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BONZO'S BIG BATCH (Amstrad Action) | BONZO'S BIG BATCH (Amstrad Computer User) |
Jeff Walker looks at the latest puppy to arrive in the Nemesis kennel BONZO's Big Batch is a package which doesn't fit neatly into any of the conventional computer program pigeon holes, presented to us in a "what you see is what you get" fashion. And what you get is three programs - a database, a pools predictor, and a sprite/screen designer. Data Manager is a simple database program that will hold a maximum of 500 records in memory at any one time. It is in two parts; the first, Initialisation and Amend, is where you set up the structure of your database. There are only two field types to choose from, string and numeric, each of which can be up to 55 characters in length. You can have up to 20 fields in each record. Entering the details is simple and mistakes are easily rectified by the Amend File Structure option. There are also facilities to load an existing file structure, alter it to suit and save it as a new or amended structure.
There is, unfortunately, a small oversight in the routine that asks you for a filename. Any string of 12 characters can be entered - there is no check for the dot, illegal filename lengths, illegal extension lengths or illegal characters. If you have inadvertently typed in a bad filename, when you come to save the structure a very unfriendly Error in line 1070 appears on the screen. Pressing a key gets you back to the main menu, but your file structure has gone. Experienced Basic programmers will be able to check the routine around line 1070 and fix this bug themselves; novices will have to wait and pray that Nemesis fixes it for them. Once your file structure is set up and saved to disc, the Data Manager program can be run. From the main menu you can load a file, add records, display the file to screen or printer, sort the file, search the file and save the file - the basic necessities of any database. Searching the file entails creating a sub-file. For numeric fields there are four operators to choose from - equal to and greater than, less than, not equal to, equal to - and two for string fields -equal to, not equal to - after which you choose the field to search. There are no multi-field searches. This has to be done manually by creating sub-files of sub-files of sub-files...
When searching string fields you enter a key word, and all records containing that word in the chosen field are selected or unselected, depending on whether you chose = or <> as the operator. For instance, with the example file supplied on the disc, I chose to delete all records whose Title field did not contain the word "love". I ended qp with the seven records shown in Figure I. These details were printed out with the Report Writer facility. Here you can select what fields get printed in one of two styles - headings at the top or headings at the side. For Figure II, which shows the headings at the side style, I further deleted all records from my sub-file that were by The Beatles.
The program can also totalise fields, which means it could be used by a small business, to keep stock or transaction records for example. Also provided is a Utilities menu, which includes, among other things, facilities to catalogue discs and rename, but not erase, files. Data Manager is a very simple database program, it follows that it is easy to use. The supplied record collection file is one sort of database the program can easily handle, but it should also be ideal for storing things like the membership details of a small club to the client list of a travelling salesman. Barbados here I come THE best known method for winning the jackpot on the treble chance is called the lucky numbers method. The very fact that people who do the same numbers every week seem to be the ones who hit the jackpot time after time is proof enough that studying the form of football teams is not only a waste of time, but is actually counter-productive. What then are we to make of a program that studies football form and predicts homes, aways and draws? Like all football pools forecasters, Pools Predictor claims that its predictions consistently outperform chance. Now the fact is that if you pick a number of matches at random to be homes, about 49 per cent will result in wins for the home team. Similarly, if you pick a number of matches at random to be Aways, around 26 per cent will be correct predictions. For draws - score and no-score collectively - the figure is 25 per cent. These are the scientific "chance" figures, so outperforming chance, it would seem, does not actually get us anywhere near the 80 per cent reliability needed for a jackpot on the Treble Chance every week. Despite these facts, football pools forecasters still sell. Pools Predictor is easy to use. The season is set up by an initialisation program, where you enter the names of each team in each league. Up to nine leagues can be entered, specifying whether each plays the Scottish system, where each team in the division plays another team in the division more than once at home, or the English system, where each team plays another only once at home.
In the main program you enter fixtures effortlessly by moving a pointer down a list and clicking on the home team, then the away team. Joystick or cursor keys can be used. Results are entered in a similar manner, using a smiley icon to point at the teams and then the number of goals scored for each team. The goals scored menu only goes up to nine, so if a team scores 10 or more - which is rare but possible - nine is all you can give them. This almost certainly doesn't affect forecasts significantly enough to upset a prediction, but it messes up Pools Predictor's other function as a football database. Forecasts are given fairly quickly, match by match, division by division, with a home, away and overall rating. Example output is shown in Figure III. This is followed by a summary of predicted homes, draws, aways and overall ratings. I tried it for four weeks. It predicted 64 Homes and got 26 correct, which is 40.62 per cent, a little below chance; it predicted 82 draws and got 20 correct, which is 24.39 per cent and about the same as chance; it predicted 64 aways and got 24 correct, which is 37.5 per cent and well above chance. Over the four weeks then, taking every prediction into account, Pools Predictor did slightly better than chance. From the scientific gambler's point of view, however, football pools are a mug's game. But they're fun, and so is Pools Predictor. Sprite and screen designers are typically only useful if you are a machine code programmer. This program is no exception, but it is a very good example of its breed. Sprite Designer lets you design up to 36 sprites in Mode 0 - maximum size 16 x 24 pixels - and save them in one file. There are copious commands for manipulating the sprites - you can mirror, rotate, scroll, insert lines - and plenty of housekeeping commands foi changing colours, storing, copying and saving youi masterpieces. Once saved you can run Screen Designer, load a sprite file and start splodging sprites here and there to create Cybernoid Uoneb and Last Nirija lookalikes. Up to 25 sprites can be placed on a screen and up to 60 screens can be stored in memory at any one time. You can do a wholesale replace of one sprite with another, combine any number of the 60 screens together, copy screens, stretch and shrink sprites to fit spaces. Screen Designer is easy to use and fun to play with. An hour"s hard work got me a few screens that looked fairly professional. You know the sort of thing - rocks and pipes and gun emplacements and things. Nothing to write home about, but then I'm no Nick Bruty. Sprite files can be loaded ana saved at will. Screen addresses of the sprites are provided when asked for. A group of finished screens can be saved to disc in their compdcted form, or separate screens can be saved as normal 17k screen images, which can be loaded again later for further editing. Great fun, but not much use unless you know how to manipulate the screen data from machine code. The Big Batch manual is no help here at all, but then this sort of tuition would need a full scale book. Sprite and Screen Designer, therefore, is a specialised too! for the machine code programmer who knows what he is doing. The verdict The best use anyone could make of Bonzo's Big Batch is to study the Basic listings to learn how to write commercial quality software in Flash Basic. If you write something that's up to scratch, Nemesis may even be interested in marketing it for you. This disc shows off just how powerful Flash Basic is, and you don't even have to own Flash Basic to run it. Recommended for the inquisitive Basic Programmer. ACU #8902 |
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