Lo-res fantasy art. Alan Foxx; Todd Halforty.

If I told you that you could quickly and simply create interesting and attractively colorful abstract patterns in Apple lo-res graphics and have fun doing so, you might have a hard time believing me. You probably feel that lo-res doesn't pack the necessary punch to do anything really exciting. Wel that is just not so--and I will prove it to you.

The demonstration programs that follow show how nested FOR loos in lo-res graphics can be harnessed to create appealing designs. I will assume you already know at lest a little bit about lo-res graphics on the Apple. In most of the demos the colors are controlled by DATA statements. The others are controlled by an equation.

If you want to experiment with your own designs, try altering DATA statements in the program lines that include them. Use numbers between 0 and 15. They will change the design to represent your choice of new colors. Make sure that the DATA statements always end with a negative number. As soon as the program encounters a negative, it will replace the pointer and start reading colors from the beginning of the list again.

If you use the same number repeatedly in a DATA statement, that color will apear more often. In this way you can create designs with a dominant color. Let's say you want your design to use red as its dominant color. Your DATA statement could read as follows:

This creates a design that uses white, black, and red, with red as the dominant color. To refresh your memory concerning the numbering of lo-res colors, run the color demo on a DOS master disk. Another effect you may want to try is a checkerboard design. To attempt this, you must alternate colors in the DATA statement. As an example, here is the way to create an orange and yellow checkerboard with a central design:

You may wish to experiment with the numbers in the FOR loops as well. When editing these programs, it is fun to predict what changes a modification will bring about, then run it to see if you were right. Of course, you can never really appreciate a loop-generated design until you see its results on the screen.