Your Spectrum
Issue 13, April 1985 - Hacking Away & QL Affairs
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HACKING
AWAY

Hacker cartoon

All the POKEs and more! Send your hacking hints to Andrew Pennell, Hacking Away, Your Spectrum, 14 Rathbone Place, London W1P 1DE.

Hello, and welcome once again to the back street hacking shop. Those with brains less withered than mine will recall the 'in depth' treatment given to Scuba Dive a few issues back (My, how time flies! Ed). Well, Andy Orchard has written in with lots of tips on how to muck around with it.
First off, to get the POKEs in, you've got to load the program as usual, choose the LOAD option offered and, after confirming it by pressing the 'Y' key, press the Break key. You're now free to enter the POKEs and, to finish off the loading process, type 'GO TO 2' and press Enter.
The obvious POKE to start off with is for varying number of lives - POKE 55711,x (where 'x' is the number of lives up to 255). The only problem is cramming in too many divers into the boat on- screen.
If you're playing an opponent, POKE 45696,0 will
ensure your opponent's clams take a considerable time to open - that should mean your opponent runs out of air pretty quickly and you end up winning (heh, heh!). Of course, be sure to have your turn before entering the POKE - you wouldn't want the plan to backfire, would you? Andy also found a bug in Scuba Dive that occasionally results in the diver being reprinted in the Status chart; as a consequence, our diver gets towed along like a water-skier when the boat moves off. Has anyone out there fixed it yet?
Moving on to one of my personal favourites, Quicksilva's Fred, Paul Margetson claims to have found the ideal solution for all cheats. It requires a little work to enter because of the loader program. Paul says that his girlfriend gave him 'invaluable help' in finding the information given here. But, without elaborating any further as this is an (almost) respectable magazine, let's get on with the hacking.
First off, type 'LOAD "" CODE 26384' and play the tape. That done, type 'SAVE "FRED" CODE 34500, 22650' and save it to an empty cassette. Now, to load your newly-created game, type 'LOAD "" CODE 24500'. It won't autoRUN anymore, so you can enter the POKEs given here as direct commands. Once you've modified it to your requirements, enter 'PRINT USR 30285' to start the ball rolling ...
Getting back to the POKEs, you can make your last unit of power everlasting with POKE 31175,0 - and if you want to vary the amount of power, POKE the number of units you require into addresses 30418, 31592 and 44696. Paul recommends a maximum of 240 units and, using these, he mentions that after level six you can choose the number of nasties in the mazes that follow. By the way, he recommends the Mark 2 version of the Picturesque monitor (which he
used for hacking away at Fred).
Entering the jungle world of Sabre Wulf, I remarked a couple of issues ago that I couldn't find the necessary POKE to keep Sabre Man permanently cyan. Well, Nigel Salt has come up with the goods (who's a clever boy then?) and they are: POKE 44685,186; POKE 44676,255; and POKE 44677,80. Many thanks Nigel!
Kokotoni Wilf has been hyped as being better than our ol' friend JSW though it's revealing that, up until now, it's never had a mention in this column - unlike its illustrious rival. To redress this imbalance, Nicky Quinn has gone to the trouble of dropping me a very useful letter ...
To begin with, you'll need to stop the program in the following way. Load the program as usual with 'LOAD ""', but as soon as the first section of code has entered and the PAPER colour turns green, stop the tape and don't rewind it. Next, reset the Spectrum and enter:

10 CLEAR 24100: LOAD "" CODE: RANDOMIZE USR 65100: LOAD "" CODE: POKE 43742,0: POKE 42177,2: RANDOMIZE USR 41200

RUN the program and then start the tape up again. The POKEs above can be altered to suit your taste. The first gives infinite lives, but you can change this to POKE 42214 to give you an option on the number of lives if you don't want to make it too easy. The other POKE simplifies matters by changing some of the sprites to red so that they don't kill you on contact. And to show that there's no bias on this page, I'm able to report that Nicky prefers to use the Dk'Tronics Distron 48 monitor. So there!
Finally, Richard Glass came up with a good challenge for all you hackers ... how about a POKE or two for The Hobbit so that those who can't finish it (myself included) (Me too! Ed) can take a look at the final screen.

CONCURRENT QL AFFAIRS

THE QUEST BUSINESS

Quest Automatic has a new range of packages for converting the QL into a 'serious' business machine. The main item is a 68K version of CP/M and the 28.5K operating system is available on 5¼-inch floppy disk at £49.50. The equivalent Microdrive cartridge, complete with assembler, which co- resides with QDOS is £79.50. Quest also has a range of disk drives for the CP/M, from the 200K floppy at £249 to a selection of Winchester disks starting at £995.
It can also supply extra internal RAM from 68K to a cool half-megabyte and the whole caboodle can be stored in an expansion console for a mere £109. Two of the new business packages are also compatible with Psion's QL packages, so data is interchangeable - an advantage Quest cleverly intends to continue.

PLUGOLA!

YS's own Peter Shaw has been busy recently (That makes a change! Ed.) writing two books that'll be available by the time you're reading this. One is Games For Your QL (published by Virgin), which at £2.95 just about scrapes into the 'value for money' ratings. The other is Games QL Computers Play (published by Corgi/Addison Wesley). Anyone still wondering why the YS Editor bikes into work while child prodigy Peter Shaw drives a gold-plated C5?
For all the news and views on the QL micro, dispel those rumours with John Torofex! The package is called STOP (STorage OPtimiser to you and I) and it squeezes programs down to roughly half their size when stored on 'drive. Not only does this mean all you micro misers can avoid shelling out hard cash quite so often, but it also opens up possibilities for large databases to be stored on a single cartridge.
Digitex is also promising the appearance of a Winchester version, something which should have you shuddering with anticipation at the storage possibilities.
For more details, write to Digitex at 4 Amwell Rouse, The Woodlands, Isleworth, Middlesex.

QL'S BUSINESS CARD

QL+ Limited has produced a handy plug-in device which it describes as, "the first product to transform the QL into a true business computer" (So what was it before? Ed.). The card plugs into the QL's main expansion port, allowing it to run CP/M-80 software. It contains a Z80 chip and 64K of RAM and also offers two eight-bit ports with 64K of print buffer space.
Seeing that WH Smiths is apparently transferring the extensive CP/M-80 software library on to cartridge form for QL Microdrive use, at £199, this gadget might just make a worthwhile investment for that businessperson we keep hearing about.

ART FOR ART'S SAKE?

Not content with QL Easel, companies like Talent, CP Software and Eidersoft are all releasing graphics packages; and, of course, all are claiming that their product is by far the best on the market!
The one from Talent will apparently be based around the Commie 64 package Panorama, one that's quite amazing considering the 64's awful pixel resolution. So what, one wonders, are we going to get on the QL front?
CP Software is still working on its advanced graphics package and wouldn't be persuaded to divulge details. But Eidersoft's package QL Art is already released and will set you back £14.95. I wouldn't want to sound mean, but I'm not too sure if it'll stand up to what the opposition has planned, but if you'd like to phone Eidersoft, the company is on nn-nnn nnnn.

STOP THE SQUEEZE

Isleworth-based Digitex Computer has launched another of those ever-useful utilities, this time one that allows you to make more use of your Microdrive cartridges.
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