~~3The Technical Touch, 70 Donald Drive, Chadwell Heath, Romford, Essex.
~~3RM6 5DU

This issue sees the start  of  a  two  part special on AMOS Professional,
with a look at its  many  features,  and  improvements over the old AMOS.
Next  issue  we'll  also  have  an   in-depth  review  of  the  new  AMOS
Professional Compiler (before Amiga  Shopper  has  even  had  a chance to
review it!).

AMOS is basically a  form  of  BASIC  (Beginners All Symbolic Instruction
Code), which also offers control over  all  of the Amiga's hardware, such
as hardware sprites, the blitter  chip,  and  the  sound chip. All of the
normal arithmetic functions are allowed, as are manipulations of strings,
loops, and other structured programming commands.

AMOS Professional also offers  control  over  multitasking, and much more
low level control by having  machine  code incorporated into programs. As
well as being a major improvement in other ways, in particular the editor
which you use to write the programs.

To go any further I'm going  to  have  to  break AMOS down into different
sections (cue sound of sledgehammer).

~~4Screen Control:

AMOS can open screens in any  of  the Amiga's resolutions, including HAM.
Though horizontally scrolling HAM screens is  not a good idea, unless you
like loads of colour splurges  (and  thats  the  technical term!!) on the
screen edges. Overscan can be used to full effect, though positioning one
I've found to be  quite  a  challenge,  maybe  I'm  just thick. Of course
hardware scrolling can be used to create ultra silky smooth movement, and
double buffered for increased clarity.

~~4Sound Ideas:

Samples can be used  and  recorded  into  sample  banks  within your AMOS
program, music can be  created  using  AMOS's  music  commands  or a much
better alternative is to use  a  tracker  program,  such as ProTracker or
OctaMED, and load the music  from  within  AMOS  using the Track Load and
Track Play commands.

~~4Meet Bob and his Sprite:

Hardware sprites can be  used  (a  typical  example  of  one is the mouse
pointer floating around),  but  there  are  plenty  of alternatives, bobs
which can be bigger and  more  colourful  and  offer everything else that
sprites do, icons can be used when you just want some graphics plonked on
the screen and forgotten about.

~~4Maths:

Thought I'd better  cover  this  one  before  I  decided to 'accidentally
forget about it'. All your  favourite  (?) maths functions, sine, cosine,
tangents, and loads of other ones I thought  I'd seen the last of make an
appearance in AMOS.

~~4AMAL, whats that ?:

AMAL is an animation language  within  AMOS,  which enables your bobs and
sprites to move around at a lightning pace, which is essential for arcade
games. AMAL programs are entered within strings, and then an AMAL program
can be activated  with  an  AMAL  ON  command,  which  is  then run using
interrupts so that it doesn't interfere with the rest of the program.

Sadly I have to leave it there, if I said that the deadline was tommorrow
would you believe me ?! Anyway expect  a much bigger Technical Touch next
issue with a detailed report  on  all  the  rest of AMOS's many abilities
plus the review of the Professional Compiler. Should be one great, even I
can't wait for it!                              [cd1am1 - Shadow Arrakis]