FADER II by Patrick L. Dell'Era (From ANTIC, MAY 1985, p. 57) This is an enhancement of the popular "Fader" program that appeared in the September, 1984 ANTIC. The original program created a dot-by-dot "lapse-dissolve" effect on Micro Painter files. Fader II now works on Micro Illustrator pictures as well. It will work on all Atari computers with 48K and disk drive. Last month, we published Patrick Dell'Era's reworking of Philip XXX Price's "Picture Painter." We now present Patrick's Fader II, based upon the popular dot-by-dot picture dissolve program by Joseph Grande that ANTIC printed in the September 1984 graphics issue. The original Fader was written in the BASM language, which is now often hard to find. Patrick has disassembled the object code into full MAC/65 source code, and re-written it with several improvements. SLIDE SHOW II Unlike the original program, Fader II can handle both uncompressed and XXX compressed Graphics 7+ picture files. This means you can have any combination of Micropainter or Micro Illustrator files on the same disk. (Micro Illustrator software comes with the KoalaPad, the Atari Touch Tablet and other widely used graphics products.) So that Fader II can tell the difference between the file types, you must use a .PIC extender on your compressed files. The Micro Painter files should have a letter other than P). Fader II will cycle through the each picture creating a screen pixel XXX dissolve. When it reaches the last file, it will begin again with the first. As with the original program, you may skip the pause between pictures by pressing [START]. In Fader II, after a picture fades in, it may be held indefinitely on the screen by pressing [OPTION]. In this way, one may take a good look at a particularly fetching piece of art, or gracefully change the disk without racing the clock. If you have DOS on your disk, pressing [SELECT] will take you to it. Fader II does not sit in the DUP.SYS area of memory, so a Binary Load can XXX be done on it from DOS without creating a MEM.SAV file. It will run with or without a cartridge installed. Patrick L. Dell'Era is a member of the San Francisco Atari users' group ABACUS, and a strong assembly language programmer whose time is currently being taken up with a new baby.
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