fORCE ANSi ViEWER v1 4 You should now have a copy of fORCE ViEW v1 4 written by Red Haze fORCE (Darren Hazelton) in August 1995 in South Australia This viewer is designed to be distributed with fORCE ANSi Packs to view their wicked ansi art but I ll quite happily allow you to look at other peoples ansi although I don t know why you d want to anyway ) System Requirements Any 8086 compatible computer with a standard VGA graphics card A sound card is nice but optional A monitor also helps The boring Instructions When you run fORCE ViEW it can accept some command line parameters if you want to If you don t give any parameters FV will try to initialise your sound card (if it is GUS SB SBPRO SB16 compatible) and start playing some kewl musik written by oZoNE fORCE (MikMod is used courtesy of MikMak ) If you have problems with sound you can disable it with the parameter n which must be the first parameter if you are going to use it e g FV N You may also need to use this parameter when running FV under Windows 3 x because it causes my configuration to crash (SB16 in Windows for WG 3 11) DesqView supposedly works okay If you have a list of ANSis you want to look at and then exit from FV just type their names in after the n if you have it Wildcards may be used The extension ANS is assumed if none is specified e g FV c ansi * d force kewl ans This will display all the ANS files in C ANSI then D FORCE KEWL ANS while playing music While viewing a slideshow like this press ENTER or SPACE to go to the next picture ESC will cause FV to exit even if there are more pictures to show You can also use any of the keys described later while in slideshow mode NB If you speficify S3M files on the command line they will be shown as text instead of being loaded as music This may change in later versions of FV If you don t specify any ansi files on the command line FV will go into the front end mode where you can navigate around the current directory The arrow keys move the cursor around HOME END jump to the top bottom of the list respectively PGUP PGDN goes up down the current column one page at a time When you press ENTER a number of things may happen depending on the type of file the cursor is positioned on If it is a S3M file FV will try to load and play it Any error messages will be displayed hopefully allowing you to try to fix the problem EMS memory will be used if it is detected leaving conventional memory for ANSi pictures I am not sure what will happen if the size of the song is larger than the amount of memory on a GUS sound card but I guess someone will find out sooner or later ) (MikMod will probably report an Out of GUS memory message ) Also if you try to load a 16 channel S3M on a 286 with a SB16 good luck because the music will probably break up badly when MikMod tries to play it at 16 bit stereo 44 1kHz You have been warned! Any other type of file will be loaded as text using ANSi colours if they are available If you select a directory FV will change to that directory for you If you select a drive FV will change to that drive A new feature is that the file list will be sorted alphabetically when they are loaded Cursor movement is also greatly improved A number of extra keys are available while you are in the file selection screen F1 displays help including a list of all the keys F1 or ESC exits this mode F2 toggles the ANSi displaying screen mode between 25 and 50 lines The current setting is displayed on the status bar F3 allows you to select a new file extension filter e g * TXT Press ENTER to accept what you have typed in or if you want to cancel it press F3 or ESC Wildcards may be used F4 displays info and greetz F4 or ESC exits this mode ESC quits FV although this feature seems quite useless ) If you have selected a file to load FV will show the percentage of the file loaded at the top of the screen and any errors which may occur during loading The most common problem is not having enough conventional memory free to load the whole picture although you will be able to view the portion of the which did fit in memory In later releases of FV it may use XMS EMS memory to store the image data Once the image is loaded you can scroll up and down it by pressing either UP DOWN to scroll slowly or PGUP PGDN to scroll quicker HOME and END will immediately display the top or bottom of the image respectively F2 can be used to toggle the screen mode between 25 and 50 lines at any time ESC ENTER and SPACE will take you back to the file selector You may experience flicker as you scroll the image (especially in 25 line mode while playing a S3M and using the up down arrows) so try using 50 line mode and or running FV without music (Command line parameter for this is n ) I have yet to work out a solution to this problem which happens even on some Pentium 90 s ( Also the faster your computer the smoother it will appear to scroll with the up down arrows because I have timed FV to go at a certain speed and it will skip frames to keep at the desirable rate of movement Disclaimer This program is guaranteed only to take up space on your computer Any extra functionality should be considered an extra bonus Legal Stuff This program cannot be altered in any way without the written permission of Darren Hazelton No fees may be charged for fORCE ViEW except the nominal cost of distribution unless other written arrangements have been made with me You may copy fORCE ViEW as many times as you want and distribute it as much as you want By using fORCE ViEW you are agreeing to these terms and conditions Comments If you find any bugs or have any comments or suggestions send them to redhaze@student adelaide edu au or Red Haze in BloodNET Improvements since fORCE ViEW v1 2 () = Version it changed in (1 3) Bugfix for fast computers where the image got stuck at the bottom (1 3) Improved file selection keyboard routines sorted file list and added option to jump straight to the root directory (1 4) S3M Playing! There is now a kewl song by oZoNE fORCE which plays if you have a SB GUS compatible sound card and you can also play any other S3M files you want if you have enough memory free FV uses MikMod by MikMad HaRDCoDE 95 (1 3) Changed (hopefully improved) the scrolling acceleration parameters (1 4) Probably some minor bugs which have been ironed out Known Problems - The music may not work under Windows (3 x at least) with a SB compatible card - The scrolling can be jerky and flicker while scrolling with (and sometimes without) music playing - It hung ChowderHead s DX4 but have no idea why because it worked the next time he tried it - The entire file may not fit into memory if it is too large This may get fixed in later versions Finally I hope you enjoy the fORCE ANSi Pack #4! We re gettin better and better