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But that was enough. Because the thing in question, for many CPC users, was a godsend. Loading games from tape is tedious: many games were available only on tape, or on disc at an extortionate price: many CPC users had disc drives. Ergo, why not think of an easy way of getting games from tape to disc?
[[Romantic Robot ]] did. The Multiface took an exact copy of what was in memory at the present moment, and saved it to disc, ready for you to reload at your leisure. All you had to do was press a little red button then select ‘Save’ from the menu that appeared.
It was such a good idea that at least three other companies had the same plan, and brought out similar-sounding devices, of which the [[Datel Imager ]] is the only one I remember. In one of those happy coincidences of commerce and merit, the Multiface was the best of the lot, and also the one which survived.
==Revision History==
==Anti-Multiface==
To return to the subject of [[Amstrad Action]], one (wilful?) misconception they put about was that Multifaces were serial-numbered. Thus you couldn’t run Multiface copies with anyone else’s machine. Needless to say, this was b... – er, balderdash – as the only check made (in later Multifaces) was on machine type. This meant that you couldn’t run copies made on a 464 on a 6128, or vice versa: and of course, you needed a Multiface to run them at all.
Tant pis. Enter Serge Querne, usually known as [[Longshot]], the founder of [[Logon System]], but in this case masquerading as Magic Software’s Merlin J Bond. His rather spiffing utility, Anti-Multiface (aka Multimag), made Multiface copies into stand-alone programs.
Suddenly, you could run Multiface copies on any CPC, from the B:-drive, without a Multiface even. You needed 128k, of course, and the original program couldn’t use extra memory. But these were small prices to pay. With this tool, the Multiface reverted from its sheep-like backup identity to its original wolf persona as Ultimate Facilitator of Mass Piracy. Except no European cracker would be seen dead using one.
Needless to say, the Multiface did just that (except written in machine code). If I could get £40 for that one line of program, I’d be smiling.
But that only records what’s in memory. The CPC also has a barrage of dedicated chips to control the display (the [[CRTC]]), colours and memory configuration (the [[VGA]]), sound and the keyboard (the [[PSG]]), and so on. There is no equivalent of the PEEK command for these chips. So how do you find out what the settings are – what colours are in use, what size and mode the screen is in, and so on?
It works like this. The CPC sends instructions to these chips using the OUT command. Each chip has a different address. So you can send the value 1 to the CRTC with the command OUT &BC00,1; you can send the same value to the VGA with the command OUT &7F00,1; and so on.
Many games, and even the odd demo, picked up on the presence of a Multiface. In order to stop illegal copying (or in the case of the demos, just to look smart), they would then refuse to work.
Most notorious of all was Elmsoft’s [[Elmsoft]]’s [[Zap’t’Balls]]. Run it with the Multiface plugged in, press the red button, and you’d get a rather rude message. Ironically, one of the much-vaunted cracks of Zap’t’Balls was accomplished largely with the Multiface’s latterday rival – [[Siren Software’s Software]]’s [[Hackit]]. See BTL 2 for more.
To get around this, Romantic Robot put an on/off switch on the Multiface. When it was turned on, you could make copies, reload games saved with the Multiface, and use the toolkit. When it was turned off, you couldn’t. Seems fine.
But some games constantly checked for the presence of a Multiface. If you turned your Multiface on even one fiftieth of a second before pressing the red button, the game would crash. Since not even [[Wild Thang|Richard Wildey ]] has reactions that sharp, you were still lumbered.
Romantic Robot came up with a typically elegant solution. The Multiface was always off, until you pressed the red button. Then it turned itself on just in time to bring up the menu allowing you to save your game. This done, you pressed ‘R’ to return to the game, at which the Multiface turned itself off again.
==Multiface Software==
Some programs were written to co-operate with the Multiface, rather than fight against it. [[The Insider]], [[Tearaway]], [[TUSS ]] (The Ultimate Sprite Searcher) and [[Soundhakker ]] were all hacking programs designed to expand the capabilities of the Multiface: the first-named was written by Romantic Robot, while the others were all third party products. The Insider was also unique in that you could still press ‘R’ to return to the program currently running.
TUSS and Soundhakker, by [[Wild Thang|Richard Wildey ]] and [[Hangman|Rob Scott ]] respectively, were particularly specialised tools. TUSS helped you to nick graphics out of other people’s games: Soundhakker helped you to nick Soundtrakker tunes from demos and fanzines. Amstrad Action (them again) once tested Tearaway against TUSS, found in favour of Tearaway, and then completely disproved their findings by using TUSS, not Tearaway, to remove the nipples from the covertape version of [[Stormlord]].
Both [[Doctor Fegg ]] and Richard ‘The Executioner’ ‘[[The Executioner]]’ Wilson started work on powerful hacking programs which would work with the Multiface, titled [[Dr Fegg’s Hack Pack ]] and [[Amigo ]] respectively. Neither was ever finished.
==Fifteen years later==
Until one fateful day, when the usual spot was blank. The caption said it all: “We used our picture of the Multiface so much that it wore out. So this is blank until we get round to taking a new one.”
'''This article originally appeared in [[WACCI]] issue 136.'''Reproduced with permission of the author ([[ChaRleyTroniC|Richard Fairhurst]]).
