Those of you who either subscribed to Elbug For The Electron or typed up/enjoyed the programs from Games And Other Programs For Your Electron may remember the Union Jack Demo. By use of vectors, this demo plotted the Union Jack flag on a Mode 5 screen, starting with a small version and gradually building up to a big one. I guess it heralded a few minutes of patriotism on your new computer back in the Eighties.

Recently I went on holiday to Turkey and was struck by the simplicity of its national flag. On the day that it rained, I decided I would have an attempt at writing a demo very similar to the Union Jack Demo and the result is the Turkey Flag Demo included on this issue of EUG. Perhaps the most surprising thing I found in writing it was the scarcity of instructions on how to draw a circle (in this demo two circles being used to plot the crescent moon) in any of the User Guides available. In the end I poached the routine from the opening animation to the cassette version of Fun School. In putting it together, I also discovered the use of the PLOT 85 command to fill areas - the little star, as you can see if you watch it being built up, is actually a number of small triangles, with the final PLOT 85 being used to fill them in.

For those of you who like that sort of thing, you'll find an animated gif image building up the Turkish flag on this page too. However, the demo itself is more sophisticated than this and draws Turkish flags all over the screen, which steadily increase in size.