pre-release 0.2 Edited By Dr Phibes
Customising STOS: Mouse Pointers
Or "How to hide the fact you used STOS"
by Bob Goodfellow
The Mouse pointers | The default fonts for
STOS | The fileselector | Support files (.ABK,MBK,MBS)
Introduction
Okay, hands up who can recognise an STOS program 30 seconds into double
clicking on it? Hmm 1,2,3,10,20 ah yes all of you. It is an easy thing
to do. The pointer for instance is awful, who ever drew this needs their
pulse felt, and the fileselector, ugh. Who decided PREVIOUS was a good
name for re-reading the disk. Anyway you know the score, some of STOSs
built in items are a dead give away and immediately put the user on the
defensive and make them hostile to your program - no matter how good it
is.
These article are specifically aimed at compiled programs, as if you
are distributing a protected STOS Basic file then EVERYONE will know it's
STOS, obvious really. Changing the mouse pointers (in this article) will
however make your life a little more pleasant.
The topics I hope to cover are:
By the end of the series it should get people wondering 'Is this machine
code? or is it GFA?" (Well maybe not).
The Mouse Pointers
Let's face it the mouse pointers given with STOS are abysmal. They look
like a child of 4 drew them and are unwieldy. What was wrong with copying
the original GEM pointers I don't know. I would assume that the GEM pointers
are copyrighted and so can be sold as a package - or something.
On the disk are four files MOUSE.SPR, LOMOUSE.SPR, MIMOUSE and HIMOUSE.SPR.
These files will give you GEM like pointers, super innit.
The 3 pointers I have lifted for your convenience are:
| No. (changemouse x) |
Description |
| 1 |
The standard pointer. A nice little arrow |
| 2 |
The busy bee pointer. For when your busy. Much better than that nasty
clock face. |
| 3 |
The Pointing finger. For those moments when you need an alternative
to the arrow. |
STOS has an odd way of dealing with pointers in that it does not leave
a masked border around the pointers in low and medium resolution, as GEM
does. Therefore we must give each of the pointers a 2 colour definition
in order to simulate this. In this case I've chosen colour 1 and colour
3. To change these colours just load up the sprite definer and change them.(
The medium and high resolution pointers need to be edited with SPRITE2.ACB)
How do I use them? Simple, here's how to do it:
NOTE: Do this only on a back up of your disk. DO NOT alter the
master disk. I will not be held responsible for any accidents!
From the desktop copy the file MOUSE.SPR from the STOSSER disk into
your STOS folder, also copy it to your compiler folder. When the dialog
box comes up with 'Name Conflict' click on the 'Copy' button. This will
erase the old file and replace it with the new one.
Copy the files LOMOUSE.SPR, MIMOUSE.SPR and HIMOUSE.SPR to the compiler
folder ONLY.
That's it! You are now the proud owner of some nice shiney GEM pointers.
NOTE: It is important to keep the background colour and colour
3 the same. Strange colour combinations will appear if you don't. You may
wish this of course!
It is possible to edit some or all of these sprites by doing the following:
-
Get the size of the sprite file you wish to edit. (2048 for ALL the pointers
and 1536 for the invidual ones)
-
Reserve bank one (1) with a command like: reserve as data 1,2048
-
'Bload' in the chosen file eg.: bload "LOMOUSE.SPR",1
-
Load up the sprite editor. If you are editing Medium res or Hi res then
use SPRITE2.ACB.
-
Edit away. Note that you can only edit the first 3 sprites. STOS will allow
you to edit past this but will not recognise them. I don't know why! You
can however - if you're mad enough - make a 64x64 pixel pointer!
-
Once you have finished editing choose the 'QUIT AND GRAB' option.
-
BSAVE the file back to the original file. Use something like: bsave
"[whatever the mouse file was]", start(1) to start(1)+length(1)
The disk will whirr and that's it..
Some errors can occur if the file gets too big (though I've never had
this happen) and if the file is too small. This is usually because of a
typing error, if the program crashes check the size of the sprite files,
if they are zero or something strange (like missing) then just re-copy
the back-up and try again.
Next time we'll be dumping the default character set and installing
our own. Can you even wait!
Bob Goodfellow (c)93