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The shape of things to come from New Generation Software? Colin Christmas puts you in the picture

Over the last year or so I have had the pleasure of being able to review most of the great Graphics Utilities which have been produced for the Spectrum. I say pleasure, because this is the field which really excites me. Games, I confess, I can usually take or leave. But a good Graphics program will keep me in front of the screen for hours.

I am, by nature, a Doodler. So that even without a particular assignment I will play with shapes, lines and colours just for the fun of it. Any graphics utility which gives me that facility is for me immediately impressive, but I also believe that this facility is important from a user's point of view.

My next criterion is always the utilities potential. Just how far can you go beyond the important stage of Doodling? Can you develop ideas and designs? How easy it is to scrap one screen and start another with the same idea? And can you go on building from one idea with more line, shape and colour?

This is not just a question of value for money. New graphics programs have got to be able to extend and develop our own creative abilities. They have to take our micros to new and exciting places in visual terms, to raise our horizons and our expectations of the micro as a creative tool.

Personally, I believe that such programs have to have what can only be described here in very general terms as 'Educational Application'. As most schools but computers, and more parents want their children to be familiar with them, so the software produced for them must have the same appeal and value that educators would expect from a new textbook or series for schools on Television.

Such a philosophical introduction has been quite deliberate. Lightmagic by Nigel Hicken from New Generation Software has had me hooked from the first time I loaded it into my 48K Spectrum.

The Cursor, a small circle on the screen, can be moved either by using the Cursor keys, or by Kempston or Sinclair Joystick. Having made this selection, the Main Menu is displayed and it becomes immediately obvious that this utility, like others of its kind, offers two main options. The first, called "Screen Editor", is for the creation of artwork. The second, called "UDG Designer", speaks for itself.

Screen Editor offers five modes. Mode status is displayed along with cursor coordinates, and two other operational states, in boxes using the bottom two lines of the screen. Within each mode, various other facilities are available.

For example, in 'Pen' mode you are given a fairly straightforward doodle pad facility. Apart from line drawing using the cursor, being able to construct circles around the cursor position, fill areas with current ink colour, change ink colour, move over any part of your artwork with the cursor 'up' as it were or erasing any lines it travels over, you can also speed up or slow down cursor movement, check positioning of objects on the screen by superimposing a grid corresponding to the character cells on the screen, enlarge the quarter of the screen in which the cursor is positioned, plot single pixels on the screen and, using this as a reference point reposition the cursor accurately on the screen.

Three other facilities in Pen Mode deserve special mention.

BAND enables a line to be drawn from the point where this facility is selected, to the current cursor position. As the cursor is then moved, this line is stretched. Its suggested use for producing angled lines is very effective and time saving. It can also be used to Erase sweeps of the artwork rather like a windscreen wiper.

CLEAN can be used either to erase the entire screen, or a quarter screen if it is enlarged. But it can also be used to set the entire screen to ink and paper colour.

Save Picture In Memory and Recall Picture From Memory are especially useful options which, hopefully, speak for themselves.

The most creative facilities this program offers, are yet to come. If you select Brush Mode, then as well as still being able to see most of the options offered in Pen Mode, you can draw using 'brush' strokes. The effect is sensational, and has to be seen to be believed. The width and pattern of stroke can be altered from an italic nib type effect to a spray dot effect, not unlike a slow motion air brush.

Each effect can be startlingly enhanced by going over areas a number of times with the 'brush'. Density and shading can be controlled very effectively in this manner. And some very beautiful freehand word achieved if the straight and accurate lines of Pen Mode seem a little too mechanistic and cold for your style.

Block Mode allows blocks of up to 64 character cells to be re-positioned on the screen, or copied to another part of the screen. A square of 8 x 8 characters is available for rotating objects and also to mirror them.

Text Mode and UDG Mode allow text and a selection of UDG characters to be positioned on the screen. They are 'picked up' from the banks displayed and can be doubled in height, rotated, reversed or inverted before being displayed on the screen wherever you position them using the cursor.

Lightmagic also offers two other familiar options. The UDG Designer and the Compscreen. Both are, by now, essential tools of the Graphics utility and are, in this instance, very easy to use. The first is self-explanatory to graphics addicts and the second enables the user to compress and save data read into the Spectrum. Compscreen is on the cassette after Lightmagic and is loaded separately. The amount of memory saved will of course depend on the amount of information in the screen you wish to compress.

Once compressed, the start addresses of the screens are listed with the start addresses of the reconstruction routine and the RAMTOP value that will have to be set. The screens are then saved to tape. To retrieve the screens for use in your own program, a CLEAR command is used to set RAMTOP, the screens LOADed and a RANDOMISE USR call is then necessary together with the DATA screen start call, to display each picture.

All screens and UDGs can be saved and loaded to and from tape of course, whether compressed or not.

The manual accompanying Lightmagic gets full marks for clarity and ease of use. An example program for using UDGs in your own program is included along with comprehensive hints on Erasing, Enlarging and Reducing, with fully worked examples for using Pen and Brush Modes, although in fat I have not tried these yet. There are layouts for both the Spectrum 48K and the Spectrum + printed on the back cover so that you can produce your own overlays with all the commands for Lightmagic at your fingertips. If you did not wish to go this far, the commands for Screen Editor are Tabulated at the end of the manual for quick reference along with a clear and accurate index.

All in all, Lightmagic has an exceptionally well produced manual and a powerful and impressive piece of software from New Generation. One can only hope that this Utility will find a place with all the other software being used in Schools and at home.