, subject to artistic ability, of course - which I'm rather short of!

THE ILLUSTRATOR
Gilsoft
Memory: 48K
Price: £14.95

The revolution in DIY adventuring begun by The Quill continues. Now you can add the icing to the cake and use The illustrator to create location graphics which will give extra atmosphere and polish to your games.

This new utility program is specifically designed to be used in conjunction with The Quill.

Once the main menu appears your first task is to load the adventure database you have created on The Quill. Doing this initialises the drawing program and gives it the necessary information about the number of possible locations required.

If you have a previously prepared or unfinished graphics file those too are loaded. Again, a demo set is provided. Selecting graphics mode on the main menu then allows you to get down to the serious business of art. You can print the current pictures to the screen or amend them - this instruction is also used to start from scratch.

You're off. Two cursors are shown: the base cursor indicates where your current line is to be drawn from and the 'rubber cursor' can be easily moved around the screen to show the end point of the line.

The cursors are controlled by eight conveniently placed keys. Other single key instructions allow you to move the cursors to new points for separate bits of the drawing. Using this programming mode you can reduce a complex picture to a short series of key presses.

As with The Quill you will need to work carefully through the manual before you begin but there is a step-by-step demonstration which will convince you the program is highly user-friendly. All the processes demand no knowledge of programming - you will only need to be logical in your approach.

When you have finished all you need to do is save your database and graphics files. After that you can simply LOAD "" and auto-run your graphic adventure.

DO WE HAVE TO DRAW YOU A PICTURE?

'Cos if we do, well probably make a pig's breakfast of it-unless we make use of one of the splendid new graphics-adventure utilities now hitting the shelves. Weary adventurer STEVE KEATON tries his hand at pixel postcards...

AND LO, THERE CAME GRAPHICS

Meanwhile, Gilsoft have been busy producing an enhancement for their original Spectrum Quill in the form of The Illustrator, a complementary package that enables you to insert full screen graphics into Quill adventures. To say that it's been eagerly awaited is something of an understatement. I for one have been badgering the Gilberts about it for months and nearly choked with excitement when it finally arrived. Surprisingly it lives up to even these inflated expectations. Using The Illustrator, full colour, hires displays can be painlessly painted (using about 500 bytes per sheet), thus allowing almost anyone to produce their own version of The Hobbit.

In order to introduce its capabilities The Illustrator reprises the small demonstration adventure from the original Quill manual. A database for this is included on the cassette.

The first step in creating your graphics involves loading a Quilled database into The Illustrator. It's only interested in the first few bytes of this and alters its display when it's had enough. It's worth noting that The Illustrator will only work with the new series C Quills. If you have a series A database it will have to be converted. A short prog on the new Quills will enable you to do this. Those wishing to upgrade should contact Gilsoft direct.

ENORMOUS SAVINGS

Having loaded the database you'll then be confronted by the standard 'not compatible' blurb. This means that the number of locations present in your database does not match those already in The Illustrator. The system needs to be initialised. Just press the 'Y' prompt and it'll create the required number of locations. A variety of facilities are thus made available: simple line graphics can be drawn by dragging a couple of cursors about the screen, 2 fill routines are available for rapid painting and there are 255 (count 'em) different varieties of shade. Perhaps the most interesting feature though is the SCALE option.

This allows you to draw a picture in the form of a subroutine (imagine a door or candle) which can be called up at any location and in scale. This means that you could create an entire forest from just one tree subroutine! The memory saving is enormous. In the finished adventure the graphics draw relatively fast (depending on the kind of fills you've selected) and then flit away at a keystroke. Neat and unobtrusive. The system clearly has monstrous potential. It's a snip at £14.95. My guess is that both The Hollow and Madcap Manor (originally planned as new additions to Golsoft's text only Gold Collection) will now be released with Illustrator graphics.

And there's more! Planned are Illustrators for the CBM64 and Atari as well as Quills/AdventureWriters for both the BBC and the Amstrad. A text compressor is also scheduled for late '85. The possibilities seem endless.

ADVENTURE GENERATORS

MICRO: Spectrum 48K, CBM 64, Amstrad
PRICE: £14.95
FORMAT: Cassette
SUPPLIER: Gilsoft

THE REST OF THE REVIEW IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE QUILL'S

The most important program for us adventurers in 1984, was in my opinion, The Quill from Gilsoft.

To be brief (for those of you who have been locked in The Goblin's Dungeon for too long), The Quill is an adventure-writing utility, released first for the Spectrum and later for the Commodore 64, enabling the user to write fully machine-coded adventures. The program thus created does not need The Quill at run-time.

A veritable cottage-industry has grown up which churns out Quill'd adventures, and many are awful. Some, however, are rather good, and one or two achieve greatness. Until now, only Spectrum and Commodore owners have been able to savour the delights of The Quill, while owners of other micros have only been able to read articles and reviews of the many Quill' d adventures flooding the market.

This is no longer the case, as readers of last months' News Desk will know. An American company, CodeWriter, has produced disc based versions of The Quill for the Atari, Apple and Commodore 64 under the American title Adventure Writer.

The new versions are supplied on disc, although the originals were on cassette (Gilsoft supplied Commodore owners with an optional disc version). The box that Adventure Writer comes in is a huge affair, containing the disc and a 120-page manual.

The only area in which the original Quill fell short was in its manual, which was rather difficult to get to grips with for the novice. Codewriter have completely rewritten it, with the aid of a trusty Macintosh, and come up with a very readable introduction to its program. There is even a welcome index, although this is not as complete as it could be (for example, inventory is not mentioned, but it is certainly in the manual).

After booting up, a pretty title page of a fire-breathing Dragon precedes the initial Menu. This asks the user if he wants to carry on with Adventurewriter, or Load in the adventure included on the disc, Rescue. This is a pretty simple game, and won't win many prizes (you can only carry one object at a time, which is a bit limiting), but it's an excellent example of what can be achieved by using The Adventurewriter.

But it's the other option of this menu that we're concerned with. Going into The Adventurewriter from the preamble Menu leads us to the Main Menu, which includes 17 options. (See Figure 1.) The basic building block from which an Adventure Writer database is created is the location. After carefully planning your adventure, the first option is selected - C on the Main Menu. This choice leads, as do many of the others, to a sub-menu, see Figure 2. Pressing '/' now presents a blank screen. Type the description of the first location, and this is placed in Location 0. The next description you type in will become Location 1 and so on. Should you wish to edit the description, this may be achieved by selecting 'A loc£'.

But, now that the locations have all been placed in the database, how does the player get from one to the other? Setting the movements is done by selecting 'Movement Table' from the Main Menu, which brings us to another sub-menu, with the same format as that for Location Descriptions. From here we can first of all Print to the Screen a list of movement entries so far recorded. To start with, of course, all locations have null entries, set up as we were typing in the locations. Going back to the Movement Menu, we can ask to 'Alter an Entry', and then type in, for each and every location, the movements possible from that location, with the number of the target location in each direction.

So we now have, in our adventure, several locations and the necessary means to get from one to another. To place objects in the various locations, we can select E and F from the Main Menu, the options which set up the object descriptions and their starting places in the adventure.

After all this, we have a good framework upon which to build a detailed adventure. To make the whole thing more interesting, for example, synonyms of words may be declared. Thus N, No, Nor and Nort may all be recognised as North if so desired. Now we may also add certain status 'flags', so that, for example, the player will need the Golden Key before he can open the Secret Door. As additions and deletions are made, so location descriptions and object descriptions can be modified.

There are, of course, many other facilities available to the budding adventure writer (such as a comprehensive SOUND effect creator), and the resulting game may be as simple or as complex as the writer's imagination will allow. Codewriter's version of The Quill is similar in most respects to the existing program, although the demonstration six-location adventure included with the disc (apart from the larger Rescue) is slightly different. In the 18 months or so since The Quill's release, we have seen some excellent work done with the aid of this superb utility. I hope that with this new version for the American machines, many more micro owners will give their imagination free reign.

The price structure of the package is a little strange. One would expect US software to be a little higher in price than the UK equivalent, and that is so in this case. But Gilsoft are still marketing the CBM disk at £20, less the mandatory 5p (do people really still fall for that old gag?), while the Codewriter version is £25 - oh, all right, £24.95. The manual with the new version is very much more "friendly" than the original, so if you feel that this ease of use is worth £5 to you, the choice is clear.

Back now to what Gilsoft have been up to.

First off, an updated version of The Quill has just been released. One of the few failings of the utility was that adventures written with its aid all tended to look the same.

Apart from the screen layout, which anyway with a bit of imagination and judicious character re-definition could be made to look different from the next Quill'd program, the system messages were unalterable. Thus, writers were stuck with phrases like 'I don't understand that. Try again using different words', 'You are carrying : nothing at all' as well as the dead giveaway 'Do you really want to quit now? OK. Bye have a nice day'. Now Gilsoft offer the C Series Quill, with a couple of new options from the Main Menu.

One of these allows the user to alter the system messages to his taste. The other option (The Object Word Table) associates objects with words like GET, and WEAR, thus saving on memory. Several new actions have also been provided, some to take advantage of the Object Word Table, while others provide the long-missing DROP ALL (will Version D provide the equally long-awaited GET ALL?) and a facility which allows for remote positioning of objects. All this and more (plus a manual and a program to convert old Series A database to the new Series C) is available to Quill owners for just £2.99, together with the cassette inlay from your version.

While I'm not adamantly set against graphic adventures - there are very many good ones - I do feel that good text is far, far better at evoking an atmosphere than the best picture. An exception to the saying 'A picture paints a thousand words'. However, it is an unfortunate fact that market forces dictate that text-only adventures will soon be struggling for existence. How much these 'market forces' owe their supposed strength to the strange ideas that the multiple chain-store buyers hold about games software consumers, I don't know. What I do know is that the overwhelming majority of letters I receive bemoan the inclusion of pointless 'pretty pictures' in adventures. I also get the same complaint from just about every software company, none of whom find the graphics make up in any way for the drastic loss of memory which could be put to better use. Ask any of them why they put graphics in their adventures, and the answer is always 'the shops won't take them otherwise'. Let's have your opinion on the subject!

Until now, it has not been possible to include high-resolution graphics in Quill' d adventures. But Gilsoft's newest utility, The Illustrator, will change all this. Used in conjunction with The Quill the program produces detailed high-resolution graphics for use in your own adventures.

The manual follows the usual Gilsoft format of lengthy description of each item on the Menu, followed by a summary of each section, and then a detailed look at the inner workings of the various parts of the program.

After LOADing, the familiar white-onblue Quill Menu appears - this offers many of the options available from The Quill's Main Menu, such as 'Bytes Free'. Now, of course, most of the options are graphics-orientated. Gilsoft have included a demonstration database, being illustrations for the six-location adventure which will be well-known to Quill-owners from the original manual. One location, the Hall, has been left blank for the tyro Leonardo to practise on.

Any micro-owner sufficiently interested in graphics to have used one of the packages like Melbourne House's Draw will be on familiar ground here, as The Illustrator is in most respects similar. Using the keys grouped around the letter 's' on the keyboard, a cursor (quaintly named the Rubber Cursor) may be moved around the screen, one pixel at a time for detail work, or very much faster, using CAPS SHIFT. Meanwhile, a cursor (the Base Cursor) remains at the original position. The second cursor's co-ordinates are continually displayed at screen-bottom, along with current status of colours and attributes.

Many options are available - to draw a line between the Base Cursor and the Rubber Cursor, or a rectangle, or FILL a required figure. Detailed work can be carried out with the use of an overlaid grid of squares, which may be toggled on and off at will while drawing.

Two unusual facilities are also available. The first is the SHADE command. The user requests a value of between 0 and 255, upon which the selected area is 'shaded' with a pattern. The second, more important, facility is the SUBROUTINE. Using this the artist may include in his location illustration a standard picture from a library. This library is built up by the user, and contains shapes or pictures to be used at more than one location, or several times in one location, thus bypassing the need to draw each one repeatedly. One example in the included demonstration file is the post of the four-poster bed. By positioning the cursor, and typing GOSUB X (where X is the number of the Subroutine), the picture is instantly drawn.

The drawing commands for each illustration is held in a string (charmingly called, by Gilsoft, a 'drawstring'), which leads us to the very useful editing facility. Typing START returns a pointer to just before the point in the 'drawstring' where the information on the current illustration is kept. Now, typing N (for NEXT) moves this pointer along in the string to the first drawing action made. Now the user may delete this or alter it at will, or move along to the next command executed, or, indeed, back to the previous one.

The illustrations created with The Illustrator may be as simple or as complex as the imagination will allow, but of course there is a cost to pay in terms of memory. Some 35K is available for the adventure writer, and this will allow between 10 and 15 fairly simple pictures to be included without the need for curtailing text (a simple picture may take about 150 bytes) but very detailed, freehand work gobbles up the memory, so a balance will have to be sought.

In play, the pictures are drawn fairly quickly, though not instantaneously, and fill the whole screen. Annoyingly, they then sit there until the player presses a key, whereupon the picture scrolls up to reveal the time-honoured Quill description. When the location is revisited, the picture is not re-drawn unless R (Redescribe) is pressed.

The Quill has shown us how such utilities may be used - either as a basic writing aid or as a springboard for the imagination. No doubt we will see many programs using The Illustrator to no great advantage - but one or two authors will surely see the opportunities of the package (think of illustrations being constructively used as a 'dynamic' inventory or Map).

USER-DEFINED POSSIBILITIES

John Gilbert says: Why not stop playing games and do something useful instead?

The definition of a utility in computer parlance has widened in the past year. In the early days of the industry it meant a program which aided the machine code programmer to accomplish a task. Now it can have five meanings.

The first category takes in the graphics and sound toolkits. Those expand the Basic command set, adding instructions which create shapes, fill them in, and save pictures to tape or microdrive. The sound generators sometimes included within those packages can make music or even create a voice for your computer.

Machine code utilities include assemblers, disassemblers and monitors, all of which are designed to help you write your own machine code routines. If you are not up to that sort of exercise you may like to acquire a new operating system or high level language such as Pascal, Forth or C.

General utilities which will teach you the highway code, help you with car maintenance or show you how to diet efficiently are also available.

Graphics packages have the most visible effect on a Spectrum or QL, and they have proved popular this year even with people who would not normally program a computer. Light Magic, from New Generation, started the interest in all things graphical during 1985. It carried on where Melbourne Draw, from Melbourne House, and Paintbox, from Print 'n' Plotter, left off.

The program is totally menu driven and can be operated either under keyboard or joystick control. There are five modes of display. The first is pen mode in which, you can draw on the screen using an electronic nib.

Circle and Fill mode will allow you to produce circles and arcs which can then be filled in with colour. Brush mode is similar to Pen mode but you can use 10 types of brush.

The block mode operates in parts, or blocks, of the screen. It allows you to rotate and mirror blocks on pictures, saving time if you need to draw an object which is symmetrical.

Finally, the Text mode enables you to write on the screen. User-defined graphics can also be produced as a UDG generator is included in the package.

If Light Magic does not impress you then The Artist, from Softechnics surely will. It is one of the most powerful packages on the market.

The Artist can be used to take one section of a picture and reproduce it on another part of the screen, where it can be enlarged or reduced. The package will also allow you to produce UDGs and a animator utility is included within the program. Not satisfied with that the author has also included a simple routine which will take a screen display and reduce the number of RAM bytes required to store it.

Art Studio, from OCP outperforms The Artist in almost every way. It has superior speed to the Softechnics package and the pull down menus are easy to use. It can be used with disc, tape or microdrive and contains a printer driver which handles most Spectrum compatible printers. It should be of use to professional artists and designers as well as to the home user.

A similar package came onto the market for the QL. GraphiQL marked the entry of quality software house Talent onto the QL scene. Not only can the package produce every conceivable type of line, circle, are and angle, but it can also be used to define textures, using form and colour. Those can then be used with Fill routines.

The program allows you to enlarge shapes on the screen. That facility enables you to ensure that Fill texture does not leak out of a shape which has a hole in its border.

QL Art, from Eidersoft, has the same sort of facilities as GraphiQL but does not have the same professional edge to it. Unlike the Talent package it is fully menu driven. One of the faults with GraphiQL is that you must rely on the instruction manual or special help option for information about user commands.

Illustrator, from Gilsoft, is the long awaited adventure graphics designer for the Spectrum. It is no ordinary package as it produces graphic screens which can be put into adventures designed by Gilsoft's adventure design program The Quill. Although the routine can only produce static screen pictures it brightens up the adventures written by its sister program and gives adventure programmers more scope for invention.

White Lightning, from Ocean, is one of the most exciting advances in graphics design packages for the Spectrum that I have seen in the last year. Its aim is to allow you to produce high standard arcade game graphics and, in order to do that, you must use its special Forth-type language. The package combines a sprite generator with a screen layout designer. It is great fun to use and its limitations are only in the mind of the beholder.

A similar package has been produced for the QL, although Super Sprite Generator, from Digital Integration, will produce and animate only sprites and not full screen game backdrops.

The program adds extensions to SuperBasic and is run in two parts. The first is the generator and the second the animation routine. It is an excellent package which has been used by professional programmers to produce arcade games. Night Nurse from Shadow Games is one example of its use.

Only one good example of a sound toolkit came onto the market last year. Varitalk produces speech through the Spectrum Beep unit. Its performance can be enhanced using a loudspeaker or by putting the sound through a tape recorded output channel.

A large number of phonetic sounds are included in the package. Those can be accessed by using a code made up of the first letter of the type of sound required and the number of that sound from a list which has been provided on the cassette inlay. There are no parameters within the program to allow you to set emotion or inflection into the speech. You cannot even get the package to ask a question properly.

Machine code utilities may only appeal to assembly language programmers but that audience has grown larger during the past year, especially within the ranks of those who own a QL.

No less than four QL assemblers arrived on the market during 1985. The most powerful was from Metacomco. The QL Assembler Development Kit comprises a full screen editor, together with a three-pass compiler.

The editor can input ASCII code files and so can be used with code Basic programs and even word processor files. Once your assembly code listing has been entered you must save it to microdrive, or disc, and then load it into the assembler program. The package takes approximately two minutes - and three code overlays - to convert the code file into a machine code format.

Also included with the assembler is a library of QDOS calls. Those can be named within you programs. A linker was put into the second version of the assembler package at which time Metacomco dropped the price.

Computer One was also quick to produce an assembler for the QL. The difference between it and the Metacomco program is that it can be loaded into the machine complete with the source editor. You can, therefore, write your assembly program and then convert it to machine code without having to load any overlays from microdrive.

The Sinclair Research assembler is similar to that from Metacomco, but it is not as powerful. Incidentally, the full screen editor in the package was written for Metacomco. GST, the company which wrote the Sinclair assembler, just does not seem to have the knack of producing editors.

Adder Publishing was not as quick to produce an assembler package as Metacomco and Computer One but it did release one after the launch of its classic QL Advanced User Guide.

The program was similar in structure to the other products on the market but adheres closely to the notation in the User Guide Book.

It was some time before anyone realised that what the QL market was missing was a debugging tool such as a monitor or disassembler. That was soon put right, however, as four companies put monitors onto the market almost simultaneously.

The first program came from Digita1 Integration. QL Super Monitor is an economical package, put out in a cassette format box. It performs its task well and allows to view and alter code in a hexadecimal format.

Computer One was again quick on the scene with a monitor which followed, and was compatible with, its assembler package.

Not to be outdone Hi-Soft also decided that it should bring out a token QL product and opted for Andrew Pennel's QL MON. Unlike the Computer One program it is not automatically invoked when the machine is powered-up. Pennel's monitor is a QDOS job and can be called simply by typing a new SuperBasic command, MON. As it is easy to break out of the package back into SuperBasic the monitor can reside in RAM, be called at any time, and not disrupt any of the other tasks being performed by the QL.

The same technique is used in Tony Tebby's QL Monitor which is produced by Sinclair Research. The package has all the usual debugging facilities, a one line disassembler, and routines which displays the values of the registers or a block of memory in hexadecimal.

Another good feature of the package is that you can set it to run on any channel or in any window. That means that you could set up several versions of the program within the machine, each of which work on different sections of code.

You may prefer, however, not to get tangled up in the web of machine code. That does not mean, however, that you have to stick to SuperBasic, or to buying packages off the shelf. You can still experiment with QDOS and machine code by buying one of the toolkits or SuperBasic extension packages which have just become available.

The most famous toolkit, of course, was written by Tony Tebby and can be obtained for the QL from Sinclair Research. It provides a whole spectrum of new SuperBasic commands and run-alone programs which show the power of the QL multi-tasking operating system.

The main body of QL Toolkit comprises SuperBasic extensions which control jobs, allocate or clear memory, and display the status of the system.

A series of separate programs, some in SuperBasic, some machine code, are also included in the package. They provide a user-defined graphics generator, an exceptionally fast back-up utility, and a multi-tasked digital clock which can be run while the package is in operation.

One task which the toolkit will not do is to check microdrives for errors or repair files which have become corrupt. Those sort of occurrences may be well known to you. They are unfortunate but fairly regular and if you do not have a back-up copy of a file you will usually be in trouble.

The Cartridge Doctor, from Talent, does away with many of the problems posed by the microdrives. It checks every sector on a cartridge to see it any errors have occurred and informs you if files have been corrupted.

Once you know about an error you can set up the Cartridge Doctor to deal with it. The most usual way is to read the file in and display it in ASCII format. A cursor is then provided by the program and you can rewrite any parts of the file which have been damaged. You can even repair the headers of files if necessary.

Machine code is a low level language because you cannot understand it but the computer finds it easy to understand. A high level language, such as Basic, is easy to understand from your point of view - as a user - but needs some translation before the computer can understand it. There are several types of high level language for both the Spectrum and QL.

Although Sinclair Basic, for the Spectrum, is highly respected it does have some faults and one software house, Betasoft has brought out a new version of structured Basic. Many of the additions provided by Beta Basic can also be found on machines such as the BBC Microcomputer, Amstrad and QL. They include WHEN and WHILE loops, a real time clock, new graphics commands and instructions to make Interface 1 and microdrives easier to use.

The Betasoft version of Basic is one of the best on the market for any machine. It has undergone several transformations during its relatively short three-year life span.

Pascal is another popular language and can often be found in schools. Indeed it is on the curriculum of some O and A level examination boards.

The first company onto the market with a full version of the language was Hi-Soft. Although it does not have an ISO standard of certification, which most full versions of the language have, it does run many times faster than Sinclair Basic and includes Logo turtle graphics.

The big Pascal launch of the year, however, was for the QL, from Metacomco. The QL Pascal Development Kit did receive ISO standard certification - an award which is to Pascal what a BSA certificate is to car safety seats.

The Metacomco package provides a full version of the language with extensions for QL graphics and sound. The source code is taken from a full screen editor and compiled into true 68000 code.

It was the first QL product to receive a Sinclair User Classic and, indeed, it was the first utility to receive that award for software excellence.

Computer One brought out a version of Pascal which while not up to the standard of the compiler from Metacomco comes a very close second. The first version of the package compiles the source into P-code which, although faster than SuperBasic, requires the Pascal operating system to be in memory. Computer One later amended the program so that code could either be translated into P-code or compiled to form a job which would run without the operating system being present.

The compiler is more user friendly than the Metacomco package - all sections of the screen editor and compiler can be accessed through a menu based program - but the QL Pascal Development Kit wins hands down in the features race.

Metacomco and Computer One both brought out versions of the popular artificial intelligence list processing language LISP. The Computer One program is less expensive than the one from Metacomco. Both versions can deal with the QL graphics commands and both are interpreted.

The medium level language C also proved popular with QL software houses during 1985. The first company to bring out a version was GST, which is famous for the 68K/OS alternative QL operating system. Unfortunately the product is a version of public domain RATC, a scaled down version of the original with additions to allow the use of QL graphics and QDOS traps. It is, of course, a compiler but the source must first be typed into a screen editor, run through a compiler which produces assembly language source, and put through an assembler to produce 68008 code. It is an unnecessarily complex operation and the code could be compiled in one go if GST had produced a machine code compiler.

GST also ranks among the companies which brought out QL operating systems in 1985. Its 68K/OS was originally intended to be the QL operating system. The package consists of as ROM board, slotted into the expansion slot at the side of the QL, and several microdrive cartridges.

As operating systems are usually judged on the amount of software available for them 68K/OS is a dismal failure. So far GST has only produced an assembler and word processor for its baby. One wonders what would have happened if Sir Clive had decided to use the GST operating system.

The C/PM-68K operating system from disc drive manufacturer Quest Automation did little better than the GST product. A few business packages are available for it but, despite the fact that it uses discs or microdrives, few software houses have taken up the challenge to produce anything of note for it.

A large variety of DIY utilities came onto the market in 1985. They teach everything from garden design to touch typing and computer athletics.

Sinclair Research wins our first Most Useless Utility Award for 1985 with QL Gardener. While it is obvious to see the benefits of a plant dictionary and garden design package for those who like gardening, and own a QL, with the dearth of QL software the company must be green behind the ears to bring out such a product. Where are all the fantastic business and educational programs which will show off the true power of the 16-bit - or is it 32-bit - machine?

Our second MUU of 1985 award goes to Car Cure, a program which aims to diagnose the problems which you may encounter with your car. All you have to do is type in the symptoms of your vehicle's illness and the program will come up with an answer to your problems - maybe. Most of the time it just recommends that you contact a qualified mechanic immediately.

Another car-orientated program which is marginally more useful than Car Cure is Highway Code. Through a series of multi-choice questions it will teach you about the signs and situations which you may encounter on the road. The graphics are simple, but effective, and the program has been checked by a qualified driving instructor.

If you want to stay fit then Microfitness from VO2 is for you. It will take you through a series of carefully graded exercises culminating in - I hope for your sake - physical fitness. When it was reviewed early in 1985 our own Clare Edgeley found out how unfit she was!

Finally, touch typing programs for beginners came from QL software houses during the past year. Two were produced, one from Computer One and the other four months later, from Sinclair Research. Touch 'n' Go from Sinclair Research provides more in the way of graded exercises and a more complex results table.

The utility market is the area in which the QL has done best. There are many languages available for it and a host of machine code utilities which allow the use of the power of the 68008 processor and QDOS.

It is a pity that the same cannot be said of the Spectrum. Very few utilities were produced for the machine and most software houses have moved to other machines. That is unfortunate as the Spectrum still has a lot of power within it which lies untapped because people like you cannot get at it.

Superb high resolution graphics can be created with this companion to The Quill text adventure game designer.

The package adds graphic screens to Quill output. Design is accomplished with two cursors and a variety of mode menus which allow the creation of lines, arcs, points, colour and texture.

The Illustrator is a unique utility and gives Quilled games added depth, and a screen format made famous by The Hobbit. Several professional software houses have used both packages, including Delta 4 with Bored of the Rings. A greater compliment could not be paid to such an excellent package.