Picture Maker: the four-colour drawing program

Starting

Type CLOADM and ENTER. The load is long, and at the end you get a demo picture, a tune and a menu:

1	Start drawing
2	Print the instructions on a printer
3	Read the instructions on screen. Space turns the page

The cursor

Move the cursor with the arrow keys. For a joystick, plug it into the right-hand socket and press J. K turns it off, and the keyboard always works. Holding SHIFT freezes the cursor, which helps when you want to move diagonally without drifting.

For the functions marked with a star (*), the current value appears on screen. Change it with the up and down arrows, and confirm with ENTER.

Colours

1–4	Drawing colour
5–8	Background colour
@	Switch between the two colour sets: green, yellow, blue and red, or buff, cyan, magenta and orange

Drawing

The brush works for as long as you hold Space, or the joystick button, and move the cursor.

B	Brush type *: pen, rubber, line, box, or a piece of the picture you stored
H / W	Brush height / width *
C	Circle: the centre is at the cursor. Move, then ENTER
L	Line from the cursor. Move, then ENTER
SHIFT + L	Box
F	Fill an area up to a border in the background colour
SHIFT + F	Fill an area up to a border in the drawing colour
M	Magnify: see the area near the cursor, enlarged

For every shape, ENTER keeps it and BREAK cancels. The author himself advised anyone who isn't a good artist to use the "line" brush: each press of Space draws a line from the last point.

Three screens

Besides the screen you see, there are two stored screens. One is yours (USER), and the program uses the other before some functions (AUTO). That lets you go back to an earlier version.

SHIFT + K	Store the picture in the USER screen
CLEAR	Swap the picture with the USER screen
S	Swap the picture with the AUTO screen: a kind of undo
SHIFT + BREAK	Clear the picture
R / SHIFT + R	Mirror / upside down
, . < >	Move the whole picture up, down, left, right

Pieces of the picture

G stores a piece of the picture: move a frame around it and press ENTER. You can store up to 8 pieces. P and the piece number bring it back, and you move it into place. There are more ways to lay a piece down: O, A, N, I, E and T, like the options of PUT in BASIC. V and Z double a piece in height or width. When you start, two pieces are already stored: letters, for writing on the picture.

Saving and leaving

SHIFT + 9	Save the picture to tape
SHIFT + 0	Load a picture from tape
*	Save everything: both screens and the pieces
SHIFT + Q	Back to BASIC

Before saving you can type a file name.

This guide is in our own words, for Dragon owners who have the original program. We do not host the program or its instructions. The keys come from the instructions inside the program, and we tried the main ones on an emulated machine with the same chips.