Have you ever fancied writing your own game? Like me, you probably lack the ability to program successfully. The only alternative is to use a game creator.

These are basically a collection of pre-written routines which you can mix together to produce your own games. Some software houses resort to this method to produce clone follow-ups to their more successful games. In fact, assemblage techniques are the basis of a lot of games. A programmer produces many a useful subroutine when writing a game and these are saved on a disk or microdrive for inclusion in other games later on.

A little bit of thought will make you realise the similar requirements of quite different games. Score calculations, character movement and pseudo sprite generation are essentially the same routines with just a few small differences. Why reinvent the wheel every time you set out on a project?

Arcade Creator for the Spectrum represents Argus Press Software's thoughts on this subject. The utility is packaged on three sides of a twin cassette package accompanied by a booklet explaining their use. The fourth side has a ready made game which demonstrates the type of game which may be made.

The Creator can be used for two types of game: platform and 'chase and shoot'. For those unfamiliar with these terms let me explain that platform games involve jumping from surface to surface on various action screens, avoiding moving hazards and collecting 'treasure'. Chase and shoot games are simple shoot-'em-ups in which a variety of 'aliens' have to be blasted before they get you.

The package has a lot of variations but is limited in scope. The generators for sound and graphics are good enough but the restrictions start with character movements. More of these criticisms later. First, let's look at the units.

The first program designs the building blocks of the game. Sound effects, sprite patterns, user-defined graphics (UDG's) and their related screen designs.

The UDG designer gives a grid representing a character which is eight pixels square. As you fill in the individual pixel squares on the grid, an actual size character to the right of the grid mirrors what is happening so you can watch as the character 'grows'. Below this single graphic is a block in which several of the same characters are printed side-by-side for border character designs.

Once your design is completed, you can save it in the full set displayed on the screen and then use some of the other key facilities to produce various different orientations. The character can be rotated 90 degrees at a time through a full 360 degrees or mirror and reversed images can be produced.

When your full character set has been designed you may save them to tape and verify that the recording is correct before moving on to use one of the other design options. Up to 84 different characters can be designed for each game you make.

The sound effect generator is the best feature of this package and allows the production of eight different effects. These can fall into two different categories: bleep and white noise. Bleeps are semi-musical effects, laser blasts and the like. White noise is suitable for explosions and may be linked to border flashing for extra impact effects.

Each sound has five elements: start and end frequencies with a frequency jump step value, the length of each round, and the number of repeats of each effect.

A range of 20 animated sprites can be designed with the Sprite option. Each sprite has four animation cells so that means a full set will require the making of 80 characters on a 16 pixel square grid! Quite a lot of work involved here when you consider that animated sprites must be worked individually and then checked for good movement.

The final stage is to create the background scene from the UDG's which you made earlier. Up to 40 screens are possible but you must bear in mind that the more complex your plan, the fewer screens can be stored in memory.

Obviously there is a lot of pre-planning involved in producing a game. If you suddenly find that you haven't considered all the phases of your game fully enough you can save what you hae done so far and make any changes later.

Each of the above sections are saved separately to tape so the next step is to put them all together and design the movements and sound effect synchronisation in the game. This is done using the second program on the tape.

Your first task is to name your game. This can be done in one row of 16 double-sized letters or two rows of eight quadruple-sized letters. Next your name is entered and finally number of screens in the game is entered.

The program then moves on to the scoring system. Up to nine lives can be allocate to your game. You can then stipulate the score which must be reached to obtain entry to the next screen level and you must also stipulate your bonus score. The word 'bonus' can be changed to suit the style of your game. For example, it may represent the character's energy level or be a time limit for completing the screen in which case the word 'Energy' or 'Time' could be substituted for 'Bonus'. You can also opt for the loss of a player's life when the bonus runs out or not depending on how your whims move you.

Gameplay type is next selected which is either platform or chase and shoot. This decision affects the number and type of sprites which will be offered for selection in the next section of the Creator. Characters, aliens, missiles, explosions and all the other elements of the game are selected for each level. The speed and nature of movement is also stipulated.

In the middle of your screen plans you may find that you have run out of memory space in which case you can shorten the game to its current length simply by pressing a key.

The final step is to add your sound effects into the correct section of the six section sound library. The first section is the sound heard at the beginning of each level, and this is followed by the sound of collecting a treasure, losing a life, viewing the high score table and firing a missile. The final section is the sound of an alien being disintegrated. This sound is selected from one of three fixed options: an explosion, a whine or a squelch.

Now is the time to put it all together onto your master tape. Your first job is to choose your title tune from the three on offer. Initially this will be pot luck because you don't hear the tune until the full game is loaded and their names are not particularly descriptive: Ditty, Classical and Modern.

Next, the Basic loader is saved at the beginning of your master tape under a name which has up to ten characters. If you want a loading screen to be displayed, now is the time to load it. There is no facility for designing the loading screen in this package, nor are there any hints on how this can be done.

Finally, the game code is saved and the information from the last section is added to make the master tape complete. Only now can you see if it all works.

The overall impression that I'm left with is that this package was planned to give a reasonable amount of flexibility and then created in a series of modules. The mere fact that you can't keep checking the progress of your game until you have put it all together would put me off using this creator. There are other more flexible versions on the market.

The order in which things are done in the manual is not the best way. I found it better to set up the loading tape before specifying the gameplay so that this could be saved directly onto the end of the loader.

All games creators must have limitations because of the memory requirements of the control systems, but this means that greater thought must go into the planning. Some of the features of this utility made me wish I hadn't started. There is no way to check if all of your screens will fit into the final version so a lot of time can be wasted designing screens which may not ultimately be used.

With a little more development and thought, this could have been an excellent little package. As it stands, it is less than satisfactory though constant use would allow you to overcome its worst facets and the finished results aren't too bad.