A USERS GUIDE TO "FLASH" by Dave Tonks In the following article, my aim is to show what can be done with FLASH, and perhaps clarify some of the shortcoming of the manual. It is not meant to be the definitive manual, and I suggest that using this article as a guide, you experiment for yourselves. I shall take you through out the various menus and icons one at a time, and explain any extras that I have found on the way. The controls that I shall be using are the default ones, which are, Q=UP S=DOWN I=LEFT O=RIGHT M=SET N=UNSET The cursors can also be used for the directions and I will explain the joystick option when I get to the relevant menu. The other thing to mention is that I shall be explaining the screen in MODE 4 only, even though FLASH can handle all 4 modes. This will not only simplify the text, but most people will want to use MODE 4 as their main screen resolution. THE TOP MENU BAR Left to right this reads:- FILE, PRINT, BLOCK, BLOCK 2, MODES, FONT, SCREEN In all the options on the top menu bar, placing the pointer on the option and pressing UP brings down a sub-menu. FILE DRIVE.. Highlight with the pointer and press M to change this to TAPE. This specifies the Load/Save device. LOAD.. This option gives you a directory of the current disc in drive one and asks for an input. Input the name of the file you wish to load and press RETURN. The file will be loaded and you will be returned to the main workscreen. SAVE.. As you would imagine, this has the opposite effect to LOAD. Again a directory is given, and you are asked for a file name. Your screen is then saved under this name to disc. On the standard FLASH, the screen is saved as a code file, but there have been mods published in the mag that allow a SCREEN$ to be saved. (see COLOUR OK). VERIFY.. Highlighting this and pressing M will verify that the screen has been saved to disc correctly. I have had myself, occasions on which this didn't work, although the file was OK. CAT.. This simply does a dir of the disc and then returns to the program. In some versions the CAT has been changed to DIR. ERASE.. Again a DIR is given and a file name requested. The file is then erased from the disc. QUIT.. Quits the program. If you have used mods published in the mag, the QUIT option may have been changed to MENU. This gives a further sub-menu which I won't go into here. PRINT FINAL.. DRAFT.. I've put these 2 items together as they are toggled from one to the other. When the menu is first brought down, the DRAFT will be highlighted. Put the pointer on the word FINAL and press M and the word FINAL is now highlighted. This is the control for the quality of the printout. Draft gives a fairly quick one pass print, whilst Final gives a much more professional 2 pass print, but of course takes longer. LARGE DUMP.. SMALL DUMP.. These 2 printout options give the same effect, but in different sizes. Anything in pen 15 is left as white paper and all other colours are printed as black. This has limited use on colour pictures as a silhouette type picture usually results. They are more use when printing out a black/white line drawing. GREY DUMP L.. GREY DUMP S.. These 2 dumps give 2 sizes of "coloured" dump. How it works is that every pen is given a dot pattern, from a plain white for pen 15 to a solid black for pen 0. This means that a coloured picture will print out "shaded" on the printer to give the effect of the colours used. Using the large option will print the screen sideways on an A4 sheet of paper, whilst the small prints the right way up but not as deep. The print routine is set up for epson compatible printers, and I have printed out on both the Amstrad 2000/3000 range as well as the Star LC200 and the epson FX/RX series. I'm afraid that if your printer is not compatible with FLASH, there is little I have found that can be done to modify the program to suit your setup. BLOCK This is the main and singly most useful section of the program, as it has most of the block move facilities within it. A block is a section of screen that is user defined, which can then be moved, copied, twisted etc. WHOLE BLOCK.. Highlight this a nd press M and the whole of the screen is defined as a block. OPEN BLOCK.. Selecting this option takes the menu from the top of the screen, and shows you the whole screen at once. You will see a pulsating outline of a square somewhere on the screen. This can be moved in the following way: Place your pointer where you want the top lefthand corner of the block to be, and press N. this brings the square into this point. You can now stretch the square with the UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT controls, until it is in the position that you want. At ant time you can press N again to reposition the square. When satisfied with the position, then press M. This will take you back to the main program, but your block will now have been remembered for future use. From now on I shall call this the current block. CLEAR.. Selecting this option will clear the current block using the current PAPER. (See INK/PAPER settings). INSERT.. This is quite a powerful command that lets you "merge" a part of another screen with the one you are working on. Imagine that the current block is a window through the picture. What INSERT does is to load in another screen "behind" the current one and then allow you to scroll it around. You will be given a DIR and asked for the filename of the screen to load. The screen is then loaded and you are shown your current screen with part of the other screen showing where you opened your current block. Use the direction controls to scroll the block around until you have the part you want on view. Now press M to set it in, and return you to the main program. Note that the INSERTED screen will take up the palette colours of your current screen. SCROLL.. You will be shown your full screen, and using the direction controls will SCROLL the current block around. This is done with a wrap effect, so that what drops off one side of the block will appear on the opposite side. Set the block and return to the program with M. TWIST.. Again this command works on the current block. Pressing N will rotate the block 90 degrees and pressing N again rotates a further 90 degrees. When the block is how you want it, pressing M sets it and takes you back to the program. INVERT.. Using this option inverts the colours in the current block. E.G. colour 0 becomes 15, colour 1 becomes 14 and so on. If you select the option for a second time the colours will revert back to their original state. MIRROR.. This option simply mirrors the current block about the vertical axis. All colours remain unchanged. Use it twice to revert back. THICKEN.. All lines within the current block are thickened by making them an extra pixel wide. Be careful with this one as it is not possible to revert back by using it twice, and you may not always get the effect you wanted. (see OK and UNDO). SCROLL ATTR... This option only works in MODE 1. (hence it is in green, meaning that it is not available in your current MODE). BLOCK 2 SET ATTRI SET INK SET PAPER SET BRIGHT SET FLASH All the above options are in green and only apply to MODE 1 and 2 screens. SWAP P/I.. This option works on the current block and makes everything within that block that is the current paper colour, into the current ink colour and vice versa. Using it twice reverts back to where you started. REPL P/I.. Using this option will change everything in the current block that is in the current paper into the current ink colour. MODES INVERSE OVER COLOUR PATTERN All the above only apply to MODES 1 and 2 They are for some unknown reason, not in green, as are most of the other MODE 1 and 2 options. MOUSE.. This option was never implemented. KEYBOARD.. When the program is first loaded this is highlighted, and means that the program is under keyboard/cursor control. JOYSTICK.. Place the pointer on this and press M to highlight it. You will now have the program under joystick control. Swap back to keyboard by pointing at "KEYBOARD" and pressing M. Whilst in joystick mode the M key is simulated by the fire button, but the N key still has to be pressed on the keyboard. MODE 1.. MODE 2.. MODE 3.. MODE 4.. These are the four screen modes of the Sam. Point at the one you want and press M. Note that if you change a MODE 4 screen to MODE 1, then changing it back to MODE 4 will not repair any damage done to the screen when it was changed to MODE 1. Mode 1 screens usually go to MODE 4 with no problem, and MODE 3 and 4 interchange quite well. FONT This section of the top menu is concerned with setting which font (type of text), that you want to use when using the TEXT option. There are 6 font options, the first five are true fonts and the "SPECIAL" is actually part of the fill patterns. To select a font, point at the one you want, and press m. SCREEN GRAY COL.. Select this option by pointing and pressing M, and the 16 palettes will change into grey scale. This ranges from black in pen 0 to pure white in pen 15, with all the other pens in between. There are not enough greys in the Sams colours to fill all the pens, so various shades of blue are used as well. SPEC COL.. This is similar to the previous option, except that the pens are filled with the default Spectrum colours. The first 8 being the normal Spectrum colours and the next 8 being the BRIGHT versions of them. Before using either of the above commands, the COL OK command should be used. (see COL OK and COL UNDO). GRID.. Only used in MODES 1 and 2 VIEW.. As the name implies, the option removes the top menu part of the screen and lets you view the whole picture at once. Whilst on view, pressing any key will take you back to the program. Note that if you have the mouse interface connected to your Sam, then as soon as you release the key after selecting VIEW, the program will drop straight back and put the top menu back again. This can be overcome by either holding down M when selecting VIEW, disconnecting to interface, or using the WHOLE BLOCK option in the BLOCK menu to see the whole screen. CLEAR ANI.. This clears all animations in memory, after using the animation options. COL OK.. COL UNDO.. These options work together to save and retrieve your colours. If you think that you want to try a different colour in one or more palettes then point at COL OK and press M. If you find at any time that you want to go back to your original colours you can point at COL UNDO. COL UNDO will change the palettes back to what they were the last time COL OK was used. This is easier than trying to remember what your original colours were. The only other information on the top menu bar is the X and Y symbols. These will tell you where your pointer is in pixel positions. They only shown this info when the pointer is in the work area of the screen. Flash uses the extra 16 pixels at the bottom of the Sam screen, so the top of the screen will read 191, NOT 175 as you expect. SETTING AND USING THE PAPER AND INK This section deals with the actual use of colour in FLASH, and is mainly concerned with the left hand side of the main menu section, plus the bar the runs the width of the screen underneath the icons. The extreme left hand section is the RGB, palette colour and cycling section of the program, and I shall return to these in more detail later. I shall first deal with the bar that runs the full width of the screen, underneath the icons. This bar has a large section either end, with the centre section being split into 16 sections numbered 0 to 15. You will also see that there are the letters "I" and "P" somewhere on the bar. Above the bar are the numbers 0 to 15 and 2 of these are highlighted in green. The "I" signifies the current ink colour and the "P" the current paper colour. These can be moved in two ways. First you can put the pointer on the bar and press M or N. This will make the "I" or "P" jump to that colour respectively. The other method is to use keys 1 and 2 to move the "I" along the bar and key 3 and 4 to move the "P". Once set, these are the colours that the program uses to draw with until changed by the user. Take the pointer to the main drawing area and move it around with the direction controls whilst holding down key M. Yoy will see that it draws in the current ink colour. Change the current paper colour as described above and again move the pointer, but this time hold down N, you will see that the current paper colour is used for drawing. Now that we can use the pen and paper options we now need to know how to make each of the 16 pens the colours that we want. By far the largest section of the top left screen is the colour grid/magnify area. Take the pointer to somewhere in the top section and you will see the section on the left showing all 128 colours of the Sam. Now bring the pointer back down to the drawing area and the colour area now acts as a magnifier. Use the M key to draw a line or something, and you will see a magnified section of the part of the screen that your pointer is in. This will scroll to follow the pointer, and is very useful for adding fine detail. Use the pointer and key M as described above to select a palette, (not palette 0 please). Now take the pointer up to the colour grid and select a colour from it and press M twice. The palette that you chose will change to the colour you chose, and you can now use the colour to draw in. This can be done with any of the 16 palettes along the bar, so you can have any 16 colours to draw with out of the 128 colours available. If you change a palette that has already been used to draw with, everything on the screen using that palette will change to the new colour. CLEARING A SCREEN We can now clear the screen of everything and you can play around changing palettes and drawing in them. First put the pointer on one of the palettes and press N to bring the "P" to that palette. It is usual to use palette 0 as the background but not essential. When you have done this go up and pull down the BLOCK menu as described earlier. Select WHOLE BLOK and press M. This makes your current block the whole screen. Now pull the BLOCK menu down again and select CLEAR and press M. The screen will now clear to the paper colour you selected. This is how you can clear the screen (or part of it). Note that the CLEAR command uses the current paper colour NOT the ink to clear a block. RGB NUMBERS AND PALETTE NUMBER SELECTION First a word about what RGB is. The letters R G B stand for the colours RED, GREEN and BLUE and on a computer all colours are made up of a mixture of these 3. As you would expect the colour number consists of 3 digits signifying red green and blue respectively. So RGB number 123 would mean that the colour is made up of 1 part of red to 2 parts of blue to 3 parts of green. On the Sam each number can be from 0 to 7 inclusive, but in flash this is split into 2 parts. Take the pointer up to the top left section of the menu just under the letters RGB. You will see the 3 figure RGB number for the current pen colour. Put the pointer on one of the figures and press M. You will see that the number is odd, and when you press M it jumps to the next odd number. This means that each figure can be 1, 3, 5 or 7. You will also notice that the large strip of colour at the end of the palette bar changes as you change the RGB number. This is showing you what the RGB number looks like as a colour. Under the RGB number is the palette number of the current pen. This relates to page 68 in the Sam manual, where every colour is given its own palette number. These have nothing to do with the RGB numbers. Put the pointer on the palette number and press M and the number will go up one, pressing N will make the number go down one. You can select colours for your palettes in this way if you wish. Under the palette number is a 1/2 symbol. This is the other part of the RGB numbers. Point at it an press M, and it will highlight. Now you will find that the RGB numbers are even and will range from 0 to 6. This gives you an extra set of 128 colours that are slightly different shades to the first. COLOUR CYCLING Just above the palette colour bar on the left of the screen are the letters C Y C with plus and minus signs under them. This is used for rotating the palette colours. Then colours to be rotated are defined be the highlighted green numbers above the palette colour bar. To alter these, place the pointer on the number that you want and press N to move the left hand highlight and M for the right. To explain more clearly, lets do an example: First clear the screen and select palette 1 as your pen. That is put the "I" into palette 1. Now draw a line or something on the screen. Change the current pen colour to 2 by putting the "I" into palette 2. Now draw something with this colour. Carry one doing this using palette numbers 1 to 6 to draw with. When you have finished, use the M and N keys and the pointer to put the 2 green highlights on number 1 and number 6. This tells the program that palettes 1 to 6 are the ones to cycle. Now put your pointer on the plus sign below the C Y C and keep pressing M until the number by it reads "6". This is the speed of the cycle, with "1" being the highest speed and 255 the lowest. Now put the pointer on the first "C" of CYC and press M. You will see that the palettes 1-6 are rotating and the lines that you drew are also rotating. To stop it, use the minus sign and M to bring the cycle number down to "0". Using the "Y" will ping pong the palettes and using the other "C" will reverse to rotation. THE ICONS Under the top menu bar and above the palette bar are the 14 icons. Icons are just graphical representations of the option and these comprise of the main drawing tools. I shall describe these in detail from left to right describing each icon in turn plus what it does. To active each icon, put the pointer on it, and press M. The icon will highlight, and in most cases all other icons will have their highlight turned off. SPRAY CAN.. This puts your pointer into spray brush mode. If you now go to the drawing screen, you will notice the the pointer has changed shape. Try drawing with it, by holding down M. You will get a spray effect. You can select other sprays, and this will be covered later.(see SPRAY SELECT). A PAINTBRUSH.. This puts you into BRUSH mode. If you use the direction controls and M, you will see that your brush is 1 pixel wide, and that this is the width of line that is used when drawing. Like the sprays, you can select different brushes. (see BRUSH SELECT). A CROSS WITH "UNDO" ABOVE IT. This is the UNDO command, and works in conjunction with the OK icon. If selected, if will briefly highlight, and the picture is taken back to where you pressed the last "OK". If "OK" has not been used, you may find that you end up with a blank screen, or the screen that was in Flash when loaded. A TICK WITH "OK" ABOVE IT.. This is the OK icon, when selected it will briefly highlight and then go out. This is used in conjunction with the "UNDO" icon, and what it does is to "remember" the screen as it is, so that by using "UNDO", you can come back to it should you make a mess trying out a new idea. A DOTTED SQUARE WITH "BLOK" ABOVE IT.. This is the main CUT and PASTE icon. It works in the same way as "BLOCK" described earlier, but not only does it open a block, it also cuts it out and places it in the top left corner of the screen. First set the corners of the block you want, the same as in the "OPEN BLOCK" that was described earlier. When you have done that and pressed M, you will find that the area that you have just marked is cut out and put in the top left hand corner of the screen. From here you can move the block around using the normal direction controls to position it on the screen. Pressing M at any time, will set a copy of the block in position, but you can still move the copy around to set it as many times as you wish. When you have set the block where you want it N will return you to the main program. There are a few things that can be done with your cut block before you set it, and these are achieved using keys 1-5 whilst the block is in the top corner. 1..will invert the colours of your block. 2..gives a mirror image in the vertical axis 3..rotates the block through 90 degrees, pressing again will give another 90 degree turn and so on. 4..This is a little difficult to explain, but what it basically does, is to add the colours of your block with anything that is underneath it. This is called ORing. 5..similar to option 4, but this time XORing is used to give different effect. The best way to find out what these last 2 option do, is to experiment, and see what happens. A PAIR A SCISSORS WITH "CUT" ABOVE THEM.. This option is very similar to the BLOK option, except that BLOK only cuts out rectangles, and CUT will let you cut around odd shapes. The workings seem at first to be very complex, but it just a matter of pressing M and N at the right time. The simplest way to explain, is to go through it step at a time:- 1. select the cut mode from the main menu with M. 2. Press M to start the cut out. A flashing dot will appear. 3. Continue to press M until the outline you want is complete. A flashing dotted line should surround this cut out. 4. Press N. A white unflashing line now replaces the flashing line. 5. Put the arrow inside the cut area using the cursor keys. 6. MOST CRUCIAL press F8. A pattern from the patterns section will appear at the top left corner of the screen. press F8 until this reaches the totally black choice. F7 will take you back if you overshoot. 7. press M. The chosen area now completely whites out. Don't panic you have'nt lost it! 8. press N. Nothing happens for a fraction of a sec. then the chosen area flashes up while the rest of the screen blanks out briefly. 9.The screen goes back to where you started with no area outlined! Again don't panic its still there. Use the cursor keys and you will see the area start to move. Its slow at first but then picks up speed. 10. When you have moved the cut out area to where you want it press M to fix it. You can now move another copy to another place with the cursor keys again. Fix it with M again. Any number of copies are possible - but always fix with M. 11. Escape back to the main menu with N with your work complete. A PIECE OF PAPER WITH "TEXT" ABOVE IT.. This is the TEXT mode icon, and it allows you to print text onto your picture. When selected, the pointer will change to what looks like a capitol "I". Position this where you want your text to start. Make sure that the paper and ink are set correctly on the palette bar, as this is what your text will be printed in. When the cursor is in position, press M and it will change to a coloured character square. Now every key that you press on the keyboard will be printed out on the screen. This includes M and N, so don't try and use them to get back to the main program. Delete will delete the text backwards, and the SHIFT key will give the normal shifted symbols. To escape back to the main program, press RETURN. This will give you your text cursor back and allow you to reposition it if needed. The character set that is used for text printing, is selectable using the FONT option on the top menu bar. (see FONT). A PAINTPOT WITH "FILL" ABOVE IT.. This is the FILL icon, and it enables you to fill areas of the screen with various colours and patterns. Select the fill pattern that you require, (see FILL PATTERNS). Select the paper and ink colour from the palette bar and then put the pointer within the area to be filled, and press M. The fill command uses the colour of the pixel that you pressed M on as the area to be filled, and any other colours as the boundary. If you find you have a gap in the boundary, and the fill "leaks" out, press N to unfill the last area to be filled. A PENCIL WITH "FONT" ABOVE IT.. A STRIP OF FILM.. These 2 icons are the font designer and animation section of Flash, and because of their complexity, will be dealt with in a separate section, (see ANIMATION, FONT DESIGN). THE DRAWING TOOLS To the right of the main icons are 4 boxes which form the main drawing tools of Flash. Each box is split into 2 halves, and I shall explain each one in turn. WHITE CIRCLE WITH BLACK CIRCLE UNDERNEATH.. This is the circle option, which as the name implies, allows you to draw circles. The white and black circles can be selected separately, and give a plain circle or a filled circle respectively. In the case of the filled circle, the current pen and fill patterns are used. To use the circle option, first point at one of the circle icons and press M. For this example I shall assume that you are using the white (unfilled) circle. Now place the pointer on the screen where you want the center of the circle to be and press N. Now move then cursor left or right, and you will see an expanding circle appear. The up/down controls have no effect on the circle size, only left/right. When you have the size of circle that you want, then press M to set it. You can now carry on with more circles using the same center, or move the center to a new position with N as before. You can also change the ink colour at any time, the program will remember the last center you defined. The black circle icon works in exactly the same way, except that when M is pressed to set the circle, there will be a slight pause, and then the circle will fill using the current fill pattern and ink. Circle mode stays in operation until another mode is selected, e.g. BRUSH, SPRAY, FILL, etc. WHITE RECTANGLE WITH A BLACK RECTANGLE UNDERNEATH.. This is the BOX option, and, like the circle can give either a filled or unfilled box depending on which icon you select. Point at the white box and press M. Now put the cursor where you want the top left hand corner of your rectangle to be and press N. Now use the direction controls to "stretch" the rectangle out from that point. When satisfied , press M to set the box. At any time N can be press to reset to top corner of the box. Again the filled version uses the current fill pattern and ink to fill the rectangle after setting. ZIG ZAG LINE WITH FORKED LINE UNDERNEATH.. This is the LINE option, which give you 2 ways of drawing continuous lines. Point at the zig zag line and press M. Now put your cursor where you want your line to start and press N. Using the direction controls will now "stretch" an elastic line from the start position to where you cursor is. When you are satisfied with this, pressing M sets the line in position and automatically put the start at the cursor position. This means that if you now move the cursor again, the line will stretch from the end of the last line to your cursor position. You can continue doing this for as long as you like. To end the line option simply select another draw tool, FILL, SPRAY, BRUSH etc. The forked line icon works in much the same way, except that the start of the line is not moved to a new position when M is pressed to set a line. This means that you can have lines radiating out from a single point. You can press N at any time to move the starting point to a new position. Like the other drawing tools, this will stay in operation until a new option is selected. WHITE OVAL WITH BLACK OVAL UNDERNEATH.. This is the oval tool, and it works in the same way as the CIRCLE tool, except that after setting the center of the oval with N, you can stretch the oval in both directions using the left/right AND the up/down controls. The black oval gives you a filled version, exactly like BOX and CIRCLE, using the current fill pattern and ink. FILL PATTERNS, SPRAY PATTERNS AND BRUSH SIZES There is a choice of various fills, sprays and brush sizes within Flash, and these are contained within the 3 icons to the right of the drawing tools. From top to bottom, these are FILLS, SPRAYS, BRUSHES. FILL PATTERNS.. Put the pointer onto this box and press M. you will be taken to a screen that displays all the fill patterns in a block at the top of the screen. One of the patterns will be highlighted, and this highlight can be moved around the patterns with the direction controls. When you have highlighted the pattern of your choice, press M to select that pattern as the current one. You will now return to the main program, with the pattern box now displaying the chosen pattern. This pattern is the one that is now used for the FILL command. You can take a shortcut to this by using keys F7 and F8 while in the main program. This will scroll through the patterns in the pattern box making the one on view the current fill pattern. SPRAY PATTERNS.. Put the pointer into the spray pattern box, and press M. the display will change to show you a selection of spray patterns, with one highlighted. Used left/right to move to highlight and press M to make the selection. You will now be back in the main program, with the selected spray pattern shown in the spray pattern box. Like the fill patterns, you can shortcut this by using keys F4 and F5 to scan through the patterns, each pattern being shown in the pattern box in turn. The displayed pattern is the one used when the SPRAY option is used. BRUSH SIZES.. This is exactly the same as the spray pattern selector, except that the selected pattern is used when BRUSH mode is selected. Again you can shortcut by using keys F1 and F2 to change the current brush whilst on the main screen. THE SCREEN MOVEMENT BAR On the far right of the menu, there is a vertical white bar with pointed ends and a hatched section in it. This is the screen movement bar. Because the menu in Flash "hides" part of the screen, you have the facility to move your screen up and down, so that all the screen can be used to draw on. If you put the pointer on the points at the ends of the bar, and press M, the screen can be moved in small increments either up or down. This is shown by the hatched area of the bar moving. Alternatively, you can put the pointer on the hatched area and press M, which will move the screen fully up or fully down in one movement. Anything that goes out of view, is not lost, and will still be there when the screen is again moved. FONT DESIGNER To activate the font designer, put the pointer onto the icon that has a pencil with the word "FONT" above it, and press M. The screen will clear, and you will be shown the font design screen. This is in the form of 3 main sections which run across the screen. The top green strip has the words FILE FONT CHR ALL QUIT I shall come to these in a moment. The main center section displays the whole of the current character set, with 8 of the set highlighted. Of this strip, there is one of characters which has a different highlight. The lower section contains a magnified view of the 8 highlighted character. If you put your pointer onto a character in the main center section, and press M, that character plus the 7 surrounding ones will be brought down into the lower magnified section. The work on a character, use the direction keys to point at the magnified characters, and M to set (put) pixels and N to unset (take away) pixels. This can be done with any of the magnified characters in the lower section. At any time, you can point at a new character in the set and press M to bring it down for editing. Now we come back to the top green strip. This is used in exactly the same way as in the main program, by pointing at a heading to open up that particular menu. The menu description is as follows: FILE.. This is used to save/load/erase character set file to and from the disc. It is identical to the file menu in the main program, except of course that you are saving and loading character sets and not screens. When saving, the program automatically saves the current set that is displayed in the designer. This is true when loading a new font, as it will load into the current set, thus overwriting the set that is already there. FONT.. Pulling down this menu, you will see a copy of the font menu that is in the main program. Pointing at a new set, and pressing M will bring that set into the designer, also making it the current set. CHR.. This is where the single highlighted character comes in. Any character in the current set can be highlighted in white, and this is the character acted upon in this section. You will find 3 option in the CHR menu. INVERT will make the character into a negative image. Selecting this again revert back to normal. MIRROR will mirror the character about the vertical axis (left to right), again, selecting it again goes back to normal. TURN This turns the character 90 degrees, further selections will of course turn it in further 90 degree jumps. ALL.. This is and identical menu to the previous CHR menu, but in this case, ALL the characters are acted upon at once. QUIT.. This takes you back to the main program. Character sets are saved as a code file of 1096 bytes long. This is because the Sam has the ability to use more characters in its set than the Spectrum. The Spectrums character sets were only 768 bytes long, but Flash will happily load these into the designer. There have been a few such ready done sets published in Sam Supplement, but if you have some Spectrum ones left over on tape, then set the Load/Save device to TAPE and these should load into the designer OK. They can then be saved to a disc for future use. DESIGNING A FILL PATTERN This option is not mentioned in the manual, but there is actually a fill pattern designer built into Flash. To trigger it, point at the fill pattern icon near the top right of the screen, and press M. This will take you to the FILL SELECT menu, which has been covered earlier. Use the direction keys to put the highlight onto the desire pattern but, instead of pressing M, press N. This now takes you to the designer. The designer takes the form of a rectangle in the center of the screen. The rectangle is divided into 3 main section. The main top section shows you the current fill pattern magnified. Below this and to the left, there is an actual size piece of the pattern, and to the right of this a list of options. The magnified area is where you actually change the pattern. Point at any part of this and press M, and a pixel appears, whilst pressing N makes the pixel disappear. This is shown in actual size, on the lower left piece. The pixels can be set and reset until you are happy with the pattern. The list of options let you do various thing to your pattern, plus load a save patterns to disc. Just put the pointer on the option you require, and press M to activate it. INVERT.. This option will change all pixel that are lit into unlit pixels, and vice versa. This gives a negative image. MIRROR.. The pattern is mirrored left to right about the vertical axis. TURN.. This option turns the pattern 90 degrees every time it is used. SCROLL.. After pressing M, use the direction controls to scroll your pattern within the square. Any part of the pattern that "falls off" the edge come back onto the opposite side, giving a roll effect. To end the scroll, press M. END.. This option takes you back to the main program. USING A FILL PATTERN AS A BRUSH It is possible, while in the main program to use the current fill pattern to draw with. Press F9 once, and you will find that all drawing tools, BRUSH, CIRCLE, BOX etc, will use the fill pattern. Pressing F9 again, take you back to standard. There is no indicator to show when this has be activated, you must remember which mode you are in. ANIMATION WITH FLASH Within Flash there is a very useful animation section, which lets you see what your animations look like before you save off the screen. I think that the first thing I must do, is explain a little about what "ANIMATION" is, and what it does. Movement of objects, either on TV or film, is actually a series of still pictures, which are displayed for a brief moment, one after the other. Each picture, or FRAME, as it is know, is slightly different from the previous one, and this gives the illusion of movement. The human eye/brain, is fooled into seeing movement from still frames at any speed above about 25 frames per second. You can go lower that this, but you will start to get a "jumping" effect as the brain has more time to see the separate still pictures, and register them. TVs in this country work at 50 frames per second, and this is more that adequate for the display of frames. Flash gives you the opportunity of seeing any animation sequences that you have drawn, running as an animation, so that any alterations can be made. For the following example I shall assume that we have draw 4 small pictures on the Flash work screen, each one a FRAME of an animation. The pictures can be anywhere on the screen, but I find that starting at the top left keeps things neat. The frames themselves don't have to be complex, a small match stick man who is waving will animate quite well. So the first thing to do is draw a simple matchstick man, standing facing you, at the top left of the screen. He is for this example about 20 pixels high, and 16 pixels across. The first frame will have him with his arm raised. Now, using the BLOK command, take a copy of him and place him next to the first one. Now you can delete his raised arm, and re-draw it in a slightly different position. Now copy this frame and do the same again with his arm. repeat this for a third time, and you should end up with four men along the top of the screen, each with their arm in a slightly different position. These are you FRAMES. Now point at the icon with the strip of film on, and press M. You will see that the draw tool icons, have now been changed to six new "animation" icons. Now we'll animate our man.. Point at the "MARK" icon, and press M. This will remove the menu, and take you to a screen that is very much like the OPEN BLOCK screen. There is a pulsating rectangle, and just like the BLOCK option, you use N to set the corner of the rectangle, the direction keys to stretch the rectangle and M to finally set the rectangle. What you must do is "outline" the first frame using the above method. Making sure that the outline does not cut through the frame at any time. Once you have pressed M to set the outline, you are taken back to the main menu. You will see that the box under "MARK" has the figure "1" in it and the number under the "F" is also "1". This tells us that we have 1 frame in memory. Now point at the right hand arrow next to the "F" and you will again be taken to the BLOK grabbing screen. Grab your second frame in exactly the same way as your first, and finish by pressing M. The number under the "F" and the MARK will now read "2". Repeat another twice, for the other 2 frames, and you should end up with 4 frames in memory, denoted by the figure "4" under the "F" icon. A quick word about how big to grab your frame. Think of your animation as being on a small TV screen. When you grab a frame, make sure that the box you grab is big enough to hold the biggest of your frames. For instance, if you had 4 frames of a bouncing ball, you must grab a box that is tall enough to cover the lowest frame and the highest frame of the ball. MOVING YOUR FRAMES This is where we use the other 3 icons, marked. "S", "B" and "E" First of all make sure the number shown under the "B" is "1". This is the start frame or beginning . If it isn't point at the left hand arrow next to the "B" and press M until "1" is shown. Now set the END, using the right hand arrow next to the "E". Put the pointer on in and press M until it shows "4". If you overshoot, point at the left hand arrow, and press M to bring the number back down. Now we have to set the speed that our animation will run at. This is done using the "S" icon. The higher the number below the "S", the slower the frames will run. For a small animation like our example, around 100 is a good start. Point at the right hand arrow next to the "S" and press M. This will increment the number below by one. If you have to do a lot of increments this way, you can actually do it quicker by pressing N, as this will take the number up/down in 10s. When you have set the speed, you are ready to animate. Point at the green section below the "S" and press M. The screen will clear, and you will see your frames running. Press any key to get back to the menu. You can alter the speed, and start it again, as many times as you like. You can add a frame at any time by pointing at right hand arrow next to "F" and pressing M. But don't forget to increment the "E" counter to take into account the new frame. By setting the "B" and "E" counters, you can show just some of the frames of animation, but of course these run consecutively. The return to the main Flash program, point at the icon with the small boxes and circles, and press M. When you return to the main program, your animations still remain in memory, unless the CLR ANI option is used in the SCREEN pull down menu.