SEASON'S GREETING

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All the season's greetings from Clyde Bish of Exeter.



Have you thought of sending someone a cassette-based Christmas card this

year? If you have, you may like to have a look at one I will be sending to

someone this year! The program makes use of the Spectrum's high resolution

graphics and user-defined graphics. You'll also find that colour and the

much-maligned BEEP function have been extensively utilised.



Paging Santa



There are four "pages" to this card - these start at lines 3, 50, 200 and 399

in Program 2.



The first screen gives a seasonal greeting in large letters (courtesy of

Uncle Sir Clive's Horizon tape) whilst the PAPER colour scrolls. A line of

bells then appears between the message, and rings out a Christmas chime.



The program then takes on a more serious note as the screen changes to show

the stable at Bethlehem, with a starry sky above. The song "O Little Town OF

Bethlehem" can be heard while the stars above twinkle. The interior of the

stable can be seen to brighten as the birth of the baby Jesus takes place,

and the Star of Bethlehem appears over the stable. Star beams appear to reach

down from the star and shimmer as the computer launches into a rendition of

"Away In A Manger".



The third screen shows a Christmas tree with candles and a star nestled

within its branches. The candles are then lit and the star begins flashing,

and "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" is played. Following a series of messages

in which you are invited to guess who is about to come on-screen, complete

with reindeer and sleigh comes Santa with messages of peace and goodwill.



The final screen gives the message "God Bless" bordered by holly leaves and

berries, to the accompaniment of the hymn "Silent Night".



Greetings ...



To use the program, first load the "walls" program from the Horizons tape,

then enter NEW. Don't worry, you only want the machine code routine - and

that's safe above RAMTOP. Now, type in Program 1, RUN it and enter the

numbers in Fig.1, reading across the lines. Enter NEW again, and type in

Program 2.



Here are some notes to help you type in the program:



1 - The capital letters within the quotes in lines 38, 55, 80, 200, 260, and

at the beginning of lien 305, are the user-defined graphics and should  be

entered in graphics mode.



2 - In line 400, the variables x$ and y$ have to be entered using colour

control characters. Type in LET x$=" (followed by the following sequence of

key presses - don't enter the '/' characters, as these have only been

included to space the different key presses) ".



"E Mode Caps Shift 4 / Graphics Mode I / E Mode Caps Shift 2 / Graphics Mode

J / E Mode Caps Shift 4 / Graphics Mode H / E Mode Caps Shift 0"



Similarly, after LET y$=" use the above sequence, but substitute Graphics

Mode H for Graphics Mode I and Graphics Mode I fro Graphics Mode H.ÿ



3 - Line 450 goes to itself to prevent an error message appearing. You could

replace this with STOP, or RUN if you wanted the program to keep repeating.



To save the program on tape, use the command:



SAVE "xmas" LINE 2: SAVE "xg" CODE USR "a",168: SAVE "xc" CODE 32256,300



When loaded the program auto-runs, firstly loading in the user-defined

graphics bytes and the machine code before starting the display.



As written the program occupies almost all of the available space in a 16K

Spectrum and the program takes about three and a half minutes to RUN.



If you don't like the messages or prefer other tunes in the program, then

change them! I have made the program as general as possible, but if you want

to change the messages to make them more personal, then just remember you can

only have eight letters maximum for each word.



Happy Christmas, everybody.