My name is Christopher J. McPeck. Systems is the name of a computer art program which I have written. This program generates different patterns of spirals.

You may download a copy of Systems. (This program runs in DOS mode and requires a mouse).

SYSTEMS.ZIP (102K)

Instructions

To use the menu for this program you must press the right mouse button.

If you want create you own spiral art patterns with my program you must use a text editor. (I started to implement an edit mode in the program but I have not yet decided to continue working on it). With the editor you can make your own patterns by creating text files which end with an SPR extension(i.e. MY.SPR).

The format of these files is the following:

The first character is either a Y or an N. This character tells the program whether or not you are instructing it to draw a random spiral. (I don't think I will continue to explain what random refers to unless you email me asking me to explain this or you ask for the source code).

The second element in the file is the number of what I refer to as 'arms'. An 'arm', by my definition, is the distance between a point which rotates around another point.

The next elements in the file are the lengths of these 'arms'(which are given by a number of pixels). Because the first arm rotates around the center of the screen and the following arms rotate around the previous arm, these next elements determine the distance from the end of the current arm to the center of the screen or to the previous arm.

The final element of these SPR files is the background color, which - in my files - I have always made BLACK.

Here is an example of the contents of an SPR file(i.e. MY.SPR).

N 5 40 80 40 80 40 0

'N' is chosen to indicate that this file is not intended to create a randomly generated spiral pattern.

The number of arms is 5.

The length of the first arm (or the distance from the first point to the origin) in pixels is 40.

The length of the second arm (or the distance from the second point to the first point) is 80 pixels. This is followed by the lengths of the third, fourth and fifth arms. (You can create a maximum of about 40 arms - I think).

The background color is 0 (which in EGA colors indicates the color BLACK).

My program can read up to 400 SPR (spiral) files. If you create more than 400 files must create more directories and copy the program to those directories in order to read your files.

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