"v1readme.txt"

Introduction/Rantish thingy for 
V1: vtest, First (1) Anniversary, C++ Edition.

---:

First off, to run this cute thing, 
you need just four files (actually, it's 
an overstatement to say that you need them,
but they come highly recommended).

-> ct.exe (the executable!!)

Three data files 
(all are actually plaintext "S+", but 
more on the format later)

-> cbmpal2.txt

Which helps to generate the C64ish pallette,
so far, this neat feature is unused.

-> chr.txt

Which is a set of 512 cells, a cell being 
8 bytes, each byte being a bitmask for 8
pixels across, and the cell being thus a grid
of 8x8 monochrome pixels. 

In english, these are the nice letters and symbols,
but in a numerical form.

-> sprmis2.txt

The optional, highly recommended, and highly
customisable sprite, which is currently a really
blocky missle, adopted from "Moving Graphics",
but with many alterations which make it far 
superior. For one, the numeric "62" was written
as "60" in my printing of the book, twice,
which changes a whole two pixel in the sprite...

Anyhow, off of nit-picking. Marcus Milton's books
were very inspirational, I feel if they sell, and
are so simple and limited, then I could write
books around that level and sell them too. Had
I a good platform, I may have already written them,
but silly me goes to try and make his own platform,
then stand on it...

---:

Involking

Unlike previous M-spawns (V1/ct.exe is actually
a part of the M8 series of pre-C99 projects, and also
part of the NP series of dooty projects), this one
doesn't take a lot of command line arguments, actually,
it takes absolutely none... don't be too disappointed,
please.

---:

User input

Okay, the program flow should go like this:

You involk the program.

It displays one cell tiled in a 16x16 grid,
in the same color.

It displays the first 256 characters of the charset
described in "chr.txt", in different colors of 
foreground and background, and then waits humbly for
your input (hit the "enter" key, or something).

It then clears the screen, and stamps several (hundred)
copies of the missle sprite (or whatever is in the 
file, now) on the screen, overlapping and groovy...

It waits for you input, then peacefully exits.

Hence, the only runtime input you have is tapping two keys,
when you're tired of staring at the screen.

---:

That's all for users...

Well, this isn't really a usable tool, yet.

Currently I'm designing the next phase in the project,
and also slowly refactoring v1's C++ code to make it 
just a little more maintainable. 

I spend a lot of time thinking and some time drawing
diagrams, some time coding but not all that much right now,
it's really more at the diagram level for now.

---:

Soon to come...

Fear not, though, I know what shall be the next major 
addition: a replacement for the Screem Matrix Emulation
Layer Library found in M7r and friends (conceptually,
embedded since M1...).

---:

Hails:

Hails to Sir Nelish Batel, Master Chip, Lord TWoodington,
Siggy", The Roman, "fireplace", and a whole 
set of people who would never even dream of even 
downloading this stuff. (yeah, I know I left out a lot of
people, but I realised that hardly anyone is likely to ever
read this file, anyhow, so I stopped before I got really
into it). 

Also, hails to the ever present ones. 

---]
K31: 22 April, 2K
circa 10pm local time.

---: P.S.

I released this because it's around the same level as the original
vtest, but it is not at all complete, and itself was only a test
of my C++ skill (and a means to develop long-term project doing-ness).
