Developer: R Tape
Genre: Utility
Platform: Spectrum 48K
Language: BASIC

Back in the 80s I had a copy of Melbourne Draw for the ZX Spectrum. It was a relatively simple paint package that enabled me to design graphics for UDGs and loading SCREEN$, colour them in using INK/PAPER attributes and save them to tape for editing later. It did the job but was probably the Microsoft Paint to The Artist or OCP Art Studio's Photoshop*.

* I never got to use the latter two as, having been wowed by the intro to Shadow Of The Beast, I begged my parents for an Amiga and moved on to DPaint II.

Arty Pants, on the other hand, is sort of like an Etch-a-Sketch™ with added Spectrum Attributes. Instead of tactile knob-twiddling fun, however, we've got QAOP controls as well as unmemorable keys (1-4) to control the INK, PAPER, BRIGHT and FLASH attributes.

Like an Etch-a-Sketch™ you can't take your 'pen' off the 'paper' and so you're drawing in one continuous line which, given the limited controls, makes drawing anything remotely good a bit of a chore.

Incredibly R Tape has managed to make a flawed drawing concept even less usable thanks to a few bugs:

• Attribute blocks seem to be offset by about +4x,y from the current PLOT position making it difficult to finely control PAPER/INK combinations
• Once PAPER has been changed from 7 (White) it's not possible to set the PAPER to that colour again
• A typo on the undocumented "Clear sceen (sic)" option

He's obviously more talented/dedicated/free-form/masochistic than me as he managed to get this striking image, entitled; "Neon Clouds Over Cryptic Beach Hut," out of it.

You may have noticed that the submission date on this entry is May, whereas I'm only just reviewing this at the end of June with no less than 5 other entries in between?

That's because, for the life of me, I couldn't draw anything with the attribute offset 'bug' even though I'd intricately planned what I was going to draw in advance in Paint Shop Pro and printed it out on grid-paper!

In the end I resorted to 'fixing' Arty Pants (as v1.1) with the following changes:

• Line 10: Started the cursor at 0,0, rather than 25,25
• Line 102/103: Replaced the calculation on line 100/101** to set the attributes based on the actual PLOT position
• Line 50-80, 95 and 800/801: Added 'jump' function to toggle the pixel step-size between 1 and 8
• Line 300: Corrected the typo on the undocumented "Clear screen" option
• Line 500/502: Altered PAPER colour cycling routine to include 7 (White)
• Line 600-701: Altered BRIGHT/FLASH toggle routines for non-POKE'd calculation

** Albeit with a slower BASIC version, using PRINT and OVER, as I couldn't figure out R Tape's PEEK calculations!

Finally, after a month of pain, I was able to produce this embarrassingly simplistic landscape - simply entitled; "City Scape." I had to make extensive use of the RZX rollback feature in FUSE in order to get it finished and, even then, made a number of pixel/attribute mistakes and completely forgot my intended BRIGHT variations until I was half-way through the second layer of buildings.

To say that this is an experience I never want to repeat is somewhat of an understatement so congratulations are in order for R Tape who, I think it's fair to say, has set a new benchmark in crap!