"SIDPIC V2.5" (Part III, in 3D-A New Beginning, or... The Final Chapter???) By Kermit R. Woodall SIDPIC was written for myself and various members of U.S.N. to replace, or provide an alternative to SINGALONG and the regular SIDPlayers like KPLAY. At the request of a friend, who happens to be a KOALAPAD(tm) artist, I added a new feature for the SID music world. Now, if you follow the instructions below, you can display HIRES graphics while your SID music plays!!! This version contains several new features not available or improperly implemented in the earlier version. You can now use COLOR and RVS codes in you .WDS files with no problems. While a song is playing, the function keys do basically the same things as they do in the selection mode. "F1" selects the note display over .WDS or .PIC displays, "F3" skips to the next song in the play list when using "F3" select all, "F5" is now the menu key instead of "*" and "F7" will exit from playing song and return you to the menu-even in "F3" mode. SIDPIC now has TRUE multiplay of selected songs, see below on how to use this! Finally, SIDPIC supports use of the MOUSE (or a Joystick) for selection of single songs for playing! As soon as you RUN the SIDPIC you will see the title screen where a very brief explanation is given of how SIDPIC works. Just hit RETURN to have SIDPIC read a directory from the disk of all the SIDPlayer (.MUS) files. All the .MUS filenames will be displayed on the screen. At this point you do not need to worry if one file has words or a picture to go with it, when you select to play a certain piece of music SIDPIC will figure out if it is just music or if there are words or a picture too! To select one music file, just use the cursor keys to move the blinking cursor to the name of the music you want. Hit the "F1" function key to pick that music. To select to play ALL of the music files on the screen, just hit the "F3" function key. One by one, all the music will be played-along with any words or pictures that go with them! To use the new MULTIPLAYING feature, move to a song you want to play. Use SHIFT-RETURN to highlight the name of the song in light green. Once you have selected all the songs you want to play, now hit the "F3" key. It will now play only the selected songs, not ALL. To return "F3" to the mode to play ALL songs, just re-read the directory of songs. If you want a new directory off another disk, just change disks then hit the "F5" function key. SIDPIC will then re-read the directory. If you happen to have more than 51 SIDs per disk side, you can hit "F2" to make SIDPIC list the next 51 SIDs. This can continue for as many SIDs as you may have on your disk. When reading in the next page, SIDPIC will pause while reading past the previous SIDs. If you have finished, just hit the "F7" function key and you will return to BASIC. To restart SIDPIC, just type RUN again. The first mode is the "Just Plain Music" mode. SIDPIC will display a stylized Grand Staff on the screen and as the music plays a music "note" will move up and down the staff in time to the music for all three voices, but the "note" will NOT be in a proper musical position as the display works. The display is meant only as a demo. The notes can change their color from the defaults if you use the AUX command in the manner of KPLAY to do so. You CANNOT change a note to be black as that is the color of the background of the screen! If you do change the color to black, the note will turn white instead. To stop playing the music hit F7 key to return to the menu. This will even return to the menu if you are using F3 to play all or selected songs. If you hit F5 you will return to the menu and the directory of songs will be reread. If you hit F3 you will abort the current song and go to the next song you have selected to play. If you hit F1 and you are using words or pictures with your music, then you will return to the notes display while playing the song. The second mode will play any SINGALONG words for you while the music plays too! The SINGALONG words are stored in a file that has the exact same name as the music file, execept that the music file name ends with a ".MUS" and the word file name ends with a ".WDS"! Any words file will work just fine with SIDPIC. SIDPIC uses only the upper case letters you would normally type in when you first turn on your computer. Even though most SINGALONG word files currently use upper and the lower case letters, SIDPIC will take care of that and translate the letters to all upper case! For further information on SINGALONG word files, I suggest reading Craig Chamberlain's SIDNEWS files that deal with them! (Technical note: for those who might be interested, the original SINGALONG used true ASCII text files and SIDPIC can use those or just plain Commodore "PETSCII" text too! But you ARE encouraged to use the regular type of SINGALONG file format!) The brand new mode, only supported by SIDPIC, is the display of HIRES pictures while playing music. To make a picture file you will need to start with a HIRES picture made by KOALAPAD, Doodle or a compatible graphics editor or convert your picture to one of these formats using a conversion utility program. SIDPIC can ONLY use KOALA or Doodle type picture formats for it's display! Any other format will just be ignored by SIDPIC, including crunched versions of the above pictures or the standalone pictures that load and display themselves. Once you have a HIRES picture that is in an appropriate format, rename the file containing the picture to have the same name as the music file, except use ".PIC" instead of ".MUS". This follows the same type of standard in names set up by the word files! Remember, instead of a ".MUS" ending to the name use a ".PIC" ending! The ".PIC" tells SIDPIC that the file is a picture. SIDPIC knows what to do with it after that! There has been one, recently discovered limitation of using .PICs with your music. The .MUS file cannot be any longer than 35 blocks for a Koala .PIC, or 37 blocks for a Doodle! You can now use your .MUS with .WDS AND .PICs!!! Just leave the two lines at the bottom for your words to appear on, and name all THREE files, .MUS .WDS .PIC, to have the same prefix as each other and SIDPIC will figure out the rest. You can use Doodle or Koala pictures, although the text on a Koala screen will be somewhat blurry. The words will be in UPPER and LOWER case in this mode and color/RVS codes are ignored entirely! One last note, when starting your .MUS, put a 1/2 note rest in the music to give SIDPIC time to display your song's title! If you own the Commodore 1350 MOUSE, you are encouraged to use this handy little critter when selecting a song or two to play, (joystick may be substituted). Just move the mouse around to move the cursor onscreen. To select & play a song hit the fire button. When playing a song, the fire button will take you to the note display. Any other mouse movement will abort the song when playing.
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