



By: Franco Gaetan


GCDraw Version 1


Welcome t GCDraw version 1. I'm very happy you decided to download it and give it a try.
GCDraw was written for game development for an object and background editor. I started this
project in 1995 and I finally finished it in late 1996. Learning how to do things and making them
always better was an ongoing problem.

It was originally written on Qbasic to get the logic down and then it required speed so off to write
it in C. This 16 pixel version was created as a need, right now I am porting it to a 32 pixel
version as we speak. I hope you like it and its useful for you as well as have some fun with it.


Getting Started

When you start GCDRAW.EXE your basic introduction screen appears and all that jazz. Make
sure you have a Mouse driver loaded and you should be fine. It doesn't require much memory
since it only allocates 256 bytes for each object and a total of 100 objects. 

Loading your first SAMPLE1 program.


After you have the program loaded press the "L" key to prompt for loading your first sample.
Enter the name "SAMPLE1" and press Enter. You should see the Image appear on the grid as
well as to the right of it. This is you main view. Since I found that drawing freehand required a
lot of steady hand movement I decided to make the grid and use a snap set-up. 

Picking up colours is done with the Right mouse button and drawing them with the left. This
saves you time since you don't need to go back and pick the colours again once you start
drawing. At the top right you will see 3 rows of letters, these represent SP=Sprite, RW=Row and
FG which is a flag to see if any data exists.  While in this mode you can also press  V' for View
to see all the objects. Use the numeric key pad Plus(+) and Minus (-) to move left and right
through the objects and Page Up or Page Down to move vertically through them.








Animation

Animation is quite easy to do, I made it that way because I wanted to see my results immediately.
Press  L' again and load file  SAMPLE2' when you have it loaded press  V' to see all the objects
I created to make sure they are there. Press any key to return to the Draw screen and move
down(Page Down) to Row 3 Sprite 6 (+ key). Now you should be on a torch of some sort. If you
press the Plus key you will see 2 other torches slightly different. Take notes of the SP or sprite
number and notice that the start of the torch starts at 6 and ends at 8. Its a small animation so lets
see how it works.

Press the letter  A' and it will prompt you for  Start' enter the number 6 since that where it starts
and press ENTER. Now it asks for destination and enter the number 8 and press Enter. Now It
will ask you for speed. Speed is determined by you 1 - is fast and 8 is slow so pick 2 and press
Enter. Now you should see the smaller shape to the right animating, ever so crudely but hey your
probably a better drawer than me. Press any key to start the animation. There was no need to
animate the object in the grid since it wasn't the actual size.



Copying 

There are 2 different types of copy within GCDraw. One in single object to single object
anywhere within 10 x 10 and the other copies a whole row. The only important thing to know is
that a copy of a row also works between files. So if you have created a row of animations in 1 file
and you want all of those in another file you just use F5 once on the Source file, then load the
destination file and press F5 again and pick the row you want them copied to. That's it.


Layout Screen

This is not covered in the Shareware version. It basically in a layout area for making screens for
games. If you load SAMPLE1 or SAMPLE2 and press F8 you'll see what I use it for. You need
to get the rest of the file structures in the full version to know and how to read them.


More Docs In the Full Version...................
Custom Text Scroller also come with full version.

Franco Gaetan
E-Mail: franco@globalserve.net
URL: http://www.globalserve.net/~franco



Mail Address:

Gaetan Computers
B.O. Box 93140
Burlington, Ontaio
Canada
L7M 3Z0


