A brief introduction -------------------- Welcome to "Hiscore Terminal Utility" (HTU). With the aid of this program you can conveniently organize and manage all your game hiscores, most specifically for those games that don't take the trouble to save them for you. Along with the actual hiscore, the game name and the gamer's name, you can also keep track of miscellaneous topics such as "hiscore date", "event name" (in case of sports games), "console/system type" and some other fields. Shareware --------- The "Hiscore Terminal Utility" is shareware, which means that you can spread it as much as you want, copy it to all your friends, sell it in Public Domain libraries, and generally do with it whatever you want. You can use it or trash it, I don't mind. However, if you find it useful (or if you don't find it useful but use it anyway) you are requested to pay a modest so-called shareware registration fee. This amount can be anything you want but should not be less than the equivalent of about 20 German marks if you would like to receive back a disk containing various Public Domain and shareware utilities written by me. Anything in any currency is welcome at the address mentioned at the end of this text file. Why shareware? I believe that people should be allowed to test a piece of software before they commit themselves to buying it. Using the shareware principle this is as easy as can be. You use the software to see if it's any good; if it isn't you leave it be and never pay anything for it. If you start using it regularly, however, you should pay the shareware fee. Using the shareware principle, everybody benefits. If you are honest, that is. Shareware works. And I will release many more shareware utilities depending on the success of a program like "Hiscore Terminal Utility". I hope you'll register. The Manual ---------- It must have been over five years ago when I got the idea to do this program. I guess it was back in the time of "Synth Sample IV" and "Scroll Message Editor", programs that you've probably never heard of and that I believe were done in 1987. The thing that made sure I lost interest in coding the thing was the user interface. I was lousy at user interfaces, and before you knew it a custom-written user interface wouldn't work on all machines. With my registering the shareware GEM dialog routine library "FlyDials" (written by a German by the name of Gregor Duchalski) all of that changed. Apart from the commercial "Ultimate Virus Killer", the "Hiscore Terminal Utility" is the first thing I've written using this library. As you will see (or have seen), it's comfortable, quite fast, and certainly highly reliable and about as compatible as is possible. So what can the "Hiscore Terminal Utility" actually do? It can keep track of all your hiscores, with optional specification of your name, the date on which you got the hiscore, the level you reached (where applicable), the name of the event (for example "Ice Skating" in "Winter Games"), the console/system type (ST/Falcon/Gameboy/Game Gear/Lynx/whatever) and miscellaneous remarks. Individual records can be deleted/added/edited, you can output any important information to a printer, you can merge together several different hiscore lists (creating one list of the absolute best) and you can quickly display whatever game title you wish to know the details of. The whole thing is wrapped in a userfriendly GEM dialog box interface, allowing for compatibility with any machine you'd care to throw it at. The only requirement is that you start it with a screen resolution of 640x200 pixels of higher. GENERAL CONVENTIONS You're probably familiar with GEM to a reasonable extent already. You already know that texts displayed in a 'light' text style cannot be selected, and that buttons with a thick border are 'default', i.e. that they can be additionally selected by pressing the [RETURN] or [ENTER] key on your keyboard. Because of the use of the "Flydials" library, however, there are some interesting extra bits. For example you can select buttons not only just by clicking on them but also by keeping the [ALTERNATE] key pressed and then pressing the letter which is underlined in the button text. You will also find the [HELP] and [UNDO] keys supporting extra buttons - in the case of the "Hiscore Terminal Utility" these will be "Info" and "Exit" respectively). Last but not least, you may discover a so-called flydial corner at the top right of a dialog. You can use this to drag the dialog box to any place you want on the screen, which is useful if you're using the program in TT high resolution or a similar Falcon resolution. GETTING STARTED To run properly, the "Hiscore Terminal Utility" needs the "HTU_x_x.PRG" and its resource files "HTU_M.RSC" and "HTU_H.RSC". It also needs a data file (which has a file extension of ".HTU") to load, as the program will not work without a data file loaded. An empty "DEFAULT.HTU" data file is supplied on the disk. This file contains only one dummy entry, which you can "edit" to your own wishes. After that you can add any other entries you want. An example of a complete datafile is "CRONOS.HTU". EDITING As soon as you press the "Edit" or "Add" buttons (or the appropriate keyboard shortcuts), you will notice all other buttons being greyed out, i.e. becoming unselectable. In the topmost edit field you will see a small vertical line - this is the cursor. You may now enter the appropriate information into the appropriate field boxes, pressing the cursor up and down keys to go from one field to another and the cursor left and right keys to 'walk' within one field entry. Pressing [RETURN] (or clicking on the button or using its other shortcut) will cause the "Edit" or "Add" mode to be exited. Should you have pressed [RETURN] with the false assumption that it would take you to the next field, nothing is wrong yet - you can simply enter "Edit" mode and change whatever you want to. Additional keys supported within "Edit" and "Add" mode are [BACKSPACE] (delete character to the left of the cursor), [DELETE] (delete character to the right of the cursor), [ESC] (delete whole current field), [TAB] (go to next field, i.e. the equivalent of 'cursor down') and [CLR HOME] (which moves the cursor to the topmost field, in this case "Game Title"). You can also use the mouse to position the cursor on another field or at a specific position within a field text. Simply move the mouse pointer and click where needed. Notes: * In all fields any alphanumeral may be entered - with the exception of the hiscore date and hiscore fields, where you are only allowed to enter numerals. * Entering no specific date in the 'hiscore date' field will cause the current date to be inserted upon exiting edit mode. It is up to you to make sure your system date is valid. The date format inserted, by the way, is "MMDDYY". * You can enter the hiscore started at the left of the entry, without taking into consideration where the "," should be. It will be automatically formatted and rightbound upon you exiting edit mode. * In case your hiscore happens to be a particular TIME, e.g. with a sports game, you should enter the score as 'hhhmmmsssttt' (where 'ttt' are thousands of a second). A SHORT OVERVIEW OF ALL OPTIONS LOAD Displays an item selector box where you can load any "HTU" type hiscore data file from disk into memory. All previous records contained in memory will be lost. Upon return to the program the first record will be displayed. SAVE Saves the current hiscore data file in memory to disk. You will not be requested to specify a file name and the old file on disk will be overwritten. Before saving, the whole database will be sorted, too (identical to the SORT option mentioned below). MERGE With this option it is possible to have several different "HTU"- type hiscore databases compared and the currently loaded list updated to your personal wishes. First you will get a dialog requesting you to specify whether or not game titles found in the supplement hiscore database that are not yet present in your own should be added by default (without your interaction) or not. Simpy select the proper answer ([RETURN] will also support "Yes", [UNDO] will also support "No"). Next, an item select will be displayed where you can select the supplemental "HTU" type hiscore data file, for example that of a friend's. After that, this new file will be read record by record, where each record will be compared with the database currently in memory. If any of the newly read records are found to have a game title identical to one in the database already in memory, you will be confronted with another major dialog box. The top half of this dialog box will display some vital information on the original record (i.e. the old one that is part of your own database), the bottom half will display the same information of the new record (i.e. the one loaded from the supplemental file). You can now opt to "Add", "Replace" (this option is disabled - greyed out - in the case of a new title when you have switched the first option off by selecting "No"), "Skip" or "Quit". These buttons can be selected by the mouse or the appropriate keyboard shortcut. Additionally, "Add" can be selected by means of the [RETURN] key and "Quit" can be selected by pressing [UNDO]. When you're not certain, just select "Add" here. You can always delete the record at a later point in time when you can examine the full hiscore database and delete any records that may be superfluous. Once the current database has been completely updated, you can have a look at it within the program. You can, of course, also save it to disk. * Where 'identical' is meant above, it is not important whether any of the entries are written in upper/lower case or a combination. Before comparisons are made, both entries are converted to upper case internally. * When the game title is identical but the hiscore is lower, this will by default not even be offered to you for addition or replacement. Exceptions are the following: - When the 'event' field is not empty - this means we may be dealing with a multiple-event sports game, where there hiscore may not refer to points gained but some kind of time record. - When the 'remark' field is not empty - this may indicate a special game mode, for example 'hard' as opposed to 'easy', or 'Without drone' as opposed to 'With drone'. ADD Enters 'edit' mode, but starts off with an empty record and increases the total amount of records by one. It is exited by pressing [RETURN] or [ALT]-A, or clicking the mouse pointer on the "Add" button once more. DELETE After asking once for comfirmation, this deletes the record currently on the screen, displaying the next one (or the previous one if the current record happened to be the last). SORT This does a quicksort, sorting the whole database from A to Z based on the game title. When you SAVE a database, the sort option is automatically executed first. EDIT This enters edit mode, allowing you to change any of the field contents belonging to the record currently being displayed. It is exited by pressing [RETURN] or [ALT]-E, or clicking the mouse pointer on the "Edit" button once more. FIND Selecting this option causes another dialog to be displayed on the screen, requesting you to enter the game title you want. Pressing [RETURN] or [ALT]-O or clicking the mouse pointer on the "OK" button will cause your specification to be accepted. After a brief while the first record with that game specification will be displayed. If there are multiple entries with the same game title, you can go to the next one by pressing the "ONE ARROW DOWN" button at the right of the record screen. It is not important whether the game title you enter is in upper/lower case or a combination. Before searching it will be converted to upper case internally. If you enter only part of the game title, for example "Llama" it will find the first entry starting with "Llama" ("Llamatron", "Llamazap", whatever). PRINT With this option you can print out your database using just about any printer. First you are requested to specify the printer codes your printer needs to enter and leave expanded (i.e. double width) text style printing, as the program will attempt to print each game title using this style. The default values given are those required for Epson emulation, which is supported by most printers today. Your printer's manual will specify these codes if they are any different and if expanded style is supported at all. Alternatively you can also disable expanded printing altogether using the disable/enable radio buttons. After this, another dialog is put on the screen. This allows you to specify which fields you want to have printed. Only the fields you specify will be printed, the others won't. For each record the program will check whether the actual individual fields contain any text. If they're empty they will not be printed. Printing will be assumed in draft mode, unless you can force your printer into another mode yourself. When printing has finished, a form feed will be sent (causing the current page to be ejected). During printing, you can press [ESCAPE] or [UNDO] to interrupt printing. Do mind that the program is usually a lot quicker than the printer, so the printer's own RAM buffer may contain a lot more still to be printed after you've officially aborted printing. * Game title, gamer's name and hiscore are always printed and cannot be disabled. * After printing has ceased (whether cancelled or not) the amount of pages and entries printed will be displayed. * The printing option has been tested using a sheet feeder and pages of 64 lines and 80 columns. It should work at all times, but you're welcome to contact me if you experience problems (of course this only works for registered users). INFO Yet another dialog, this time specifying some internal statistics: The amount of free memory, the amount of memory currently used by the database in memory and the amount of records currently in use. ABOUT Displays a dialog box containing my snailmail/email addresses and the name, version number and finishing date of the program. EXIT Selecting this button will cause the program to relinquish control back to the GEM desktop. If you have made any alterations to the datafile currently in memory it will first ask you whether or not to save it to disk. If you don't save it, all changes made will be lost. THE ARROW DEPARTMENT To the left of the currently displayed record you will find six buttons. These can be used the 'walk' through the records. "S" moves you to the "START" of all records, i.e. to the beginning of the alphabet. "E" moves you to the "END" of all records, somewhere close to something starting with "Z". The single arrow buttons move closer to the end or the beginning by one record at a time, the double arrow buttons do the same in steps of ten records. There are no keyboard shortcuts to any of these buttons. LIMITS * The lengths of the field texts are limited to the size of their fields. * Up to 1000 records can be managed. COMPATIBILITY The "Hiscore Management Utility" should work on any ST/TT/Falcon with any amount of memory and any TOS version, including multitasking efforts such as "MultiTOS", "MultiGEM" and "Geneva". The program needs less than 300 Kb of free memory, so it should even work on half megabyte machines. CREDITS As usual, this program wasn't done all on my own. First of all, of course, there's thanks that need to go to Gregor Duchalski who did the "Flydials" library (Baueracker 15a, 44627 Herne, Germany). Way to go Gregor! Thanks also need to go to my girlfriend Miranda, who did some beta testing and who also made sure I could enter some more hiscores worth while entering. The Address ----------- I can be reached at the following address. There, I would like to receive suggestions, interesting letters, bug reports and, of course, your shareware registration fees. Richard Karsmakers Looplantsoen 50 NL-3523 GV Utrecht The Netherlands Email: r.c.karsmakers@stud.let.ruu.nl I'd like to remind you of the fact that, unless you've read otherwise at a later date, the addresses specified above are valid up to the summer of 1995, for I don't plan on living at that address forever. If you send any money, please restrict it to cash (absolutely no cheques, because they cost about as much to cash in as the total amount of money needed to register!) and don't include any coins! The program(s) on this disk and its manual are copyright 1993 by Richard Karsmakers. However, you may copy them as much as you want as long as the package remains complete (i.e. program + document file + possible other associated files). Like Jeff Minter already proclaimed long ago: "Death to The Men With Suits!" Utrecht, the Netherlands, August 23rd 1993