fORCE ANSi ViEWER v1 8 This is the doc for fORCE ViEW v1 8 written by Red Haze fORCE (Darren Hazelton) in May 1996 in South Australia This viewer is written for the ansi group Force so you can view their kewlo ansi art You can t look at any other groups art unless you register System Requirements Any 386 compatible computer with a standard VGA graphics card A sound card is nice but optional A monitor helps A keyboard might also come in handy (It needs to be an extended keyboard ) VESA support is great Note You can t run it under Windows 3 x or 95 because it crashes (Thanks to Midas ) ( I haven t tried it under any other multitaskers yet The boring long-winded Instructions When you run FV you can run it in one of two front ends or have it completely command-line driven The first time you run it the Midas configuration screen will appear where you tell it about your sound card if you have one otherwise select no sound card The file MIDAS CFG will be created in the same directory where you put FV EXE Make sure you are realistic about the sampling rate you tell it to use especially on a 386 with an SB16 - don t expect 44 1kHz 16bit stereo to work well (It may but I doubt it ) ) If you want to run FV with the ability to play music disabled put N as the first parameter (NB this will not allow you to run FV under Windows) e g FV N If you want to run FV by command line just type in the file specifications after FV (and any switches used) Filenames without extensions are assumed to be filename * e g FV c ansi * d force somecool ans FV will go through * * in the c ansi directory playing any S3Ms MODs or MTMs displaying any GIFs running any executables which are in there and showing you any other files as ansi text Then it will show you that cool ansi in your d force directory After that FV will quit to DOS (or whatever other OS you happen to run it under ) If you want to view a S3M MOD or MTM as text rather than hearing it as music (pretty stupid if you ask me) just use n as the first parameter e g FV n c ansi * d force somecool ans While viewing all these files press ENTER or SPACE to go to the next picture ESC will quit FV immediately Songs will load and immediately go on to the next file This allows you to do things like FV d happy mod d happy ans e sad s3m e sad ans This will have the effect that you will be able to look at the happy picture with happy background music and the sad picture will have some other suitably sad music I dunno if anyone will use this feature but its there if you want it The other side of the coin is that if you have two songs in a row the first one will load but immediately get stopped to play the next one However if a song is the last in the queue FV will play the song FV until you press a key then it will return to DOS NB You still have control over the volume pausing stopping of songs if you run FV with the command line See the key listing below for info If you don t specify any files on the command line FV will go into one of two front end modes where you can navigate around the directory you ran it from The default front end has new graphics and also displays file SAUCE descriptions The parts of SAUCE which are shown are the Title followed by the Author The old front end (as in FV versions before 1 5) doesn t try to load SAUCE s - this makes file list loading a lot quicker if there are lots of files in the directory or if it is a slow drive (e g CDROM) It also displays files in 5 columns and has the old title screen You can use the old front end by using the switch F This must come AFTER N if you want to specify both e g FV F Note F is useless if you are using command line file specifications Functionally the only difference between them is that LEFT RIGHT arrows in the old front end move between columns but in the new one RIGHT is the equivalent of ENTER and LEFT is the same as ESC when you re viewing a file I did this so you can do everything with the cursor keypad Woohoo ) Keys ENTER in a front end will load a file play a song run a program change the current directory or change drives depending on what the cursor is on In viewing mode it will return to the front end if you are using one If you are using command line file specifications it will load the next file in the list SPACE is the same as ENTER ESC returns to the front end if you are using one and are viewing a file Any other time it will quit FV which is quite a useless feature ) F1 in a front end displays help including a list of all the keys F1 or ESC returns to the front end F2 Advances the ANSi viewing screen mode through the available modes These are 25 line text (Text 1) 50 line text (Text 2) VGA and SVGA 1-4 Holding down SHIFT with F2 will go backwards through the modes The current setting is displayed on the status bar in the front ends F3 in a front end allows you to select a new file extension filter (e g * ANS) Press ENTER to accept what you have typed in or if you want to cancel it press F3 or ESC Wildcards may be used If this is set to * * * * * * or * there will be automatic filtering allowing only files with extensions ANS ASC DOC TXT MOD S3M MTM NFO DIZ RIP FRC COM EXE and GIF F4 in a front end displays info and greets F4 or ESC returns to the front end F5 at any time will pause or un-pause the song being played F6 at any time will stop the song being played and deallocate the memory the song was taking up (Normally EMS) F7 F8 at any time will adjust the playback volume up down This volume level doesn t get reset when you load a new song You can check the volume level by looking at the status bar in the front ends HOME END jump to the top bottom of the file list in a front end or to the top bottom of the file you are viewing PGUP PGDN move the cursor up down the file list one page at a time in a front end or scroll quickly up down if you are viewing a file UP DOWN move the cursor up down the file list one file at a time in a front end or scroll up down if you are viewing a file LEFT RIGHT in the old front end move the cursor between columns In the new front end RIGHT is the same as ENTER in the front end and LEFT is the same as ESC from the file viewing screen Error messages always get displayed so you can try to fix and problems you have with FV Most potential problems are with Midas If you have EMS but none of it is free you won t be able to play any songs because Midas doesn t bother trying to load them into conventional memory if EMS is detected ( I could change that I guess but it d be too much hassle When FV is loading a file to view it will show the percentage loaded so far You can press ESC to stop loading and view the amount currently in memory Greetz Anyway I ve already written too much for anyone to be bothered reading so here come the greetz Personal shouts go to SpoonMan FTS Cool to see the board up again! Da Schemer FTS Are you SURE you didn t overclock your FPU ! Anubis fORCE Stop hassling me about VGA code already!! P Pulse PoP Impulse Tracker rules! Pity you re in PoP ) Griffin FTS Get ya board running - we need a HQ Perhaps I ll get that demo working one day too Pheon FTS Get that XM player working and the diskmag and that 3D engine and don t forget to study ) NetSlider FTS( ) Are you still in FTS ) Petteri Kangaslampi Thanks for writing Midas! Try to support IT s and Jarno Paananen Group greetings go to all fORCE FTS PoP and Winter members 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 History (1 8) VGA SVGA support added - VESA required to use this (1 8) GIF picture loading thanks to ***** GIFLITE format not supported and only 256 colour pictures can be loaded (1 8) Minor screen mode bug fixed (1 8) You can now run exectable files ( COM and EXE) No batch file support unless someone wants me to bother doing it (1 8) COM EXE and GIF are now in the file extension filter (1 8) A lot of internal re-arrangement but you don t wanna know about that (1 8) New front end art and a cool exiting picture! Tnx Anubis ) (1 7) Pausing stopping and volume control for any song being played (1 7) The front end only lists files with the following extensions (unless a mask other than * * or equivalents are specified) ANS ASC DOC TXT MOD S3M MTM NFO DIZ RIP FRC (1 6) Filenames on command line without extension now have * appended (used to be ANS ) (1 6) Fixed up flickering and most jerkiness while scrolling! Scrolling is now the same speed on all computers even while music is playing (1 5) Loads SAUCE file descriptions (1 5) A new front end which displays the Title and Author in the SAUCE Old front end retained which doesn t load SAUCE - quicker loading (1 5) Stops loading the file at the first EOF character (1 5) No more inbuilt song (1 5) MOD S3M MTM playing thanks to Midas (changed from MikMod) Midas also supports more sound cards is smaller and runs faster than MikMod Unfortunately no XM support yet Midas is 386+ only too Darn ) (1 5) Songs play from command line file specifications (1 5) Adds the directory to network drives (Netware doesn t display a or 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 4) Probably some minor bugs which have been ironed out (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 3) Changed (hopefully improved) the scrolling acceleration parameters (1 0-1 2) Unsure! Known Problems (Bugs You gotta be kidding ) - Does not run under Windows 3 x at all (Midas crashes) Use an older version if you need to run it under Windows - The entire file will not load if there is not enough conventional memory I may use EMS for picture data in later versions Coming Soon (in future versions) - RIP JPG etc loading - maybe - Tag files while in a front end - Jump around file list in front end like Cubic Player does - iCECOLOR support Final Comments Registration is not actually necessary to view other groups art in case you hadn t worked that out by now ) Have fun looking at Force Pack #7 and I ll cya l8r