Hooked on the worm game

I AM HOOKED. I have been playing with the Worms game for the last seven months, at least six hours a week.

I have finally conquered it. Could I be a world record-holder with a score of 260,850, completing stage seven successfully?

Mark Appleby

Friendly suggestion

I AM WRITING to say how much I enjoy reading your magazine. I buy it every month to do the programs for the Spectrum.

My friend made up a program. I thought you might like to try it. 10 PLOT 127, 88: DRAW 50, 50, 788. To change the program you change the last numbers.

My favourite game is the Worms game on which I have scored 150,765.

D Axtell

Scoring on all fronts

I THOUGHT I would tell you my high scores on ZX Scramble (Mikrogen), Mazogs (Bug-Byte), Lunar Rescue (Mikrogen) and Zuckman (OSL) on the ZX-81.

ZX Scramble, 3660; Mazogs, 92 percent; Lunar Rescue, 15,280; Zuckman, round the clock once plus 1,442, I think that is 101,541.

Jonathan Slatter

Orbiter record under attack

I HAVE a 48K Spectrum and I have bought the Silversoft Orbiter. I have achieved a score of 244,050. I played the game for 45 minutes and I had completed 14 attack waves. Is it a record?

Michael Pascall

Cookie gets high score

I HAVE scored on Cookie 51,825 and I reached level 11. I saw that someone said that they did not like Cookie, but I do. I think it is the best game we have so far.

Matthew Garrett, aged 8

A routine discovery

I AM WRITING about a routine I discovered while experimenting with the POKE statement on my 16K ZX-81. The routine has the effect of 'slurring' the characters of the '81, allowing 'impossible' graphics. As the routine is so small I have not taped it. The listing is:

10 POKE A,N
20 POKE A+ 1, 200

where A is the desired location and N the character code. An example would be:

10 POKE 16800,1
20 POKE 16801,200

That would give a vertical, one-pixel wide, line near the middle of the screen. The routine will work only on the 16K ZX-81.

D Read

Shortcomings pointed out

I HAVE OWNED a ZX-81 for nearly two years and had great success from the start. In April, 1982 I heard about Sinclair User and hurriedly ordered my issue. You do a marvellous job, as most of your readers must agree, but there are some points I would like to make.

In the Attack program - October 1983 - you stated it was for the 16K ZX-81 but when has BORDER, INK, PAPER, BRIGHT, READ and DATA been available on the ZX-81? I know it is easy to make mistakes but please do not do it again. After converting it to work on the ZX-81 it worked perfectly.

I can scarcely read some parts of the program listings made with your new printer. Why not treat it to a new ribbon?

About the early retirement for Corner Man, I met him in Oxford recently and he told me that you made him redundant. I beg you, give him back his job.

Andrew Hewson should have more pages and so should that Forth stuff.

I have access to a Jupiter Ace at school and I would recommend Forth to anyone who is interested in learning different languages.

On the other hand, if I told you all my compliments on Sinclair User you would need a whole issue for just my letter.

Finally, if anyone is interested in having a pen friend who has a ZX-81, I would be more than delighted to swap views, letters, tips and programs.

May Sinclair User live for ever.

Michael Boxwell, aged 13

Greed threatens home micros

AS I ENJOY your magazine and always buy it, I would like to make the following comments:

The home micro industry at the moment has an unacceptable face to it.

It is one gigantic rip-off and I am waiting for the first magazine to expose it as such.

Most software is incredibly poor in quality and not worthy of any type of professionalism.

Shops are hell-bent on creaming off the profits while the going is good on this no-refund, no-service product market.

Please discontinue your top ten as I suspect certain stores have an interest in promoting sales of particular cassettes.

Please continue with your software review and listings.

How about an article on software houses? I rate Melbourne House highly.

Please, please save the home micro industry before it self-destructs in a welter of greed.

B Plowman

Disreputable advertisement

I HAVE just bought my usual copy of Sinclair User and I am somewhat horrified to see an advertisement which appears to be selling pornographic programs. Apart from producing such programs in the first place, I think that such material might well be left to find more suitable outlets. Second, whether the programs are pornographic or not in content, the inference of the advertisement is that they are, and there is no age warning. I think that there are three point which should be made:

Sinclair User is read by a very large minor audience, my daughters included, aged 8 and 12. I am sure that there are many parents who will be as keen as I am to keep children away from such material.

The lack of age limits indicates that minors and adults alike will be able to purchase the programs which are, by and large, well within the 'pocket-money' market. I would question the legality of this situation.

Do you not think that a magazine of your reputation would have been better keeping away from material like that? I should have thought that if anyone wants sex games they would be better writing their own or at least have to look for such things in the adult press.

Obviously I shall have to switch to another magazine if anything of a pornographic nature is to appear again. Unfortunately, I have recommended Sinclair User to a large number of people and I hope that there will be no repercussions over this latest issue.

For my part, as a computer consultant, I feel that anything which brings computing into disrepute is harmful to the industry as a whole. We had enough trouble in the '60s and early '70s with bad salesmanship to last a lifetime. Now these machines are achieving their correct place in society after all the years of mystique, I am very disappointed to see the advertising of pornography which cannot do the industry any good.

I, and probably many others, would like to know your policy on this matter, particularly your future policy.

G S Kinnear

We agree with your comments and we published an apology in our last issue. In the rush of producing a magazine some things can be overlooked and unfortunately that is what happened in this case. We took immediate action to ensure that it did not appear again and we will do our best to make sure it does not happen again.

Cheap graph paper sought

I OWN a 48K Spectrum. The Print 'n' Plotter jotter is the only graph paper of which I know that is the same size as the Spectrum screen i.e. 8x8 squares and 176x256 overall. At £9.95 it is too expensive for me. Normal graph paper has 10x10 squares and is not suitable for designing hi-res screen layouts.

Does anyone know where I can obtain some suitable graph paper at a reasonably cheap price?

Here is a list of POKEs I find useful when programming:

POKE 23609,25 sets the keyboard beep.
POKE 23658,8 - sets caps lock on
POKE 23658,0 - re-sets caps lock off
POKE 23662,1 - allows line 22 to be printed on
POKE 23662,2 - re-sets line 22 to normal.

Important - line 22 must be re-set after it has been printed on.

To print on line 23 use 10 PRINT #0;"SINCLAIR USER":GO TO 10.

Michael Horgan

Technological retreat

CAN YOU remember when the first calculators appeared? Soon they were advanced and had touch-sensitive keyboards. The price of that type of calculator was substantially higher than the normal.

When computers reached the market they, too, had 'typewriter-style' keyboards. One of those computers, the ZX-81, had a touch-sensitive type. You would expect, in line with calculators, the price of such a machine would be substantially higher than other computers but the ZX-81 is the cheapest computer on the market. Even when people buy a ZX-81 they would eventually like to buy an add-on keyboard.

What had once been the best machine to own seems to have changed through the years to be the worst. It has also happened in the short term with computers. Originally computers were vast machines with many valves and engineers tried continually to reduce the size.

Now we seem to change our views again. People buy keyboards with large cases for the Spectrum just to make the computer look bigger and more powerful. What we have set out to reduce we now wish to expand. Are we going forwards or backwards in this age of technology?

Marc Hawes

Competition unfair to readers

I HAVE decided not to renew my Sinclair User subscription as I do not think that you are treating all your readers equally. For example, the competition for the Microdrive is open only to the more experienced.

The majority of Sinclair owners as yet could not write a program, far less do your competition, so until you have competitions all your readers can attempt I do not think I should subscribe.

Robert McKinlay

We attempt to please as many people as possible in each issue. While the Microdrive competition was limited, it attracted a good deal of interest. Last month we had a competition for users of all machines.

Businesslike Spectrum

I WOULD like to say how much I agree with G A Rooker's letter - Sinclair User, October - about serious use of the Spectrum. My 48K machine is in constant use in my one-man design business. I use Rooker's Beamscan program and I have written my own program from which I can select construction notes to be printed-out, to save me hours of tedious handwriting on my drawings.

I am heartily sick of the way the business computer world seems to ignore Sinclair computers and dismisses them as mere games machines. There is even a regular computer column in my local paper in which the writer often makes veiled 'anti-comments' about Sinclairs.

The more I learn about the capabilities of the Spectrum, the more I am convinced that there is much left to explore, and I am absolutely convinced that it is not necessary for the small business to contemplate the expenditure of more than £2,000 to install a computer system.

I agree with Rooker that Sir Clive should concentrate on the development of the Spectrum business image before pushing ahead with his projected business computer.

R C Crane

Missing colour mystery

MY PARENTS bought me a ZX-81 in August, 1982 and since then I have been an avid reader of Sinclair User.

I am now the owner of a 48K Spectrum Mark II which my parents bought in July. We have two television sets, a Pye 22in. colour set and a 14in. portable Contec less than two years old. I cannot get colour from the Contec set; all pictures appear in black and white and no amount of tuning will help. I discovered this only last week as the Contec stays in Kent during the summer months.

Could any of your readers tell me why my Contec colour television is incompatible with my Spectrum?

Nicholas Fuller, aged 14

Integrating machine code

SOME READERS may consider this as egg-sucking advice but others, like me, may have found difficulty in integrating machine code routines with Basic programs. I have found the following procedure effective with the Spectrum:

SAVE Basic program and machine code separately - "mainprog" and "machinecodefile".

Type an initiating program like this - call it "init": 10 CLEAR n: LOAD "machinecodefile" CODE 20 LOAD "mainprog"

SAVE "init" line 10 on main tape. Remove tape but do not wind back.

NEW and put "machinecodefile" into cassette recorder. Type CLEAR n: LOAD "machinecodefile" CODE: RETURN.

Replace main tape and SAVE "machinecodefile" CODE n,n.

Remove tape: put in Basic program ("mainprog"): LOAD "mainprog" - NEW first.

Remove and put in main tape. SAVE "mainprog" LINE n.

To run it, type NEW, wind back and LOAD ""

The main tape then contains the Basic and machine-code programs and thereafter can be loaded in 1; it is also self-running.

One assumes USR lines in the Basic program to enable the machine code routines. Once Microdrive is generally available, perhaps we can forget this hassle.

David Bye

Family tree program

MY SON tells me he has seen an advertisement for a program to make a Family Tree. We cannot find it in any of our copies of Sinclair User and I wonder if anyone can let us know if such a program exists for the Spectrum 48K.

Dilys McIntyre

Display errors corrected

THANK YOU for publishing my article on display in the November issue of Sinclair User. Unfortunately there were two errors in one of the lines of diagram three. Line 370 was printed as LET A$=("."+ A$ AND A$ (1 TO 2)="OO")+A$ AND A$ (1)=".")+(A$ (2 TO) AND A$ (1 TO 2)="0.")

John Armfield

Churning out the aliens

WHEN I BOUGHT a Spectrum 48K a few weeks ago I thought the standard of games for it would be fairly good but nine games out of every 10 available in the shops are childish tripe along the space invaders lines.

I am 35 and want something to tax my intelligence. The cliche games such as chess and backgammon fulfil this slightly but there is tremendous scope for programmers to turn their skill to producing new games. I accuse them of taking the easy way and churning out aliens after aliens after aliens.

What do I think of games software in general? To borrow the title of a program printed in the September issue, Rubbish!

Mike Godwin

Help needed for software search

I THINK your Software Directory is an excellent idea, with the profusion of programs flooding the market but I think the potential user will be looking for a program for a particular purpose and if you were to catalogue the titles alphabetically, section by section, it would be much quicker to locate the kind of thing one is seeking.

I would like to ask you if you know of a program to enable me to get a cutting list, costing and list of materials from a design of a cabinet after the variables are entered. I know of some available in the States for the purpose but I should imagine someone has produced something here by now, or there may be a Spectrum graphics program which could be modified for this purpose.

G H Anderson

We take your point and are looking at the possibility of rearranging the list. We do not know of a program of the type you describe but perhaps readers can help.