Did Anyone Ever Use Any Of The Non Game Making Utilities Available

[Nick]

While there are a lot of game creating utilities released (GAC/PAW/graphics creating software etc) there was also quite a range of other software around - office based, home finance and so on.

So did anyone on here ever use these? Did any of you try the football pool or race horse form programs to see if they were any good? There are even garden designing programs in the DB, although I'd imagine that using the humble Speccy to design your dream garden might be a bit beyond it's capabilities.

I'm interested to know because there often seemed to be quite a few advertised in classified sections of Spectrum magazines, so I'm guessing that they must have sold fairly well?

[8BitAG]

Definitely used a lot of the word processing/DTP software that was out there (such as the Tasword stuff) and also the database utilities.

[PeteProdge]

The Tynesoft database program Superfile was the only non-game packaged with my Dixons 128K +2, it was sluggish and slow. IT lessons in school taught us the importance of databases, but Superfile is certainly not a good introduction to them!

I've always been rather creative. I wanted to do desktop publishing and so Art Studio 128 was the closest I could get to that, but it's still way way off! I liked making fonts, that was always fun.

Also, I got the Videoface Digitiser from Romantic Robot, rather late in 1991 (as that's when our household got a VCR for the first time, yeah, really really late). I remember grabbing screenshots from The Young Ones and Mary Whitehouse Experience and saving them to tape in glorious monochrome.

Polish music utility Soundtracker, for the 128K, is simply amazing. The closest the Speccy will get to the Amiga's Octamed. I did knock up a fairly okay tune in this, despite being totally unable to play any real instrument.

But yeah, that's about it really. I know it was Sir Clive's dream to make the Speccy a general purpose home computer and for gaming to be just an occasional distraction, but the reality is the ZX Spectrum is a games machine to almost everyone who owned one. It was practically a games console! If you tried to do anything outside of games, the technical limitations made it a real struggle.

When I moved to the Amiga, I had the opportunity to do proper creative work and move towards a profession of sorts, you just couldn't do that on the Speccy. I think that's the first computer where my non-gaming usage outweighed any gaming time. I've been like that ever since.

[catmeows]

I did some drawings in Art Studio, just for joy, I used BASIC to solve home work (to multiply matrices) and Desktop with BT100 to print something. My problem was missing floppy.
Desktop by Proxima was quite powerful DTP program (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... um/Desktop), Proxima used it to create some of their manuals and books. It is WYSIWYG, with pictures in text, proportional fonts etc.
Most of manuals are OCRed now, but I believe Orfeus manual captures original look&feel - https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/8 ... _Assembler
You can also look here to see Desktop capabilities: https://softhouse.speccy.cz/documents/desktop_en.htm or https://softhouse.speccy.cz/documents/A ... trum_1.htm

[Daveysloan]

I used Animator 1 to make this rather snazzy loading screen.

[mjwilson]

I had The Code Machine for assembling/debugging.

[Ralf]

I did some drawing in Melbourne Draw (if I remember correctly) but that's all.

Well, what else could I do apart from gaming? I was a 10 years old boy

And let's be honest, all these programs with cooking recipes, horse races or lottery predictions, biorythms, cataloging your books or
planning you home budget were a bit crap.

They offered little or nothing more than could be obtained with an usual book or a pen and a piece of paper.

If you want a cooking recipe you open a book and voila! You don't have to wait 5 minutes before some program with limited number
of recipes loads.

And all these gambling prediction programs were mostly a cheat. Yes, they did something but they didn't do what you expected them to do -
help you to make more money.

[Ralf]

Actually I'd like to add one thing. All these "domestic" programs (cooking, diet, horse races, gardening) were a bit cheat.

They were not for children, they were for adults, right?

When you are a kid, everything is new for you. When you are an adult, you have some expectations based on your previous experience.
I believe many adults in the 80s expected computers to be something extremely powerful, able to make miracles. You know, computers
allowed to break German ciphers and win against Hilter, computers allowed to fly to the Moon and back, they can make calculations in a fraction of second that a human would need hours for.

So hey, if I make a cake using a computer (for a recipe) it won't be an ordinary cake! It will be a mega cool cake made with a use of the
computer

Then you realise that it actually doesn't taste better but you've already bought the program

[Vampyre]

I definitely remember using Melbourne Draw a few times. I specifically remember being impressed with the Ariolasoft logo (the 3D boxes in the image below) and it not having any attribute clash. So I replicated that every time I loaded Melbourne Draw.



Also recall borrowing Animator 1 off a mate and not having the faintest clue how to use it.

[luny]

Animator 1 was the Vim of the art / spectrum world.

[PeteProdge]

And let's be honest, all these programs with cooking recipes, horse races or lottery predictions, biorythms, cataloging your books or
planning you home budget were a bit crap.

But this is amazing*!



It's perfectly okay to load up every day of the year (as my friend who owned it, claimed he would do**) as long as you're in a year which has the same dates of 1989. Which is next year***.

* = Not really amazing, the only amazing thing is that this was commercially published and at full price too.

** = By about 10th January, nope.

*** = Other years you could have used this since its release: 2017, 2006 and 1995.

[Morkin]

I tried a couple of art packages like Melbourne Draw, but realised the downside - it doesn't make you any better at art - all those sample pics just gives you false hope..! After messing around for a bit I decided it was just as easy for me to use graph paper, as I was using DATA BIN statements in BASIC so it was quick to transfer.

I remember seeing programs that could create a database of sorts - e.g. a list of owned Speccy software/games/music/books.

Only thing is, by then I'd learned just enough BASIC to write my own. Possibly less efficient, but I liked the idea that I could write the code myself.

As an aside, I did attempt to write a BASIC program that would calculate a footy league table based on scores/results. I failed miserably...

[ANDREWRYALS]

I wrote a couple of college and I think maybe one Uni report up on Tasword +3 and a Citizen 120D+ printer, these later got replaced woth Wordstar and an Amstrad 1512.

[Journeyman]

The Tynesoft database program Superfile was the only non-game packaged with my Dixons 128K +2, it was sluggish and slow. IT lessons in school taught us the importance of databases, but Superfile is certainly not a good introduction to them!

Considering it was written in BASIC, it was surprisingly good, in some ways. I spent quite a lot of time going through how it worked, and got ideas for my own projects off it. I also made a few mods to it. Only thing on it that really didn't work well was sorting files - it took hours.

But yeah, that's about it really. I know it was Sir Clive's dream to make the Speccy a general purpose home computer and for gaming to be just an occasional distraction, but the reality is the ZX Spectrum is a games machine to almost everyone who owned one. It was practically a games console! If you tried to do anything outside of games, the technical limitations made it a real struggle.

When I moved to the Amiga, I had the opportunity to do proper creative work and move towards a profession of sorts, you just couldn't do that on the Speccy. I think that's the first computer where my non-gaming usage outweighed any gaming time. I've been like that ever since.

Completely agree. If you weren't an obsessive gamer, or couldn't afford disks, printers etc., the Spectrum's limitations were quite serious. Brave attempts were made to overcome them, but it was hard to consistently do anything really useful with it.

[druellan]

I used Tasword Two and later the 128k version a LOT for my things and school (I also used The Writer at some point, because it was faster than Tasword, but not so handy). Also, Masterfile for some light database and Art Studio for goofing around thinking I'm an artist I also started to use disassemblers at some point, but I don't remember which one.
One piece I used a lot for my small Basic games was Paintbox, specially the UDG editor.

I wrote a couple of college and I think maybe one Uni report up on Tasword +3 and a Citizen 120D+ printer, these later got replaced woth Wordstar and an Amstrad 1512.

I also used mine with a Citizen printer, was a very competent couple for typing/printing things.

[toot_toot]

I used the utilities that came with my original rubber keyed Speccy, Tasword 2 and Vu 3D, although I was tinkering around more than anything.

Later on I got the Datel Mouse and Artist II bundle, I quite fancied getting into art design and it was quite good fun, although more limited than I maybe thought (it came with the rubber/foam mouse mat, I guess it felt very advanced for the time. I remember having to clean all the fluff out of the mouse though..)

I also remember picking up the Summit budget re-release of Mini Office, which I remember being quite good.

The thing I never understood with the Spectrum was why it wasn’t bundled with more utility software. The 48k rubber keyed spectrum came with Tasword 2 and one of the Psion VU utilities (but not all of them), looking back I don’t understand why Sinclair didn’t put some effort into utilities. I mean, the whole thing that sold the Spectrum by us kids was that “honest mum, I’m going to do my homework on it!” But other home micros at the time did seem to come with more utilities bundled with it. I wonder how many poor sods got an Amstrad by mistake because their parents were told by the Rumbelows sales person that the Amstrad came with better utilities and therefore was better at homework!!!.

[toot_toot]

Oh, I remember I had a pirated copy of The Games Designer by Quiksilva

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... s_Designer

I had no instructions for it and I remember trying to draw some sprites but not to much avail. Did anyone actually make any games with this?

[animaal]

Who among us didn't dream of designing a powerful CPU in Make-A-Chip, or something more complex than the wine glass in VU3D?

[Matt_B]

I'm sure lots of us used tape copiers like The Key, KopyKat and the Lerm ones a fair bit.

The main problem with application software was the lack of reliable mass storage options. Cassette tapes were far too cumbersome, microdrives weren't a lot better, and disk drives were expensive and non-standard until the +3 came out.

[cha05e90]

Oh, indeed I did not *always* play games on the Speccy. While my comrades (with more cash) slowly migrated to the so-called 16Bit machines and explored the creative (and "business like") side of the software world there I tried to do what could be done with 48K, 8Bit and ZX Microdrives.

At least I remember to have used (really!):

Masterfile
Tasword Two
Art Studio
The Artist
Melbourne Draw
VU-3D (!) - who needs Lightwave's predecessor Videoscape?
Zeus Assembler
...and my own - still not published - Vocabulary Learning Program...

[flatduckrecords]

Did anyone actually make any games with this?

Only when I finally got a Microdrive in the last year or so. (Like others have said, I could only dream of these exciting devices back then). It’s good fun to customise the example games with some rude sprites, but I don’t think you can save the games as standalone programs—they always need the designer tool to be loaded first—so it’s a bit limited.

I did use Draw It to create loading SCREEN$ for my BASIC programs and type-ins (I recently recovered one from tape in fact). And I genuinely did use the Spectrum to help me with my maths homework!

[AndyC]

Oh, I remember I had a pirated copy of The Games Designer by Quiksilva

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... s_Designer

I had no instructions for it and I remember trying to draw some sprites but not to much avail. Did anyone actually make any games with this?

I remember trying to make sense of it as it came with the Microdrive when my dad bought it. I was too young and it was too incomprehensible though, I think I got as far as fiddling (badly) with the sprites in the sample games but not much else.

[MarkRJones1970]

Who among us didn't dream of designing a powerful CPU in Make-A-Chip, or something more complex than the wine glass in VU3D?

I had a go!

[PeterJ]

I've been looking at Masterfile recently, and it's fine if you just want a flat file database, but the Amstrad version has basic relationship capabilities with parents and children. It's a pity the +3 version of Masterfile wasn't expanded in this way.

The example given in the Amstrad CPC version is of a LP database with the artist and LP title as parents, and the track names as children. Very good for the time.

[Alessandro]

In my experience, the "usual" channels (i.e. piracy) simply did not deal with utilites. A notable exception was Melbourne Draw!, which I played with quite a bit back in the day and used to teach myself the first concepts of pixel art and image manipulation.

Other than that, there were many interesting utilities in this book I got as a present from my Dad around 1984:

https://www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk/ent ... r_Spectrum

I was particularly attracted by the graphics, business graphics and animation sections.