The "EX4 Coders Disk Issue #1" Welcome Stranger, This is one of the latest creations to hit the streets from the good old work-a-holics in EX4, namely, none other than, The Art & 2-Cool. Thanks to the dedication and hard work of The Art in his last few evenings spent debugging & coding this awsome menu system, we at EX4 are proud to present this brand new collection... 'The EX4 Coders disks' series.. A few days ago we (2-Cool & The Art/EX4) where chatting to each other about coding in general and then we got talking about the lack of decicated source disks around still being released on a regular basis. 'The Source' become quite a favourite with many people (including us) however the releases of the next volumes became less and less over time and to date only 7 volumes have been released in well over a year. And so here is where the new 'EX4 Coders Disks' comes in... In case you have not yet noticed you can manouver your way around this source-disk using the mouse as well as keyboard, don`t forget you can hold the right mouse button down (just like OS Pull-down menus) to bring up the options selector panel. From here you can return to the main menu and generally fiddle about with the options like fonts and music, etc. One thing you may have notice by now is that from this 'source-disk' menu executable demos can be executed and IFF picture snapshots shown. These are used where possible to give you a quick overview of exactly what the sources perform before you begin to examine the source-codes themselves. This is quite a novel concept that we have not seen on any other source-disks in the past so we hope this format appeals to you. You may find that the odd executable will not work... this is not a bug in the program, but a BAD system takeover in the program it is trying to run... if nothing happens, just press the LMB and you should return to the main menu. We plan to release coders disks on a regular basis with many themes covered in both OS (Operating System library programming) and Hardware ($DFFxxx & $BFxxxx style coding) techniques. Many sources will be written by ourselves as well as other programmers who feel they would like to submit some of their cool source-codes and get worldwide recognition fame and fortune in the process (?? hehe) (some Hope (ed!)) We have quite a few megabytes of sources already lined up for the next few releases including some goodies like planar full-screen graphics rotation, morphing, texture mapping, 3d-vectors, copper effects, demos, sources to many demo effects like plasma and many other useful things like fast 8 way scrolling and game map creation among other things. On the OS side of things many useful things covering many source-codes to some useful utilities, (on this 1st issue you`ve already have seen the source to utilities, like 'NoClick', 'FlushMem', 'PPDecrypt' and etc.) Possibly even full blown applications like crunches as well as useful stuff like 'How to install a XPR-II Bi-Directional 'xprdmodem.library' compatible interface into my BBS/Comms package' type of things.. Other things planned are 'the full src code to the DMS v1.11 TURBO Compression and Decompression routines' for anyone interested in developing their own clone of DMS.. like Blackhawk/PDX did, etc. Also how to code tools for BBS`s like /X will not be missed out. Infact you will get may extra bits of interesting information from these very disks on how to write tools for SWIFT BBS. (The new /X style BBS Package under development my 2-Cool/EX4) Special interest information will be included also like the full structure of DMS and LHA files and 'how do I write my own DMS or LHA-Checker' type tutorials (and I don`t mean just using 'Execute c:lha t myarchive.lha' style checking.. full checking using your OWN code. In anycase the each disk should contain at least one or more things of interest to you, and if not then maybe its time you sumit some juicy source codes...Tune in or miss out... You may find that some sources relate to The Art/LSD and 2-Cool/LSD but in actual fact we have now left LSD in the last few days, There is a lot of confusion over membership of LSD, but we are now in EX4. Along with all the active constructive coders, the group has split members have gone their seperate ways, and two new groups have formed LSD with halve their original membership, and EX4 with the other half, this includes the best coders, namely ourselves, and we still strongly object to the release of the CD, and we will NOT be paid off, we will not bore you with the details.. The disks themselves are dedicated to ASSEMBLY programmers only, sorry no other languages are planned to be supported. I guess all you SAS/C , AMOS and Hisoft-Basic, PASCAL , FORTH, LISP, ADA, AMIGA E, (need I go on? hehe) can just bin these disks or begin learning the language you should be coding on the Amiga anyway. We chose only to support assembly because while other languages are popular like SAS/C we feel we would much rather promote coding in assembly which will always produce the *BEST* results in the most efficient manner possible (in terms of speed & memory). And in any case we plan to cover many aspects of the Amiga`s hardware for development of games/demos and also OS application programming and to be perfectly honest no other language is suitable for both Demos and OS coding. Of course there are arguments to this, but this is *OUR* view.. But remember this quote from 'PøT-Noodle/ATX' (hi man!) when the arguments about programming languages cropped up on the /X-Net... "'E' may be faster than 'C'... but 'A' kicks the arse outta both of them..." WE AGEE! ASSEMBLY RULES FOREVER!! Whether you decided to keep the collection based on this or not its your own decision but if you don`t you`ll be missing out of a lot of very useful technical information and full source-code examples. These disks will be an absoulute Gold-mine for coders struggling to get to grips with the Amiga`s hardware and a source (excuse the pun) of valuable inspiration for old hands at assembly. The source-codes themselves are not stored in the conventional 'lha' archive formats, everything is compressed with Crunchmania 'LZ-Huffman' algorithm. The program 'DLD' is supplied on the disk so that you can decrunch them back to source. Have fun... Any comments, remarks, etc. Leave us mail with any EX4 member on any of our boards... Signed: The Art/EX4 2-Cool/EX4 You can E-Mail us on these BBS`s: Wild World (UK) * The Tower (UK) Planet-X (USA) * Diabolical Sabotage (USA) Mega-Lo-Mania (USA) * USS Enterprise (USA) Static Chaos (DENMARK) Pet Semetary (DENMARK) Flashback (SWEDEN) If possible always try to contact us first at the Boards marked with a '*' as these are the ones we call around most often. Leave mail About (Games & Demos coding & this menu-system ) to : The Art/EX4 And About anything OS related (Or Games & Demos themes!) to : 2-Cool/EX4! See Ya..