Over the last year there has been an increase in the amount of budget software available for the Atari micros.

The popularity of these programs seems to have overshadowed the full capabilities of the micro, so it was with some interest that I viewed Blazing Paddles.

This graphics package offers you more than 250 colours, a range of pre-drawn shapes stored on disc, three variations of text, four different input drawing devices and an icon-driven menu of commands.

You load the program with Basic switched off and the first thing to appear is the Drawing Device menu. This is where you choose your drawing tool - joystick, paddles, touch tablet or trackball.

I found the joystick easiest to use, as the scrolling and medium pace takes you around the screen comfortably, if a little jerkily. The Touch Tablet requires a Koala Pad - I tried to use my Atari Touch Tablet but as I moved the stylus up, the crosshair moved down! As a result I stuck with the joystick option.

Moving on to the drawing mode, the menu icons are placed across the screen at the top and bottom. This effectively leaves you with only half a screen for your drawing.

Blazing Paddles has the usual range of drawing commands - Clear screen, Text, Lines, Ovals, Solid box, Outline box, Dots, Spray can, Fill and Zoom. Attached to these are the pre-drawn shapes and window features.

The majority of commands are selected by placing the screen crosshair cursor on top of an icon and pressing the fire button. Some of the commands speak for themselves, but others will benefit from a brief explanation.

Window is a visual cut and paste routine. By dragging a dotted outline around a portion of the drawing you want to cut you can send it to a buffer. This allows you to move a chosen segment around the screen by simply picking the spot and hitting the fire button.

Text can be selected in three sizes and each is double the height of the last, with the smallest similar to the standard Atari character set.

There are two additional styles - italic and bold. But only one style at a time can reside in memory.

Also on disc are three files containing various pre-drawn shapes. When first loaded, the program defaults to a set of six shapes which includes buildings and vehicles. These can be moved using the cursor, flipped from side to side and rotated in 60 degree increments before placing with the fire button. There is also a file of more than 30 musical symbols ready for pasting.

The Colour Selection menu displays sixteen colours with up to sixteen variations of shade in each. You choose a colour by selecting a playfield register - 0, 1, 2 or 3 - then you must decide on a main colour and finally on a shade. This procedure is a little time-consuming.

If you take advantage of the six pre-set pattern boxes found at the base of the colour palette screen you can also mix two colours for the patterns. These are a mixture of horizontal and vertical lines in a checker-board design.

The Spray command produces a stippled effect using a defined colour - although there doesn't seem any method of modifying the nozzle pattern.

A more useful method of drawing is provided by the seven different painting brushes, and a mixture of these can give a very nice effect to your picture.

The Fill option is linked to the colour spectrum and allows you to flood an area with a colour or pattern.

Zoom works by splitting the screen in two. The top half is a normal representation of the picture while the bottom shows an expanded view. You can then carry out close detail work on an enlarged area of the picture.

It's essential that an art package allows you to save your creations, and this one has a reasonable Load and Save feature - which allows you to process pictures, or windows, shapes and character sets.

There are also facilities to view a disc directory, erase a file and format a data disc - all the options you need are included.

Each picture is stored as a 62 sector uncompacted file which is compatible with the Micropainter art pack.

The windowing feature is handy for storing any size blocks of a picture. By cutting a section from your drawing and storing it in the buffer you can move directly to the disc operations and save the block to disc.

This procedure also works in reverse so blocks can be cut from disc and pasted to the screen. Probably one of the most useful features available is the Undo key, which will cancel your last command and revert to the original display.

A Help file that can be viewed at any time is also included on the disc, but only gives very brief information. There is one sample picture file and a useful Basic program with a short machine code routine to enable you to display pictures from within your own programs.

Printing your picture is all part of the fun of painting programs, and Blazing Paddles has drivers for Epson, Gemini 10X, Panasonic and Okidata.

Unfortunately the 1029 dot matrix printer is not supported, but as the picture file is saved in the 62 sector format you can always print it out by using the listing for the 1029 printer published in the July 87 issue of Atari User.

Overall, Blazing Paddles will be of limited use to experienced Atari users as only four colours can be displayed at any time and it doesn't have the range of commands that the Graphics Art Department boasts. Its saving grace is the ease of use, the pre-drawn shapes and the standard 62 sector format.

Blazing Paddles is a good art package. Though not ideal for experienced computer artists, it is a great introduction to art - and superb for children of all ages.