Since I implemented RVMplayer on the forum and made it so it runs CAT on launch, I was wondering, what happened to CATart intros? Why are there so few of them? It’d be nice to have a creator take care of that for others…
As far as I know, CAT Art is not easy. You need to play with the characters in the file names which can control codes and on top of that, the file names are listed in different orders with CAT and |DIR…
yes, that’s my understanding as well. That’s why I said that, if someone made such an editor/creator it’d be great. Not sure if possible though, just musing 
CAT Art used to be “impressive”
IMHO CAT Art is a nice hack that had its nice effect back in the days.
As a user you would be impressed and think “cool!”. Then maybe “wow, the developers are so powerful they can run code before I even run the game” or something like that.
Now, these can be considered a nice addition, though not very important.
Also, it is applicable only to software distributed on a floppy side image (DSK/EDSK/etc), as a way to tell the user what to run. Back in the days it was the canonical way to distribute software.
Nowadays its value had faded
Nowadays the experience is more varied and some do not allow CAT art:
- Emulators tend to automatically guess which program to run, to save the user a few keystrokes (and time if the keyboard emulation is imperfect).
- Programs can be distributed by other means:
- things (e.g. Nocart, extensions that download from server via WiFi) that emulate file read but nothing else, no track+sector read, no actual filesystem structure that the CPC inherits from CP/M.
- tape image. As some emulators can instant load from emulated tape, it is no longer second-class
What do you think?
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CATart is SO annoying.
I don’t want to see a blinking, colourful screen, I want to run a game - or quickly check what’s on the disk.
Especially in the second case it’s even more annoying as it usually clears the screen and changes pen colours.
And when I want to copy the files, the directory is a total mess.
I mean, it’s fine if someone likes to do CATart, but please also provide a pure image without it.
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Personally, I have always loved CatArt! I even included some simple ones in my “recent” productions.
I’ve seen quite tricky and imaginative CatArts in the modern era of the Amstrad CPC. They always add a clean finish to a great demo! 
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I have only done it once and from the little bits I remember it was a tedious manual task, but it’s something a demo coder should have (had) up their sleeves.
It’s not CatArt’s fault that emulators don’t play nicely with it. It’s a form of art, so it get all kinds of reactions from people.
I am all for more of it. There’s surely room for some yet unseen forms. And afair it’s rarely needed to get a “proper” directory from disks with CatArt.
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I wrote an article for Donut Mag some years ago explaining how it worked and how you could do it yourself. I’ll have to see if I can find the text somewhere and add it to the wiki. Although I think I was being a bit pretentious calling it a WonDIR or something crass like that!
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It was cool the first few times I saw it. But I quickly became indifferent to it I guess. Some of them are well done but it’s also mildly annoying when the computer doesn’t behave like you asked it to.
These days I respect a clean directory. And it’s better I think not to make too many assumptions about how people are accessing their files.
Maybe I’d appreciate catart more if it was actually distributed as catart. I guess I should expect to see it on demos but I’d rather not get catbombed when launching games. I know a lot of great games do it, but I made a personal decision to leave it off mine.
A gallery of catart would be nice to see. Anybody have favourites?
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Can someone provide a good example? I never came across one in the old days and probably never run CAT on anything else than a CPM disk 
Here you can find some
I particulary like the one where high scores are stored !
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Thanks alot. Now I see - and I have to admit - I like it. 
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Orion_Prime_SP_3p_Side1.dsk (220,3 KB)
I loved the Orion Prime one, especially when it is about to write author name and then it is edited.
EDITO: Oh, I can’t find COPY key!!
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in RVM-player it’s the Alt-Gr key
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Yeah this is pretty cool!
Right! Thanks
Oh wow, had forgotten about the Orion prime one, so cool indeed!
In Vivaldi ALT GR is overtaken by the browser, sadly.
It is? I wonder if that’s a keyboard settings thing because it worked fine here (I use Vivaldi too)
Hmm, interesting, tomorrow I’ll check the scan codes for my keyboard to see if it’s sending an ALT GR code or just an ALT
EDIT: Ok, TIL that the US Eng treats the ALT GR key as a right ALT key; whereas International English sends an ALT GR code. Copy works now
The one that displays the high scores is wild.
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