| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ CREATION GRAPHIQUE ★ PARROTRY ★ |
PARROTRY (Amstrad Action) | PARROTRY (Amstrad Computer User) |
Who's a pretty program, then? Jill Lawson tries her hand at a drawing package that can produce animated displays From time to time, among the more conventional art utilities, one finds an oddity, a program that approaches the whole business of putting pictures on your computer screen in an entirely different way. Operating on CPC 664 and 6128 computers only, in a choice of Modes 0 and 1, it also has the ability to repeat sequences and to produce animated displays. The introduction to the slim manual makes a virtue of eschewing the use of gimmicky menus and mice, so on loading up the screen goes black, displaying a number of letters across the bottom. The various functions controlled by the appropriate keys are listed in order. For instance, B changes the border colour, C, the initial ink colours (a pity that, when the manual said single digit numbers "may" be prefixed with an 0, they had not made it clear they meant "must"). Pressing D puts you into drawing mode, and the display changes to offer two basic drawing options; COPY plots points/lines and C now draws a circle (limited to those with a radius in excess of 28 pixels). It is possible to add a delay to ink changes to obtain special visual effects. Solid fills can be performed, and there is a facility to add standard text. The last drawn line, fill or addition of text can be deleted if done immediately. Anyone more used to complex drawing programs with a variety of pens, brushes, sprays, boxes, triangles, ellipses, windows, customised pattern fills, a wide choice of text sizes and styles may not be willing to accept the challenge of producing viable drawings with a minimum of tools. Users are advised to start with a simple drawing, and are thoughtfully provided with a couple of re-useable sheets of acetate and a marking pen for tracing designs to attach to the screen as a guide. Everything drawn is stored in arrays, and pressing E in the main menu enables alterations to be made. Lines can be changed, deleted, inserted or nudged to manipulate the original drawing. An explanation of the array organisation is contained in the manual. A sequence of functions may be looped to repeat any number of times and anywhere on the screen. The program displays the current coordinates after each cursor move in draw mode, and a grid can be superimposed to help with accurate positioning. At any time, re-draw allows a review of work to date, and slow re-draw makes it easy to determine where changes should be made. Files can be saved on disc and reloaded later. Because of the methods used, pictures created in this way are very economical on memory. Also there is an option to save as a normal screen. Parrotry comes with a quite impressive series of demo pictures ranging from a four stroke petrol engine to a fly-catching lizard, which give the user a fair idea of the sort of thing that can be produced once one has got to grips with the necessary procedures.
Parrotry: Ideal for illustrating programs for young children I thought this was a very interesting concept and one which I would like to explore further, but it is a utility which would appeal perhaps more to the mathematically-minded than the straightforward graphic artist. With only single-colour fills and no spray or zoom option it is not suitable for detailed hi-res work, but would be useful for display sequences. Jill Lawson , ACU #8707 |
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