Speedy Splatch I am not a great games enthusiast but I really must congratulate Mark Roberts on his excellent game of Splatch in issues 12 and 13. This is above the standard of much commercial software. It is a great pity that it takes the seven Basic programs so long (6 minutes from disc), to poke the machine code before it comes to life. It is very easy to convert the program to load directly after having ensured that all parts work. Fi rstly this short loader program should be saved at the beginning of a new tape as “SPLATCH”. 10 MEMORY 20759 20 LOAD "!SPLATCH.BIN"
30 CALL &BD19:CALL 21760It is a good idea to print a description on the screen after line 10 since even with disc-loading there is still a ten second delay while the code is loaded.Do not rewind the tape but remove it from the recorder. Load (not run) program 7 and add :STOP to line 110 and save the new program 7. RUN “program1” which will run each of the others in turn and all the code will be poked into memory and the program will stop. It is then only necessary to reinsert the loader tape then enter SPEED WRITE 1:SAVE “SPLATCH.BIN”,B,20760,18024. The result is a fast loading version of a great game. D.G. Shedden Sudbury , Suffolk, ACU 1/86 | 
