STAR TIP 10

by David Thompson

from Your Sinclair #29 (May 1988)

[files STARTIPA.*]



[There were several errors in this listing, which I've corrected. ]

[1. The eight bytes starting at 45800 were printed twice.         ]

[2. The title wasn't centred properly.                            ]

[3. The phrase "YOUR ONE MEAN MAN" was grammatically incorrect,   ]

[   so I changed it to "YOU'RE A MEAN MAN".                       ]

[4. The bottom line of keys "YZ[\]RE" should be "YZ [\]RE" (ie.   ]

[   the third character should be a space), so any character      ]

[   selected after Z on the bottom line came out wrong. I inserted]

[   the missing space, which meant moving down the location at    ]

[   which the hi-score was held.                              JimG]



At last! For all of you who've been suffering from extreme, excruciating

Star Tip withdrawal symptoms, here's one at last. Phew! It's from David

Thompson and it's a great, soopa, smashing, ace (etc), Hi-Score chart.

Let's hear it for Dave! Raaayhhhhhh!



Dave



As you can see from the picture, Dave has a head, a couple of legs, and

- oh look! - two arms. Wow! He started programming on a ZX81 at the

cherubic age of 13, about five years ago. His first game was Butch Hard

Guy, followed by the cool Ultimate Combat Mission, and the forthcoming

Future Bike Simulator, designed by "Playability by Design", graphicked

by Dennis Mulinen, and consulted by Mark Wallace. In his spare time he

dons his Green Beret for a bout of Russki bashing, and we all hope he's

gonna' be a regular contributor to these pages (get the hint Dave?).



Method



Type in the code with the Hex Loader, save it with SAVE "hi-score" CODE

45000,904, and then RANDOMIZE USR 45000 to score highly.



The Charts That Count



The first thing you'll see when you type RANDOMIZE USR 45000 will be a

straightforward "are you asleep yet?" GAME OVER message. Just press any

key and you'll be greeted by a table of letters, a row of dots, and a

blank stare reflected back at you from the black TV screen. You'll also

see that one of the letters is darker than the rest; this is the cursor.

Press Z and X to move it left or right, and then press SPACE to place

the current letter onto the dots. In this way, you can spell your name.

The R letter represents a backspace, and the E letter will quit the

chart. Once you've finished, the chart will appear for you to goggle at.



The maximum number of digits is seven and these should be POKEd into

addresses 45890-45896. Should you decide to use an alternative (yes,

very rude) character set, you must POKE its address into 45104 and 45105

(hi and low bytes respectively). And if you do use another character

set, characters 91, 92 and 93 ([,\,]) can all be re-defined.



The Code



Look, I know it's big, I know you've hardly any time, yes I know the

cheetah is the fastest land animal, but this is worth it, especially if

you need a Hi-Score chart on your most recent megagame.

