               AMSTRAD COMPUTER 1990 USER LISTINGS AND 10-LINERS
                         Compiled by Nicholas Campbell
               -------------------------------------------------

This instruction file is broken down into monthly sections. The programs from
January to June 1990 can be found on the file ACU1990A.DSK, and the ones from
July to December 1990 are to be found on the file ACU1990B.DSK. The file name
for each program is written in square brackets, and you can run each program by
typing RUN"filename" at the Ready prompt. A list of all the files on a .DSK
file can be shown by typing CAT at the Ready prompt. My own rating out of 5 for
each program is shown in stars. There are also brief comments on how to use
each program if it is not already explained in the program itself, and any
major changes from the original listing (e.g. bug fixes, error checking,
compatibility with BASIC 1.0) are also mentioned. I have also made changes to
the presentation of several listings by adding PAPER and PEN commands where
necessary, as well as the use of CALL &BC02 to reset the colours, but such
alterations are not mentioned.

A few programs have been omitted because their alleged authors stole someone
else's code and claimed it as their own. This is plagiarism and I do not
condone it. Sadly, ACU seemed to be very lax about this. I also find it very
hypocritical for some people to write 10-liners which I know to be their own
work, and yet send in other people's listings under their own name and even
write full-featured articles on these programs! If you look through this file
and back issues of ACU, you'll know who I'm talking about.

                                     * * *

                                  January 1990

BROKEN TV by Mark Wood [BROKENTV]                                             *
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A bit of a useless one, this. Wait for about 90 seconds whilst the screen is
blank, before the CRTC goes haywire and your monitor looks as though it's in
need of repairing. It's fun to watch - for about a minute. This program may not
work properly on some emulators.

FUTURE GAMBLER by David Hall [GAMBLER]                                      ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rather than betting on horses, future races see people betting on robots. There
are five robots, and you bet on which one will reach the finishing line first.
You start with 300 credits and the aim is to amass 10000 or more credits and
become a rich man. You can bet any amount between 1 and 100 credits at a time,
but the amount you win is random.

DISC MANAGER by Mark Wood [DISCMAN]                                         ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another disc utility to make your life easier. Select which drive you want to
use (A or B), and you can rename, erase and unerase files in different user
areas, although bizarrely, only ASCII files can be unerased. You can also boot
up CP/M from this program; make sure you have a CP/M boot disc in the drive
beforehand. It's not too bad, but there aren't that many options available.

Keys: R - rename file, E - erase file, U - unerase ASCII file, S - change user
area, D - disc directory (i.e. |DIR), C - disc catalogue (i.e. CAT), P - boot
CP/M.

MORSE CODE TELETYPE by Chris Wootton [MORSE]                                 **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type messages on the keyboard and see them being converted into Morse code on
the screen. It's interesting for a while.

FRACTAL LANDSCAPE GENERATOR by Dean Cracknell [FRA-A, FRA-B, FRA-JOIN,    *****
FRACTALS]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This utility was supplied with a three-part feature on fractals and is designed
to draw realistic fractal pictures of Norwegian fjords and similar landscapes.
The programs FRA-A.BAS and FRA-B.BAS generate two binary files, FRA-A.BIN and
FRA-B.BIN. The program FRA-JOIN.BAS joins the two files together, and saves
them as one large file called FRA-CODE.BIN, which contains the RSXs used by the
main program.

A contour map is shown on the bottom left of the screen, and a list of settings
is shown on the bottom right. The top half of the screen shows the current
view. The three boxes in the view represent the highest and lowest points of
the landscape, and the position of sea level. The map is generated from two
seed values which can be changed.

There are three types of drawing mode - wireframe, solid and mixed. Wireframe
is the quickest, solid is the slowest. Use wireframe mode for rough sketches
and solid mode for the final image. The contour/shaded mode also affects the
image; contour mode colours the image by height (like the map at the bottom
left of the screen), while shaded mode gives a more 'real life' look. You can
also choose how you want the sea to be drawn. There are three types of sea
mode - below sea, fill sea and no sea. Below sea mode draws all points below
sea level; fill sea and no sea modes don't. The auto elevation mode is used
when selecting your viewpoint, and will automatically adjust your viewing
position to the height of the point that the crosshair on the map is located
at, but this can be turned off.

To switch between box mode and drawing mode, press RETURN. Be aware that
landscapes take time to draw, and if you are in drawing mode and you make any
changes, the program will draw the landscape all over again, so use box mode to
select your viewpoint before switching to drawing mode. When drawing a
landscape, the message 'Working' appears in the settings window; when the
program has finished drawing, the time it took to draw the landscape is
displayed.

Keys: Cursor keys - move crosshairs/select viewpoint (use SHIFT and CONTROL to
move more quickly), RETURN - toggle box mode/drawing mode, I, S - increase seed
values (use SHIFT to decrease), L - increase level of detail (use SHIFT to
decrease), A - toggle auto elevation mode, W - change drawing mode, C - toggle
contour/shaded mode, H - change sea mode, : - change sky colour (can also use
SHIFT), ; - change sea colour (can also use SHIFT), COPY - save screen with
filename S0xxx.SCR where xxx is the current frame number, F - increase frame
number (use SHIFT to decrease), O - switch sea/sky on/off.

                                     * * *

                                 February 1990

WHACK ATTACK by David Hall [WHACK]                                         ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whack the moles as they pop out of their burrows, before they disappear back
into them. Great fun, with 255 skill levels ranging from extremely slow and
easy (255) to impossible (0), and lots of cuteness as well. Wait a few seconds
for the program to set up.

Keys: f1-f9 - whack mole.

The original listing only worked on BASIC 1.1, but I have altered it so that it
works on BASIC 1.0 as well.

SPIRAL NEBULA by Ian Graham [NEBULA]                                        ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Create your own nebulae and watch as it swirls in and out in a blaze of colour.
Enter a number from 0.1 to 10 - the smaller the number, the more dense the
nebulus will be, and the longer it will take to draw. Press SPACE when you want
to start the swirling, and press SPACE again to start again with another
nebulus.

DISC MENU by Chris Wootton [DISCMENU]                                        **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A short program to include on your disc collections as a menu. Run it and
select a program to run using the cursor keys and R. Why not use SPACE or
RETURN instead?

Keys: Cursor keys - select program, R - run program.

The original listing only worked on BASIC 1.1, but I have altered it so that it
works on BASIC 1.0 as well.

ESP TESTER by Steve Leak [ESP]                                              ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Test your ability to predict the future. Four coloured boxes are shown on the
screen, and you must guess which of the boxes the computer is thinking of.
After 24 goes, the computer reveals your ESP rating and a comment.

Keys - 1-4 - select box.

BLOCKADES by Marion Clarke [BLOCKADE] - BASIC 1.1 only                     ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A board game for two players which requires strategy. Each player starts with
five counters, and the aim is to get a counter to the top of the screen before
your opponent. There are blockades which block your path, and you cannot pass
them unless you can move on top of them with the correct roll of the die; this
allows you to move the blockade elsewhere on the board and block your opponent.
Moving on top of one of your opponent's counters sends it back to the start.

Keys: Cursor keys - select/move counter/blockade, SPACE - take counter, small
ENTER - drop counter, DEL - abort move, K - list controls, S - quit.

ACU PROOFREADER by Aimo Niemi [PROOF]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACU's program to check that you've typed in listings from ACU correctly. Type
in your listing, and after typing each line and pressing RETURN, a proofcode
appears in brackets. If it doesn't match the proofcode printed in the magazine,
you've typed that line wrongly.

                                     * * *

                                   March 1990

CAMPANOLOGY by H. W. Silcock [CAMPANOL]                                     ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A nice bell-ringing rendition of the Grandsire Triples for you to listen to. It
also prints the bell numbers as they're ringing.

STOCK MARKET by Matthew Pinder [STOCKMAR]                                    **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Make money on the stock market by buying and selling shares in five companies.
You start with a random amount of money between 1500 and 2000, and you've got
just five minutes to make a profit. To buy shares, press B and then RETURN,
and enter the number of the company you wish to buy shares in. To sell shares,
use the same procedure, but enter S instead of B. To update share prices, press
RETURN.

The original listing lacked some error-checking routines, but I have added
some. I have also removed the annoying beep that was heard every time shares
were updated.

LIVE WIRE by David Hall [LIVEWIRE]                                         ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A simple yet effective demonstration of colour cycling. Draw a line all over
the screen with the joystick and watch it come to life in a blaze of colour.
It's fascinating to watch.

Keys: Joystick - draw line, Fire - change colour of line, SPACE - start colour
cycling.

SNAKE by Peter Simon [SNAKE]                                              *****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guide the snake around the screen and eat the mice while trying not to crash
into the walls or yourself! As you eat more mice, the snake grows longer and
there is less room to manoeuvre. Not only that, but walls also begin to form,
making movement even more restricted. This is one of the best games in ten
lines that I've played, although it is written entirely in machine code, and
the DATA statements are base-64 encoded to squeeze even more code into ten
lines - a nightmare to type in, but the result is worth it. There are six skill
levels as well. Wait 20 seconds for the program to set up.

Keys: A - up, Z - down, N - left, M - right; keys can be re-defined.

LOCOMOTION by Andrew Price [LOCOMOTI]                                         *
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Five toys - a boat, car, ball, shoe and duck - are placed at the bottom of the
screen, and one of these toys is chosen at random and moves from left to right
at the top of the screen. You have to judge when it moves over the same toy at
the bottom and press SPACE as it does so, and this happens 30 times in total.
However, you can just cheat and hold down the SPACE bar permanently, and get
maximum points, which makes the game rather useless.

LISTCAT by Andrew Price [LISTCAT]                                             *
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A utility to help you remember what the files on all your discs are for, by
writing notes about each of them. It's a shame, then, that it's cumbersome and
extremely unintuitive to use.

After running the program, a catalogue of the current disc is displayed. Enter
L to load any previously saved notes for this disc, or I to insert new notes.
If you insert a new note, you must then enter a filename and an explanatory
note for this file. You are asked if it is OK; if it is, enter Y, otherwise
enter N. If it is OK, you can enter another note; if you want to stop and save
all the notes to disc, enter N; this also quits the program.

If you load any previously saved notes, you can either edit them by entering E,
or list the notes for all the files by entering L. After listing the notes, you
can run the program again by entering R, or quit the program by entering E.
Editing the notes takes you back to the start of the program, where you must
enter I to insert new notes; the word 'edit' is misleading since you can't
delete any notes that you have previously entered. The file containing the
notes is saved in a secret user area with the filename CATLIST1.BIN.

There were some errors in the original listing, but I have fixed all of them.

ACCOUNTANCY by David Weller [ACCOUNTS]                                     ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keep track of up to ten accounts, along with sales records and invoicing
facilities. The presentation is rather poor but some of you may find it useful.

There were some errors in the original listing, but I have fixed all of them.

                                     * * *

                                   April 1990

NOTE: The 10-liner "National Anthem" made its second appearance in this issue
under Mark Crawford's name, despite the fact that ACU had already been told
that it had appeared before in the March 1989 issue and that Mark was
plagiarising other people's work by calling it his own. Another example of
ACU's well-renowned competence...

KEYSET by John Bradley [KEYSET]                                             ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A set of keyboard shortcuts letting you enter the most frequent BASIC commands
at the touch of two buttons. The shortcuts and the commands they run are:

CONTROL+f0 - MODE 0    CONTROL+f4 - CLS      CONTROL+f8 - LOAD"
CONTROL+f1 - MODE 1    CONTROL+f5 - LIST     CONTROL+f9 - CAT
CONTROL+f2 - MODE 2    CONTROL+f6 - EDIT     CONTROL+COPY - set screen to
CONTROL+f3 - RUN       CONTROL+f7 - SAVE"     MODE 2 and inks to blue and grey

REMEMBER by Darren Kierman [REMEMBER]                                        **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Watch carefully as words flash randomly on the screen, and enter the last word
that was displayed. There are ten goes, and your score is displayed at the end.
It would be better if there were more words and it wasn't so easy.

SPACE RACE by Duncan Macfarlane [SPACERAC]                                 ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guide your spacecraft to the space station through the onslaught of meteorites
and dock with the space station at the other end. The graphics are simple but
it's great fun to play.

Keys: Z - left, X - right, or cursor keys or joystick.

There was an error in the original listing, but I have fixed it.

TOWER OF BRAHMA by Chris Wootton [TOWER]                                     **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Move all the rings from one of the three columns to another column, without
putting a larger ring on top of a smaller ring; you should be familiar with
this puzzle. There are six skill levels; level 1 has three rings, while level 6
has eight. It's quite challenging, but there's no colour at all!

The original listing lacked some error-checking routines, but I have added
some.

LIFE by "Auntie" John Kennedy [LIFE, LIFE-BAS]                             ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Conway's game of Life has fascinated people since its creation in 1970.
The rules of the game are simple; a new cell is created if it has three
neighbours, and a cell needs two or three neighbours to survive - any more or
less and it dies. However, these two rules lead to some very interesting
formations. You can create your own Life formations, or watch the outcome of
some randomly generated formations. The program is written in machine code, but
a BASIC version (LIFE-BAS.BAS) is also included for the purpose of showing how
much faster it is when it's written in machine code! Wait 7 seconds for the
program to set up.

Keys: Cursor keys - move cursor, CONTROL - add cell, COPY - delete cell, C -
clear screen, R - generate random cell formation, G - start generating, SPACE -
return to editing mode, ESC - quit.

YETCHA by Paul Wilson [YETCHA]                                            *****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Does the name sound familiar? It's a version of the dice game Yahtzee, where
you score points by matching certain dice combinations. Up to six players can
take part, and full instructions are included in the game.

There was an error in the original listing, but I have fixed it.

                                     * * *

                                    May 1990

NOTE: Nick Hutton's "Sound Lab", which made an appearance in this issue, is in
fact a copy of RpM's "Digitiser" program which appeared on an Amstrad Action
covertape. He even had the cheek to write a feature on how to use it - and this
is despite a 10-liner of his appearing in the same issue of ACU. He went on to
do the same thing again in a few months.

ROCK DANGEROUS by David Hall [ROCKDANG]                                     ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earth is being bombarded with rocks from outer space. Each of them has a letter
engraved on them, and you must press the correct letter on the keyboard before
the rock reaches the ground and destroys our planet completely - and there are
500 rocks. There are two skill levels.

The original listing only worked on BASIC 1.1, but I have altered it so that it
works on BASIC 1.0 as well.

SCREEN INVERT by David Hall [SCRINV]                                        ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A short routine which turns the screen upside-down - useful for people who live
in Australia! Type CALL 40000 to use it.

CIRCLE WRITER by M. Foster [CIRCLE]                                        ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This routine takes a string and fits it perfectly on to the circumference of a
circle. It takes some time but the results are interesting. The text is stored
in line 10 as TEXT$, and the following variables are stored in line 20. le and
he adjust the width and height of the circle, th adjusts the size of the text,
and col changes the colour the text is written in.

RAINBOW-SCAPE by Chris Wootton [RAINBOW]                                    ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A graphic demo which draws a rainbow rising over some hills; a little
relaxation for you. The picture takes 39 seconds to draw.

THE SINGER by Richard Sheppard [SINGER]                                       *
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Watch a blocky face sing along to the music that's being played on your CPC's
cassette player. It's not as convincing or exciting as it seems. This program
may not work properly on some emulators.

ODD ONE OUT by Matthew Pinder [ODD1OUT]                                      **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find the odd word out from a list of four. There are only sixteen sets of words
and it's far too easy. There isn't enough to make it interesting.

SKULLS by Nick Hutton [SKULLS]                                            *****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A brilliant and scary graphic demo; three skulls, hanging from hooks, are drawn
on the screen, and then an eerie glow emanates from them! Turn the lights off
for the best effect. The skulls take 69 seconds to draw.

                                     * * *

                                   June 1990

ALPHABETICAL SORTING by Andrew Dagnall [ALPHSORT]                           ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A useful routine which sorts words into alphabetical order. Enter ten words or
phrases and let the program do the rest for you. Changing the variable n in
line 40 allows more words to be entered. An alternative routine which makes use
of the @ pointer symbol is also offered; see line 90 for more.

There was an error in the original listing, but I have fixed it.

6128 COLOUR DEMO by John Bradley [6128COL] - BASIC 1.1 only                 ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not the most original name for a graphic demo, but this program draws a series
of spirals which are created from polygons, starting with triangles and
progressing through to decagons (ten-sided shapes). Each spiral is then
animated using colour cycling.

MASTERMIND by George Ho-Yow [MASTMIND]                                     ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Try to guess a four-digit number in seven goes. The computer tells you how
close you are to getting the number correct. A W means that a digit is in the
number but in the wrong position; a B means that a digit is in the correct
position. To get the correct number, you need to get Bs in every position. If
you want to alter the difficulty level, change the values of wid and lvl in
line 20. wid is the number of digits, and lvl affects how many goes you get;
increasing lvl gives you more goes.

SHOOT by A. Davidson [SHOOT] - BASIC 1.1 only                                **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shoot the targets that appear on the screen with the crosshairs. You only have
20 shots, so be careful not to waste them.

Keys: Cursor keys - move crosshairs, SPACE - fire.

BANNER by J. R. Kenworthy [BANNER]                                          ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Print out large banners on an Epson-compatible printer. Enter the message you
want to print out and the computer does the rest. If you want compressed print,
remove the apostrophe in line 40.

TUNNEL by Andrew Dagnall [TUNNEL]                                            **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A tunnel lurks somewhere beneath the surface of the Earth, but no-one has ever
escaped from it, and when you look at this, you'll see why. Watch as lines are
drawn from the centre of the screen, gradually forming a series of concentric
circles. Every few seconds, the circles appear to move in and out as they
change colour.

SQUEAKER by J. Wilson [SQUEAKER]                                          *****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Help the poor squirrel escape from the pit and back up the tree where he
belongs by clambering on to giant snowflakes as they fall from the sky and into
the pit. These giant snowflakes hurt the little squirrel, though, so watch out!
There are eight skill levels. Wait 21 seconds for the program to set up.

Keys: Cursor keys.

                                     * * *

                                   July 1990

EINE KLEINE PORSCHE by George Fagg [PORSCHE] - BASIC 1.1 only              ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dodge the cars as you zoom along a three-lane road in your Porsche. At first,
the speed is slow, but as the Porsche gains speed all the time, the game
becomes a lot harder - and you can't slow it down. You win the game when you
reach a score of 2603 points. The movement of the other cars is predictable,
but when you consider that the game is written in ten lines of BASIC, the
graphics and sound effects are actually relatively good. After the title
screen, the screen goes blank for about 8 seconds.

Keys: Z - left, \ - right.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY by Chris Wootton [BIRTHDAY]                                  ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now you don't have to leave your CPC out when it comes to your birthday
celebrations. This program plays a little rendition of Happy Birthday for you,
and flashes the words "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" on the screen.

LAMP by Nick Hutton [LAMP]                                                  ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A strange graphic demo, which draws a lamp and an eerie silhouette of some
prison doors, and by pressing any key, you can change the colour of the
lightbulb. It's almost like a disco.

SCREEN BOUNCER by Chris Wootton [BOUNCE]                                    ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two RSXs which bounce the screen left and right. |BOUNCE.ON turns the effect on
and |BOUNCE.OFF turns it off. It's amusing for a while, but it'll make your
eyes go funny if you watch it for too long. This program may not work properly
on some emulators.

DOM-S-DOS by Nick Hutton [DOM-SDOS]                                         ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nice name! This is a disc management program which can catalogue discs, rename
and erase files, view files that have been erased, move files to another user
area, identify the format of a disc, and run programs.

The original listing wasn't actually a 10-liner, but it has been altered to
fit into ten lines. It also lacked some error-checking routines, but I have
added some.

SQUASH by Marc Eade [SQUASH]                                                 **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A screen file normally takes up 17K of disc space, and this program tries to
reduce the size of your screens. Unfortunately, it's written in BASIC, which
means it's really slow; it takes roughly four minutes to compress a screen, and
two minutes to decompress it. Furthermore, you can't decompress the screens
from your own programs; you have to use this program to decompress them.
Compressed screens are saved with the .ARC extension.

DISCFIND by Niall Brady [DISCFIND]                                         ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the hackers among you, here are two RSXs which search your discs for a
particular message or sequence of bytes. The RSXs are:

|ASC,start track,end track,start sector
|HEX,start track,end track,start sector

|ASC searches for a message, while |HEX searches for sequences of bytes. To
search an entire disc, enter 0 as the start track and 39 as the end track. The
start sector is &C1 for data format discs and &41 for system format discs. The
program is supposed to be able to cope with some 'funny format' discs as well,
which is why you need to enter a start sector. After entering the RSX, you will
be asked to enter the message or sequence of bytes that you wish to search for.
To pause the search, press ESC, and press ESC again to quit.

FORMAT by G. Farmer [FORMAT]                                               ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another disc formatter which formats discs to either data or system format.
This one also shows you a cut-out of the disc and indicates the progress of the
formatting by highlighting the formatted tracks in red.

The original listing only worked on BASIC 1.1, but I have altered it so that it
works on BASIC 1.0 as well.

                                     * * *

                                  August 1990

PUZZLE by Chris Dunn [PUZZLE]                                               ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Slide fifteen letters, from A to O, around a 4x4 grid so that they are arranged
in alphabetical order.

Keys: Cursor keys.

DUMP by John Bradley [DUMP]                                                 ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This utility lets you search through the CPC's memory, and displays its
contents in both hexadecimal and ASCII on the screen. The contents can also be
sent to the printer.

Keys: Cursor keys - previous/next page (use SHIFT to move 10 pages), P - send
screen contents to printer, Q - quit.

ENDLESS by Bill Hamley [ENDLESS]                                           ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A rather impressive kaleidoscope which just keeps on going; it really is
endless. Watch as ever more colourful patterns appear.

CROSS by Roger Swaine [CROSS]                                               ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you were a fan of The Crystal Maze, you may remember a puzzle where a word
was contained within an unsymmetrical cross, and it had to be shifted from one
line to the other by moving letters one at a time. You have to do the same
thing here. You have three minutes in which to move the word "MACHINE" from the
vertical line to the horizontal line. It can be done, but it's not quite as
easy as you might think.

Keys: M, A, C, H, I, N, E - select letter, cursor keys - move selected letter.

BALLS-IN-THE-AIR by Bill Hamley [BALLS]                                      **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A graphic demo which draws a sphere using lots of coloured dots and then
animates it. Press ESC to stop the animation and turn the sphere back into
multi-coloured dots.

NUMBER CIRCLE by Roger Swaine [NUMCIRC]                                     ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another puzzle borrowed from "The Crystal Maze". There are four concentric
circles, each containing four sets of numbers, and you have three minutes in
which to get all the numbers in the four radial lines to add up to 9, by
turning one of the four circles clockwise or anticlockwise. It's tricky on your
first few goes, but the four sets of numbers are the same in every game; it
would have been better if random sets of numbers were chosen each time you
played it.

Use the left and right cursor keys to select one of the four circles, and the
up and down cursor keys to turn that circle anticlockwise and clockwise
respectively.

ENVELOPE DATA PRINTER by William Bromfield [ENVELOPE]                      ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Print addresses on envelopes more easily with this utility. You can enter, save
and load up to 100 addresses and print them out. From the menu, you can input
addresses, list all the addresses to either the screen or the printer, receive
information and send it to either the screen or printer, save and load data,
and there's also a disc utility allowing you to select either disc (drive A or
B) or tape, erase and rename any files you've saved, catalogue a disc or tape,
and even change the colours. The program saves files with the .WMB extension.

At the start of the program, you'll be asked if you want to adjust the left and
top margins. Option 2 lists the names of the people you have addresses of on
the screen or printer. To print out a full address, select option 3 and enter a
person's name, to print their address to either the screen or printer.

                                     * * *

                                 September 1990

MAZE by Paul Waterman [MAZE]                                               ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find the exit from the randomly generated maze within 100 seconds. You can
watch the maze being generated, but the map disappears as soon as it's
finished generating. You can only see a small portion of the maze at any time,
although the map at the bottom of the screen shows the exit and traces the
route that you have taken so far. The time limit is represented by a flashing
bar on the right. It's a bit easy and you should have no problem completing
most, if not all, of the mazes, but there is a very nice screen effect when you
win! Each maze takes about 30 seconds to draw.

Keys: Cursor keys.

CITY by Laurence Rapaccioli [CITY]                                          ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See a city at night, with the lights from the skyscrapers illuminating the
night sky. This program draws some skyscrapers and their reflections shimmering
in the nearby river. Pressing any key alternates between day and night. It
looks nice by night, but the colour scheme by day is horrible.

SPACE AUTHS by Alan Scully [SPACAUTH]                                        **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shoot the alien as many times as you can as it bounces about the screen. Alan
even managed to get a plug in for his PD library; one of many examples of his
arrogance which eventually led to his departure from the CPC scene. With
programs like this, it's not surprising. This is a mediocre game with very
primitive graphics.

Keys: Joystick.

MUSIC GALORE by Laurence Rapaccioli [MUSICGAL]                             ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Five sound effects are here to listen to - running music, mysterious music,
fire engine noises, a crazy rocket, and random spooky noises. All of the
effects are very good indeed.

DISC MENU by S. McCully [DISCMENU]                                            *
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a response to Chris Wootton's original "Disc Menu" program in the February
1990 issue of ACU, here's another menu program that doesn't use any machine
code. In fact, all it does is catalogue a disc and ask which file you want to
run - rather useless.

METRIC/IMPERIAL CONVERSION by Chris Wootton [CONVERT]                      ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Convert between metric and imperial units easily. A total of 22 options are on
offer. Despite this number of options, the program is small and quick.

There was an error in the original listing, but I have fixed it.

ROM DUMP by Nick Hutton [ROMDUMP]                                            **
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I don't know if Nick stole this listing from someone else as he did with his
two other 'efforts', so I've allowed this one in. It displays the contents of
the upper or lower ROMs in either hexadecimal or ASCII. If you want to output
the data to the printer, select option 1 and enter 8 as the output device. To
output it to the screen, enter 0 (this is the default option).

There were some errors in the original listing, but I have fixed all of them.

SORCEROR'S CASTLE by Jonathan Pugh [SORCEROR]                             *****
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Guide the young mage around the Sorceror's castle and collect the orbs. There
are six rooms to explore in the castle, but the orbs are guarded by monsters,
and contact with any of them loses one of your three lives. You must also make
sure you don't run out of magic force; this is represented by the colour of the
"MAGIC FORCE" message at the bottom of the screen. Collecting the magic spells
increases your magic force. Your magic force is depleted when you are hovering
above the ground, and when you are casting protective spells to fend off the
monsters. A fantastic game with bright and cute graphics, although the sound
effects aren't very good. Wait 54 seconds for the program to set up.

Keys: Cursor keys or joystick - move, COPY, Fire - cast protective spell, P -
pause, SPACE - resume.

                                     * * *

                                  October 1990

SPACE STORM II by David Hall [SPACEST2]                                    ****
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Guide the cute little alien through the oncoming barrage of green meteors - or
blobs. If you crash, the game is over. The game features colourful graphics and
parallax scrolling (wow!), but it's too hard. A bar on the right of the screen
shows the distance you have yet to clear. Wait 7 seconds for the program to set
up.

Keys: Cursor keys or joystick.

LOVE ME TENDER by Chris Bradshaw [LMTENDER]                                   *
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A poor rendition of Elvis' romantic ballad, with lyrics and a red and green
flashing border to accompany it. Not very romantic, if you ask me.

QUADRATIC EQUATION SOLVER by Chris Wootton [QUADSOLV]                       ***
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Solve quadratic equations (equations of the form ax^2+bx+c = n) easily. Enter
the values of a, b and c, separated by commas, and you'll be given the
solution(s), if there are any. It can't calculate solutions for imaginary
numbers, though (that's a mathematical term, by the way).

NAMER by Richard Osborne [NAMER]                                            ***
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Enter your name and age and watch it scroll along the screen from left to right
in large letters. The colour scheme depends on the length of your name, and the
texture that the letters are drawn with depends on your age. This program may
not work properly on some emulators.

The original listing only worked on BASIC 1.1, but I have altered it so that it
works on BASIC 1.0 as well.

GEOGRAPHY TEST by Matthew Pinder [GEOGTEST]                                  **
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Test your knowledge of capital cities with this quiz. There are only 24 cities
and countries, so once you've learnt them all, the game becomes too easy.

CASSETTE INLAY PRINTER by J. R. Kenworthy [CASSETTE]                        ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Print your own cassette inlays with up to 25 entries on each side. Enter the
data for side 1 first, and when you're finished, enter SIDE 2 or END to go to
side 2. Now enter the data for side 2 and enter END to start printing. If you
need to print more copies of the same inlay, press TAB when the program has
finished printing.

CONNECT 4 by David Hall [CONNECT4]                                        *****
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A very good version of Connect 4 for two players. Take turns to insert counters
one at a time and try to get four of your counters in a row, either
horizontally, vertically and diagonally. Player 1's counters are blue and
player 2's counters are red. This game stands out from other Connect 4 games
thanks to the excellent graphics. Wait 7 seconds for the program to set up.

Keys: 1-7 - insert counter in column.

DICE by V. J. Willmore [DICE]                                                **
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This program rolls an imaginary die a random number of times and then displays
the results in the form of a bar chart, complete with lots of squeaky sound
effects. Quite useless, but you'll see that there isn't an equal chance that
each number will be rolled.

The original listing only worked on BASIC 1.1, but I have altered it so that it
works on BASIC 1.0 as well.

TRAP by Rakesh Borhara [TRAP]                                              ****
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Another appearance for this great Tron clone. Stay within the confines of the
board and try to avoid hitting the other player's trail. Unlike many other Tron
games, though, you are allowed to cross your own trail. You can choose the size
of the board, and the sound effects are great as well!

Keys: Player 1 (red): joystick; player 2 (green): L - up, . - down, / - left,
\ - right.

CHUG by Stephen McCormick [CHUG]                                             **
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Drive your car around three laps of four tracks - Beginner's Luck,
Silverstunned, Doctorin' Da Track, and Brands Hitch. Don't crash into the
walls, and watch your fuel gauge; you'll need to refuel after each lap. To
refuel, just pull up at the petrol pump at a speed of 50km/h or less. You'll be
disqualified if you try to go the wrong way round the track, and if you're too
slow, you'll lose points. This is a poor game which moves very slowly and has
very basic graphics.

Keys: A - accelerate, Z - brake, < - left, > - right.

                                     * * *

                                 November 1990

TRON by David Hall [TRON]                                                  ****
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After last month's "Trap", here's another brilliant version of Tron written in
machine code. Who can survive the longest? Player 1 (Tom) controls the green
line, and player 2 (Jerry) controls the red line. The first player to score
nine points wins. Wait 7 seconds for the program to set up.

Keys: Tom: f8 - up, f2 - down, f4 - left, f6 - right; Jerry: joystick; Fire -
start game.

SHADOWS by J. Arrowsmith [SHADOWS]                                           **
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A short graphic demo which displays the word "SHADOWS" on the screen, with a
shadow behind it, and which then moves a block from left to right, between the
text but in front of the shadow. Erm, and that's it.

COLOUR SCRIBBLE by Gareth Bownes [COLSCRIB]                                   *
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One of the dullest 10-liners I've ever seen. It draws some random lines on the
screen, all in the same colour, and then it flashes and changes the colours a
bit - yawn.

PRINTER CONTROL RSXS by Daniel Griffin [PRNTCONT]                           ***
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Three RSXs to make using a printer easier:

|PRNT,@a$ (a$="something":|PRNT,@a$ for CPC464 owners)
|LF
a%=0:|CHK,@a%

|PRNT is the same as PRINT#8, but is shorter to type in. |LF sends a line feed
to the printer, and |CHK checks whether the printer is on-line or not.

HEIGHT by Chris Wootton [HEIGHT]                                            ***
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Write text in double, triple and quadruple height with this little routine. The
routine is stored in lines 70 to 100. text$ contains the string you want to
print, xp and yp are the x- and y-coordinates to print the text, and h is the
height of the text (2 for double height, 3 for triple height, etc.). A
demonstration is included in the program.

SHOOT-'EM-UP by Paul Faulkner [SHOOTMUP]                                      *
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A very simple, and very slow, example of a shoot-'em-up. You control the white
blob and must shoot the oncoming aliens, represented as light blue @ symbols.
The collision detection is terrible - your bullets often pass straight through
the aliens - and when you fire several bullets, the game slows to a crawl.

Keys: Q - up, A - down, O - left, P - right, SPACE - fire.

WORD-MAN by Chris Wootton [WORD-MAN]                                        ***
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Guess the correct word using as few letters as possible; it's similar to
hangman except that you are given more guesses. Nice enough, but there are only
14 words.

COMPUTOTE by R. E. Jones [COMPTOTE]                                         ***
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This utility is an aid for fund-raising events, be they sports day races,
quizzes, or table-top games. You can enter data for up to twenty competitors
and how many tickets have been sold for each competitor, and ticket prices can
be adjusted. The percentage of the income from the tickets going to the first,
second and third place competitors can be changed, although make sure the
organisation gets some money back! A horse racing game is also included for
your entertainment, and can be used should the event be cancelled due to bad
weather or some other cause. Full instructions are included in the program.

                                     * * *

                                 December 1990

DOWN STREAM by Robin Gilbert [STREAM]                                         *
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Guide the fish through the river and avoid touching the banks. This is an awful
game with very jerky scrolling, unresponsive controls, and dull graphics, and 
the river is too narrow, making the game too difficult.

Keys: Cursor keys.

UP THE LADDER by Robin Gilbert [UPLADDER]                                   ***
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A two-player game which requires a lot of strategic thinking. Take turns to
move either 1, 2 or 3 rungs up the ladder at a time, and try to reach the top
rung first. It sounds boring, but it isn't.

The original listing only worked on BASIC 1.1, but I have altered it so that it
works on BASIC 1.0 as well.

MERLIN by David Hall [MERLIN]                                              ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of those memory games where you have to recall a sequence of flashing
lights which grows longer with each turn. The game starts with three lights,
but it won't be long before it becomes really taxing.

Keys: Cursor up - select red light, cursor down - select blue light, cursor
left - select yellow light, cursor right - select green light.

FILE COPIER 3.5" <-> 3" by Jack Whiteley [FILECOPY]                           *
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This utility doesn't really copy files from drive A or B and vice versa.
Instead, it creates a 'boot disc' which is run from CP/M+ and which copies or
moves files. First, you'll need to format a 3" disc to system format using
DISCKIT3. Then, using CP/M+'s PIP utility, copy the following files from your
CP/M+ master disc to the boot disc, and make them read only and system (hidden)
using the SET command: C10CPM3.EMS, AMSDOS.COM, ERASE.COM, PIP.COM, SET.COM,
SUBMIT.COM, and PROFILE.SUB. This last file must contain the line "SUBMIT
COPY.SUB". The program itself should be saved on to the boot disc as DISC.BAS
or another name, and again set to read only and system with the SET command.

That's just the start, though. When you've done all of the above, run this
program, which will ask for the source drive (A or B), the user area where the
source files are located (from 0 to 15), and the user area where the files will
go on the destination drive. It then catalogues the source drive and asks you
which files you want - you can use the wildcard characters * and ?. Finally, it
will ask you whether these files are to be moved or copied, and when you've
answered that, it will create a file called COPY.SUB on the boot disc and boot
into CP/M+ to perform the operation.

You might well be thinking, "This is all extremely technical and cumbersome."
You're absolutely right. Why bother with all of this when there are disc and
file copying programs available which are much easier to use?

The original listing used a command only available on the Utopia ROM, but I
have modified it for non-Utopia owners.

MUSIC by Shabaz Yousaf [MUSIC]                                               **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An irritating interrupt-driven piece of music which plays in the background
while you're doing something else. Press ESC to exit from the scrolling message
and return to BASIC. A word of warning; don't use the CAT command while the
music is playing, or the computer will crash. Wait 7 seconds for the program to
set up.

MIXER by Allan Adams [MIXER]                                                 **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You may have come across the technique of hatching or stippling, where a
pattern of pixels with two different colours is used to create what looks like
a new colour. This program shows all the combinations of colours on offer and
goes through them in quick succession.

There was an error in the original listing, but I have fixed it.

SOLITUDE by David Hall [SOLITUDE]                                          ****
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remove the pegs from the board by moving one peg over another, eventually
leaving just one peg in the centre. Colourful graphics add to this game's
appeal, but I'm not convinced it's possible to complete the puzzle, myself!
If you're stuck, select the "Quit" icon at the bottom right of the screen.

Keys: Cursor keys - move arrow, SPACE - select peg.

THE GAME WITH DICE by Stephen Battey [GAMEDICE]                              **
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A dice game for two or three players who take it in turns to roll four dice.
The person who scores the most wins that round, and the first player to score
ten points wins the game. In the two-player game, you score one point for
winning and lose one point for losing, while in the three-player game, you
score two points for winning and lose one point for losing.

Keys: SPACE - roll dice.
