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                          Super Breakout Level Editor
                           (c) 1996 Donald Campbell
                        Donald.Campbell@manhattan.com

                       for Super Breakout 5.0 and above
                          (c) 1996 Stephane Jantzen
                       Stephane.Jantzen@scinfo.u-nancy.fr
                     -------------------------------------

Okay... the editor is pretty simple and self explainitory, this will just
explain why certain things were done as they were.

First off, why did I make this? I saw Stephane's description of the levels,
wanted to make some of my own, was bored, and needed something to program. :)
This is my first REAL program, so critique all you want and send comments or
whatever to the address listed above (MINE, not Stephanes :).

Getting the program running and saving your levels might be a problem if you
don't use the included batch file. Since I'm still learning BP I didn't know
how to get enough memory to run Make85S and all that from within my program,
so I made a batch file that checks for a Dos errorlevel of 2 to indicate
that MAKE85S should be run. SBEDITOR.EXE alone will only make the SBLEVELS.ASM
file you need to make the string (check out the assembly file!), don't forget
MAKE85S overwrites the old file, so if you want to make sets of levels, rename
the string file or the ASM file. If you want to load a backup file, just
type EDITOR [FILENAME] if you don't enter a file name, or if the file is
invalid, the origional 25 will be loaded.

Alright... it's not noted in the program, but if you've made a level or played
with the origionals you would notice that there is an invisible row above and
below what you are allowed to make. So if you for instance want to make a box
with an unbreakable border and a hole on the top, just remember to leave at
least one empty column on either side so the ball can get to the hole. My
example levels show some of the stuff you can do. Also since bonus bricks
appear the same as regular breakable bricks, any "artwork" done in the editor
with breakables and bonus bricks won't look the same.

Maybe you've wondered why my levels are from 1 to 25 instead of 0 to 24 like
in Super Breakout... maybe not. But anyway, I did this because of the way I
set up the direct level jumping stuff. To go to level 14 you Hold down Alt,
and press 14, then let go of Alt. This sends the ascii value of 14 to the
computer. I would've used 0 to 24, but the ascii value 0 is sent to the
computer every time you press any of the arrow keys. So if I would've stuck
with Stephanes numbering, you would only be able to edit level one. :) OR,
I could've gotten rid of the direct level jumping stuff... but I like it so,
it stays.

Oh yeah... why is X always an odd number? Because there are two bits per block
and since it would be annoying to have you change both bits seperately, I just
let you move to odd spaces in the array I made. So instead of saying block
1 to 12 I just said bit 1 to 23.

Since I'm too lazy to finish this... check the built in help thingie for more
help. Oh yeah... and if you know Pascal... check out the source. It's the
cleanest I've ever done. Oh yeah... as to the source code... feel free to
rip off any of my functions or whatever, feel free to port this program over
to another system (like anyone cares) (oh yeah, if you can convert BP to
standard :) or whatever, as long as you mention my name and send me mail
letting me know... cause I want to check out your coolimo programs. :)
Oh yeah... tell me what you think of all the position conversion stuff I did,
Took me forever to figure out how to do all those conversions!

I'm learning ZShell now so... maybe someday I'll finish the game I've (sort
of) started.
