Star Tip 6 (Invisible Loader)

by David Jones

from Your Sinclair #22 (Oct.1987) - "Program Pitstop"

[files STARTIP6.*]



The Magic Knight series from MAD Games, a Mastertronic

label, has been going on for years. This popular series

began with Finders Keepers, was quickly followed by the big

hits Spellbound and Knight Tyme until finally this year we

saw Stormbringer. All four games are arcade adventures,

featuring a unique system of pull-down windows called

Windimation. This system has been much copied, and with good

reason, the Magic Knight games are exceedingly popular!



The man behind these triffic games is David Jones. David,

being an amenable sort of chap, has given us this

interesting tip on how to finish your games professionally.

We haven't seen this printed anywhere before, which is

strange because it's so simple.



You remember when you draw a nice loading screen for your

game or utility and put it on a cassette with your program?

Don't you find it irritating when the filename of the

program overwrites the picture, spoiling the effect? Well,

now it can be told. The solution is in the way you save your

programs to tape.



Method



Imagine we have a game which has a Basic loader called

"MEGAZAP", followed by the loading screen "S", and finally

the game, a code block 15000 bytes long starting at address

32000. To save your game to tape from your working copy,

proceed as follows:



LOAD "MEGAZAP"

SAVE "MEGAZAP" LINE 10



CLEAR 26200

LOAD "" CODE 32768

SAVE "S" CODE 32768,6912



CLEAR 31999

LOAD "" CODE 32000

SAVE CHR$ 22+CHR$ 1+CHR$ 0+"Bytes:" CODE 32000,15000



How this all works is really very simple. The CHR$ coded

save instruction performs the function of (1) giving your

code block the filename "Bytes:" and (2) backspacing the

filename and OVERing it over the prompt on-screen, fitting

exactly over it and rendering it invisible! See, we said it

was simple.



Many thanks to David for this important tip, and we look

forward to seeing more from him later in the year.