Volume 1Number 2July 1988E1.95

AMIGASOUNDFive super samplersare put to the testAMAMI'

AMIGA VIDEOA guide to theultimate inanimation

C O M P U T I N G

AMIGAGAMES• Zork• Exodus• Sentinel• Footman• Barbarian• Ferrari Fl• Star Fleet 1

• • • • •

: • • •

M INEENNIa l l A Database Publication

L e• - - M P

• , • • • _ 1 W,MW•

O r — O WOTI• • i g •

:M o t E .— 0, ••=••—•

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_weA n e w generation in Amigaprogramming takes o f f.

Three of Level 9's most acclaimed adven-

tures - Lords of Time, Red Moon and ThePrice of Magik - come together in one

package. Each has been enhanced and enlargedwith more text than ever before - 60,000 mind-expanding words creating magik and mysteryround every corner. There's a powerful newparser, and most disc versions include stunningdigitised pictures that help to dramaticallyheighten the atmosphere.

What the press have said:LORDS OF TIME: "Destined to become a classic" -Computing with the Amstrad.RED MOON : Best Graphical Adventure or BestAdventure of the Year- Zzap 64, Crash, Amtlx,CC!, and Amstrad Computer User.THE PRICE OF MAGIK: "Another superb adventure...their best yet" - Commodore User. Also a CrashSmash.

Europa House, Adlington Park,Adlington, Macclesfield SK10 4NP.

ENQUIRIES: 0625 878888 ORDER HOTLINE: 0625 879920

The trilogy

Interactive fictionfrom LPTIPi

Spectrum (cassette) Plus 3 (disc)Commodore 64 (cassette or disc)Amstrad CPC (cassette or disc)Atari XL/XE (cassette or disc)Amstrad PCW (disc)Apple II (disc)

Screen shots fromAtari ST version

Atari STCommodore Am igaMacintoshAmstrad PC, IBM PCand compatibles

E19-95

Available f rom a ll good stockists o r order direct by sending acheque or postal order made payable to Mandarin, together withyour name and address. Price includes P&P. AccessNisa owners:Phone our hotline or send your card number with your order,

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40 capacity £5.49 50 capacity E5.4980 capacity £7.49 100 capacity £7.49120 capacity £9.99 140 capacity £9.49

Single Sided Discs Double Sided DiscsQuantity Price Quantity Price10 E11.99 10 £13.4920 £23.49 20 £25.9930 04.99 30 £37.9950 £57.99 50 £63.49100 £114.99 100 £125.99

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SPECIAL!!!Premium Quality Mouse Mat Now only E3.49

HARDWAREAT LEAST 10% OFF ALL HARDWARE

Amiga A500 with Software E 4 2 9 . 9 9 *Citizen 120D NLO Printer with parallel I/P E 1 4 9 . 9 9Seikosha SP 180 NLO Printer o n l y £139.99Cumana 1Mb Amiga Disc Drive E 1 1 7 . 9 9NEC 1Mb Amiga Disc Drive E 9 9 . 9 9

• While stocks last

ASA

- - , „P&P Free on all orders over E15, under E15 add 75p P&P (UK Only)

Overseas Disc Orders Add E3 P&P. All prices include VAT

totrian * O w =52 Brook Street

Chester CH1 3DNTelephone: 0244 312666All prices include VAT

ACCA"* •

-tch ertisempot %tanagerlohn Stomden

ErktorialAdminastratiop

Adverlimon:SubstriphonsTelecom

Ielei

Prestel

Managing EditorDerek Meakin

Group EditorAlan McLachlan

&Mot.Simon Rockman

Pmditchon EditorPeter Glover

.4r1 EditorsMark NolanDoug Steele

Editorial Assistant:Elaine Rawlins

News EditorMike Cowley

Advertising SalesWendy Cothourne

Or; 2344599625 M N0623 memeas tinsioITSIAGoo I295971 C .Quoting lief 72,MAGse1614561A1

1'0111,411Ni b o :

Dalabase Publicalioni Ltd.Europa House, Adlinglon Park.

Adlinglon• Macclesfield SEM 4NP.11.15N 0952- 3014

0111

Amiga Computing welsomes articles for publi-i Minn %121Prial should be tsped or I moonier-primed and preterablv dookilevpacisd. PropramTogs should 6, 4(1 ompaamed bs disc. Nose mit lasea stamped seltaddrmsed envelope. otherwise theTtiliM Of material tamed be enanosreed tontrtWhims tan onls be airepted tor publication InDatabase thibliratioits lad cm an all-rights b a s i s

1966 Daubs-se Publimaiunn Lid, So material manbe ttprodvned in whole or in port without wnnenpermission. Whkle tiers- r a r e i s t a k e n . t h e p u b

hshers canine be held legally responsible fur anMN'S in articles listings or aril ertiserments1 mita tImpureng J I9 aldeptadent4nd Commodore fanciness klattbints It Isi aid is&it responsible fo, a m o r T h e e t i t ) e, : i i t h is L ic e or

Inc dor aline °potions eklyec5eff.Sews trade disiribuuior htmprcc Sates and Div.Mbution Untried. I nit 1. RHI1RNS Raitd. hshousetbat. Hdstmes. LISI SiliteN 1\31 AR. Tel: 942443a1412

4 A M W A COMPUTING t a i l ' Nt ie

AMIGA SCENE

7 LATESTNEWSAn update on the new Amiga prices.Plus hol gossip from America, Canadaand Germany as the Amiga shows itcan offer the world a challenge.

ADVENT!, IRES1 THROUGH THEPORTAL

Dave Eriksson looks at two classicgames which have proved that eventhe ravages of time cannot harm awell written computer fantasy.

DTP

GOLD DISKPAGESEITER

With a high resolution screen and afast processor the Amiga is a greatmachine for desktop publishing, butit needs good software to do it.

SIMULATION

INTERCEHORElectronic Arts latest game release iscertainly its greatest. A military flightsimulator which breaks new giouand is set to be a winner.

SCULPT ANDANIMATE 3D

A pair of programs which worktogether to make the Amiga shinebrighter than any other computerbut are extremely easy to use.

GRAPHICS

PHOTONPAINT

Trip the light fantastic with a greatnew artists' package from ACtiViSiOnSomething which will make IIAMmode far easier to manage.

AZZE1311111•1A n im a t e d Am i g a P a g e 2 4

THE PLAIN MANSGUIDE TO CLI

Phil South continues his explanationof what happens when you click onthe a l icon and face AmigaDosnaked. This month ASSIGN.

F / A-1 13 i ntementnr Page 19

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• C O N T E N T S I

PRINTERS

32When one printer costs half as muchas its nearest rival ii looks like abargain but in the printer stakes youmay often find less means more.

ilOUSE CALI.

ELECTRONICARTS

Electronic Arts has been an Amigafan since well before Commodorelaunched the machine, John Minsonfinds out more about the company.

SOUND

3 SAMPLEBAME

Five of the lop Amiga sound samplersare compared and put to the test forthree major criteria: Sound quality,ease of use and value for money.

SOFTWARE

AMIGAARCADE

The joystick hotshots rate the newiesin the shops, killing Barbarians andavoiding the evil Sentinel: racingFormula I and joining Star Fleet.

HINTS

STAR I.C40 VsOKIMATE 20

GAMEKILLER

Join Max l'he Hacks" Tennant as heand his friends explain how to win atBubble Bobble and find your wayround Activision's ['framer.

SYMPOSIUM

DEVELOPERSFACE TO FACE

To eavesdrop on the Washingtonconference Dave Parkinson battlesKennedy airport and wins, but losesout to Autoboot and a Copper.

LANGUAGE

TRUEBASIC

When the original authors of Basic gettogether again to do things properlythey have the benefit of hindsight —and it really shows in the end result.

ADVICE

QUESTIONS ANDANSWERS

Whatever your problem we have apanel of Amiga experts who are hereto help you solve it. Ask and we'll doour best to put you on the right track.

LETTERs

FROM OURPOSTBAG

Our readers write and we reply:Views on piracy and first commentson the first issue of Amiga Computing.Plus prizes for your best letters.

ENDPIECE

GURU'SHAUNT

We've all seen the Guru meditationmessage, But who is the Guru andwhy is he meditating? To find thefacts we delve back into history.

This month sees the launch of the AmigaComputing Awards. These are given tooutstanding products reviewed in our pages. inOlympic tradition there are three types: Gold.Silver and Bronze.

The Silver award is given to a product whichoffers outstanding value for money. A Bronzeaward goes to one which is particularly wellmade or a program which shines_

The supreme Gold award can only be won bya product which is both exceptionally goodvalue and well made.

Very few products will win an award - fewerstill an Amiga Computing Gold. Don't expect aGold winner every month - they will be savedfor the cream of the Amiga crop.

Samp a t t i c Page 39

ElLa, IRONIC ARTS

Electronic Arts Puge 36

M u MIMI A MI G A W I W I TING 5

I I

Link your Amiga to the outside world with...

mucroLiDKElectronic mail - The cheapestand fastest form ofcommunication possible. It coststhe same to send a message toone mailbox as to 5001Telex - u p with 96,000 telexsubscribers in the UK and 1.5million worldwide. You can evensend and receive telexes afteroffice hours or while travelling_

Telemessages - Type in yourmessage before Bom anddelivery is guaranteed by firstpost the next day lexcept Sunday),anywhere in the UK and USA.

Tele-booking - Reserve train•andtheatre tickets, check fl ight detailsworldwide, or order f rom a vastrange of products - from flowersto floppy discs.

Advice - on a team of pro-fessional, legal and financialadvisors as and when you needthem, fo r both business andpersonal problems,

Company Obtain facts about anyBritish limited company inseconds, and fu lly analysedfinancial information on over100,000 companies.

Translation - Access the biggestand most up-to-datemulti-lingual dictionaryin the world, withover 380.090 words.

News - Use the powerful searchcommands to pinpoint vitalbusiness information from thewo rld s leading news services,newspapers and periodicals.

Radiopaging - If you also have apocket radiopager you'll bealerted each t ime an urgentmessage arrives in your mailbox.So you're always in touch.

Gateways - Get through to NewYork in just five seconds - or keyinto the EEC computer inLuxembourg, which links you to600 databases throughout Europe.

When you join MicroLink you've gotthe whole business world at yourfingertips - 24 hours a day. You'llhave immediate access to ALL thefacilities offered by Telecom Gold

and a great deal more besides.

Typical comms packagesA Pace: Ni g h t i n g a l e V21, V 2 3

manua l -d i a l m o d e m 4 -Rub ycomm Sof tware R S 2 3 2lead (1199 inc carriage & VAT)

Pace: Linnet V21, V23 autodialmo d e m * Ru b ycomm s of t -ware + RS232 lead (1257 inccarriage and VAT)

C Mi r a c l e : WS 4 0 0 0 V21, V 2 3aut od ia l m o d e m + Ru b y -c omm sof tware + RS232 lead( f-286 inc carriage 8i VAT)

O M N I . . 4 1 • ,1 1 0 ,1 1 0 f fil a b • ••• •

Jr

I T O FIND OUT MOREFill in the coupon andsend it to the addressbelow. You will receive

1 ful l details of servicesand costs, together withI a n application form,

,Complete this andI w i thi n days you and

your Amiga will beable to use all theservices of Microlinkand Telecom Gold.1

All y ou need - apart f rom y our Amiga - is amodem, which plugs into your telephone wallsocket and suitable communicat ions software.

We have prov ided a list of possible combin-at ions (left), ranging f rom the very cheapest toones whic h can automat ically dial t he Mic ro-Link t e lephone n u mb e r a n d c onnec t y o udirect ly t o the service - all you have to do istype in your personal security password.

Whichever equipment you use, you wi l l beable t o c al l Mic roLink , open y o u r mailbox ,save t o disc any messages wai t ing f or you,and disconnect in as lit t le as t wo minutes-

More than90 per centof subscriberscan connect tothe Microlinkcomputer atlocal callrates.

Please send me full details about Microlink, and informationsheets about the following hardware and software options'please circlel:

A B C

Name

Address

Postcode

Send to: MicroLink, Europa House, Adlington Park,Adlington, Macclesfield SK10

Aimc7

• • • • • • • • AMIGA SCENEPRICE CUT GIVES AMIGAPARITY WITH ATARI ST

TN a mov e that has sent'shock waves through thecomputer industry, Commo-dore has slashed E100 fromthe pr ice o f the entry-levelAmiga.

This puts the Amiga 500 —at E399.99 — in t o d ir ec tcompetition w i t h At a r i ' s520STFM, whic h was onlyrecently on the receiving endof a price hike, thanks to theworld shortage of dram chips.

And w i t h t h e t w omachines c ompet ing f o ressentially the same market,Commodore is confident theAmiga's reputation w i l l bethe dec iding factor for endusers.

On the whole, dealers alsowelcomed the news. " I wasdelighted to see prices go upon the Ata r i" . s aid SteveKingston o f Bath ComputerShack. "And a reduction onthe Amiga w i l l make evenfur ther inroads f o r Com-modore".

But he had reservationsabout the long term benefitsof price cutting. c a n ' t seeAtari s itting back and doingnothing — there have alreadybeen rumours of reductions.But a Dutch auction betweenthe t w o w i l l make things

very l i v e l y f o r t h e c us -tomers".

A Northern dealer had noreservations: " I t ' s jus t theshot in the arm the machineneeds — sales s o fa r havebeen s teady r a the r t h a nspectacular", he told AmigaComputing.

" A new pr ic ing polic y ,taken w i t h t h e r a p i d l yincreasing software base,makes t h e Am ig a a v er ytempting p r o p o s i t i o n —especially when it 's meas-ured against the ST".

Surprisingly, some dealersare not par ticular ly happywith the idea. John Danielsof Cut Price Software thinksthe Amiga sells well enoughon its own mer its anywayand that a price war is hardlyneeded.

"It's a s low seller at thistime of the year, but i t wasahead of the ST two monthsago and w i l l be again", hesaid. "The ST is a glor ifi edgames machine — I have onemyself but I wouldn't dreamof using it for business.

"There should be a pr icedistinction of at least £100 toreflect the difference in thecapabilit ies o f t h e t w omachines".

V E T another Amiga virushas been identifi ed — but

finding it is another matter.Christened t h e R y t e

Bandit, the new virus makesits presence felt — after anapparently random length oftime — b y f r eez ing t h emachine, c o r r up t ing t h eWorkbench and los ing anyprogram running at the time.

The net result is that usersare r e tu r n ing appar ent lydamaged machines to dealers.and s wamping them w i t hcalls f o r reassurance and

S CHOOLS in Canada areto benefi t f r om a newCommodore marketing exer-cise w h i c h o f f e r s t h e mAmiga software at a quarterof list price.

Project Software inc ludesmore than 100 educationalsoftware t i t l e s w o r t h$10,000.

When a school board buysbetween 3 and 50 Amiga

NOW anyone with an

Amiga c an enjoy t hethr ill o f becoming the manwho b r ok e t h e b a n k a tMonte Car lo — and i f thewinnings aren't real money,neither are the losses.

Casino Roulette from CDSSoftware (0302 21134) is aninv itation t o the wor ld o fhigh society gambling for upto eight players at a time.

The p r o g r a m a u t o -

Lurkingbanditadvice. A n added c ompli-cation is that the Byte Banditis undetectable by ex is tingVirus Killers , though i t canbe tracked d o w n w i t h asector editor.

And users are compoun-ding the problem by unwit-t ingly t r ans f e r r ing t h ehidden virus to uncorrupteddiscs.

Soft sellto schools500s it can get the entire lib-rary for $2,500. I f an ordertops 100 machines then a llthe software is free.

Canadian schools alreadyget one free Amiga 500 forevery two they buy.

Breakthe bankma t ica l ly ca lcu la te s wh a teach play er has won andhow they stand, and gives astatis tical analys is o f theprevious 370 spins o f thewheel.

It als o inc ludes s ix est-ablished roulette betting sys-tems. Price E19.99.

MICROLINK HOLDS THE LINE ON EMAIL PRICE INCREASESDESPITE t h i s m o n t h ' ssurprise Mic ronet/Pres telprice increases, Mic roLinksays it w ill not be forced byBT into raising its charges inline.

From J uly 1 Mic r onet /Prestel subscriptions will goup from E66 to E79.95 a yearfor home users, w ith bus i-ness users paying f:119.95.

Peak time charges are torise from 6p a minute to 7p,and free off-peak usage hasbeen scrapped — users w i l lnow hav e t o p a y l p aminute.

For the first time, full peak

time rates will also apply onSaturdays between Barn and6pin.

However, although somecommunications indus tr yobservers are predicting thatMic roL ink w i l l h a v e t ofollow s uit , the c ompanysays its annual subscriptionwill remain at E36 for homeand business users alike andit w i l l continue to operateoff-peak rates for the wholeof Saturday and Sunday.

Head o f MicroLink DerekMeakin said: "The increasesin the cost o f using Prestelstem from pressures that we

have b e e n s uc c es s fu llyresisting s ince Mic r oLinkstarted over three years ago.

"We hav e rejec ted a l larguments to increase thecost o f our services — evenwhen Telecom Gold uppedits charges substantially lastyear we were able to protectour users from their effect.

"As a result Microl.ink hasgrown by leaps and boundsand it is not surpris ing thatour subscribers form by farthe largest s ingle group onTelecom Gold".

Protests f r o m c o m m senthusiasts have been flood-

ing in t o Prestel followingthe announc ement o f theincreases in charges.

Typical M ic r o n e t us erDave G ilber t f r om Derby-shire estimates his averagebill would r ise by 120 percent,

He said: "O ff peak use ofMicronet — 50p an hour Brit-ish Telecom and the new 60pan hour Prestel — means thatas my BT b i l l is presentlyE100 f r o m N e t us e t h iswould make a new cost o fL220. "This I could not afford— I w o u ld hav e no otherchoice but to say goodbye".

tly I 988 .4 AftG.4 COMP/ MN(

ermany's softwareslow to emerge

GREGOR NEUMANNreporting from West Germany

C O MPAR ED to England,the German s of twar e

scene is a rather unprofess-ional o r gan is a t ion . T h eindustry consists mainly o fsmall software companiesfounded by computer freakswho try to sell products ontheir own.

The whole German soft-ware market is controlled bytwo m a j o r d is t r ibu to r s .A riolasoft and Rushware,who handle products for thebig Br it is h and Amer ic ansoftware houses.

Given the lack of Germansoftware houses, there hasbeen no strong competition —no one has been ab le t oestablish a successful label tobecome an effec tive th ir dforce.

The lack o f German soft-ware houses meant a dearthof German software as localprogrammers felt they hadno outlet for their products.In 1983, for example, therewas only one small indepen-dent c ompany Kings o f t ,ranged against the giants.

Kingsoft s t a r t ed w i t hbudget software, and hassince g r o w n s l o w l y t obecome the leading label —but not distr ibutor — in Ger-many. In fact, today the com-pany employs many Germansoftware developers.

With the rise of 16 bit com-puters, notably the Amiga.two more companies rapidlyestablished themselves in themarketplace — Rainbow Arts(Garrison, Bad Cat. GreatGiana Sisters) and Mic ro-Partner (Wes tern Games,Pink Panther). The two com-panies a r e b a c k e d b yRushware and Ar iolas oft ,

which are now trying to acti-vate German program devel-opers.

Rainbow Arts especially isgrowing rapidly and has itssights set on becoming thebiggest software house i nGermany. T o this end thecompany has entic ed thehest team of programmers —Magic Bytes — away f r omMicro-Partner.

While th is was the fi rs ttime a label had switchedcompanies. the move has itsechoes in Andy Braybrook'sdecision to work for FIT.

Two ques t ions r emain.however: Who owns the pro-grams s t il l under develop-ment, and w h o owns thename of the label?

Micro-Partner bought thelicence to publish the officialTom and Jerry c omputergame with the intention thatMagic Bytes should write thegame. But once Magic Bytesjoined Ra inbow, n o o n eseemed to know who exactlyhad the rights.

The c o n f u s i o n w a scompounded by the welterof contracts involv ing var i-ous permutations betweenMagic Bytes, Micro-Partner,Ar iolasoft, Rushware andRainbow Ar ts , and at onestage i t seemed that only acourt case could unravel thetangle.

In the event, however, asolution was work ed out .Both the Magic Bytes labeland the licence for Tom andJerry b e l o n g t o M i c r o -Partner — o n ly t h e p r o -grammers s w i t c h e d t oRainbow Arts.

We'll have to wait and seewhether Micro-Partner canfind new developers to finishTom and Jerry for the Amiga.

8 ANHGA COMPUTING P l y Iglia

The Micro way (Europe) Flicker FixerBoard for the Commodore Amiga

Easy onthe eyesn ETTER known for its PC

numerics and maths co-processors. Mic roWay hasentered the Amiga marketwith the Flicker-Fixer board.

Managing director SimonShute said: "This is our firstever product for the Amiga,but i t fi ts in %rery well withour s trategy o f o f fe r ingupgrades that make genu-

Amiga tothe rescuer i ROWING success of the

.Amiga is the main factor

in C o m m o d o r e I n t e r -national's third quarter prof-its of $9 million and sales of$200 million.

Short ofribbonsIT would appear that Com-modore can produce a pr in-ter — but not the ribbons togo with it. At least that seemsto he the case with its latestoffering for the Amiga, forowners of' the new 1500Cmachine have been hav inggreat d i f fi c u l t y t r ac k ingdown extra cartridges.

In fact the situation provedtoo problematic for Commo-dore — it recommended cus-tomers to seek advice fromMeedmore D i s t r i b u t i o n(051-521 2202).

"We have had a number of

inely useful improvements tosystem performance.

"Previously. Amiga usershave had to contend with ahigh resolution mode that isso bad it almost hurts to lookat it. Most users have stuckwith the l o w o r med iumresolution modes.

"The Flicker-Fixer allowsthe Amiga to achieve its truepotential f o r d is p lay o fsuperb graphics — somethingit has never done before". Itcosts E345 from Mic roWay(01-541 5466).

In the same per iod las tyear Commodore profi t wasonly $1 million with sales of$5170 million.

Chief ex ec ut iv e I r v in gGould said: "We're pleasedwith the strong performanceof the Amiga produc t l inewhich accounted for 45 percent o f our revenue in thequarter".

inquir ies from irate 1500Cowners w a n t i n g p r i n t e rribbons", said Meedmore'smanager Geoff Hall. "After agreat deal o f searching wemanaged to secure suppliesfrom a European dealer.

"One of the reasons for thedelay in being able to fulfi lorders w a s t h a t i t w a sextremely diffi cult to identifythe r ibbon type", he added.

"However, now that w ehave supplies the only otherhurdle t o overcome is theprice. At E24.97 each it mayseem a little high but we aretrying to have them manu-factured o n o u r beha lf ,which should reduce the costconsiderably".

• A M I G A S C E N E E

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ActivisionbecomesMediagenicA crIvisioN, one of thelbest established Amigasoftware h o u s e s , h a schanged i t s n a m e t oMediagenic. The Activisionname w il l remain, as thegames label, w ith the re-introduction o f the logowhich graced the company's

Teletextfor Amiga

A N international versionof Nlicrotext's TeletextAdapter is now available forthe Amiga. The modifiedproduct copes with the dif-ferent television frequenciesand standards - which arenot compatible with those ofthe UK - used by variouscountries.

And in addition to hand-ling t h ese t h e ad ap t erprovides access to teletext

Take overB ETTER Dead than Alienis the name of a the firstAmiga game on the newlabel Electra.

It is written b y OxfordDigital Enterprises - ODE -1Arhich started the scrollingshoot-'em-up as a spoof. butaccording to ODE's DavidPringle: "The aliens just took

BundledsoftwareS ERIOUS sof tware a tsensible prices should beon the way for Amiga userswith a promotion recentlylaunched by Precision Soft-ware (01-330 7166).

The company is offeringdiscounted software bundlesfor a variety of applications.And while the promotion isaimed at dealers, end userstoo will feel the benefits.

Savings are considerable.The Professional Im ag eProcessing bundle - Digipic,PIXmate and Paxall VideoCamera - now retails atE499.95: Bought separatelythe packages would add up

early VCS cartridges.New t i t l e s i n c l u d e

AfterBurner, which is beingforecast as number 1 for nextChristmas, Time Scanner - apinball game, R-type - thelatest scrolling shoot-ein-upand a n u m b er o f otherarcade conversions.

Mediagenic w i l l exploredifferent markets - and notnecessarily computer basedones - with an emphasis onpresentation tools and inter-active video.

plus pictures and sound inany country using the PALcolour system.

Other facilities, includingthe ability to save or printpages, allow the user to getmore from Teletext. An dMicrotext (0705 595694) hasalso included a system tospeed up page availabilityand allow instant recall o fthe last 16 pages received.

Connected to the computervia the parallel printer port,the Teletext Ad ap t er i ssupplied as a free standingcase coloured to match theAmiga. Price E169.50.

over". The game is describedas slime, so you might havetrouble holding a copy, andit will cost £19.95.

to more than &MO.An Introductory Graphics

pack - Express Paint, Page-flipper and introCAD - isavailable at E99.95. whilewould-be sound samplerscan get started with PerfectSound a n d E C F M i d eInterface for £124.95.

The DT P bundle, Viza-Write and Citydesk, is nowpriced at E149.95. VizaWritealso features in the £199.95Business Pack, along withLogistix and Superbase Per-sonal.

Precision's 2 5 0 - p l u sdealers will have the optionto sell the bundles intact orsplit them, and the promo-tion w ill be backed by anextensive advertising cam-paign.

rT1 FIE Amiga has acquired arespectable number o f

serious programs. In NorthAmerica, Commodore did itsbit t o g ive t h e softwareindustry momentum b ysponsoring a promotionaldeal for user groups.

The deal tied together newusers, user groups and soft-ware houses b y making abundle of programs - homeor business - available at anattractive price to systempurchasers. The offer put alot of professional level soft-ware into user hands. Andsince one of the most impor-tant buying-decision ques-tions is: "Who do I knowwho has it?", a lot of goodprograms d evelo p ed acredibility base.

Deluxe Paint I I leads thefield o f drawing programs.WordPerfect is undoubtedlythe mo st revered w o r dprocessor. SuperBase, fromPrecision Software in theUK, is highly rated for data-base a p p l i c at i o n s .There's no clear winner inthe spreadsheet race, butMaxillan was part o f theCommodore promotion andseems to be well regarded. Inother areas - sound, ani-mation, communications -the best package may be theone that fits your particularneeds, budget and hardwareconfiguration.

On the non-commercialside, group librarians findthemselves swamped withfree programs. In the earlydays of computers, the ques-tions was "Where can I find

Picking software andcountering the virus

JIM BUTTERFIELDreporting from Canada

ANY programs?" Today, theAmiga question is: -H o wcan I pick my way throughthe huge mass of free pro-grams?"

Free, o r almost free pro-grams come in three classes.The legal interpretationsvary. Public domain pro-grams are common property;you may give them away,sell them, copy them, changethem, or feed them to yourbudgie.

Free distribution ones maybe copied and given away.but not sold or changed. Theauthor retains copyright forlegal purposes, and ofteninsists that a program maybe copied only i f accom-panied b y fu l l documen-tation.

Shareware programs arethose w h ere t h e authorhopes that the user will sendmoney. The last have been ofonly limited success

The free program distri-bution system i s one o fioyful turmoil. The telecom-munication networks buzzwith new versions of

products, questions, boastsand rumours. But there isfear of the dreaded virus.

Commodore has a team -CATS - whose task is, inpart, to track and counterviruses. A n d a separategroup i s developing areward fund to help locateand prosecute virus-creators.

I'm not sure about theprosecute part; apart fromthe legal side, can you effec-tively sue someone who hasthe mental maturity of a four-year-old?

lull' I 981i AM/ G A ( i )MP ( ,I 1 N G 9

• A M I G A S C E N E E

Deeperinto spaceC TAR Wars the movieL./eventually spawned StarWars the coin-op for Atari -and Domark's bestsellingconversion for the Amiga.

Now D o m a rk ( 01- 9475622) is following u p itssuccess with the release ofThe Empire Strikes Back, aone-player g a m e w h i chbears more than a passingresemblance to the movie.

The player controls bothLuke Skywalker's snow-speeder and Elan Solo's Mil-lenium Falcon

a A m t a i MNI P I TI NT; j I v 7FIRR

After Star Wars Luke Skywalker takes to space againcourtesy of Domark*s The Kmpire Strikes Rack

Conversionslining upIN a determined bid to set

its stamp on the 16-bit.market, O cean Sof tware( 0 6 1 - 8 3 2 6 6 3 3 ) h a s m o r ethan 20 products due forrelease over the next fewmonths — and a sizeableProportion are destined forthe Amiga.

Jackal and Gryzor are inthe pipeline, as are Platoon.Army Moves, Green Beretand Combat School, a l lestablished favourites i nothere f o r m a t s w i t harmchair warriors.

Strong Amiga showing at ComdexC OMMODORE made astrong showing at therecent Comdex show in theUSA w hen i t unveiled anumber of Amiga add-ons.

The twice-yearly Comdexpresentation i s aimed a tCommodore dealers an dvalue-added retailers, themain attendees.

Commodore's presence isas much f o r sales as fo rpublic relations — and doeswonders for boosting andmaintaining the companyname in the minds of profes-sional computer buyers. Anappearance is an expensiveproposition, but it pays off inmany ways.

The show, held in Atlanta,Georgia, d re w a reco rd60,000 visitors.

Much interest was shownin t h e n e w Commodoreproducts, although no indi-cation was given of prices,nor when they will becomeavailable.

The only surprise was a20Mb SCSI hard disc for theAmiga 500, with sockets for2Mb o f additional memoryin the expansion box.

The other products hadbeen previously hinted at tosome extent — an expandedChip memory graphics chipset, a 6 4 0 x 4 0 0 n o n -interlaced display chip set, aCommodore bi-sync monitorto w o rk w i t h t h e n o n -interlaced display, the newAmigaDOS 1 .3 , an d t h e68020 coprocessor hoard,with a n d w ithout U n i xSystem V. release 3.2.

Aside from a modest boothon the trade show fl oor.Commodore held a press anddealer e v e n t i n t w oballrooms at a nearby hotel.One ballroom held about125 Amiga 500s and 2000swhile the other housed alarge projection televisionscreen and several Amigasfor the various presentations.

After a series o f enthusi-astic speeches from Commo-dore management, musicianand programmer R o g erPowell gave a performanceof Amiga Midi music, usinghis Textures program.

Los Angeles artist Brumm-bar w a s a lso o n h an d ,showing the animations andstill images he makes withVideoScape and paint pro-grams. Commodore printeda poster with a montage ofhis images, which Brumm-bar autographed.

Brummbar w orks w it hcelebrity Timothy Leary —now a figurehead in the sci-ence fi ct io n cyberpunkmovement — making ani-mations a n d images f o rpromoting Leary's recentbooks.

Pro imageAPART from the creativeand entertainment potentialof the Amiga, i t was clearthat Commodore is hell-benton cultivating a professionalimage for our machine. Most

BY JOHN FOUST*Amigas in the Comdex standhad FlickerFixer boards toavoid the annoying interflicker. so the Amiga dis-plays were indistinguishablefrom the other EGA-style dis-plays at the show.

PresentationsTHE Amiga 2000 can attractIBM PC compatible buyers.Many corporate purchasingdepartments require an IBMPC compatible machine, andthe Amiga 2000 is a way toget the IBM compatibilityalong with the video pre-sentation abilit ies o f theAmiga side. I n this way.Amigaphiles can sneak the2000 into a company to dopresentation graphics, whileretaining the ever-popularPC compatibility.

One example of a profes-sional application was Com-modore's Professional VideoAdapter, or PVA. The PVAincludes a digitiser and two-source switchable genlock. Itwas shown connected to avideo camera attached to amicroscope. Microscopicorganisms swam on a slide,and the PVA digitised andgenlocked their image.

On t h e t a i l o f recentannouncement of the Amiga2500 AT and UX machines,another part of the Commo-dore stand showed the 68020co-processor running Unix.

Several w eeks ag o , adebate ensued as to whether

the Amiga 2500 would everbe released in the US.

In a Wall Street Journalinterview, CBM chairman ofthe board Irving Gould saidthat the machines would besold in the US. Within daysof this interview, severalother Commodore upper

membersmanagementdenied this.

While the 2500 machinesare actually composed of off-the-shelf C o m m o d o r eboards, availability o f theUnix software i s a k e yproblem.

Chances are, i f the soft-ware is available in the US atall, i t w i l l b e sold on lythrough a f e w .s e l e c tdealerships that can handlethe extra level o f supportnecessary for the complexUnix operating system.

The 68020 board's Unixwas demonstrated running aproprietary w i n d o w i n ginterface. Most probably, theUnix will be shipped withCommodore's version of theX-Windows w i n d o w i n ginterface.

One Commodore engineerwas willing to talk about arecently developed 68030coprocessor board for theAmiga 2000. I t runs at 25Mhz. but it has not been of-ficially acknowledged in anyw a y . •

*John Foust has been an Amigawriter and Amigaphile sinceDay One . H e ha s regularcolumns in several US Maga-z in e s..

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hoiy M R AMI G A COMPVTING I I

r• % f a ; •( y 1 5 . F P ( r T I N( ; j ti lv 1988

E A D V E N T U R E S E

THE original Adventure game

appeared in the mid-seventiesand was to be found on manymainframe computers. For all itssuccess, there were some who wantedto see an improved operating system,as Adventure only accepted a simpleshowing each character's status. This

In 1977 a group at the famousMassachusetts Institute of Technologydeveloped a new parser that wouldunderstand commands like: KILLTROLL WITH SWORD. OPEN GREYBOX and GET ALL BOOKS EXCEPTTHE RED ONE.

The first game to use this was Zork.Originally developed on a Dec 10. itwas later converted for othercomputers but in each case required amemory of megabytes rather thankilobytes. With the rise of the micro.the operating system for Zork wasrewritten in Zit.. Zork ImplementationLanguage. The saving in memory wasfantastic.

Presently Infocom has games formost tastes but recently discontinuedproduction of over half of the Amigatitles. Some are real classics andshould be in everyone's collection. Ifyou act quickly, at least one mailorder house has many for only E12.Buy now. I'm sure you'll not regret it.

APART from its parser. the main

feature of an Infocom game isthe highly descriptive text. Althoughcomplex commands are possible theyrequire the first six letters of a wordto be typed in, rather than the moreusual four. Infocom games are asgood as anything else on the market,but I feel that we should not beblinded by hype. I wonder how manyplayers actually type in TAKEEVERYTHING EXCEP'I"l'HE BLUEBOOK, rather than TAKE ALL,followed by DROP BLUE BOOK.

Underground Zork 1 is a greatadventure. Of all the early Infocomofferings. this is the one for thebeginner. It is not easy, but is fun andbrings a great sense of achievementwhen you win through each puzzle.

Also known as The GreatUnderground Adventure, Zork 1starts outside an apparently desertedhouse in the middle of woodedcountry. The entrance to theunderground domain is in the house.hut the countryside around also hashidden treasures. Your prime aim isto gather treasures and put them in a

trophy case.Drawing a map as you go is vital

but complications arise whenexploring the two mazes. Thestandard method to map a maze is todrop objects so you can identify alocation when you go back to it.However there is a thief roamingaround, so objects dropped may notbe there when you return. You willmeet other characters. some of whomyou will have to fight. This was a firstFor the original Zork.

DIAGNOSE will display your stateof health and, if wounded, thenumber of turns to full recovery. Thelocation descriptions are verycolourful and you may choose theirlength with VERBOSE. BRIEF orSUPERBRIEF.

There is the unusual option ofbeing able to ask questions withcommands such as WHAT IS XXX?or WHERE IS XXX?. You may notalways get a useful answer.

Try asking WHAT IS A GRUE?Grues are Infocom's own specialnestles that will grab you if you staytoo long in the dark. A batteryoperated lantern is found in thehouse. Use it with care, as batterieswill not last forever. There arematches, candles anti a torch so. keepyour eyes open for sources of light.

The underground system is not anatural cave system as in the originalAdventure, but is createdaby amixture of magic and really hightechnology. You will come across ahi-tech dam, a coal mine and theentrance to Hades. This game isdevious: watch your score closely to

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see how well you are doing.Do not take too much undergromul

to start with: you will not be able tocarry many treasures hack to thattrophy case. You can find severalweapons. some of which are moreeffective than others. Read books verycarefully. Remember that they mayhave more than one page. and SAVEyour game position before pressingany buttons.

If Zork is a classic text adventure.then Exodus: Ultima III has got tohave a similar standing in the field ofcomputer role playing games(CRPGsl. It is produced by OriginSystems and distributed in the UK byMicroprose.

F o r t h

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N OT surprisingly, Ultima III isthe third in a series of CRPGs. Iand II are not available for the Amiga.but IV should be here any time. andV is in the final stages of completion.Several early CRPGs gave you theoption of assuming the persona ofvarious different classes of character —fighter, cleric or magic user and soon.

Ultima III was one of the first toenable you to venture forth with threecompanions, each haying attributesanti characteristics of their own.

The underlying plot of the Ultimaseries is the rise of evil in the land ofSosaria. Called through time antispace by Lord British, your mission isto gather a team of adventurers todefeat its present manifestation.Although the setting anti weapons are

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The spawn of evil from the pastovershadows any other concern, asyou and your team struggle to unravelthe clues to its existence. Origin maynot produce the cheapest games onthe market but its standards of qualityand presentation are of the highest.

Ultima III comes with a cloth mapof Sosaria and three manuals. One isgeneral and the other two describethe various priestly or sorcerousspells your characters may use. Asimple reference card covers all theoptions open to the player.

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party. You can go adventuring withless than four but this is not wise. Increating each one, you must choosethe name, sex and race (human, elf,dwarf, hobbit or fuzzy). Each race hasdifferent potentials – dwarves arestrong, elves are dexterous and so on.

Next comes choice of profession –barbarian, thief, wizard or ranger.There are 11 possibilities and caremust be taken to finish up with abalanced party. Finally you have 50points to apportion for yourcharacters' strength, dexterity,wisdom and intelligence.

Fighting types need strength,thieves dexterity, clerics wisdom, andmagic users intelligence. A table inthe manual lists the professions andtells you what type of armour.weapons and spells each can use.

A good combination to start with

would be ranger. thief, druid andwizard, providing good fightingability and characters who can casthealing and offensive spells. You arenow ready to journey into theunknown lands of Sosaria. The windin your hair, open rolling plainsbehind you and a small walled citybefore you.

THE display is a plan view, with

one character indicating yourparty's position. Water is shown tothe right of the map and twobuildings represent a castle and smalltown. You can see some woods to the -west.

To the right of the map is a displayshowing each character's status. Thisprovides such information as foodsupplies, hit points, magic points(spell casting ability) and their level(all start at level I). By typing Z, youare told how much gold they have,what they are carrying and theirpresent statistics.

Each character starts with a daggerand cloth armour, but you must tellthem to 'R'eady the dagger for useand •W'ear the armour.They have alimited amount of gold. The sensiblething to do next is •E'nter the town tobuy additional weapons and armour.Visit the tavern where gossip may beheard, or bought for the price of afew drinks.

Most towns have a grocers for food,and some other interesting places.Explore towns carefully and talk tothe people – you will pick up all sortsof useful information. Purchase abow, even if this means pooling yourteam's gold.

Out in the open, everything thatmoves will attack you. If you can killsome of them before they can get toyou, it will save some hit points.Kilted out to the limit of your purses,leave the safety of the town. Monsterscome in a variety of different guises,from ores, trolls, ghouls, zombies andgiants, to daemons, dragons, devils,balrons and even sea serpents.

When combat takes place, thedisplay shows a larger scale map.with the four members of your partytowards the bottom and the foetowards the top. Once conflict hasbegun there is no retreat.

Battle at a distance is possible witha bow, magic or by throwing daggers.

Your team may only swing orthrow weapons to the north, south.

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HANDS 1 1 2H i t P o i m t s : 2 5 2 0 G e m s : 0 4

T o r c h e s : 5 6H o x i m o m : 2 5 5 0E x p e r ; e m c e : 3 1 3 3 P o m d e r s : 0 1

L e v e l : 3 2H a 9 i c : 0 0 I -

Armour-

4BON

S t a t u s —Good S K I N A t

C a r ds — H a r k s LEA TH ER A tH e a t h F o r c eS o l F i r eHooms S m o k e

K im s sss

Status screen for one o f the team

west or east, and the enemy may alsostrike on a diagonal. Each time amember of the team is hit his hitpoints decrease:

ONCE past the initial stages, I

found the combat and magicbalance one of the best I have comeacross. Every time a member of yourparty kills an attacker, he gets

EXODUS: ULTI MA I I IOrigin/Mic roproseZ24•95

-11111114

STOR Y LINEBelievable alternative universe in needof help. You'll want to give it.

AURACreating and believing in your team o fcharacters is a s imple part of the him

a nte •urSTAYING POWERWill take you many enjoyable weeks tomap and to learn its hidden secrets.

111GAMEPLAYWell balanced operating system thatmakes the whole thing hang together.

li1111-1111111

VALUEMust work out at fractions of pence perhour of pleasure, despite the highAmerican price on the shiny box.

DIFFICIII,TY m m e n n m m E DStamina needed to explore and mapof its many levels. Worth the effort.

OVERALL 5 8 1 / 4Winner for role players, lots to get yourteeth into. Totally absorbing.

additional experience points.Initially, for each 100 gained. Lord

British will increase your potential hitpoints. Time ticks away inexorablybut the games pace is quiteacceptable. You may pause to takebreath and consider your options byselecting to use a weapon and thendelay in aiming it.

Having won, the vanquished foeleaves behind a treasure chest. Theseare often booby-trapped, but may beopened safely using a priestly spell.Thieves may be used as they are morelikely to spot traps.

If it has been a costly battle do nothurry to open the chest as a spot ofhealing may be worthwhile. You canuse chests as a barricade to protectyour flank. Hit points lost duringcombat will come back as timepasses; the same goes for magicpoints expended in casting spells.

Many towns are dotted aroundSosaria — explore them carefully tofind out what and who they contain.In some places injured or poisonedcharacters may be healed — for aprice. Keep a pencil and paper handy.

Dungeons are 3D mazes. The fourkeys that you've been using to moveN,S,W,E now refer to forward, retreatand turn left or right. Dungeons aredark. Spells will light your way butlast only a short time, so you arebetter off with a torch. These andother useful items may be purchasedfrom guild shops found in sometowns. Initially only a few spells areavailable to you as their use dependsupon the number of magic points acharacter has. When creating a

magical or clerical type it is wise toallocate the maximum number ofpoints to the appropriate attribute.

As you explore coastal areas, youmay find yourself under attack from apirate ship. If you beat the pirates, theship is yours and you can exploreSosaria more thoroughly. There aremany pirates at sea, so be prepared tomeet them either with cannon or aboarding party.

Another means of travel is viaMoon Gates, ancient structures whichonly appear at certain phases ofSosiria's twin moons. Entering onewill teleport you to another gate. Tohelp you to understand the working'of these portals, the phases of themoons are included in the maindisplay.

Exodus: Ultima III presents a realchallenge and has much more to itthan just bashing monsters. There are26 commands issued with a singleletter input — the mouse duplicatessome of them. There is an option totype in additional commands such asDIG or SEARCH, It is not too difficultto learn to stay alive, but solving thereal puzzles behind your quest willtake a little longer.

ZORKinfocom 01-131 1101Less than £15

" ' M V P 11i111STORY LINEArchetypal fantasy with enigmaticorigins o f underground empire onlyapparent after quite some time.

AURA g a l l I M M E U DGood descriptive passages keep theinterest active however often you play.

11STAYING POWERLots of puzzles maintain pressure tokeep you up until the small hours.

.11811 11111GAMEPLAYBasic text adventure with many goodpuzzles and mazes to tax the player.

VALIT .11111111,111ALExcellent. just because Infocom hasstopped producing the game it is nosysold at bargain prices. Buy quickly.

INFER:117-Y l u a l u m m u DInfocom games involve some

devious thought. This is a good placefor the novice to learn the ropes_

OVERALL 6 4 %Ooes not show its age. A game withheritage, which has sired many moreadventures. including Zorks if and

uly 1988 A y liGit ( M i n !TING 1 5

THE Amiga lacks a top-class

desktop publishing program torival Aldus PageMaker on theMacintosh or Xerox's VenturaPublisher on the IBM PC. But, a littlelower down the scale, it can competewith other computers.

Of the DTP programs available, thedeservedly dominant one is GoldDisk's PageSetter. This really shineswhen used with PageSetterLaserScript, a good PostScript driverfor an appropriate laser printer suchas Apple's LaserWriter.

PageSetter is capable of producingwork of a professional quality,although this requires considerableeffort. I t is used to produce theAmerican magazine Robo City News.

With it, I typeset and illustrated a150-page book — The Desktop Guideto Desktop Publishing.

You can create school magazines,club bulletins, community newslettersand flyers. For such productions, youwill hardly notice that it has noautomatic page-numbering or that itlacks such typographic niceties asautomatic hyphenation (splittingwords at the correct point when theyare set in columns) and kerning(altering the amount of space betweenadjacent letters).

PageSetter comes on a singleunprotected disc together with a smalland inadequate manual. This ravesabout the joys of desktop publishingbut fails to tell you everything itshould about the program.

WHERE PageSetter differs from

many desktop publishingprograms is that it allows you toswitch between three screens — thepage layout screen, a text editor,which provides many of the facilitiesof a word processor, and a graphicseditor which doubles as a simpledrawing program.

The text editor allows you to copy.cut and paste text, to search for wordsor phrases. and replace them. But it isline- rather than page-orientated,which makes updating the screensomewhat jerky. I found it toouncomfortable to use as a wordprocessor.

The text editor's main purpose is tofine tune words created on anotherword processor. You can loaddocuments saved in Ascii. PageSetter

lb A M/ G A COMPUTING J uly 1988

Making theheadlines

is also compatible with Scribble! andTextcraft, so it w ill preserve styles,such as italics, from the originaldocument.

You set different text styles withinthe editor by entering a backslashfollowed by the appropriate letteraround words or phrases. Thus, \ bwould put words that followed it inbold and \ n would return them tonormal. Available styles are bold.italic, normal, outline, reverse.shadow and underline, which can bemixed in any combination.

The graphics editor is used forloading and altering illustrations. Youcan draw lines in various thicknesses,

A simple bar chartcan enhance the

appearance of a page

John Walker looks at GoldDisk's DTP package

HAL

Arm

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P r

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Peach

Other

• 0, 01-• 44 •-••

• • •-• •••••••••••• •

0% 1 5% 30%

GET IMPACTINTO YOURHEADLINES

Get Impactinto yourHeadlines

Get ImpactInto YourHeadlines

Get impactinto yourheadlines

airbrush, and produce fi lled oroutlined rectangles and circles. Azoom gadget magnifies part of apicture so that you can add finedetail.

You can c lip part of a picture anduse it as a brush. The artwork can becopied, re-sized and fl ippedhorizontally and vertically. You canalso play around with text, changingits size and shape to create interestingeffects, something that the manualfails to tell you.

PageSetter converts colour graphicsto monochrome, adding grey scaleshading that is sometimes unpleasant.It may also distort the original, since

Four styles of headlinesettings. Current practicefavours the lower caseapproach

its resolution of 640 x 200 pixels isnon-standard_

PageSetter's greatest limitation isthat graphics cannot be re-sized onthe layout page. A full-screenillustration in the graphics editorshrinks to something much smaller,less than a 4 x 3 inches. whenprinted. It can he shifted, moved at apixel at a time and masked to showonly part of it but it cannot be madean bigger.

INCLUDED on the PageSetter disc

is a selection of clipart to provideyou with instant illustrations. It isuninspired and uninspiring stuff, butoccasionally useful.

You can move text and graphicsbetween the layout pages and theeditors at any time. Transfer from onescreen and another is almostinstantaneous even when there are alot of words in the system. Using a512k Amiga I've worked on layoutsthat ran to 17 pages. contained 6.000words and half-a-dozen illustrationswithout much slowing down. Youcouldn't do that on an IBM PCwithout a hard disc.

The page layout screen is the heartof PageSetter. To create your layoutyou use the mouse to access pull-down menus at the lop of the screenand a toolbox at the righthand side.The display initially shows a blankpage with on-screen rulers.

Measurements are in either inchesor picas, that peculiar printingmeasure with six picas to the inch, Inorder to make design easier, a gridcan be superimposed on the page.

WORDS and pictures are held

in boxes which can bedrawn on the page or defined in apage requester that allows you toenter the size of the page and itsmargins with the number and size ofthe columns, after which they aredrawn automatically.

You can define a default box, inwhich you specify how the text is tobe justified — either centered or setragged left or right, the tracking —spacing between letters, and leading —the spacing between lines.

You can choose a font and whetherthe box is to have a border around it.There is a choice of five borders, all

MeI G otoD I L2_ 5_ 1 (1

Desktop Publishing for the AMIGA

Since the desktop publishingboom started in 1982, the industryhas exploded. Software, hardware,books and even trade papers havemushroomed t o fi l i a market,which is expected to reach SObillion dollars world wide by t990.14ot since th e advent o f thespreadsheet h a s a s i n g l eapplication made such an Impacton the computer industry. Largecompanies, small groups and evenindividivals a r e us ing th e i rcomputers to produce crisp,

professional flyers, newsletters,signs and resumes quickly andeasily, a t a fraction of the costof commercia l ty pe s e tti ng,Desktop publishing has brought thepower of the press to the peopiel

PagaSetter Is arevolutionary newsoftware t o o ldesigned t o tur nYour 4mir.4 into aPowerful desktopp u b l i s h in gworkstation. A n

'intuitive' user interface roinhinesCSC of operation with complete

Otter Features i n c l u de :

r •r'": k t i t „ :4 1nea ll:4 1 •9 4 1 1

Several

_

Foir. iostificaticm modes including micrtr-fustification.

Graphics may be sized or Lropped at will.Automatic article fay:kitting, tfrough colunns and betweenTent styles include gw_liast. zeriati, 4kaiSlimmil, and _ _ •

ttulti-paye deo/amts. with v &-i a b l e s i z e s a n d f o r m a t s .

Hulevs, strids, colisins, and margin indicators.Neastrement in inches or Ei_c4s.Prints on any printer in muipreterences

/loxStreetsville2C2

combinations of straight lines. Ashadow can he added to the box.

One minor bug is that PageSetterwill not print the righthand shadowof a box unless there is another boxbeneath and to the right of it.

Boxes can be linked so that text willflow from one to another, over asmany pages as you like. Changes tothe text in one box will affect all ofthem. This is useful because it meansyou can produce a basic layout for aregular newsletter, which can besaved as a series of empty boxes.Then, when occasion demands, youload your text and pour it through thepages.

Boxes can be overlaid, either so thatwhat is in one box will show through

and le t PageSetter handle thetedious ta s k o f forma tting.Create stunning a rtwork andhard-hitting copy quickly andeasily using the built- i n g r a p h i cand tex t editors or import thetafrom y o u r fa v our i te AMICAAraphic or word processors.

agaSet ter includes an extensive ilibrary of clipart and fonts to

right away,allow you y to get up and running

And at all times,

TAW' Mti. low' viz* orc,

flexibility of pare design. Us emagnify to zoom in for detailedwork, or pull back for the ful lpage. Combine text (In differentfonts and styles) and graphicswith complete freedom, a ndenhance them with a variety oflengthyshadings a nd borders. S p i l l

articles a c r o s sboxes

E R E V I E W E I

linked

Eilg e L g t e rC l e n f h a tcomipaula ta unt

Rvili'0137' gives you the Creative Edge

Thgs do c um a i tt woe c rea ted with rimagetter

_ _

another, or in an opaque form, so thatyou can cover up mistakes. Using thesee-through option allows you to puttext over shaded boxes or graphics.

A box can be changed in size andshape by simply pulling at its bottomrighthand corner. It can be shiftedaround the page by putting the cursorwithin it and moving the mouse.

The page itself can be displayed atthree magnifications. At its smallest,the whole page is shown on screen.At its second size, you can see half apage on screen at a time. At fullmagnification, which shows an eighthof a page, what you see will be whatyou get when you print.

PageSetter uses the Amiga's built-in

AI N 1 9.98 .4 M I C A a m p t r n v c I 7

• R E V I E W E

.111fonts, which are acceptable for themain text but don't make gooddisplay types for headlines.

Headlines themselves can either bewritten in the text editor and thenadded in their own boxes or writtenon the page using a small pop-upQuickText box in which you can typeup to 100 characters,

If you want more interestingtypefaces. you w ill need to investeither in one or more of the threevolumes of Zuma Fonts or thecheaper three volumes of Earthbound

pAGESETTER uses the Amiga's

Preferences drivers for itsprinted output. This is a pity since the1.2 drivers are limited to 9-pin dotmatrix printers and some do not workwell, leaving thin white lines. Theimproved Workbench 1.3 drivers curethis, but I'd like to see some customprinter drivers, incorporating the sortof smoothing algorithms which areavailable on DTP programs for othermicros.

Some problems may be solved by apage-printing program included onthe PageSetter disc. To use it, you firstsave your pages. quit PageSetter, loadthe pr inting program and pr int them.Because it occupies less memory, theprogram holds a whole page at a timein ram. which eliminates the whiteline problem. A further programincluded allows you to save a page asan HT fi le which you can then loadinto Deluxe Paint or a s imilargraphics package.

It takes about five minutes to pr inta page using a dot matrix printer. Theresults are good with a 9-pin printer,but better with a 24-pin using a driverfrom the 1.3 Workbench preferenceswhich is beginning to appear on theupdates to some programs — minecame from ProlArrite 2.0.

PageSetter LaserScript, an extraprogram that is an essential buy forthose lArho want the best possibleresults, allows you to drive aPostScript laser printer. It comes withfour PostScript type-faces — Courier,Helvetica. Times Roman and Symbol— which can be scaled to any' size you

15 .1 l•fruil com P uTi NG / o r 1988

t a l l a I r2Tt L i i t M i t i tICE, COLD

' — osDON

L N . . . . A . , . • • • • , . . A. aw ,•••6.0 4 .104 4 , 4 , , , l i k •a.m.

,. A ,* •••• .mo•ON boon ....Ow • a.

4, 1104, 4•4 , 4• • • • • • 4 1 . 4 • • 4 • • • • • • • , • • • •0 4 . • 4 Oa S. ", w i a • vs mg, _ , 1oao•c4hm o r m 4 a m , i , 4 4 4 s 4 1 da. • O m s k Emod,

IC

fl F T1101,11)1EFILI

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want. I t also permits the manipulationof finished pages, which can beshrunk, rotated or laid one or top ofanother to create unusual effects.

IFOUND the program robust and

unlikely to crash. However there isone annoying little bug. Sometimes,when dealing with long documents,the first line on a page w ill not justifyto the leithand margin but w ill be setone character in and w ill resist allattempts to change it. I found the onlyway to deal with it was to go to thefirst page of the document, switchfrom the layout screen to the texteditor and then return to the layout.

Otherwise PageSetter is a good,uncomplicated program suitable fornon-professional use. I prefer it tosuch rivals as City Disk and Publisher1000, although its supremacy may bechallenged soon.

The others are being updated, andthere are newer ones on the horizonsuch as Publishing PartnerProfessional and Gold Disk's ownProfessional Page. In the meantime.PageSetter provides excellent valuefor money and w il l more than meetthe requirements of many users.

r-

PostScript lets youmanipulate images,reducing andangling them

REPORT 'CARD

PageSetter11B Mar keti ng. Tel : 01495 444433.E79.95

USEFULNESSTurns simple documents intopmfessional looking pages but takessome time.

EASE OF USE 1111111111•1111While the commands are notimmediately obvious they can bepicked up quickly

11111 I I IINTUITIONFully intergrated along Commodoreguidelines but is ram and processorhungry.

HUM

SPEEDProfessional results take a while butwith the Amiga's horsepower it shouldnot be quite as slow as it is.

VALUE 1 1 = 1 1 1 1 1At only .1•80 this is priced much momkeenly than you would expect for anAmiga package which has a smallmarket_

0 VERALL 6 6 " oA fu ll Desktop Publishing packagePageSetter takes some mastering butproduces creditable results.

• R E V I E W E

Roger... Wilco S i m o n Rockmis cleared for take-off

ONLY the Amiga makes it

possible. It's Commodore'sslogan, and so often a true one. Butgames software houses with an eye tothe quick buck so often let themachine down. Electronic Arts hashung in there supporting our machinesince the days of prototypes, so it isfi tting that the company should haveproduced the greatest ever Amigaprogram.

F/A 18 Interceptor is a fl ightsimulator — that's a bit like •Buckingham Palace is a ho

but an u n d e r:a r t . Y o

ng thatTrue,

a choice of the land-based F16 orcarrier borne F/A-18 jets to play with

As soon as you unwrap theprogram you know that you'vebought something special. Thedocumentation advises that youdisconnect a second drive on an 512k •machine, grabbing the precious ramthat it needs. The carrier iconappears. Antic ipate blast off. Doubleclick to load and a pilot launches intothe blue.

The Amiga' drive does its stuff fartoo slowly, the seconds . h e d hy

July 1988 A•W/G.4 COMPUTING 19

your impatience. The title screencaptures the atmosphere of the battleTwo jets locked in a dogfight over a

, c ry s tal clear Californian sky which

I . .• contains the kinds of blues you only

. see in real life and the Amiga palette.. Y o u ' v e plenty of time to appreciate:: it as the game loads, but that period

would be better spent reading the• manual. Electronic Arts — EA to its' friends — is hardly known for,' sk imping on documentation. The

confrontation on your retina iscomplemented by s imilar auralstimulation thanks to Dave Wahol'ssound.

F/A 18 Interceptor is a game ofmissions, but before you can takethose on you need to learn to fly thecrate. The game is its own trainer.

1 T h e demo mode shows what can bedone. Simple options to take off andfly around familiarise you with thecontrols.

Aspecial mode tests your ability

at some set manoeuvres. Aninstructor goes through a prescribedset of loops, turns and rolls. You haveto follow in a chase plane. I f you cando this then the next stage shouldseem easy. Take off from the carrier,c limb to at least 10,000 feet and thenland back on the carrier.

You have an incredible amount ofpower in your engines. Thrust can becontrolled in 10 per cent incrementsby using F l to F M Pressing F1 whenthe engines are at 10 per cent willswitch them off — something bestdone when you have landed —pressing F-1 0 w h en y ou a re ,a t 100 per

cent turns on the afterburner, giv ingyou an unbelievable boost. Moregentle, 3 per cent, increments ofthrust can be selected by using theequals and minus keys.

The best tactic for take-off seems tobe locking the brakes and switchingto at least 90 per cent thrust. Allowthe power to build, and then releasethe brakes. This ensures that you haveenough oomph to stay in the air whenyou run out of carrier. Lift theundercarriage as soon as you take off— it reduces drag significantly. Resistthe temptation to bank.

Climb a little, say to 1,000, feet anden level off. The crosshair in thead up display (HUD) should he onexel below the horizon. Check the

e sure s are20 A MI G A COMPUTING & I v 1980

Orers not I e carrier and loop round

keeping a constant height. Then usethe rudder, the < and > keys, to turn.If you are not c limbing or div ing thehorizon w il l remainievel.

Keep an eye on the compass. Froman initial starting position of goingnorth it should rotate to pointingsouth. I f you fl ip to the map thecarrier looks to be ly ing east-west.That is because it is too diffi cult todraw it north-south and still look likean aircraft carrier.

While you are travelling south pullback on the joystick and c limb to atleast 10,000 feet. Then push gentlyforward, drop the nose a little waybelow the horizon. Reduce thrust sothat things will happen less rapidlyand descend to less than 4,000 feet.Switch the radar from its 40 milelimit to 10 or 2 miles, just enough tokeep the carrier in view. The furtheryou are the easier things w il l be later.Level off and use the rudder to

complete the circuit. Again it shouldbe possible to turn without banking.

Once you are pointing north dip thenose. The carrier lies ahead. Use thezoom function to make sure that theblob is the carrier and prepare asteady glide path. Drop the thrust tobetween 30 and 40 per cent.

As you approach the carrier an

enemy fighter may attack. It ispossible to pull up and spot itwithout banking. Hit Return to selecta heat-seeking missile. Target thebandit. The HUD will light up likeBlackpool Illuminations. Once thecommie is vignetted by a largediamond, squeeze the trigger. Thiswill loose an air-to-air missile. Fireand forget.

Bring the nose back down to point

1

1

E R E V I E W E

aidng.p thethehe

to

anI is

ect

int

provide the speed and graphics hewanted. Nigh on 90 per cent of theprogram is written in assembler,with menus and set-up routines inC. The program was developed onElectronic Arts ' Artists WorkStation (AWS).

It is a shame that Bob's nextgame is for the PC, but he hopes toreturn to the Amiga after that. I leclaims that Interceptor II would beeasy with new missions, locationsand different planes.

The existing planes werecarefully chosen, The Ft A 18because it is new, exciting andcarrier-based. It was also chosenbecause it is a single pilotaircraft.

The F16 was chosen"for variety, and becauseI have a couple of

F-16s in the game trying to defect Ithought I'd let you fly one", saysBob.

The Amiga needs more classprogrammers like Bob Dinnerman.Interceptor is the first of a newgeneration of Amiga programs.

INTERCEPTOR was written by

Bob Dinnerman. It is his firstcommercial home computer gameand the Amiga his first homecomputer.

No one, not even a genius likeBob D., picks up enoughprogramming experience toproduce a game of Interceptorproportions in the year and a halfit took to write.

Bob used to be a programmer forBally — the arcade gamemanufacturer. He wrote the arcadesmash Discs of Tron, which despitehitting the arcade market in midnose-dive still took a lot of money.

Discs of Tron used a mere Z80with 56k of rom. So it is notsurprising that Bob has workedsuch wonders with a 68000 andhalf a megabyte. Some of the work.mainly fl ight algorithms, forInterceptor was a development ona flying game which Bally plannedand scrapped.

Bob had not bought a homecomputer before the Amigabecause he felt that nothing could

at the carrier and lose any extraheight rapidly. The deck is 145 feetoff the sea. You want to be 100 feetabove this as you come in to land.While you are still some way off,lower the arrestor hook. This catcheswires on the deck surface and haulsyou in to land.

Closer in, drop the undercarriage.Then put on the brakes. This not only

NDG 014 1

912 (ITS B S FT

The game has an accurate map of SIM Francisco !

locks the wheels but engages the airbrakes. As you Hy over the ca rrie rbring the nose down and cut theengines. You should plop on to thedeck. Bring the nose up in acontrolled stall to land on the rearwheels.

Real carrier pilots come in at fullflying speed in case the arrestor hookdoes not catch. You shouldn't worry

MEMabout this. Overshooting is a muchgreater danger. Your reward for thetask is a pair of sweaty palms and theright to go on to a mission.

Now you have proved that youhave the r ight stuff you can take onthe world, The first mission is to flyout, identify an enemy plane and flyback. Easy and boring, it is the k ind

July 1988 AMIGA COMPUTING ; I I

• R E V I E W E

411of mission that Nato pilots (I() all thetime. The temptation to blast the foeis dreadful. Don't do it.

The first mission where you areactually supposed to shoot somethingdown oilers an enemy plane which isafter the President's jet, Air ForceOne. Succeed and you are presentedwith a great graphic sequence of AF-I

ding.

GUN 2 9 0

23102

ther missions have you tryingto persuade two defecting

E-16s that they really love mom,apple pit! and the American wayenough to turn around and not defect.You have to fly in front of them —failing that you can blast them. Allthe while a couple of Migs are out toget you.

was while I was just about to talkF-Ifi around that a Russian missile

will lear

22 AM117A COMPUTING July 1988

homed in on me. I pressed F for flare.C for chaff and E for electroniccounter measures. What I reallywanted was J for electronic jammer.Instead I got E for eject. At least themissile didn't get me.

The enemy gets harder to attack — acruise missile can only be shot down,as I found out after I'd wasted a loadof missiles on it.

Interceptor is br illiantly designed. Itstretches your playing abilityprogressively. It is also full of greattouches.

You can view the plane from insidethe cockpit. looking all the wayaround to check for enemy johimieson your tail. You can watch the action,from a third person position at one ofthe eight compass points outside theplane, or you can watch from thecontrol tower. These views work justas well when you are parachutingdown after a missile hit. A zoom

•

INTERCEPTOR is protected with

a code wheel, something ofwhich I approve. Along withMagnetic Scrolls-type novellaprotection, this allows the honestuser to make disc back-ups. andoften allows the transfer to harddisc, but it reduces the problems ofpiracy.

Sure the crooks will r ip apart thecode and produce an unprotectedversion, but at least we don't haveto suffer if our discs get corrupted.The Interceptor code wheel feelslike part of the game, not a bid toprove your innocence.

I like the way you can run thedemo without using the wheel, ataunt to the person who steals acopy. l ie can see what he ismiqsinu! xvitlinut plav in,:!gives a better o f depth.There are so u g s . I have

managed to fly over the carrier andhave the wing disappear under theship. I t is common practice to landthe sea. but none of these matter.when you take into account the

hof fun you'll have when 'ou take tothe air w it Inter c ept

REPORT CARD

FiA 18 InterceptorElectronic ArtsPrice E24.95

SOINDWonderful sampled sounds which getlouder when you view from outside.GRAPHICS 1111111111119WEIFast 3D solids with a surprisiii.gamount of detail including the EAoffices in California and Alcatraz.

GAMEPLAYA good range of missions, Spaced indifficulty gives sense of achievement.USE OF THEAMIGAA game only possible on the Amiga. Ituses the Winer and sampled sound.

VALUE

r r

Hours of fun packed flying time. Youwill want to go back for more whenyou have finished all the missions.

OVERALL 9 6 " , 0The greatest Amiga game ever. You willbelieve a computer can make you 4y.

I Bridge StreetGeleshiels701 1SW

Tel; 0896 57004(24 hours)

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hill, 1988 crpurtravc 2 .?

SINCE its inception the Amiga

has played host to manystunning examples, either painted ordigitised, of its graphics capabilities.More recent items have beengenerated by the computer itself froma description of a world, resulting ina static or animated picture.

Until recently, there have been notools to explore the potential of the

Tour throughSculpt andAniivate 3D

Since Boing, other microshave tried to emulate theAmiga's demos. SamLittlewood tests a coupleof programs which wi l lhelp it stay out front

24 A M/ G • ilL INIP / TI NG M y 98H

Amiga to generate images andanimations. The first of the packageswas Videoscape 31), which does notprovide any means of easilydescribing the world, but givesanimation,

Dr Eric Graham, the creator of theluggler program, continued his workto produce Sculpt 3D from Byte-by-Byte. This has a user interface to help

create objects without graph paperand typing lists of numbers. Yougenerate images with a techniqueknown as ray-tracing. This uses alarge amount of computer time togenerate realistic pictures inc ludingshading, shadows and reflections.

The facility to animate a scene isprovided by Animate a l l Used inconjunction with Sculpt 3D, Animate

Ed 1 t To o t ,F43 =K5= Elb - 4 4 4 4

°cationTargetLens

m,ExpostireImage size

TiltStartSh,p,

PaintingSnapshot

VPhotoWipe frame

—N/Lo-res

Hi-resNo-interlace

_ItInterlace

Bit •lanes

describes how objects move andchange with time. The resultingsequence of images can then becompressed and played back in realtime or recorded frame-by-frame onto a flying erase head video recorder.

In both Videoscape and Animate3D the individual frames of ananimation are generated one by one,taking between seconds and hoursapiece. To play the images at thecorrect rate, they are compressed intoa special file format that can beplayed back in real time. If a specialvideo recorder is available it ispossible to record each image directlyon to video tape as it is created. Thisallows much longer animations, asthey are not limited by memoryneeded for playback.

SCULPT 3D comes on a single

disc containing the mainprogram and a set of example objectsand images, It can be used on a 512kmachine, but it is limited, as withouta megabyte or more, complicatedobjects and higher resolution pictures

cannot be generated.Sculpt 3D does

not take over the machine, and can berun from the Workbench or CLI and itknows about PAL machines. The userinterface is through normal windows,gadgets and menus.

F AD I TI N G o bj ec ts invol ves three

windows, collectively known asthe 'Fri-View, representing a box inthe three dimensional space. Thethree windows are views of the bit ofthe world within the box from thetop, west and north. They are normalIntuition windows that can be depth-arranged and re-sized. Additionalgadgets move the box around inspace and zoom in and out.

A cursor within the box indicatespositions in space. Shown as a bluecross in each of the windows this canbe moved by clicking the left mousebutton. As the windows are only two-dimensional, it may be necessary toclick in two windows to position thecursor exactly where it is required.

A scene manipulated with Sculpt3D consists of' vertices — points inspace, edges — lines joining vertices,and faces. Faces are the triangularshapes implied when three verticesare joined by three edges. The Tr-View displays only the vertices andedges.

To create a vertex, the cursor ismoved to the correct position inside

the Tri-View, and the right mousebutton is clicked while

the left is held

E R E V I E W S E

down. The 'edge* gadgets on thewindows create edges betweenselerfted vertices. Existing sets verticescan be easily manipulated by usingvarious options to drag, rotate,expand, contract or delete them. It iseasy to forget that there are unseenselected vertices outside the 'Fri-View.and accidentally include these in amanipulation.

It would be possible to build anobject by simply creating each vertexand joining them together by hand.Often objects or bits of objects arethemes on common elements likecubes, spheres, discs and so on.Sculpt 3D has a menu-driven way ofincorporating them into the scenebeing made.

The new object is dumped in themiddle of the Tr-View box at asensible size. It can then be dragged,scaled and rotated to the right place.

ANOTHER method of' building

up objects is to take an existingset of vertices and do things withthem. Sculpt-3D can make a straightcopy — a copy connected to theoriginal with edges and faces. a"spun" object like a vase startingfrom a silhouette of one edge, areflected copy and others.

With these tricks it is relatively easyto build up a complicated scene bystarting with a few simple objects andthen cutting, stretching, copying, androtating until the shapes are formed.

A useful last resort is that Sculpt 3Dcan be driven by a script from a textfile. All the creation and editingactions are available, so commoncomplicated command sequences canbe put in a script and a programwritten that describes an object, forexample, lettering. This opens up thepossibility of converting otherSystems data files into Sculpt-3Dscripts.

To get a p icture o f a scene, theremust be more than the objects: Thingslike colour, lamps and an observer.Faces can have colour, texture andsmoothing. Colour is controlled by arequester. It allows red-green-bluecontrol, as well as hue-saturation-value, like Deluxe Paint. Texture canbe one of dull, shiny, luminous,mirror or glass:

If a face is smoothed it appears to110-

/Lily /Wig A NfiG,4 M M P UTI V G 2 5

411

be curved in line with the facesaround it. A dodecahedron withsmoothed faces would look more likea sphere.

Several parameters are associatedwith the observer. There is theposition of the eye, the point beinglooked at and the focal length of thelens, or zoom. The two positions canbe set by selecting a point in the T r -View and then selecting a menuoption. The zoom can either beselected from three pre-defined valuesor given an exact numeric value.

Lamps, with colour and brightness,are created by selecting a position inthe Tri-View, and then a menuoption. A further option is the groundand sky. The ground can be a solidcolour or checked, and the sky can begraduated from one colour at thezenith to another at the horizon.

WITH the scene set up, a

picture can be taken. Thereare various options at this point. Thefirst is the method that w ill be used torender the image. Choices areWireframe, Painting, Snapshot orPhoto. Wireframe is used forpreviewing, and just draws an outlinerepresentation of the picture. This isdone in a second or so — good forchecking the positions of objects andwhether the observer is set upcorrectly.

Painting renders each face in afixed colour. It doesn't do shadows,reflections, smoothing or the morecomplicated lighting. This techniqueis also used by VideoScape 3D. Ittakes maybe 10 seconds to generatethe image, and gives a better feel for,what the fi nal ray-traced image willbe like.

Snapshot is a ray tracing mode,giving correct shading and smoothingwithout the shadows and reflections.rhis may lake an hour or more togenerate for a full size image andfinds a use in producing fi nal imageswhere shadows and reflections arenot important.

The most realistic mode is Photo.which copes with shadows andreflection, but takes several hours fora full size image. By using the othermodes for previewing. Photo modecan be avoided until the final image isproduced.

'NW

A way to cut rendering time is tomake the image smaller — useful forchecking out shadows and thelighting. The image size can be fullscreen — an overscan image that fi llsthe borders, or half, quarter andeighth of full size.

The number of bit-planes and thedisplay mode used for the image canbe controlled: Low resolution, highresolution, interlace and HAM are allpossible.

A further option is not to render theimage to the screen, but to three files,each containing bytes for the red,green and blue value of each pixel.Although this cannot be displayed onthe Amiga, it might be possible on acolour printer or another computer. Anice feature is that during imagegeneration Sculpt 3D will attempt toshow how much time is needed tofinish the picture.

The editing interface takes time tomaster, but once understood, ispowerful and easy. It does allowcreation of objects, as opposed tofighting with numbers and bits offolded paper. The choice of renderingtechniques is excellent, leading to thetime-consuming ones only being usedwhen it w il l be worthwhile. Themanual is well written, inc ludingtutorial and reference sections. Theresult is a useable tool, not a toy.

ANIMATE 31) is supplied on

two discs — one for theprogram. and the other containingexample animations. It requiresSculpt 3D. pushing the memory

26 AMI G A COMPUTING I ui y M i n

requirement up to a minimum of1Mb. with more needed forcomplicated work. There have beenno problems running it in 2Mb aslong as nothing else big is running aswell.

The user interface is the same aiSculpt 3D's with additional menuitems to handle the animation. Somefeatures have been added to the basicmodelling commands, the main onebeing splines. These extras areextraordinarily useful, and shouldhave been in the original Sculpt 3D.

A line of vertices connected byedges can be made a spline. A few ofthe vertices become control pointsand the rest follow in a curvebetween them. The "stiffness" of thespline and several other attributes canbe modified, giv ing a powerful tool.

A second new feature is that ascene can be named in a hierachicalfashion. So "fan" could have children"base" and "head". "Head" couldthen have children "motor" and"hub". "Hub" could then have fourblades as its children. It is possible toselect/erase/toad/save a named groupof vertices.

Animate 3D can be used for staticimages in the same way as Sculpt 3D.When a "take" is selected, it becomesan animator. A "take" is not a staticscene, but all 'the informationpertinent to a complete animation. Itconsists of scenes describing how the

• R E V I E W S •

will iPst1"111.1'

world changes over time. along withhow many frames the animationconsists of. i f a ram animation is to beused, if it is a loop animation and soon.

As more than one scene is used in atake, it is important to remember tosave the changes in one scene beforegoing on to edit another.

ITis not necessary to edit a

complete scene for every frame ofthe animation; Animate 31.) has twoways of describing the changes withtime. The first is the global scene.This is a single scene, as in Sculpt 3D,that is present for the wholean

A new type of object is a path, aset of vertices connected by edges.possibly a spline, describing motionover time. Parts of the namedhierachy can be attached to the pathby making them children of a path.Paths can be attached to paths. Aplane could be attached to a straightpath, while its propeller spins on acircular path relative to the plane, Anobject can be rolled, pitched andyawed as it travels. Objects. the eve,the point being looked at and lamps .can all be attached to paths.

The second method of animating isto edit scenes that describe how theworld looks at key points in time,letting Animate 3D interpolate the

inbetween frames. Objects can changeshape and size in any way.

A limitation when using thistechnique is that two key frames withframes in between must have thesame number of vertices and thevertices must have been created in thesame order. This is so that Animate31) can do the inbetweening. A goodway to create key frames is to edit thefirst one normally, then copy it to theother key places. The vertices in theseother frames can now be dragged,

REPORT CARD

Scullil 3DAmiga Centre Scotland. Tel: 031-5574242.E69,95

USEFITNESS a a n i l l i t t a ]Sculpt makes it passible (or an_vonewith patience to create picture.

, • • • • • . . I IEASE OF IEases the complicated problem o fcreating and editing shapes in 31.1.

INTUTTION 11111MTIME111Fully multi-tasking and runs fromWorkbench. Uses masses of memory.

SPEED I I L H I H IIt can take 20 hours to ray-trace ascene. A reflection o f the processingpower not a programming fault.

VALVE E I C I M I K E DVol exactly a bargain but a sensible

price for an advanced graphics tool.

OVERALL 8 2 %A well thought out package with widerappeal than most design programs.

scaled, and stretched as necessary.• T h e inbetweening process not onlycovers vertices, but colours, lighting.observer positions and zoom. Aglobal scene and inbetweening can bemixed in the same animation asappropriate.

THE controls available for

rendering an image are alsoavailable for an animation. Inaddition, there is a fast wire-framepreview of the animation. Singleframes can he rendered for checking— they will not be re-rendered when itcomes to the complete animation. Asray-tracing is so time consuming. itmay be worth using painting mode.Movement can distract from amultitude of rendering sins.

Animate 3D gives access to all threeaspects of animation: Modelling,animation and rendering. As withSculpt 31), it is a tool that oncemastered, does not get in the way ofcreation.

The manual is harder work thanSculpt 31). not giv ing as much in theway of a tutorial. I f the area ofcomputer generated images andanimation is of interest to you, thenboth packages will be rewarding.

REPORT CARD

Animate 31)Amiga Centre Scotland. Tel: 031-5574242E69,95

......Great for producing rolling demos butneeds an A500 to be expanded to

EASE OF t!SESplines make shape definition easierthan in Sculpt. Friendly interfame.

• • •

A T I Tr i (ArWritten with the developer's guidelinesfi rmly in mind. A kosher program.

111111111ln

SPEEDHelped by nut having to re-renderframes but st ill processor hungry.

11111111 I L E MNeeds Sculpt which brings up theoverall cost, but can produce un-rivalled graphical results.

Ideal for producing stunning demosonce yOlf have made the investment inmoney and lime to master it,

OVERALL 7 8 %

i A 1. )% 1 7 1.7.0 . ' t ; ."7

Printed using11 e r u A 40/20

It mumM O W

d'i,,),(,)1? P a u l l ,,,,•1.1t•c fi l l 0 t . : 0 ,e ' i t ' t ( I ) n S (

28 A H G A COMP/ ,7 T V G h i l t ' 0 8 1 4

Arty factsSimon Rockman takes a look at the program which

could oust Deluxe Paint from the artist's garret

AIL Amiga 500s come with

Electronic Arts' universallypraised Deluxe Paint. So anyone wholArants to sell an art package needs tomake sure that it is exceptionallygood to persuade a Deluxe Paint-Owning Amigaist to spend hardearned shekels on another program.Photon Paint is the thing to do lustthat.

Deluxe Paint can't cope with the4.096 colour Hold And Modify(HAM) mode, Photon Paint can. Theadvertising claims that it w ill expandyour paint capabilities as neverbefore, No package is going to makeme a great artist. but what PhotonPaint will do is allow me to start withsome simple building blocks andproduce a creditable result.

One look at the packaging revealsthat Photon Paint is trulyinternational. li is sold in the UK byActivision which has the rights to allthe products from the Californian-based Microillusions. It in turn hasbought the program from BazbooSoft, a company in Tel Aviv.

The program feels right from themoment you load it. It has clearlybeen designed by a programmer whouses art packages. The menu can bemoved around the screen or toggledoff. An extended menu allows you toplay with colours.

The menu selection can be a littletedious since many sections are storedon disc, no doubt to leave room forthe pictures.

The package supports NTSC andPAL TV standards. with overscan forthe video production fraternity.Changing from NTSC to PAL meansthat you can keep the menu on thescreen without obscuring the picture.One strange problem is that thealternate screen has to he wiped tochange modes while the displayedscreen is sate.

At fi rst I thoughl that th is was a

ram limitation, but on a 3Mb machineI was able to save the alternatescreen, change modes and thenre-load. The ram management is verygood, with plenty of warnings if youare about to run out of memory,including the option to disable theUndo command to release extra rain.

TIIE standard option to cut a box

and turn it into a brush has theextra, machine-taxing. facility whichallows you to cut around a shapefreehand and turn that into a brush.Unlike DPaint. you cannot draw witha brush, only position it and plonkthe image on the page.

One of the great features offered bya brush is the blend option. Thismakes it translucent, so that thebackground shows through. You cancontrol how much shows overdifferent areas of the brush, an effectwhich would be almost impossible toachieve by just drawing.

Everyone who is familiar withDeluxe Paint w ill feel at home withPhoton. A good number of thecontrols are the same, things like I toswap screens, and a s imilar pencontrol. There art! lines, dots, arcs.hollow and fi lled rectangles. It often

di pic ture is n in t h ei ihmt_swod wo r ds"

• R E V I E W •

looks as though the authors havelooked at Dpaint and thought "Howcan I improve on that".

The fonts menu has a wide numberof options, with italic , bold,underline, outline and reverse. I f youhave shading on, the letters will bestippled. Great effects can be achievedby cutting the text as a brush, thenblending and creating a drop shadow.

There are many special effectscontrols. Pictures can be pixelised — afeature much enjoyed by pop videos —which enlarges each pixel to producea chunky image. lust think, we'vespent years watching computergraphics improve. getting less chunky

hth • ; I ( • ) % 1 1 ' t \

11%!

• R E V I E W •

Go toWorkbench

Switch offmenu

64Directlyaccessiblecolours

Arcs Ell ips e /d r a wColour mix ing controls a n d fi ll

Freehandpixel draw

Current penand backgroundcolours

Standardbrushes

Text

Powerfulmagnifyfunction

Uselastbrush

Circle drawand fi ll

Pixelise

Freehandline draw

Line draw

Rectangledrawand fi ll

Fill area

Cut outfor brush

Undo lastoperation

and now we have an option to do thereverse.

The main special effects allow youto play tricks with the brush, notablythe ability to wrap a shape around a3D object. A cone, tube, ball andblock are defined as standard, butyou are free to draw your own shapeand then wrap the brush around it.

Experience has taught me that youneed a picture with all the detail atthe centre and plenty of colours at theedges to show that it has beenwrapped around a shape. Lightingeffects can be used to really give theimpression of 3D.

Photon Paints documentation isclear; printed in a crisp, spiral boundbook it is very easy to follow. It doeserr on the "I don't know anythingabout computers" side, and perhapsfails to get technical enough.

I thought the greatest failing wasthe lack of pictures. Describing iconsis less effective than showing them.and in the case of special effects apicture is worth a thousand words.

Pictures apart, the manual is wellwritten. The tutorial takes you to astage where you really feel in controlof the package. although I kept on

.7() AM/ G A CaSfl 'I r l iNG 1,? 8 8

running before I could walk andtrying things too soon.

We are asked to believe that themanual was written by one HeidiTurnipseed. This nom de plumeleaves me wondering if there really issome poor woman in California, bornout of the flower power years. whohas to live with such a name on herdriv ing licence.

THE outstanding features of

Photon Paint are the brushcontrols, which are great fun. Even i fthe package did not offer all its othergreat features, speed and overallslickness, I'd buy it for the brushmenu alone.

Combine the features it does haveand the program is a winner. As ever,the price is steep. Activ is ion has it at09.95, which means that you have tobe pretty serious about artwork.however good the package is.

I'm not saying that Photon Paintisn't worth £70, just that there are anawful lot of people who can't affordto spend that much on any piece ofsoftware and who would get a greatdeal of pleasure from using it.

REPORT CARD

Photon PaintMicroi l lusionsftazhoo Soft/Activision01-431-1101£611.95

UILISEFI I SESSA-ful ly featured drawing program

which can cope with the HAM mode.JIME.-4SE OF I•cf

A combination o f intuitive and DeluxePaint type icons mean you do not needthe easy to follow manual supplied.

1A71.1710ArA proper multi-tasting program, but itis necessarily ram hungry. Would notalways swap to Workbench.

SPEED M 1 1 . 1 1 1 1 . 1Amazingly fast with good prompts tokeep you informed when performingprocessor-intensive operations.

VALUENot that expensive when you look athow well the program performs but itis priced beyond many users' budgets.

OVERALL 8 8 %The best paint package the Amiga hasseen. A good example o f hots' oneprogrammer learns from another.

• I N T E R F A C E E

WE covered a fair amount of

ground in last monthsAmiga Computing, talk ing aboutAmigaDos and its purpose in life.This time I thought we'd dive right inand cover a few common problemareas. In particular we'll be talk ingabout the ASSIGN command.

ASSIGN is much misunderstood asa command, and people who onlyknow of its existence through alteringtheir s/startup-sequence to read Doswords from RAM: rather than disc arestarting from a disadvantage, Like asnot you find it lurk ing in a shortlisting in a magazine, along with alittle discourse about logical devicesand not much else. So let's take it onestep at a time.

To aid expansion the Amiga is anopen architecture machine. Thismeans nothing is ever in the sameplace in any two programs (a slightgeneralisation, but bear with me).

On a familiar 8 bit machine, likethe C64. every character in the defaultfont lies in its own location inmemory, accessible at any time. InAmiga computers the fonts areASSIGNed to a directory (whichcould he anywhere on the disc) as thelogical device FONTS:. Note thetrailing colon, the symbol thatdenotes a logical device.

Whenever AmigaDos needs thefonts directory, it knows where itresides due to the ASSIGNment, andso goes straight to it. There are otherlogical devices, too. Here are some ofthe ones you need to know about:

SYS: System disc root directoryC: AmigaDos commands directoryL: Library directoryS: Sequence libraryLIBS: Library for OpenLibrary callsDENTS: Device for OpenLibrary callsFONTS: Loadable fonts for OpenFonts

THE purpose of all this is that

ANY program can refer to andutilise an important function, libraryor command, regardless of whore itactually is. Let's look at each logicaldevice in turn, and see what we needto know about them.

SYS: is the system root directory.When you first boot the system,AmigaDos automatically assigns SYS:to the root directory disc in driveDEO:. So any programs on that discwhich need the boot disc know whichvolume to ask for: "Please replace WB

The plain man'sguide to CU

This month Phil South delves intothe little understood ASSIGN

function o f AmigaDos

A500 1.2 in drive 0" sort of thing.C: is a very important logical

device, as this is where AmigaDoslooks for all the commands inAmigaDos. That sounds a littlecontradictory, but we are talk ing twodifferent levels of AmigaDos here.The system level looks for commandsfor the CLI command level.

The C: directory can be assignedanywhere, but a good place to assignit is to the RAM: disc, after havingcopied the c directory there of course.This means all your AmigaDoscommands will be in memory ratherthan gr inding off of disc every timeyou type one.

L: is the place where all the"overlays" for big commands andnon-resident parts of the operatingsystem are kept, in the librarydirectory. Things like Ram-Handler,Disc-Validator and Port-Handler arehiding in here, and they are blippedout whenever you need them. Hmm,it does seem like there's a lot to loadoff of disc whenever you want to doanything on the Amiga, doesn't it?The operating system part ofAmigaDos needs this directory toOperate at all.

The S: logical device looks for allthe sequences in the SequenceLibrary. These are used by theEXECUTE AmigaDos command, andthe sequence — otherwise referred toas batch files — runs them. Batch filesare the rough equivalent of programsin AmigaDos, but are perhaps bestlooked at as mere lists of usefulcommands. You can build morepowerful c directory commands usingbatch files.

The remaining functions are just forproviding a pointer towards the morecomplex library functions of theAmiga. To delve into those wouldtake a whole feature to themselves, solet's drop them before I get carried

away.ASSIGN itself is used to direct

program fl ow to the function,command or library it wants in thissyntax:

ASSIGN <Jog' :a dev ic e><direc t ory >

So assigning your c directory to theramdisc would take the form:

From then on all your AmigaDoscommands w il l be read Out of ram:.The other main use of ASSIGN thatpresents itself is when you need totell AmigaDos to read systeminformation from your new hard discor DHO:. You would s imply type asimple sequence of events like:

and so on.

ASSIGN c: ram:c

ASSIGN SYS: IMO:ASSIGN C: DHO:CASSIGN L: DH0:1ASSIGNS:

SO there you have it. All you

really wanted to know aboutASSIGN, but didn't know where tolook. As always, the best place tolook — besides Amiga Computing, ofcourse! — is in the AmigaDosReference Manual (Bantam), whereyou'll fi nd more than you really wantto know about the operating systemof your computer.

Incidentally, i f you get lost whenyou're in AmigaDos, just typeASSIGN LIST, or even just ASSIGN,if you're feeling lazy. This w illpresent you with a little road map ofthe current assignments and mountedvolumes, just to put you in thepicture. By the way, this trick alsoworks for CD 'on it's own, which tellsyou the pathname you're currentlyCDed to. Happy CLI-ing.

! lily 198n A MICA COMP1177N17 •

Hot impression ormajor impact?

Two printers head-to-head. Who'll be firstpast the ribbon? Rupert Goodwins looks attheir performance on paper, and finds out

who's hue suits him best

32 A MI G A COMPUTING J uly 1988

IT'Sa touching scene. With

trembling hands, the new Amigaowner opens the boxes, plugs in themonitor, turns on the power andloads Dpaint In seconds. theglistening deathmask of King Tut isilluminating the liv ing room. Thesilence is broken only by the gentlesound of jaws dropping.

But dissatisfaction soon sets in. " I fonly." thinks our new owner. " i f onlyI could pr int it out". But this is not tobe. A swift perusal of the prices ofcolour printers has the same

mandible marooning effect asthat first encounter with Tut.The curse of the fair old price.

However, there has been amore affordable alternativearound for a while — the

Okimate 20. This faintly

ligathe

I is

itle

, "If'onlytot toof

ye

ly

P P "—

odd printer has had the fi eld to itselffor a year or so. but at last there'ssome competition. The Star LC-10Colour; more conventional in itstechnology but more than a littleexciting pricewise.

Why has it taken so long for themassed ranks of the Japanese printerindustry to come up with more thanone colour device? Asking a printer toFaithfully reproduce 4.096 colours isone thing. Asking it to also pr intclear, well-formed text in black andwhite is a different kettle ofmonochrome herring. And you wantit cheap, you demanding so-and-so.

The two printers use differenttechnologies to harden your copy.The Okimate 20 is a hothead: a set ofminute heaters sweep past a wax-coated ribbon and melt a pattern onto the paper. The Star prefers to makean impact. A set of pins pushes aninky ribbon into contact with thewomipulp and builds up charactersand pictures. However. both producepolychromatic output in a s imilarmanner; by overlaying the primarycoloured red, cyan and yellow wax orink a wide range can be printed.

BET you thought that red, green

and blue were the primarycolours. There's a lot of confusionover this and now's not the time to gointo the physics, but the famous RGHtriplet only works for transmittedlight, as seen on your monitor.Printed mailer relies on dyesabsorbing light and mix ing red.yellow and cyan on a white

background can reproduceany hue.

Next time you pull apart a packet ofcornflakes examine the flaps of thebox. You'll fi nd blobs in those threecolours where the pr inting process ischecked.

Away from the cereal parallel, let'slook at the Okimate first, It's one ofthe smallest printers on offer. colouror no, and it sports a number ofinteresting design features. Uniquely.it has no form feed or line feedbuttons: all paper movements — apartfrom normal pr inting — are achievedby twiddling a knurled knob.

There's a five-position switch onthe front which sets the overalldarkness of the final output and aSelect red button which starts orpauses printing. Those and an Open/Close paper lever are all the controlsyou get. The paper feeds in from theback, and both single sheet andfanfold can be handled.

The wax-coated r ibbon comes in alarge cassette with a markedresemblance to the musical variety.There are two sorts, all-black and thecolour version where seven inches ofyellow is followed by seven of redand seven of cyan. Due to the natureof the mechanism, where all of thewax on the tape is transferred to thepaper at a hot spot, any stretch ofribbon can only be used once.

Printing in colour from Basic is acomplicated process. There is aspecial command code which gets theOkimate to find the beginning of a

, a 10"

'1111116.

E H A R D W A R E E

three-colour sequence on the ribbon.The first line's worth of characters —and you have to print a complete line,even if most of the characters arespaces — appears in yellow, the nextline in red and the last in blue. Allthree appear on the same line on thepaper, and thus you can mix coloursby pr inting things at the sameposition. Only when you've sent threecomplete lines should you tell theprinter to advance the paper, andbefore you try and pr int any moreyou should send the find-beginningcode again.

Of course, most people w ill just usethe Okimate-20 driver from thePreferences printer setup. But spare athought for the poor programmer whowrote it.

THE Star is far more the old style

dot matrix printer. Althoughconsiderable care has obviously beentaken in its design — the lines aresmooth and curves take the place ofthe usual angular edges on the case —the principles of operation drawheavily on Star's experience withordinary low cost (OK, cheap)printers.

That's not to say that there's anylack of refinement, Buttons on thefront allow you to select any one ofthree near-letter quality typefaces orfast draft (draht as the manual calls it,

PP'

1988 A MI G A a I M P I /TING 3 3

(louble-draht) without fi ddling withcontrol codes, and condensed. italicand proportionally spaced output canbe invoked in the same way with just

twinkle of the l' ilPaper feeding is s imilarly stylish. A

hatch at the -back of the printer liftsoff to reveal the tractor mechanism,and a variety of slots allow for someimaginative configurations. There's amassively clever scheme which feedssingle sheets of paper in from the topwhile unwinding the fanfold justenough to prevent tangling. The ideaof this is that you can pr int a letterwithout having to unthread yourlisting paper, although in practice I

COURIERCOURIERC O U R I E RCOURIER

COURIERCOURIERS A N G E R IG A N G E R IG A N G E R IG A N S E R I

ORATOR -ORATOR -

- A m i g a- A m i g a- A m i g a- A m i g a

-

F -

F

G A N G E R I FGANGER I FORATOR -ORATOR -ORATOR -ORATOR -

AMIGAAMIGAAMIGAAMIGA

AMIGAAMIGA

Samples of the colour output from the Ster

found it a smidgeon unreliable unlessthe fanfold was hanging just so. Thatwas the only aspect of the paperhandling which even s lightlydispleased; overall the thing fed withelegance and is the best in thatdepartment of any printer I know.

The Star has an altogether morestraightforward approach to paintingby numbers than the Okimate. Theribbon is ink-soaked fabric, with fourhorizontal bands — black, red, cyanand (you guessed it) yellow. It sits ona plinth which can, in the manner ofThunderbird 2's launch pad, hinge upand down. This brings one of the fourbands in between the pr int head andthe paper. and pr inting continues inthe appropriate colour.

- A m i g a C o m p u t i n g- A m i g a C o m p u t i n g

A m i g aA m i g aA m i g aA m i g a

C o m p u t i n gC o m p u t i n gC o m p u t i n gC o m p u t i n g

C o m p u t i n gC o m p u t i n gC o m p u t i n gC o m p u t i n g

- A m i g a C o m p u t i n g- A m i g a C o m p u t i n g

COMPUTINGCOMPUTINGCOMPUTINGCOMPUTING

COMPUTINGCOMPUTING

IF you select a colour which is a

mix of two of the primaries, thenthe printer overstrikes automatically.During the time I had it, it workedreliably but there was the occasionalbleeding of colour where ink fromone colour got carried over (on thehead?) after the change for a coupleof characters. Also, somethingstreaked the yellow band with a thinline of black after a few pages ofscreendump. but this was barelynoticeable on the page.

A nice extra with the Star is itsability to cope with embedded controlcodes sent to it in plain text. Forexample, there's no way with the

word processor that I'm using towrite this review that I can make asentence or paragraph a differentcolour on output with the Okimate.However, by bunging in a little magicalong the lines of (IC))0 I can tell theStar to switch colour — and alsocharacter size and other effects —without having to worry aboutesoteric escape codes or specialprinter drivers.

tex

34 ANUG A COMPUT7NG

refis tatticalllan(Janof

M i

Pathi

sv,geTI-snba

TillS method does have its

limitations though, as the wordprocessor will think of ( (CP as aword and format the rest of the text i taround it, although it won't beprinted. Also. I can't have the word((C))0 in my printer output; this mightnot matter to anyone else but whenthe time comes to print the printerreview...

I had a litt le fun playing guess-the-printer-driver with the Star; thehandbook lists a number of printersWhich can reasonably be supposed tolook like an LC-10. and of coursenone of them is in the Workbench 1.2Preferences. However, an adequateperformance with screen dumps and

1 -1

• H A R D W A R E •

is athenrally,edionalimtheaple

5

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ontrol

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ito.nagicthe

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lext was squeezed out of the EpsonIX-80 driver, colour and all.

The handbooks made interestingreading next to each other. The Star'sis better written. better organised andaltogether more professional in feel:although the Okimate's was adequateand free from the worst excesses ofjanglish. From a programmer's pointof view, there are more useful samplecode snippets in the Star and justmore information generally.

BOTH printers have broken away

from the Epson habit of puttingpower switches and cable sockets atthe back where the paper gets in theway. And both have the evil DIPswitches where the dipsomaniacs canget at them without resorting to tools.The Star has them under the mainsmoked-plastic cover, on a chunk ofbare printed circuit board (naughty),whereas the Okimate has them on thePersonality Module.

The Personality Module (greatname - do Sirius Cybernetics know?)is a small printed circuit board withthe main cable plug on it, By .unclipping a plastic shroud, the PMcan be removed and the switchsettings changed: alternatively the PMcan be changed and replaced withone for a serial interface or even for adifferent computer. Not that you'relikely to.

It's intriguing. but the PM is acomplete computer. There's amicroprocessor - the humble 8051:not much to look at but a member ofthe biggest selling family ofmicroprocessors in the world. There'sprobably one in your washingmachine, one in your microwave andtwo in your IlumgiiNumgi 1,'CR.There's some ram, 16k of ram and afew lumps of chipperyr to provideinput output. Not long ago that wouldhave outgunned many a homecomputer.

ALL this is fine, but how do they

print? The Star is a standardNLQ printer: a year or so ago itwould have been classed as verygood. but these days we're all used toseeing miraculously good qualityfrom a printer. It's probably as goodas you'll get without going to 24-pin -and incidently losing colour. The

colour performance is adequate - auseful adjunct but the results are alittle dull. With a lot of care inprogramming, however, I get thefeeling that the Star could shine.

The Okimate is a bit of aconundrum, It's capable of excellentpictures - the wax surface iswonderfully glossy - which while nophotograph, is up to cheap colournewspaper standard. Its textperformance is defi nitely iffy (cananything be definite and iffy?); theblacks are really black, but thecharacters are lumpy and not as goodas the Star. And the Okimate ishorrendously expensive to run.Expect, paper and wax, to pay abouta fl for every full-size full-colourscreen dump.

The Star is going to be between 5and 10 times as cheap to run, and thedifference in costs w ill be even morepronounced when used with blackribbons and ordinary text. TheOkimate can use thermal paper aswell: although this obviates the needfor a r ibbon it isn't cheap.

Speed is another place where theStar is a comfortable winner. It'salmost twice as fast on dotty text,

REPORT CARD

Star I .C•10Star M ic ro n ic s£285

USEFULNESS W 1 1 1 6 0 1 E 0A good all round printer which offerscolour as a bonus. Strong and looksreliable.

EASE OF USESensible positioning o f cables andsockets, with good paper feed and frontpanel controls.

I I ISOFTWAREThe Epson IX printer drivers fromWorkbench produce acceptable resultsbut the Star might benefit from customdrivers.

SPEEDReasonable for a nine pin dot matrixprinter. Needs up to eight passes incolour mode but still fairly fast.

I IVALUEThe cheapest colour printer to run andnot too expensive to buy. Look out fordiscounts.

OVERALL 78%A natural choice for Amiga ownerswho want colour but don't think theycan afford it.

where it can manage about 120characters per second, about the samespeed on NIA.) (but produces nicercharacters), and significantly faster onscreen dumps. This last is heavilyinfl anced by the software that'sdriving the printer, of course, andneither the Okimate nor the Star willhave finished Tutting by the timeyou've drunk your coffee.

'COULD have the Star as my only

printer, and in fact I suspect itwould work well in that role. Thewide selection of' standard typefaces,together with the simple way tochoose them and the extra littletouches in the design departmentmake this a printer to watch for. TheOkimate has the edge on the glossypictures, which might make it a goodbuy if you've already got a goodmonochrome printer and just wantthe occasional hard (but not fast) copythai looks rather nice.

But for both the best way to dothings is to have a black r ibbon forday-to-day work, leaving the coloursfor Sunday best.

REPORT CARD

O k ima t e ZOL O M A 0753 72331E l 59

11SEFIINESSReally only designed Mr colour workthe Oki is too slow and expensive touse as a print workhorse.

EASE OF I ISE , 1 . 1 1 1 1 M M E E IGood paper feed and dean ribbonsmake it simple to set up. ProgrammingMr colour is complicated by the poormanuaL

S O FTW A R E = M E T R EWith either IBM or Amiga romsinstalled the preferences driver willwork, hut the IBM mode leaves gapsbetween lines.

SPEEDThe Okimate's Achillies heel is theneed to print every line three times.

VALUEWhile it is exceptionally cheap to buy,the printer suffers bad& from highrunning costs, even when printing text.

0 1 ER A L 6590Ideal as a second printer but verylimiting i f this is to be a prime sourceof hard copy.

july 191111 A M/ G A M A I M lTING 3 5

The Californcoders

John Minson heads west to interviewthe software house which

wears an Amiga on its heart

THE small Berkshire town of

Langley may seem an unlikelyliome for a selection of internationalcompanies. but Honda's offices lieacross one road of the elegant,modern Business Centre, whileEpson's logo can he seen fromanother window. But I'm here to visitAmerican software giant and Amigaspecialist, Electronic Arts, whoselatest offering, Interceptor, is ravedabout elsewhere in this issue.

I'm sitting drinking coffee with PRperson Lesley Mansford andphotographer Tony Sleep. But despitethe fact that Lesley wants to tell us allabout EA and its thrilling newproducts, Tony and I are moreinterested in the water cooler.

It's a drinks fountain, just like you

36 1 AIK; A COMPUTING ha y 7g88

see in all those Hollywood movies,complete with three taps for hot,warm and cold: Red. white and bluelike the Stars and Stripes.

This seems to symbolise EA's wayof working. After an initial period.when the company's products werelicensed through Ariolasoft, it set upits own British operatipn, bringingwith it working practices which areperhaps best described as Californian.Certainly they're totally unlike those

Mark Lewis. heado f EA, UK andNeuf ball juggler

anof many British companies, where, ifyou want a drink of corporation pop,you have to rely on staff loci.

Now, before you start sendingangry letters to the editor saying thatif you'd wanted this sort of thingyou'd have bought Water CoolerMonthly, let me explain. ElectronicArts believes in treating its staffdecently: It gives them what theyneed to make life comfortable and inreturn they give 101 per cent back tothe company — and that goes all theway from programmers to warehousestaff.

In addition, every employee of EAis also a shareholder in the company,giving them an added interest in itssuccess. The result is that everyonemakes a real effort to guarantee thatits product stands out from the crowd— and as anyone who has everpuzzled over The Bard's Tale, gotcreative with Deluxe MusicConstruction Set or been driven nutsby Marble Madness will tell you, it

• H O U S E C A L L •

tre. ifpop,

that

rid inck iothehouse

I EApany.its

methat:rowd

31

nuts, it

works. EA is truly at the leading edgeof software.

It's not just Stateside hyperbole thatcame up with the Arts tag. EA fi rmlybelieves that its programmers,musicians and graphics specialists areartists — and it treats them as such.

REALISING that creative minds

aren't best served by nine-to-five hours and impossible deadlines,EA assigns each of its projects aproducer whose role, just like hisnamesake in the fi lm industry, is toact as a buffer between thecommercial interests of the companyand the freedom of the programmingteam.

It's this sort of liberal attitude thathas helped EA attract — and keep —some of the leading talents insoftware development today.

Only a few months ago RobHubbard, doyen of British computermusicians, whose work was to beheard on dozens of products fromalmost every major publisher, decidedto give up his flourishing freelancework for a contract with EA. It'shardly surprising when you considerthat contract meant the opportunity towork both in the States and in Britainand, perhaps more importantly, theopportunity to keep on top of all thelatest developments in the softwareworld,

iCan a computermake you cry?,(Electronic Arts' first advertisement.)

Coffee over, Lesley takes Tony andme on a short tour of the offices.There's the bustle of busy people, butthough they're on the phone orporing over papers, there's a relaxedatmosphere, almost as if they were...(gasp) enjoying themselves. Maybethey are. I know from past experiencethat it's not unusual to find peoplestill hard at work at seven in theevening — not because they have tobut because they want the best for thecompany.

And when Friday comes roundthere's none of the POETS daymentality (Push off early —tomorrow's Saturday). Instead, at five.everyone gathers for an informalmeeting in which views can be freelyaired, they can sink a few cans ofBud, and let off steam throwingfeatherlight foam balls at each other.

But the biggest surprise is when

'Electronic Artswas the 136th fi rmto enter t h e homecomputing field whenits first products wereshipped in May 1983

Today the Elec-tronic A r t s b r a n d name i s t h e m o s trespected consumersoftware brand y

The water cooler. imported from the US

Lesley introduces us to the Director ofEuropean Publishing (head honcho,UK). Not for Mark Lewis the heavilyfortified office with guard dogsecretary and gold key to theexecutive too. Instead his "cube", aseveryone calls the open-plan cubicles,is just like anyone else's. In fact, Marktells us, its smaller than some,because he needs less desk space.

AROUND the walls are various

pieces of EA memorabilia,including the "Can a computer makeyou cry?" advertisement that firstbrought the company to the publiceye. It set out the philosophy oftaking game design further, deeperthan ever before, so that it could startto elic it the emotional responses wetake for granted in other media suithas the cinema. Next to it was a

photograph of the founding teamtaking on this mighty task.

With this in mind, I started byasking this enthusiastic Americanabout the company history. It allstatied in Silicon Valley with avisionary by the name of William MHawkins, better known as Trip, whowas at that time work ing for Apple.Mark picks up the story.

"Trip realised that it was software —not hardware — that made peoplewant to buy computers. He had adream of a company that would bringpeople a new depth of interactiveentertainment, so he brought togethera team of people, each withexperience in different areas".

This group included Tim Mott, whohad previously been with Xerox. tomake sure that people got the toolsthat they needed to do the job (didthat include water coolers, I idlywondered) and a guy called DaveEvans for talent seeking.

Together Dave and the team drewup a lis t of every name they couldthink of in the Bay area who might beinterested in working for thecompany, then they invited them allto a big, glitzy party to test theirreactions. Somehow it seems fi ttingthat EA started with a party.

All this was taking place in earlyautumn, 1982. Eight months later, inMay 1983, the first product was readyto be shipped. Now one of the placeswhich chose to stock it was a shop inPennsylvania where Mark wasworking. "These were the best gamesI'd ever played. I wanted to work forthe company"

THE first Electronic Arts games to

reach the UK came viaAriolasoft. " I t was a good experiencefor a couple of years but we weren'tin touch with the consumers", Markrecalls. "Also, when you're dealingon a license, it's diffi cult to attractartistic talent. That's one reason wedecided to sell direct".

Bringing the Californian philosophyto Britain appears to have paiddividends. EA in the UK now hasthree production staff, headed byassociate producer Joss Ellis, backedby Kevin Shrapnel and RupertEasterbrook. As well as overseeingconversions for British formats, theyare also involved with thedevelopment of home-producedproduct.

The first British EA program isto-

h il t, 19BR .4.1tHCA MMPUTT.W: 77

• H O U S E C A L L E

44likely to he Hyperdrive fromnewcomer Michael Powell. ThoughMark Lewis says that only one in 300speculative submissions makes thegrade, this one did impress themenough to take it further. Nobodywants to say too much about it, ascompletion is still a couple of monthsaway, but apparently it concernsfuturistic, sophisticate bobsled typemachines. All should he revealed inthe early autumn though.

EA will back teams that it believesInn, even if the programs submitted

aren't suitable but show talent. And ifsomebody comes to the companywith a great design but doesn't knowtheir assembler from their hex, they'llarrange for him or her to work for aweek with a programming team, tosee if they hit it off together. It all getsthe best from people.

The truth is thatCommodore hasn'tbuilt or sold as manyAmigas as we had alloriginally hoped,(Trip Hawkins, EA President)

Obviously one of the burningquestions for readers of this magazineis Electronic Arts' attitude to theAmiga. In the past it's supported it tothe full, with games like Ferrari -Formula One and the superb Deluxeseries of creative applications, someof which, like Deluxe Video, are nowbeing used professionally byadvertising agencies and productioncompanies.

But there's no denying that Amigasales have been slower thaneverybody hoped, and that for variousreasons the machine has not yet hadthe success that it deserves. Can EAafford to continue to back it, Iwondered. Mark Lewis had nohesitation in assuring me that it canand will.

"The Amiga is a beautiful machine— both an auditory and visualexperience. And you can do so muchwith it. There's Deluxe Paint at oneend and arcade games at the other".He went on to explain that EA'sromance with micro goes back a longway. "We worked closely with thedevelopment team. They were basedwithin 20 miles of us and we caughttheir enthusiasm.

"The popularity of the PC is killingthe market for the Amiga in the US",

he continues "but it's doing muchbetter over here. When Atari raisedthe price for the ST. that was a greathelp. When the two are at the sameprice the choice should be obvious topotential purchasers. There are twoways to make it take off — forCommodore to push hard and forElectronic Arts to develop leadingedge software".

AS if to demonstrate the faith

that EA has in the machine,Mark hands me a copy of DeluxeNews, a glossy magazine which isautomatically sent to all registeredusers of the Deluxe series, on bothsides of the Atlantic. The cover storyis about Deluxe PhotoLab, a packagewhich lets you take an existing imageor digitise one, manipulate it, thenprint it at any size up to a ten footsquare poster.

But the thing which could really setthe Amiga soaring is Mark'sconfidence that it will lead intooptical disc media. He dislikes theoverused acronym CDI (Compact Disc— Interactive), but loves its potential.EA already has a demo of aninteractive adventure up and running.

"Your screen is like a cinema, and

Lesley Mans ford — prowl of interteptor

what you see is just what you'd see ifyou were walking round. Our demohas you walking round EA'sheadquarters, solving a simplemystery. It's hardly animated but itcould quite easily be. In terms ofinteractive entertainment we're justbeginning to realise the possibilities".

He also lets slip that Rob Hubbardis working on the sound-storage tools— which has to be one reason hedeserted these shores. "With theAmiga you currently have graphics tomatch the Saturday morning cartoons— but with compact discs you'll havethe movies," Mark enthuses.

Britain will play its part in thatrevolution. Though Mark professeshimself extremely happy that the 8 bitmachines are going into a decline, hebelieves that there have been manyadvantages in their dominance of theUK market for so long. "You've hadthe development of really greattechnical expertise." he said. Yourprogrammers have made the C64 dothings the rest of the world couldn'tbelieve".

Already Solar Systems, an associateof Argonaut, has been commissionedto produce an Amiga game. AndMark is in fairly regular contact withace designer Mike Singleton: "He'swaiting for a day when there'll be amachine great enough to catch upwith his ideas. The UK will surpassAmerica in terms of making the mostof the technical side. It's one of ourresponsibilities as publishers todevelop it properly".

It seemed a good, optimistic note toend on, and to leave Mark to get backto work. As we go he consults hisdesktop computer to check formessages. Another of EA'srevolutionary practices is to linkeveryone by electronic mail, so thatcommunications for individuals or toeverybody on the staff, from Langleyor San Mateo, can reach theirdestination immediately. It alsoprovides an open forum to for thegerms of new ideas.

ON the way back to the West

End Tony and I are bothboggled by what we have seen. Canthe method of working really be soperfect? Nothing has suggestedotherwise — end the end productsuggests that it works too. If I had tobet on a company to create acomputer game which will make youlaugh, think — yes, even cry — then I'dbecome a patron of Electronic Arts.

38 A • I G A COMPt!I INT; July igloo

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IN my quest as a games

programmer I've traversed theaudio wastelands in search of theultimate sound sampler. Video gamesneed sampled title music anddigitised sound effects. Back in theearly days — 1985 - none wereavailable. I rented an Ensoniq Miragesynthesiser so that I could samplesome speech, the famous -M i s s i l elaunched" voice of Clare Edgeley atRainhird — and transferred it via theMidi port into the sT and Amiga forplayback.

Alas the Mirage proved to be

battfez San casts a critical ear over a collectionof boxes all designed to get super sounds

into your Amiga

•MUSIC•

unsuitable. Its playback fi ltering let itget away with lousy sound qualityand background hiss — unacceptablewhen transferred to the Amiga. AProphet 2000 was hot on features andin b e t t e r sound quality. but itdidn't have any easy ways of' gettingthe samples into the Amiga. so allthese rental synthesisers turned out tobe less than prophetable.

An Amiga sound sampler, theMimetics SoundScape, came alongjust in time. This little black boxconnected upright into the second

11,fr ,,..uulGA court rim; 39

E MU SI CE

mouse port on an A1000, andproduced some very effective results.It was way ahead of its time. Sincethen. I've had more than my fairshare of samplers Mimet ic s ,Futuresound, PerfectSound. The lot.I've bought, borrowed or stolen (No,we want the review one back — Ed)every single one I could get my handson.

My criteria were simple: Soundquality must be superb, money noobject. A l l very well for a gamesprogrammer to scoff at price but itturned out there was no simplesolution. None of the units excelled ina way that made them superior. Theyall had their features and drawbacks.The more expensive ones didn'tappear to be any better.

Some of the samplers under test arelittle more than toys, others semi-professional tools. Nothing currentlyavailable for the Amiga is comparableto true studio quality. It is unlikelyyou could make a record with any ofthese samplers, but you can have a lotof fun trying.

They are very s imilar in design,made up of three stages. The inputstage which sometimes has anamplifier, the fi ltering, and lastly thedigitis ing section. Samplers skimp onsome or all of these options, to thedetriment of versatility or soundquality.

Mimetics' Soundscape

THIS has stereo inputs, but

unfortunately the softwaredoesn't take advantage of them, andwill only sample in mono. Mimeticssupplies sampling packages with itsunit for making musical instrumentsfor packages like Deluxe Music, bysampling and creating LH files.

Samples are limited to 32k inlength — about three seconds at thetypical 10KHz sample rate — fine fordigitis ing instruments, but useless forlong pieces of music or speech. Theprogram also has the ability tointerpolate sounds — to move themaround and alter their frequencywithout having to re-sample.

The software runs from theWorkbench in little windows, andpops up more windows as you selectdifferent options. Fully icon-driven, ittries to be friend ly. No doubt readingthe manual wou ld help.

A second program supplied is a

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demo for sampling long contiguouspieces of speech or music. Its samplescan only be replayed with theirproprietary software being speciallyencoded. This is because Mimeticsdoes clever tricks to enhance thequality of the sound by recording itwith DBX fi lters and compoundingthe master volume control over thetop of the sound sample. It gives thesamples an accuracy of 14 bits whenthe Amiga can usually only do 8 bits

the other 6 bits are the volumecontrol.

The Mimetics samples really areimpressive in quality, and suffer little,if any background hiss. I got theimpression that the hardwarepotential inside the Mimetics box wasbeing incredibly underused. Thesampler has a software controlledgain fac ility that the accompanyingsoftware barely utilises, A shamereally.

was generally impressed with theMimetics box, but frustrated at thelack of portability with the demoprograms data fi les to any otherprogram, inc luding my own. But as asampler for creating musicalinstruments there is nothing to faultit. Obviously this sampler wasintended fo r musicians, notprogrammers.

Applied Visions'FutureSound

FUTURESOUND is a cream

coloured box that attaches, via aribbon cable, to the parallel port at

the rear of the Amiga, like almostevery other box. It is a mono-onlydigitiser, has a gain (volume) controland two inputs, one for a microphoneand one for a phono line input.

The microphone supplied with thepackage is junk. Throw it away.Luckily only the mike was useless,the sampler itself being quite good,Why they don't drop the price a bit,and discard the mike from thepackage is beyond me. This is theonly sound sampler that has a switchand passthrough connector to let youuse your printer while the sampler isplugged in.

The software supplied withFutureSound is reasonably graphicaland powerful. It presents your soundsample information in a fr iendlymanner on the screen, showing theapplicable waveforms and allows youto zoom in on any interestingsections. You could also specify startand stop points by clicking on thewaveforms with the mouse.

Full control of the sampling andplayback rates is supported, as arevarious edit effects like reversing,mixing and copying waveforms. Mostimportant feature is the ab ility to dolong samples that span the entire freechip memory. This gives a maximumsample length of about 37 seconds atthe usual lo KHz sample rate.

The sound quality, is excellent, as isits ability to show you a VU-meterpeaklevel to let you know the correctvolume at which to sample. Too loud,and you get clicks and pops — knownas Clipping — too quiet, and thebackground noise becomes

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unacceptable compared to the soundsignal level. I ended up usingFutureSound to sample StarGlider'stitle music — the digitised version —and most of the speech too.

Futuresound is a great package.with good sound quality and nicesoftware. Unfortunately, it isexpensive — possibly because itfeatures a quality digitising circuitincorporating an amplifier and filtercircuits that really show their effect inthe quality department. The softwareis friendly and easy to use but I wasfrustrated by its lack of capacity tohold huge larger than 380k) samples.Various companies have promisedability to use fast memory in thefuture — something that Futuresoundsorely needs.

SunRize Industries'PerfectSound

I FIRST saw the PerfectSoundsoftware on PeopleLink, theAmerican computer system renownedfor its Amiga software support. Idownloaded this free program andwas impressed by its capability andfriendliness. It rates on par withFutureSound for features, with the.added bonus that it supports stereo. Itallows you to name each sample youhave loaded and click on them toselect them — a more powerfulapproach than FutureSound.

More importantly, it brought news

Clue meter levels — perhaps irs a video game

of a really cheap stereo sounddigitiser available from the author'scompany. I phoned him up, andwithin days I had a prototype board.It looked like two pieces of cardboardheld together by chewing gum and abit of circuitry.

It connects to the parallel port, butthis time without any ribbon cable, soit stands precariously out of the hackof the Amiga. It has two phono inputsand two gain controls.

I later received a final production ofPerfectSound in a smarter metal case,with the two volume knobs pokingthrough holes in the top. This makesit difficult to plug into an A2000because they stick out. It suffers thesame problem of not having anyribbon cable to connect itconveniently to the back of theAmiga. Hopefully they will make itmore accessible in the future.

I wasn't particularly impressed withthe sound quality, but it scored veryhighly in the ease-of-use department.it managed to sample everything Iasked of it but there was somebackground hiss. This is because theyuse an inferior analogue to digitalchip. the flash converter variety.rather than the more expensivesample-and-hold type.

PerfectSound represents thecheapest reasonable entry into soundsampling, but the sound qualityleaves a lot to be desired. For a littleextra cash there are other, far superioralternatives.

The S5, by SophusSoftware and ASAP

I W A S eager to see the S5, since itis the most expensive soundsampler available for the Amiga.Glancing through the manual I soonnoticed it had some reallysophisticated features — fast Fouriertransformations (Fri's) allow you toplot frequency graphs and there aresome really useful fast ram modes.The hardware is impressive stuff: Afull stereo sampler which connects tothe parallel port via a ribbon cable. Ithas a gain control and a switchableinput with different impedances formicrophones or line inputs.Unfortunately it is the software thatlets it down — it lacks some basic userinterface routines.

You can ask it to do something. likeplay back your long sample, and itwould go to sleep for minutes withouteven printing a message saying it wasbusy. A simple "Please Wait" wouldhave gone down a treat, especially forsome of the more time consumingfunctions like resealing the sample. orFri's.

On the plus side, the S5 is the onlysampler I tested capable of really longsamples. It utilises Fast memory whenyou request it. This means if you have3.5Mb you can sample an entire trackfrom your favourite CD. For that Fmgrateful to the guys at Sophus. They

P.

/ult. twin A NtIGA OtiMPI 'TING 41

• M U S I C E

I'm-Sound is definitely a user's package

provide a useful and powerful libraryof functions to allow programmers toreplay digitised sounds from the S5Sampler. The software defaults tosampling Deluxe Music instruments.

In terms of sound quality the S5was probably the best. It came on par

i t h FutureSound, but has stereoinputs. If you can grasp how to use it,the software is much moresophisticated. Definitely designed forthe professional programmer.

Pro-Sound Designerfrom Eidersoft

THE Pro-Sound package is

unusual in that its softwaresupports both the FutureSound andPerfectSound hardware, as well asEidersofrs own. Pro-Sound is a stereosampler in a small self-containedi:artridge with no external controls.Having no cable, it connects to theparallel port, clinging upright to theback of the Amiga. Since it's beendesigned for the A1000 a genderchanger is supplied to allow you toconnect it to an A2000 or A500. Thebox has its volume preset internally towhat Eidersoft thinks are line levels.This means you must fiddle a littlewith the volume on your source.

Pro-Sound is definitely a user'spackage. The software has a cute,friendly icon-based feel to it.Although some of the icons wereunusual in function. What struck mewas the attention to graphical detail.

AmiG.4 rovpr. TING ? .

It's supposed to be a sound samplerand not a video game. But I had a lotof fun, so maybe it was a game afterall.

It's an amazing package with reallyflexible controls, and so easy to use.The waveform viewing and analysistools were the most powerful I'veseen — the cute meter levels look likean oscilloscope with true real-time

waveforms being displayed as youadjust the volume control. The abilityto hold numerous samples in memorywhile you edit them is a feature onlyPerfect Sound is able to duplicate.The flexibility with which you couldinstantly call things up with functionkeys is a joy. Eidersoft tells me that afuture version of Pro-Sound will copewith Fast memory, but until then.. themaximum sample length is about 30seconds at 10 khz.

Sound quality is reasonable,although not up to the S5's standards.However I certainly sound it betterthan PerfectSound. The loss of anexternal volume control was a bitfrustrating for me, since I hate having

to play with my Discman's volume tostop the clipping problems caused byhigh levels. Minor grumbles apart, I'dclass the Pro Sound Designer as anabove-average product, for a veryreasonable price. Excellent.

Summary

DIFFERENCES between the

samplers are really quite subtle.Most support the same basic features,and only oiler minor improvements.However. I would class thePerfectSound as little more than a toy.The sound quality just isn't up toscratch, but then it is the cheapestunit and so possibly a good entrylevel box. Buy this only if you can'tafford anything better.

In terms of home use, I woulddefinitely recommend the Pro SoundDesigner. Being relatively cheap andso easy to use, it has got to be themost fun, and oilers quite reasonableresults,

The best sampler was undoubtedlythe Sophus S5. but it's a shame thetop-class hardware was let down bypoor software. It was technically themost sophisticated both in terms ofsound quality and features, but it wasa pig to use. For professionals thisrepresents the best you can buy at themoment. Hopefully Sophus will takeanother look at its software. A fewminor changes will turn it into agrumble-free package.

FutureSound and Mimetics comesomewhere in between. Both arebadly priced in England, due toimporters slapping on huge penaltiesfor buying American_ There isoohing wrong with the samplers —they are quite good hut they just don'toffer value for money.

Where to buyPerfectSound — E75Amiga Centre. ScotlandTel: 031-557 4242

Future Sound — 0 7 5KB MarketingTel: 0 1 - 8,1 4 1 2 02

Pro-Sound Designer — £79EidersoftTel: 0268 541212

Sophus S5 — 0 9 9Appl ied Systems & PeripheralsTel: 0724 280222

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TOWARDS the end of 1986 that

rarest of rarities, an originalgame. was released by Firebird.Called Sentinel. it was the latest mas-terpiece by Geoff Crammond. whoearlier had proved that the BBCMicro could support top class soft-ware with such elTorts as Aviator andlater the excellent Revs, still regardedby many as the definitive drivinggame.

Sentinel consists of 10.090 land•scapes. each containing a Sentineland up to six Guardians whose lifeenergy you must absorb before gain-ing access to another landscape.

Each landscape is rather like a con-toured open plan chess board withvalleys, mountains and plateaux onwhich trees almond. The key to thewhole game is energy. The smallestunit of energy is a tree: boulders are

the tree.; for ertergl

worth two trees and Sentinels three.Sentinels are like giant Oscars that

slowly rotate on their elevated plat-forms. Whenever a Sentinel, orGuardian, turns to face you, it beginsabsorbing your energy. randomlyredistributing it throughout the land-scape in the form of trees.

The only way you can absorb theenergy of the Sentinel, or its Guard-ians, is by reaching an elevated pos-ition in the landscape from whichyou can look down on its platform.

You can only absorb an objeclsenergy when you can see the squareon which it stands. You start eachlevel in the lowest point of the land-scape. often only able to see the topsof a few trees and the Sentinel tow-ering above you.

Getting high enough to be able toabsorb the Sentinel is in principle

simple, but far from easy in practice.Imagine you're standing on theground with an empty square besidevou. You can create a boulder on the

empty square. Then, on lop of theboulder, you can create a "copy" ofyourself into which you cantransport.

You're now standing on the boul-der looking down on the 'old' youwhich you can absorb so as not tohave lost any net energy, except thattied up in the boulder.

From your new vantage point youcan see bits of the landscape visiblebecause of your extra elevation. Youmay already be able to see the basesof a few of the trees the lops of whichyou saw earlier. If so, absorb theirenergy, you're bound to need it laterto create more boulders.

And you're not limited to justbuilding one boulder at a time either.Apart from the fact thai each onecosts two units of energy to create.there is nothing stopping youbuilding a tower of boulders before

placing yourself on top. But althoughit allows you to make big jumps inheight, having so much energy tiedup in boulders ofter proves to be toorisky a strategy.

As soon as a Sentinel or Guardianstarts sapping your energy you haveto transport to a safe part of the land-scape or risk premature death. Thismeans leaving behind all the boul-ders. Although from your. hopefully,now safe point on the landscape youcan begin reabsorbing the boulders.you are now competing with theSentinel which, even though you'vemoved, will still absorb any otherenergy source it sees.

Frequently. a policy of little andoften is the key to success. Move fromplace to place. always staying onestep ahead of the Sentinel, withoutever having too much capital inves-ted in boulders.

Compared with earlier 8 bit ver-sions and the ST conversion releasedlate last year. Amiga Sentinel, pro-grammed by Steve "Goldrunner"Bak, is faster and has been given acomplete sonic overhaul in the formof an incredibly atmospheric set ofeerie, almost surrealistic, soundeffects and musical cameos courtesyof David Whittaker.

Although the lack of effort put intoAmiga conversions is often disap-pointing. Firebird has wisely decidedto slick closely to Crammond'soriginal 8 bit graphics, although theyare brighter and crisper than inprevious versions.

Any attempt at major modificationwould have been a big mistake,purely because the original was soperfectly crafted.

If you've never experiencedSentinel, treat yourself to the nearestthing yet to the perfect game. Unlessyou're an out and out death merchantyou Avon't be disappointed.

David Bishop

sentinelE19.99Fire bird

Graphics•6amet)10 autinEltrni

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•• • • • •ata •

• • • l e S I •

WE all know the old joke about

the first program that is everreleased ford n e w c o mp u t er R ev e rs i .

If that's true - arid it is if you thinkabout it - then the main contender forthe second has gut to be Pacman. orin this case Footman.

It's been a long time coming. andthe thing is, was it worth the wait?Well, sort of.

What you get from TopDown in

pICTURE yourself as a barbarian

fighting for the love of MariaWhittaker (down boyst You are notalone in your desires and have rivalSun readers to fight off. They come atyou one by one in the forest for a"discussion", each with enormousbroadswords and very little on.

Prepare yourself before battle com-mences. You spend the first half hoargetting killed, very, very quickly.After a while things get better andyou hire i ti to enjoy hacking the foe to

squelch as the head rolls44 , 4MIGA O M I T T I N G f u ly 7988

this case is a bog standard ripolaPacman clone with very few frills.You use joystick or cursor keys andtroll off round a whole bunch ofmazes y o u get SO on the disc -while being pursued by somearthritic ghosties.

'up. there are dots. power pillswhich give you the ability to put theghosties out of their misery, andwraparound corridors that'll take

NEJEbits, especially when a well aimedblow decapitates him.

The head falls to the ground with aspurt of blood from his severed neckaccompanied by a scream and satis-fying thud as the torso tumbles.Wholesome stuff.

The graphics on Barbarian are a bitof a lei down. It would seem thai theAtari ST graphics were simplydumped from one machine to theother. The ligures are very basic, incolouring ar id i n form. One

You from one end of ihe screen to theother.

Gameplay, when you get down toit, is not particularly fast or start,lingly responsive.

So far. so standard. but theredeeming feature of Footman is thecomprehensive Maze Editor. This letsyou design your own mazes in whichto weeble, providing all sorts ofopportunities to shock maiden auntsand generally be terribly rude.

That apart FOOlincill at this price issimply, well, adequate b u t onlyjust.

John Baker

loolmant 4_!Hil'opllon n Developments

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r e de em in g f ac to r is that they move in

a very lifelike manner especially inthe sword fighting.

The games designer, Steve Brown.videotapes himself wielding swordsand kicking. and then watches thetape to produce the graphics.

The digitised sound is very good,the gurgles screams and thuds beingparticularly realistic. All good bloodcurdling stuff. forget your karategames and get into this.

If there's a digitised piccv of Maria

at the end. I haven't got there yet, butit gives you an incentive to fight everonward.

All in all it's a good game andsomewhat addictive. A bit moredetail in the characters wouldn't havegone amiss.

This must be the last in this seriesof two guys beating each other up invery nice scenery. Ifs wearing a bitthin. but no doubt someone willcome up with yet another scenariowith different graphics and surpris-ingly familiar gameplay

A good one for all the hackers outthere. that s the violent ones, not thequiet key tapping types. or are you anArnold Sr bwarzenegger in WoodyAllen clothing?

Brian Chappell

BarbarianEl 9.95Palace

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FERRARI FORMULA 1

A, the Formula 1 season gets

into full swing. Electronic Artshas released its latest attack on theAmiga games player in the shape ofFerrari Formula 1.

Designed to bring the thrills andspills of a Formula One racing teamto your screen, the game revolvesclosely around the 1986 Ferrari teamof Michele Alboreto and Stefanlohansson - even though fohanssonhas since been booted out in favourof the faster Gerhard Berger, who inthis game is racing for Benetton!

Apart from Acornsoffs Revs, mostsoftware houses have been tooterrified to release a game whichactually involved the technicalities ofdriving a racing car. Games such asPole Position and Super Sprint aresimply arcade games with a car as thetheme, as opposed to a fish or abanana.

Ferrari Formula I sets out to rectifythis situation, not only giving youcontrol of the machine as it hurtlesaround the various world cham-pionship tracks, but also allowingyou to act as team manager.

Holding this post for a high profilecar manufacturer like Ferrari must bea terrifying proposition, arid thank-fully the game does not stretch to thereality of being fired although alterlosing a few races resignation feelsclose at hand,

You must not only get your car toand from each race - allowingenough lime for testing. modifi•cations and travel - but you must beable to set your car up correctly foreach different track.

A variety of alterations can be doneto your car - the F186 model, a 1.5litre turbocharged job producingmore than 800 bhp. These range hornturbo and engine adjustments, withthe help of a dyno at Fiorano. rightthrough to choosing different tyresfor different wheels at Detroit.

In order not to make the game toodifficult to get into, a friendlymechanic will help you with advicewhen necessary.

The first few hours are spent at thetest track trying to learn how to con-trol the car.

Thankfully, you can choosewhether or not to operate the gearsmanually, something which makesdriving a little simpler.

Using the mouse, the right buttonaccelerates, the left button brakes andpressing both down engages theclutch for drag starts.

Moving the mouse from left toright steers the car and it is thiswhich presents the most difficulty.Unlike every other driving game Ihave played, instead of the front ofthe car pointing wherever you steer.

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the screen scrolls left to right and youcontrol the driver's head.

This means that in hard cornersvou can be turning full lock and yetthe car is in the corner of the screen_Although it is nut too difficult to getused to, this small point is suf-ficiently annoying to make the firstfew attempts at driving around thetrack both frustrating and very slow.

After about 20 laps of the test track.ou will find that cornering is riot too

big a problem. The real worry iskeeping up with everyone else_ Onaverage. I was running about 15seconds slower per lap than theseven computer-controlled cars -those of Mansell, Piquet. Senna,Prost, Berger and Alboreto.

This is when you should take the

plunge arid choose the Formula I car.with its gears. turbo boost and mas-sive overstuff.

Changing from a supposedlyFormula 3 car where the gears areautomatically selected to a Formula Icar with manual gears is not quite aseasy as I had imagined. Even with theturbo-boost set at its lowest, the carstill goes into corners far too fast. andunless you have been methodicenough to learn the track, excursionsinto the undergrowth are all toofrequent.

Thankfully, unless you are actuallyin mid-race, these crashes do notaffect you too adversely - apart fromthe seconds lost.

In a race, however, you can lose upto a couple of months if you crash

iets bum behind 111)1,

Ferrdri viewed from dben,•

• R E V I E W S E

badly - and two months can, atworst, mean four races - 36 possiblepoints.

The graphics are good. but by nomeans exceptional. Attention todetail - track dimensions. and so on -were obviously considered moreimportant than artistic graphits.

On the other hand. the instrumentpanel is small and lacks an accuraterev counter. which is a pity. Theanimation, too. is good. But as thegame is written in C rather thanassembly language, it is still not assmooth as perhaps it should be.

On the other hand, the sound -both music and effects - is excellent.A natty little tune plays while thegame is loading. The sounds duringthe game are excellent ranging fromthe roar of a turbocharged Ferrariengine to the whirr of an air-poweredspanner.

Ferrari Formula 1 is , whencompared to everything else avail-able for the Amiga. an excellentdriving simulation. It combines anemotive subject w ith enoughsubstance to provide many days ofsatisfaction that shoot-'em-ups orflight simulations could never give.

That is not to say the game is notflawed - it is_ The most unfortunatething about Ferrari Formula I is thatit could have been THE definitiveAmiga game. Unfortunately thataccolade will have to go elsewhere.

Francis lago

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Absorbing all the information on Star Fleet takes a while

WHEN you're asked to review

a product which has a quickreference guide longer and moredetailed than many games' fullinstructions, you know you've got aproblem. Star Fleet 1 is a case inpoint.

Complete with a 68-page Star Fleettraining manual, not to mention a100 page officer's training manual,this is a combat simulation and role-playing game of mammoth propor-tions.

Set some time in the future. StarFleet is a strategic war game between

two opposing forces. Natural!enough, you represent truth, democ-racy. the American way of life, theuniverse and everything. Thebaddies are the evil and incrediblyhostile Krellans and Zaldrons,empire builders on a galactic scale.

You begin ;lc a cadet s till wet

46 A A•fGA COMPUTING J uly 1988

behind the ears, but hungry for everyscrap of knowledge you can gainfrom the Star Fleet Officers' Acad-emy. There. you w ill be givencommand of the training ship OCASRepublic. I f you prove yourself aworthy enough student, you willhave a choice of 36 starships tocommand.

Missions are many and varied butall involve the location and destruc-tion of enemy craft. A typical missionbriefing might go something like this:

L Ellective immediately, you are toassume command of the M G Dukeof York. After relieving CaptainBertsch, you will proceed directly' tothe Antares lii region,It You are hereby ordered to seek outand engage the forces of the Krellanand Zuldron Empires which haveinvaded the Alliance territory. In so

;!, being mission-based Star flm °Hes much to MI* Star Trek games

doing. You are to deplete the enemyBeet sufficiently so that our mainbattle Beet can be assembled anddefeat them before they can reach ourcolonies.

Each briefing ends with the spe-cific requirements of the missionwhich include the number of enemywarships you must destroy and thetime in which vou have to do so.Finally you are given the number ofstarbases in the region.

If vou can locale and dock with anAlliance starbase — providing they'lldrop their defence shields longenough to let vou through — you'll beable to refuel and re-arm your ship,as well as carry out repair work.

Your ship is controlled from 23 dif-ferent command menus, whichembrace 13 separate computer sys-tems, as well as other functions suchas emergency hyperspace. self-

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destruct sequencer and starbasestatus readouts.

Computer systems are used to con-trol damage. navigation, shields,torpedos. phasers, tracter beam.transporter. internal security andreconnaissance probe launches.

Within each of these systems arevarious menus and sub-menus usedfor controlling that part of the simu-lation.

The amount of detail is almost• bewildering. Take security forexample: This can be compromisedin one of three ways.

Enemy agents can get aboard,hidden in the supplies you pick up atstarbases. Prisoners, captured duringbattle, can escape and wreak havocthroughout your ship. Finally, agentscan be beamed aboard if their ship iswithin two sectors of yours.

Internal security control gives youthe latest information and allows youto start or stop searches to apprehendintruders. You can also opt for amaximum security deck situation, inwhich one deck is given blanketcover at the expense of all others.

Should you outguess the villain,and he goes on to this deck, he willalmost certainly be caught. or at leastprevented from sabotaging any vul-nerable systems.

The same attention to detail can beseen throughout Star Fleet 1,Whether such a mass of information,documentation a n d displaysamounts to a great game. you couldonly say after spending plenty ofhours on the bridge.

Certainly the package is impress-ive, the depth of the game unques-tionable, and the scenario one thatmost gamesters hold dear to theirheart.

Although the lack of graphics mayput many ofir, this shouldn't necess-arily deter Amiga owners from con-sidering the package. especially ifthey like pure simulations or roleplaying games. But be prepared towork hard at getting the most fromthis game.

David Bishop

Star Fleet IL'24.95Electronic Arts

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• H I N T S E

Max "The Hacks" Tennant is the master ofgame play. Whatever the game he'll win at it,fair means or foul - often with a little helpfrom his friends. I f you have a tip for a gamesend it in. For every one we print we'll sendyou a game f rom o u r goodie drawer -together with a Konix Speed King joystick

THE first friend of Max the Hacks

is Adrian Curry from Firebird.An ace games player, he has turnedhis attention to Bubble Bobble, andpresents the advanced Bubble BobblePlayer's Guide. So if you have beenbitten by a Benzo, bounced on by aBonnie-bo or bowled over by aBoa-boa you need some Amiga-typehelp,

On almost every screen two specialitems will appear. The first w ill bem.rorth loads of points and the secondwill be a magical object. Knowingwhich object does what is the key topoints prowess.

You don't need a sweet tooth toappreciate the candy stick. Pick thisup and k ill all the baddies, The hugefruit which falls down the centre ofthe screen is worth between 10 and

30,000 points, Any bubbles on thescreen will turn into the same fruitsworth 500 points each, so make sureyou blow lots of bubbles beforek illing the last baddie.

A s imilar magic item is the treasurechest. The huge fruit is replaced by adiamond worth 50.000 points.

The potions are tasty - uponquaffing a bottle of the stuff thescreen w il l be decorated with aspecial type of fruit. You have tocollect as many as possible within atime limit. I f you gel them all theplayer who gets the most scores a100,000 point bonus and the runnerup 50.000. I f the players get half eachthey both get 100,000 points.

Your bubbles are your maindefence. Bubble up sweets come inthree flavours - yummy yellow.

perfect purple and bubbly blue. Thefirst allows you to blow bubbles attwice the normal rate and the purplesweets increase the range of yourbubbles. Bubbly blues are useless, aquick chomp to no effect. The hest ofboth worlds, dropping yellows andpurples is known as -S u p e r B u b b l eUp".

UMBRELLAS are tuella. Grab the

open brolly to allow Rub andBob to fall down either three, five orseven screens. Very useful foravoiding the nastier screens.

It helps to get cross when the crossin q uest ion is a magic one. The bluewater cross fi lls the screen withwater, k illing all the baddies on thatlevel, the purple lighting cross callsdown several bolts of lightning tosmite the evil monsters. The red crosssets either Bob•or Bub breathing ballsof fire; unfortunately this abilityexpires with the end of the level.

The teapot can be the hest drink ofthe day, A red teapot bestows superbubble up on whoever drinks itscontents dry. The next item is morethan a storm in a teacup. Get it torelease a storm to destroy all yourenemies. Last, and certainly least, theblue teapot. in keeping with itsconfectionery cousin, does nowt.

The secret levels are somethingwhich only more experienced playersshould look for. I f either playermanages to survive more than 20screens without losing a single life. asecret door will appear instead of amagical item, Enter this portal totravel to one of the secret screens.

Then i f you manage to surviveanother 10 screens without losing anyJives another door will appear. Thiscan happen up to four times, the finalOne being a teleport of 20 levels. Thewriting at the bottom is more thanjust a scrawl - try pausing the gameand decoding the secret message.

Two's company, and BubbleBobble was designed as a two playergame, so although one player can justabout fi nish i ll s f a r , f a r e a s ie r w it h

two. T,, see the end and secret screensmost people use a kamikaze tactic.One player must do all the workwhile the other should save his skinand hide from trouble. I f Baron vonBlubba should appear the kamikazeplayer should try and collide with theBaron to save his friend.

If you ever come across a monster

M y 1988 A AliG.4 W W 1 rt iNG 4 7

411who won't come out of his hidingplace stand on the platform directlyabove his head. The baddie inquestion will come out to find outwho is making such a racket on hisroof.

I. ISTED below are some of the

J screens which have proved to bevery difficult. The hints and tips hereshould allow you to bounce where nobrontie has bounced before.

Level 13; Fall through to the top ofthe heart and wait for the waterbubbles to come up. Pop these toflush the Bubbas out.

Level 32: You have two options onthis screen - either wait to see if amagic item appears. or just time it sothat all the Boa-boas are moving awayfrom the centre when you fall downthe hole.

Level 42: A really great group, famedfor Mark King on bass guitar. Nothingto do with Bubble Bobble.

Level 44: Stand on the far left or rightledge and bubble the Grumpies,jumping to avoid their fireballs.

Level 63: A tricky one. You have tojump from your own bubble on to thefirst ledge. Repeat this to get to thesecond ledge, and again to get on tothe top one. Once up there stand onthe ridge and bubble away.

Level 70: Fall through on to the torchand work your way down to itsbottom ledge. Once there stand asclose as you can to the edge and headbutt the first fire hubhle which comes

Watch out for the fireballs

M4 rtu rompuTtvc Jnfy q81-1

Catch the letters for an !AMINO

mrerhead. Then it's chocks awayGinger, Goodbye bonnie-has.

level 71; To get to the monstertrapped in the pit, Poop on your ownbubble and bubble through the wall.

Level 72: To get out of the pit standwith your back to the wall and jumpon your Own bubble, bubbling all theway. You will probably have to trythis several times to escape.

level 88: You will need to help thetire bubbles along when they getstuck. To do this just blow loads ofbubbles around them and gentlynudge them along - the fire bubblesshould resume their course. Onceover the heads of the haddies, justpop them and on you go.

Level 95: Bubble up the sides of thescreen and once you reach the topstand on the ridge and bubble thosehad dies.

Level 96: Wait for the invaders fromspace to get stuck in the pits then justfree-fall close fry and bubble themone by one.

Level 99: Bubble the Blubbas throughthe walls and drop fire on thebonners. Then return to the bottom ofthe screen and Pimp on your ownbubble, up past the Boa-boa. Whenyou are near the top. pop your ownbubble and move left. Free fall downand bubble the Boa-boa as you pass.

Final level: The first thing you should •do one you reach this screen is grabthe lightning potion at either the topleft or right corners of the screen. Youwill then be able to blow lightingbubbles, the only thing which canharm the King of the Banners.

The best tactic to finish off the giantBonner is to jump on your ownhobble which will float up the side ofthe screen. While you rise up youshould blow bubbles, then, once youreach the top. fall down and pop thebubble chain which has been created.You will have to do this a couple oftimes but once the King turns blue heis close to death. Then once theBonner is bubbled it is everybrontosaurus for itself and "pop thatbubble", because it is worth onemillion points to whoever gets therefirst.

TIIVO hints from Phil Sinclair are

the cheat modes for StarGliderand Gold runner. To becomeinvincible in your AGAV take thevelocity down to zero, press II for a

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fixed crosshair and press thebackspace to pause the game. Type"is arg s", then press backspace againand type I s arg s" again. Theinstruments will all go to fixed levelsto indicate that von are in cheatmode, Pressing Z will put you in theshape editor while P tops up yourmissile collection.

Finally a hint for all Goldrunnerplayers. You can make your shipinvincible by running the first ship offthe building and pressing Pi. Thenpress I to pick tip a special bonus.

Thanks Phil. your joystick is in thepost.

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Hacks is Sam Littlewood. AUnix hacker by day and Amigaphileby night. Sam is responsible for theFirepower map you see here.

He also offers some great advice forArkanoid fans. Pause the game andtype DSIMAGIC. A cylinder will rolldown the screen. Catch it. Nowgetting the cylinder you want is adoddle. lust press the appropriatekey. I. for lasers. c for catch and theVans will he freed. Really lazy playerscan press F for final screen and getstraight to the end. Perhaps F standsfor screen fi rty free.

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/Yf*,4,o

, •4n Face **

Preliminary — t OApril April 28th

KENNEDY Airport NYC

is absolute murder.Non-USA residents have toqueue for ages at passportcontrol, then go into customs.which is an absolute shamblesand takes even longer. I discussKennedy later with an Amigaphileprofessor from Utrech University —ye agree to have one airport

somewhere in Europe. with one entry-point marked "AMERICANS", with asmall notice under it saying"Remember Kennedy!". An Americanfriend later tells me that hesympathises, but not to botherbecause Heathrow is pretty well likethat already.

CONFERENCE registration starts

at 7am next morning — this isabout midday for me and the othersfrom Europe. so we are the only onesgetting up at a sensible and normal

faceto

time for a programmer.We stand in line while bleary-eyed

but willing Commodore people handout T shirts, schedules and conferencenotes — real Gail Wellington (GeneralManager worldwide software andproduct support) specials consistingof an enormous hinder stuffed withtechnical information. I wonder aboutpaving excess baggage to cart it back.

Gail says hello to everyone andintroduces representatives from thedifferent countries who are attending

in all there are more than 300 of us

E I S Y M P O S I U M I I

there, ofwhom a good

proportioncome from

Outside the USA,which is all rather

encouraging. Keynotespeaker is Gail's boss

and the man who leadthe original A2000

design team, Dr HenriRubin. Henri previews

the new Amiga developmentsto be discussed in detail later

in the conference.The main point he makes concerns

Amiga multi-tasking — this issomething which other computercompanies are falling over themselvestrying to get working, but which theAmiga has had for years. Is currentAmiga software exploiting thiscapability properly? Henri clearlyfeels that it isn't, and I must say thatagree with him.

The conference splits into threeconcurrent sessions. The first threeare an introduction to Amiga for newprogrammers, something on theCopper for more experienced

Washington DiaryThe 1988 USA Amiga developers' conference was held in

Washington over bank holiday weekend, Apr i l 29 to May 1.Dave Parkinson o f Ariadne Software was there and reports

lu f r 19•98, A M IG A U M ,I P UT I NG 51

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1

programmers, and something onA500 peripheral design for thehardware freaks. I can only report onsessions I go to — my multi-taskingisn't all that wonderful. sorry — whichin this case is the Copper talk by JimMac kraz.

If vou ever make it to an Amigaconference, take any chance you getto listen to Jim Mackraz. Jim knowsthe Amiga really well, having takenover Intuition from R.J. Mical afterversion 1.1; he is also a naturalspeaker, informative and veryamusing.

ON this occasion. Jim's topic is

how to pull tricks with theCopper without upsetting the rest ofthe system, by setting up a "userCopper lis t", to be integrated withwhat the graphics libraries want to dowith the Copper. This turns out to bequite straightforward, but not to agreetoo well with the documentation(sigh). Jim provides an exampleprogram which does it right.

The trouble is that tricks with userCopper lists can upset graphics co-

existing with Intuition's idea ofmultiple draggable screens, with theresult that dragging down the lastscreen can produce garbage. Thisseems to be non-fatal, and w ill befixed in version 1.4. In the meantimeit may be better to reserve Coppertricks for your own private non-Intuition ViewPort.

Jim goes on to talk more about thesystem's use of the Copper, and abouthow to use Copper lists to implementefficient double-buffering on theAmiga. This turns out to be trickierthan one might like — the optimum

• S Y M P O S I U M E

solution presented involves setting uptwo alternative Copper lists for thetwo screens and swapping betweenthem on the vertical blank using alow-level graphics library functioncalled LoadView(), plus setting up aCopper list interrupt to signal yourtask when it's safe to resume drawing.

THE second talk starts with a

general presentation of recentdevelopments in IFF by CarolynSheppner of CATS, who should beknown to UK Amiga developers fromthe official [FT Fish discs. She runsover the most recent developments,and considers a few problem areas.such as uncertainties remaining inrepresentations of overscan images.and of colour cycling. She then handsover to Lattice to discuss the newPGTB (ProGram Trace Back) form,then to Sparta to discuss ANIM.PGTB seems like a very neat idea.

TO use PGTB you link with a

new startup module so that theAmiga doesn't just give a guru alert if

AmigaDoS: The Amiga's operatingsystem, whic h apportions jobs forthe hardware to do when it receivesa command from a program. It looksafter t h e hous ek eeping o f t hesystem.ANIM: A fi le format wh ic h hasbecome accepted as the standard forshowing animation frames. It allowsscreens to be compacted and thenreplayed at speed.Autoboot: A process which allowsthe c omputer t o s tar t-up (boot)without using a Workbench fl oppydisc. The computer w i l l autobootfrom ram, a hard disc or a network.Barrel shifter: A type of register inthe computer which can multiply ordivide by two. This can be used tochange t h e g r a p h ic a l r e s u l t sproduced by different numbers.Binddr ivers : A pr ogr am w h ic hchecks w h i c h per ipher a ls a r eattached to an expanded Amiga. It isnecessary for connecting a hard discor network.Copper: The Amiga's graphics co- •processor, whic h handles a goodnumber o f t h e d r a w in g a n dcolouring functions. It needs its ownspecial machine code instructions.

Double buffering: Flicker can beavoided by drawing a screen i nmemory a n d t h e n s h o w in g i tcomplete. W h i l e t h e c omple tescreen is being shown the nexc oneis drawn in memory. The two arethen swapped and the process con-tinued.Fish discs: Fred Fish is a Texan whocompiles Public Domain (PD) discs.These contain a variety o f usefulprograms and demos.Guru: The er ror message systemused by the Amiga. A Guru Aler tprovides system information whenthe machine crashes.UT: Interchange File Format — Com-modore's s tandar d f o r m a t f o rstoring sound, graphic and text fileswhich a id compatibility betweenprograms. By keeping to Commo-dore guidelines developers canmake sure that fi les produced withtheir programs can be used byfuture programs from other manu-facturers.! IBM: Inter leav ed B i l M a p t h escreen format used by UT, devel-oped by Electronic Arts for Commo-dore Amiga.Intuition: The part of the operating

system the programmer uses. I tchops up the jobs it is given by theprogrammer and sends them toAmigaDos. A n ins t r uc t ion l i k eOwnBlit() is an intuition command.Kickstart: The program which sitsinside the computer and comes tolife when y ou switch i t on. Thisloads Workbench.Multi-tasking: A special feature o fthe Amiga whic h allows i t to runmore than one program at once. Notall Amiga programs co-operate withthis.Overscan: T he s tandard Amig ascreen has a maximum resolution of640 by 400 pixels (dots). This is allyou can see on a screen but someapplications — notably Desk topVideo, need the pictures to go off theedge o f the screen. This is calledoverscan.Vertical blank: A television pictureis not displayed a l l the time. Thevertical blank is the time between 4frames being shown. I f the com-puter tr ies to draw on the screenduring the vertical blank the resultwill not be seen until the next frame.Frames are drawn at a rate of 50 persecond.

JuIi 1988 A MI G A ( I M P U TI N G 5 3

something goes wrong. Instead itwrites out a fi le containing a pur Bform, then gives a guru alert.

The PGTB form holds debuginformation such as seglist addresses,registers, parts of the stack, memorystatus, and any special data obtainedby calling an application-specificdump routine. The user can then sendthis fi le back along with the usualhug report ("Er, it keeps goingwrong"), so it can be attacked by avariety of debug and trace backutilities. This could be a real help inprogram testing — let's hope it catcheson.

The situation as regards the ANIN1form is less satisfactory. ANIM isreally rather a mess. The problem isthat it has been allowed to evolve intoa de-facto standard, while in fact itcontains two major problems. Firstly,it uses an ILBM form to contain whatis actually delta information, which isnasty. Secondly, ANIM should not infact be a form at all — it is asuccession of WE objects inheritingcommon properties, which should bedealt by seriously under-used WEstructure called a LIST.

THE afternoon starts with another

"all together" session, this oneon Commodore's new hardware andsoftware developments, presented byJeff Porter and Andy Finkel. Sincethese have been reported elsewhere. Iwon't go into detail.

FOILOWING the new

Commodore productspresentation we form an orderlyqueue (ho ho) and shuffle out to pickup copies of the official conferencedisc pack. These include gamma testversions of Workbench and Extras1.3. plus three discs of sampleprograms and so on from theconference. We then split into threegroups again, and I settle for a sessionon the new A2024 high-resmonochrome monitor.

This session is hosted by HedleyDavis, the Amiga hardware engineerwho developed the A2024, aided byJim Mackraz. Hedley starts byshowing off the A2024. This is areally nice-looking bit of hardware.capable of producing a very sharpdisplay up to 1008 x 1024 PAL non-

/I)7 Face

to rface)4;1

interlaced four-level monochrome. Itlooks great. Together with the newfonts it should help a lot in areas likedesktop publishing.

The way the monitor works is quitesimple. You set up an enormousbitmap — say by opening a bigIntuition screen — which you thenrender into precisely as normal. Thesystem outputs this as four successiveframes — or six frames i f you want toavoid cycle stealing by the PAD. Themonitor then puts them back togetherin an internal frame store which itoutputs as a very high resolution non-interlaced image.

Note that the effective full-screenupdate-rate is reduced to a quarter (ora sixth) of normal, so fast animationcould be a problem. It appears quiteadequate, however, for normaloutput. Note also that very high-resscreens take a lot of memory, so youneed at least a megabyte total on yourmachine.

The monitor will really come intoits own when we get the newextended chip set which allows up toa megabyte of chip memory.

Full software support for the A2024will be in Kickstart 1.4: meanwhile itis possible to get it to work on 1,3with a fair amount of patching. Thereis an "emulation" mode where anA2024 is faked on a current monitor,with the display lurching violentlywhen you move the mouse out of thecurrent v is ible area. This lookshorrid, but should be useful forsoftware developers who don't haveA2024s

this point I decide to go tothe session on new Kickstart

and Autoboot - Amiga start-up and

expansion.library is something I'venever really looked at, so perhaps Imight learn something. In the event Idon't learn much, as the session is notparticularly successful. Still just onedud in a day isn't bad.

The s'ession starts well enough withBart Whitebook (autoboot software)giving an overview of the bootprocess. Joe Augenbraun (hardware)then takes over and gives a very br iefdescription of how to set up a bootram. Bob "Kodiak" Burns(recoverable ram disc software) thenmanages to confuse me completely.

The basic idea seems reasonablysimple. First. expansion.libraty looksat each board in turn, and if itrecognises a valid ram it copies it toan "image" somewhere in ram. andcalls a "rom/diagnostic" vector whichallows the rom to patch itself toreflect its current ram position ifnecessary.

Next a new library is invoked.called romboot.libraty. This checksthough the expansion board ramimages looking for flags CONFIGMEIf found, it searches the ram image inquestion for a valid "Resident"structure; if found, it calls a routineInitResident() allowing the board'sdriver software to initialise.

This allows the board to get itsExec device or whatever sorted out, ina neater way than loading off a bootfloppy using the old Binddriversprogram. It also gives it anopportunity to say it wants toautoboot. It does this by link ing astructure called a BootNode into alinked list maintained byexpansion .library.

Later on, the Dos is woken up bysomething called strap.library. Thisfirst of all checks for a boot disc inDEO: — if so, it boots off this, so that ilis possible to overide auto-boot to runa game or something. Otherwise ittries to boot by calling the routinespecified by the highest priorityBootNode. This is handled by callinga romboot.library routine calledRomBoot(). I f both fail — if it can'tfind a floppy or a ram that wants toboot — it puts up the old "please giveme a Workbench" image. Note thatthe Dos brought up by RomBootOwill normally be ArnigaDos. It doesn'thave to be, so it would be possible touse this to bring up an alternativeDos, say if you were booting off anetwork.

As I said — the principals aresimple, but the details are tricky,particularly when it comes to how

154 AMI G A COMPUTING lul l ' 1988

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• S Y M P O S I U M •

this process is gimicked by Kodiak'srecoverable ram disc.

FINAL session for the day is on

low-level blitter access,presented by Torn Rokicki of RadicalEye Software, author of Amiga TEX.Hitting the blitter hardware is veryeasy on Amiga. The simplest - notnecessarily the best - method is tocall graphics library routinesOwnBlifter() then WaitBlit(), hit theblitter to your heart's content, thengive it back using DisownBlitter().Note that this should be followed byanother WaitBlitIl if you are going toexamine the blitted data. This givesyou maximum Witter performancewithout messing up the OS.

Getting access to the blitter issimple; using it once you have it isnot so easy however. The problem ispartly that the documentation israther sparse. and to make life moreinteresting, just a teeny bit wrong inplaces. More fundamentally, theproblem is that the Amiga has a Wordblitter which blasts 16-bit words

around in chip memory very quickly.But what you really want is a Bit

Witter, capable of transferring an a bitpattern. The way to simulate a BitWitter using a word blitter is to makeuse of the barrel shifters attached totwo of the inputs.

In order to sort this out, Tom hasdone a fair amount of blitter research- inc luding some graphicshbrarydisassembly - and has written a reallynice PD program called BlitLab foreasy experimentation with the Witter.

Tom's BlitLab demo is followed byan interesting question session. A lotof these involve use of the blitter bygraphicshbrary, which Tom passeson to graphics author Dale Luck. Onequestion concerns the use ofalternative Witter access mechanisms(Mit( ) and QSBIlin. These allow youto queue blitter requests as BliNodes,to be processed as soon as the Wittercan get round to them, optionally in abeam synchronised manner.

A further question to Dale is whythe graphicslibrary doesn't offermuch in the way of multi-channelbills such as ANDing or °Ring two

RastPorts together. The answer is thathandling the "arbitrary move"problem through the layers logic is socomplex that two blitter inputchannels get tied up doing it, using'onlo_f one left over to the application.

This discussion leads me tounderstand the graphics library ratherbetter. The program doesn't have totackle the usual problems of writinglots of assembler to move stuff aroundin memory as fast as possible, sincethis is looked after by the hardware.

A further question Dale gets askedconcerning speed relates to thefunction BitilitNlapRastPort(). This isvery useful, since it allows you to setthings up using the blitter in yourown private off-screen BitMapwithout worrying.

Dale admits that this was put in lateand done by calling a load offunctions he already had written. Itcould be made faster, and he hopes tolook at this for version 1.4.

By this time exhaustion is setting infast - the session comes to an endaround 6.30, 111/2 hours afterregistration. Phew,

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BACK in 1963 at Dartmouth

College, two gentlemen alongwith willing undergraduates designedand implemented a language thatwould be easily grasped by beginnersas an aid to learning Fortran. Thosegentlemen were John Kemeny andThomas Kurtz, and the language wasBasic, now the standard languagesupplied with nearly every micro.

Over the years Basic evolved, anddue to memory restrictions on theearly home micros its authors tookshort cuts to make it completelyhardware-specific. A program writtenin one dialect of Basic stood nochance of running on a differentmachine.

Kemeny and Kurtz watched thisprocess with some horror, and fi nallydecided to do something about it.True Basic was the result, a portablelanguage that they hoped would bethe structured language system for the

future. It was already available on thePC and Mac — the Amiga was the nextin line to see the light. Adam Webberwas the actual author of this version,though he has received little credit forhis work.

True Basic is certainly a big enoughpackage. consisting of a languagedisc, a 307 page users guide, and a331 page reference manual. The usersguide will doubtless come assomething of a shock to thoseunfortunates who are used to Basicmanuals that Commodore normallysupplies with its machines. It is bothclear and helpful for the beginner.with many tutorials, and yet containsvital machine-specific informationthat all standards of programmerrequire.

The reference manual is the samefor all versions of True Basic, and assuch has the irr itating habit ofdivulging juicy little secrets, only to

Basic strikes backMark Luckham finds that a grown upcomputer merits an adult approach toprogramming. Structure reduces thebugs and the LET statement returns

Scirroarr from the (rwason 0,1 knit;

The Structured Langutzge System for the Future

John G. KemenyThomas E. Kurtz

AE) H i s o N - WI t s L Er PU BL I SH I N G co M PAN Y, I NC,

Ing

point out that your version may bedifferent. Thus it isn't as portable asTrue Basic Inc would like you tothink it is.

A typical True Basic displayconsists of a source code window, acommand window, and an outputwindow, The last two are optionaland can he opened or closed at will.If the output window is not definedduring output, or has been closed,then output goes to a full screen, thecontents of which are lost when theprogram is stopped or ends.

Once a program has been enteredthe editor can be brought into play tocut, copy and paste sections whichare marked by clicking and draggingwith the mouse. Alternatively theFunction keys can be used to markblocks, as well as perform otheruseful editing tasks such as moving tothe command or output windows,moving to the start or end of a

program, and deleting characters orthe line to the right of the cursor.

In a s imilar word processing vein,it is possible to search and replacespecific words, or parts thereof, in theprogram. This operates from thecursor position onwards and w ill fi ndkey words as well as variables.

An interesting feature is the abilityto mark a part of the program, sayjust a couple of lines, and delete therest — useful i f you are try ing to buildup a subroutine library, as theselected lines can he saved to disc asone.

When entering a program it w illnormally be displayed justified to theleft of the source code window. hotthis can be changed to show thestructure of the program. Select theDo Format option and watch as thestructures are indented, key words arechanged to upper case, and REM — oras they are referred to here comment— lines are straightened out.

As with any modern Basic, TrueBasic does not ordinarily use linenumbers, but they can be added atany stage in program development.and lu ll line renumbering is alsoavailable The maximum number ofcharacters that can be used on one

l A l t a l COMPUTING July

E R E V I E W E

Test TrueBasic Amiga 1Basic

1 0.06 0.042 0.22 1,943 0.68 3.944 1.02 4.645 1.16 5,046 1.7 8.867 2.6 3.76

11.5 17,68Le

to

to

line is 32,000, which is a far cry fromthe 255 C64 days. The largest linenumber as well is impressively highYou can have line numbers runningup to 999.999.

Large scale numbers indeed, but itdoesn't stop there. Numbers have 14digit accuracy, the maximum stringlength is over a million characters,variable names can be 31 charactersin length, the maximum record size isover 16 million bytes and, quiteastonishingly, the maximum fi le sizeis four tr illion bytes. In theory. Ididn't have a fi le that could test thatclaim. Roll on optical discs.

As far as general structure goes,Kemeny and Kurtz have attempted tomake the language as structured andorderly as possible.

Going back to the line numbers_Concatenation is not allowed in thesource code, and there can only beone command statement to each line_

So a program containing anIF-THENALSEANDIF constructwould have to have IF..THEN..one line. ELSE all by itself on anotherand ENDIF again all alone.

SELECT CASE isn't something thatmany Basics support, but as youmight have guessed, it is here. This issimilar to IF..THENALSEIF as it letsyou try several tests and execute ablock of statements, depending onwhich test fulfi ls the conditionsrequired. When assigning variablesthe almost forgotten LET becomescompulsory. It isn't optional.

Neither is using the variable namein conjunction with a NEXTstatement. You must specify thevariable name, What is interesting isthe option to jump out of a loopbefore it has finished. There are fewBasics indeed that w ill allow you todo that.

Also in the field of loops can befound DO.J .0013, % y h i c h s i m p ly

executes endlessly, unless it finds dilEXIT DO statement in theresomewhere. DO WHILE..LOOP,UNTIL—LOOP and combinationsthereof are far more flexible, and willexecute the loop while certainconditions are met or until they alenot. And if no conditions are likely tobe met then there is always EXIT DOto save you from the programmel snightmare — the endless loop.

Your friend and mine, theprocedure, has of' course not beenforgotten, though it has undergone aname change. Functions can bedefined and then CALLed, as can

I sing standard Bask benchtests you cansee that True Basic is very much fasterthan Amiga Basic

subroutines. Name them with SUBname (p a ra ml, param2.,) and endthem with END SUB. Exactly thesame as PROC, especially when youcall pass variables to the subroutine.

A variable within a subroutine, orwithin any section of a program, isi,,cal to that particular section. I f youwant to share values around then youhave to pass parameters with yoursubroutines.

What is particularly interesting isthdt a subroutine can be internal, orexternal, saved on a disc. This allowsthe programmer to build up librariesof useful functions and procedures,save them on disc, and only call uponthem when needed, by using aLIBRARY command.

K. so structured programmersare doubtless feeling pretty

smug, having been served up withvirtually everything they could asktoe What about the graphics? Thisafter all, is what the Amiga is famousfor.

A language that claims to be trulyportable surely cannot fully exploitlee graphics hardware that is so,,,achine dependent.

Well. True Basic certainly makes alair old stab at it. Graphics are notrelated to on a pixel basis, they use acoordinate system of your owndefinition. Thus a program withgraphics on one computer will, orrespond to the display on anothercomputer, even if the desired effect isreduced.

So before drawing or anything else.you must define your window, inwhatever numerical terms you like.For example, your Y coordinatescould range from 1945 to 1988, and

the program would assign theintermediate values, and the Xcoordinate could range from 0 to 25.After defining this window, allsubsequent graphics commandswould then be in terms of thesecoord inales_

For your money, you can plotpoints, draw lines, draw and t ill acomplex shape, flood fi ll and,strangely. box. The BOX command isused in conjunction with LINES,ELLIPSE, AREA. CLEAR. KEEP andSHOW, and provides those functionsinside a rectangle, the size of whichyou specify.

KEEP and SHOW are the two darkhorses of the collection as they are. infact, Witting commands. KEEP willstore part of the display in a stringvariable while SHOW will spiel itback again. Crude animation can heachieved this way.

RATHER surprisingly, given that

the other graphic commands arenothing special, there are five specialeffects commands_ With these you canslide a picture. change the scale,rotate it and shear it. When you cancall pictures that have been definedjust like subroutines, and call them inconjunction with one of the effectscommands. you have a very powerfultool indeed.

What it is possible to achieve is insome ways far more impressive thanthat which The Director, whichpurports to be a professional displayand an imation language. can manage.

The system used by True Basic isby no means as easy to get to gripswith and produce the desired resultswithout a lot of trial and error. But asa language that makes no attempt tobe portable, what can be achieved isfar more than you would expect_ Evenif sprites are not catered for at all.

Should the range of commands notbe powerful enough for your needsthen True Basic Inc will supply youwith a language extension dedicatedto just that task. The price is a heavyone. As well as being expensive, banggoes portability.

Sound is the other area that Amigaowners love to crow about. but onceagain portability and compromise arethe order of the day_ It is ratherdisappointing this area, as all you areallowed is PLAY music$ where the

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string contains the musical notationfor a tune, and SOUND frequency.duration. No envelopes or specificchannels to make your sound effects.

Never mind. string handling issuperbly done and the handling istreated far more comprehensivelywith the ability to question files forspecific details, as well as the usualbyte, data, and program loading andsaving functions.

I don't know whether the authors ofTrue Basic anticipate that everycomputer their language will run onwill have a mouse and windows, hutthese are catered for on the Amigaversion. While windows can be madeto happen on systems which don'tnormally use them, reading and usingthe mouse may prove more difficultto port across.

I asked the question at thebeginning of this review as towhether a language whose primarilyaim was standardisation andportability would make good use of

the Amiga's powerful and individualfacilities_ Well, the quick answer is:-Not really-. But True Basic makes a

very valiant attempt in areas that youwould not have suspected. It is alsosurprisingly fast at most things,coefficients excluded.

It's worth noting that it is a goodidea to read the reference manual firstfor the general situation regardingavailable facilities, And then lookthrough the users guide, in whichextra commands, helpful tutorials.and quirks native to the Amigaversion are detailed.

For the programmer who willuse an Amiga, True Basic can be seenas a structured, modular andundeniably stylish language thati,von't help that person get the verybest from his computer. For anyonewho is interested in portability,standardisation, and working on theMac and the PC, then True Basic canbe seen as a very fine piece ofsoftware, and be heartilyrecommended.

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1111INTIFITIONAs Amigaized as a portable languagecan he expected. Windows supported.

111SPEEDPrograms compiled using True Basicrun an average of three limes faster.

1 11111VALUEPriced a bit high he a home user. reallyaimed at conipanies who want toproduce products ler various. m a c h i n e s .

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• A D V I C E I M I

Why don't some of my oldergames work when I have

insta led extra memory?

ASome early games will nut

work with a system which hasmore than 51 2k installed. The way toovercome this problem is to selectSlowMend.ast and NoFastRarn fromthe system drawer of yourWorkbench disc before clicking onthe game icon.

If the game selfboots you will haveto remove the ram. Note that fi tting asecond drive uses up a tiny bit ofram, so a really big game. such dSFirepower will only work on a 5 12kmachine if you unplug the seconddrive.

Amiga Answers

I have seen some cheapAmiga IBOtis advertised and

am templed to buy one in preferenceto an Amiga SOO, I can't see what theadvantages of an Amiga 2000 are.Which one should I buy?

AIt depends how much vou

want to spend. There are somereal bargains to be picked up if youshop around for a WOO. Many ofthese are "grey" imports front Franceand so w il l have an azefty keyboardwith stickers to turn it into an Englishqwerty keyboard,

Diehard Amigaists feel that 1000sare visually the nicest Amigas.Commodore has a declared intentionto support the machine. although it isno longer made. This means that newKickstarts w il l be made available ondisc.

But many of the add-ons you w illwant to buy in the future will comefrom third party companies. These art:unlikely to be readily available in thefuture. A1000 is very expensive toexpand beyond 512k, The A500 is itsimmediate successor and is easilyexpandable to 1Mb. with plenty ofthird party support and altogether arosier future.

The keyboard is not as nice as thatof the A1000, and Kickstart is in ram,which is less flexible but easier touse. Once you want to add more thanhalf a megabyte things start to getexpensive, as are hard discs.Commodore has an expansion un it

Solve y our Amiga anx iety w ith aletter to Amiga Answers. Our panelo f experts is ready to sort out trickyAmiga problems. F r om mac hinecode to midi. communications tocompilers. Whatever your problemour experts are here to help y ousolve it.

We cannot deal w ith enquir iespersonally so please don't send anySAE"s. We do need loads o f ques-tions. So wr ite to Amiga Answers,Amiga Computing, Nor th House.78-84 O ngar Road, Br entwood.Essex, CA415 WIG.

planned. but it is s till a way fromproduction.

The A2000 is aimed at businesses.It can be made IBM-compatible, iseasily expandable to 9Mb and comeswith 1Mb as standard. Anunexpanded 2000 is no more usefulthan an expanded 50tr

Which you buy depends on whatyou want to do. I f you just want toplay games you could get away witha MOO. Remember that they comewith 256k as standard and you w illhave to buy the ram pack I f youdon't plan to expand your systemstraightaway an A500 is the best allround bet. A second disc drive andthe 51 2k ra in pack are sensiblepurchases. but can be left un t il yo u rbank account has recovered.

An A2000 is only for the rich k idwho wants the better keyboard and toadd peripherals immediately, or forthe businessman who needs the extraram.

Make sure you get the latestversion. which is known as a B2000because this is faster than an A2000and has an extra expansion slot,

How can I drag more thanone icon at a time? Whenever

se ect a second icon the first isdeselected.

AHold down Shift when you

click on subsequent icons.You can then do anything with thegroup of icons that you wouldotherwise do with one icon. A reallyuseful application for this is to selectClean Up from the menu bar, select

all the icons in the window, beingcareful not to double click, and thenselect Snapshot.

How can I open a windowthat covers the whole screen

and a s no border?

AThe Amiga Basic WINDOW

command does not allowwindows without borders, hot thatdoes not mean that they are notpossible. By using the Intuitionlibrary routines OpenWindow() andCloseWindow() you can open awindow to whatever specification.

le t HeightPOK(.W Wind11+46,15for WBench)

idPointt OpenWindowt (Windi)CALL freeMemg(Windg,48)

IF P o i n t ' 0 THENPRINT "Fai led t o open window"GOTO Qu itEND I F

RastPort& PEEKL(WPoint&+50)GOSUB OpenlnputAPen& . IWHILE INKEYS: -

CALLSetAPenUitastPortg,APenti)

CALL RectFiLIS(RastPortg,0,0,640,256)

APen& A P e n i XOR 1WEND

Quit :GOSUB CloselnputCALL CLoseWindowt(WPoint&)Quit l :SCREEN CLOSE 1LIBRARY CLOSEEND

OpenInput:WINDOW 2,'Input Window',(11,200)(3211,201),142,1RETURN

Closelnput:WINDOW CLOSE 2RETURN

If you haven't done so already, youwill need to create the intuition..bmap' file.

The input fi lename is:—Extras:FD1.2fintui tion—l ibld"

The output fi lename is-Extras:BasicDemostintuition.bmap-

lu iv 0188 AM / G A C O MM ' 7 7V : hi

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E L E T T E R S E

Virus problemsI AM a member of a user group andtherefore get quite a hit of publicdomain software. On almost everyoccasion I fi nd it has the virus. I havetwo virus killers and a detector whichsits in memory and tells you if a virusis present. This is useful because youcan fi nd a virus before it spreads.

Is there a virus which can destroythe Amiga's ram? I've been told thereis by several sources, inc luding acomputer shop. Other people havetold me that it is impossible to changethe rum, inc luding Commodore repairstaff. rve been told that Commodorewon't fix the computer underwarranty because it said you can onlyget the virus from pirated software.This means an expensive repair bill.

Now, anybody who has an Amigawill have some PD software and thevirus can easily come from this.

D. Cadywold.Darlington.

You cannot damage the computerwith a virus. Turn the machine offand on and it w ill recover. Peoplewho claim that the virus can damagea rom do not understand how a ruinworks —

MistakesI ENJOYED reading issue 1, especiallythe bit about Workbench 1.3. Howmuch is it anyway? There was anerror in the Plain Man's Guide to CU.The author said that it is important touse capital letters. He is wrong, itdoesn't matter whether you use upperor lower case. The Amiga treats it thesame.

Now on to the hidden messages.For the last message you omitted tomention that you must hold down thefunction key while you eject theWorkbench disc and replace it with anon-Workbench disc.

Also on the subject of hiddenmessages do I qualify for a free gamewith a hidden menu? Hope so. All

you have to do is enter the CLI andtype: LOADWB —DEBUG. When theWorkbench has loaded up the debugmenu go to the menu bar and holdthe right mouse button.

Move right from the "special"menu and a previously hidden menuwill appear. This causes debugginginformation to be sent down the serialport at 9600 baud, So i f you have anRS232 terminal you can tap into it. I fthis does qualify me for a free game(Ito I have Photon Paint marketed byActivision?

Leszek Wolnik-KurianowiczEaling. W5

Commodore hasn't yet fixed a pricefor Workbench 1.3. Sorry we don'thave any spare cqpies of PhotonPaint. Our review copy was one of thefirst half dozen Activ is ion had.send you a copy of finks instead — Ed

Bare shelvesSOME of my friends bought a copy ofyour magazine in London, but when Itried to get it in my local shop Icouldn't fi nd it on the shelves. It hasloads of other computer magazineshut not yours. Why?

David °borne,Swansea

It is always possible that it has soldout. I f not it could be because it onlvstocks magazines which have a record

Write t o T h e Ed i t o r , A m i g aComputing. F i r s t F loor . N o r t hHouse, 78-84 Ongar Road, Brent.wood, Essex, CM15 9BG. The bestletters each month w i l l be sent agame from our goodie drawer.

of selling well, Of course with a newmagazine there is no way to provethis. I f you are in a shop which doesnot have Amiga Computing on theshelves you should ask why.

In a big shop you should ask tospeak to the news manager. He w il lbe able to tell you when he expectsthe next delivery and if it is sold outwhether the shop w i i be getting somemore. — Ed,

Piracy problemI WAS very interested to read in yourfirst issue about the sales of theAmiga catching up with those of theST. I work in a shop in Londonwhere we sell all kinds of computers,and the Amiga runs second only toAmstrad PCs. But ST software outsellsAmiga products. I attribute this to thelack of really good Amiga games andthe huge amount of piracy on theAmiga,

Most of the games are straight STconversions. I f I wanted an ST I'dhave bought one, but the Amiga hasfar better graphics and sound. Piracyis a serious problem, and I imploreAmiga owners to buy their games andnot copy them.

If you have a stolen game whichyou play a lot, go and buy theoriginal to show the software househow much you appreciate the game.

This is the only way that softwarehouses can be persuaded to carry onsupporting the Amiga. One goodthing is the bundled software whichcomes with the ST. Every Atar i comeswith loads of games, which cutsdown the number of new games STowners w ill buy, and so makes theAmiga sales look proportionatelybetter.

Your first issue was great, keeprooting for world's best computer,

Alex Walsh,Newbury

July 1988 AMIGA COMPUTING 53

\ YCOMPUT ING

Seconds Out — Take on fivechampion boxers in your quest fortame and fortune and a covetedworld title.FOrMUla 1 Grand Prix — Experiencethe thrills and spills of Formula Iracing, competing against the bestdrivers in the world over sixchampionship circuits.Winter Olympiad '88 — Pull on yourwinter woolies and take part in liveoutstanding events.. Downhill, Ski-Jump, Biathlon, Slalom and BobSled.Stock Market — Enter the hecticfinancial world of the LOnclOn StockExchange to make millions or losethe lot overnight!

Ititos —Take the controls in thissuperb space shoot-'em-up gamewhich pits you against a multitude ofingenious planetary defence systems.Mouse TraP — l-lelp Marvin themouse win back the affections of hischarthood sweetheart Meryl byscavenging for cheese.

Mail Order Offers

To mark the launch of Amiga Computing here's a uniquereader offer you just can't refuse.

We want to send you one of Tynesoft's range of populargames for the Amiga — Mouse Trap or Plutos (worth £14.95each) — absolutely free of charge.

All you have to do is buy any one of these othertop-selling titles: Seconds Out, Formula I Grand Prix,Winter Olympiad '88 or Stock Market. Then take yourfrom the other two favourites.

To place your order turn to the coupon on Page 85and select your free game.

ar95

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et 96 9 5 0 7

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bc; id to 31.7 88

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No II I_ I I I I I I 1 1 1 11 1

T e lSond to: Amiga Computing, FREEPOST,

Macclesfield. Cheshire SKI° 4Y Elpas Marrp needed If posied In UK) Please allow 213 days tor de lkwyO r d e r a t a ny ti m eo t ths d a y o r ni ght

Telephone Orders 0025 878920

Orders by Prattel 1 1 ShcroliniVreSecont Golda syss• then 114581383 7 2 M A G 0 0 1

Don't fer of le ohs your nem& address and credit card numberr EN D U R ES ONLY: 0825 879040 Own-5pm A M C ? '

M E N D P I E C E •

Amiga PD

Calco SoftwareCBS •CentecCestrian SoftwareClikCut Price SoftwareDate! ElectronicsEvesham MicrosICPUGKumaMelton ComputersMetacomcoMicroLinkShacksoftSolidiskTimesoftTriangle Music/TelevisionTry h ri d geWorldwide Software

56,

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WHEN a computer crashes it

usually locks up, leaving theprogrammer or user to wonder whythat happened. The Amiga is noordinary computer. It doesn't crash. ItGurus. The black and red screencontains magic information on thestate of the computer before it pointedits toes skywards.

The name is due to a bit of Amigahistory. When the company was setup it made joysticks for the Atari VCSand Commodore 64. Among thesewas a tiny stick which you could usewith one hand and a huge stickwhich you stood on. The big joystickwas called a joyboard. It wasdesigned for skiing and surfingsimulations.

A couple of games were written forthe VCS but nothing really came ofthe joyboard. One program whichAmiga did put together was ameditation package. You had to sit on

Guru'shaunt

the joyboard and stay as s till aspossible. The more relaxed, thehigher you scored. Although thecompany has been bought byCommodore and the joyboard is nolonger, it is touching to note that i l lscommemorated by a magic numberon every Amiga screen.• The Commodore logo, the CIsymbol, is well known to all Amigausers.

What is less well known is theCommodore in-house name for thelogo. To Commodore the CE is the"chickenhead",

THE AMIGA GRAPHICSAND SOUND SPECIALISTS

N AM E 110 AM * Cleak, M i l ' M O W S s o m u c h a t m! A m ig a o r i ol e s ' t ha t awn Be ' Mi cr o Fee' sated tor Mee

advIce N AM E 111 AAUP *Mier thai shiners ones decried densonstr store ard Men checks ail systems helmet heyMee the premises 'IMAGINE en Amiga &Met that will ooneinue gmng heiotue 441w• 4,4441 saw you've handed oweyour MCINIT UNIMAGISABLET THIN IMAGINE TRIANGLE TV - THE UNUSUAL AMIGA DEALEft

HARDWAREAmiga 200Cre Am p sites, Memory Expansion Had DaceFb,d. Geniccio, FIGS - 'Moo Enceseets

• NEW FUGHTCASES •(in ngdeed grey aluminium)

DIGIITZEkS, TRAIN/SG 14 ANIASTION AM CkRALAIICS, LEASING Ail) FINANCEI I !TOO(

Defoe paint (iLe eloreat), Deane IA096 mimes), ')elum 'Mao 2 (PAL). 'New Ante 30 Sideswipe. limeSculpt 30. Vogt Arend* 30, liwa The Deeds, la m Pageflpper I V Tea, lb w nd Stoic PTO Video, liveAage Video Titer. Ove w (PAL). Deluxe Prat Cease Music Masa Music, Pegeeseetentaso W V . Cay Dish

DIP l i r a Colour Iresseirettiet In Nock D e l u x e ' N e w Photon Nine (PALI, lie w DeluxePloductions N ye A4 Graphics label

THE AMIGA MUSICAND MIDI SPECIALISTS

NEW PRODUCT NEWS DIU MUSIC SOFTWAREhinsdkcing MOW (=viable Nehmen) ke ihe A5012000. These new inducts hot CIRT teethe me poweredmusic (IOW recoiling system lor the Amp lo dee

"THESE ARE THE TRUE OSGRAL NORKSTATICNS•FAT KCSA AS tack MOM wort* elle SIPE Cassini. ot Feelers* Nee edam; CAC pule Nal copy Ion:lions Transposeend quartos Ternpo changes lad mime retch marsDFLT. KCS Leine 2Meow el Medi sequencer with WIPE plAtiprOprie liglin c e n c r e l o r Nod maser idiot Progrwamemealtime ol reoceded trade (up lo 7 verusonstack) lo sue Ogees stre st m a c A l s o c e l l s m u s i c * o l i v e : i t i n

loce• "LPL".

KCS I 6 and Level 2, ceny a Molls* Pmgrarme Erriwonmert This O w yew lo run iso ICI 4 printer %nesI snot erd lo ele eccordeiglyV r ill tineDIILT.Lilts sokeid from nix insincere* arel sem Mere Yamaha Rciand EnsoniqueIIDC

ked fi ct ion lot the A5O02000 at* fc44 a va i t i ld o R E

U N-Coisues m net wel mos steward Ming *or deistic Al produces No MON CM OLD dernersitaler MUSIC ACIA0 C0919

El 95

TRIANGLE TELEVISION (Computers)130 Brookwood Road, Southfields, London SW18 SOD.

Tel: 01-874 3418. FAX: 01-877 1029 MMal Order available

Demonstration available ; m g Coin ( F i n a n c e on completeplete systes)

M E

COMPS 1.7 1 V C I i r t v

ADVERTISERS'INDEX

SHACKSOFT

Are you tired of fumblingunder or behind your com-puter to swap your mouseand joystick cables ? Are

MOUSE MASTEI?

your cables and computer connectors worn out from all theplugging and unplugging? Then Mouse Master is a mustfor you!Mouse Master i s an innovative switchbox that allows youto instantly select either your mouse or Joystick (or othercontroller) in port 1 . A switch on the top does theswapping for you! Additionally, port 2 is brought out tomake all the ports easily accessible. E24 .95

MONITOR STANDSSpecifically designed for use with your AMIGA 500 witha slot cut for the disk drive. Your Amiga fits neatly underyour monitor with no untidy leads in view. £ 1 9 . 9 5

•-1

QualityMouse MotsOnly E6.95

UNIT 11/I7 White !lays SoulWest Wills Trading Estale

Westbury. W i !Wake(0373) 858031 (2 Lintz)

BUSINESS REPLY SERVICE

Do not affix postagestamp if posted in the

United KingdomChannel Islands or

Isle of Man

1 BUSINESS REPLY SERVICE

Do not affix postagestamp if posted in the

United KingdomChannel Islands or

Isle of Man

AMIGA COMPUTINGFREEPOSTMACCLESFIELDSki() 4YB

AMIGA COMPUTINGFREEPOSTMACCLESFIELDSK10 4YB

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Software OW OurOur Title S.S.P Price Title & S P P r i c e

Title S S P Price Plutos E14.95 £11.50 The Jewels of Darkness £19.96 C I 5.50Arkanoid £26.00 E20.50 Port of Call £39.95 £26.50 Time and Magic E EAlien Strike £24.95 £18.50 Phantasie Ill £24 99 E18.50 Annals of Rome £24.99 £ 1 8 . 5 0Ara2oks Tomb £29.95 £21.50 Power Pla

y£19.99 E16.50 Gett.Bee Air Rally £19.95 £ 1 5 . 5 0

Arto Fox £29.95 E21.50 Pink Panther £19.99 £16.50 -Pump Jet £14.95 E 1 1 . 5 0Adv Con Set £29.95 C2I .50 Power Struggle £14.95 El 1.50 Shedock £24.95 E 1 8 . 5 0Back Gammon £9.99 E7.50 0 Ball C19 95 £16.50 Jinx E24.99 £ 1 8 . 5 0Battleships £19.95 E16.50 Red October E24 95 £18.50 The Armageddon Man £19.99 E 1 6 . 5 0Blacks hadow £24.96 £18.50 Rockey C9 99 £76.0Borrowed Time £24.99 £18.50 Roaclwars C19 95 E16.50 I M U TY USTBubble Bobble C19 95 £16.50 Roadwar 2000 E24.95 El 8.50 Adrum £39.95 E 3 2 . 5 0Barbarians C24 99 £18.50 Return to Atlantis E24.95 E18.50 AC Fortran E295.00 E202.50Blast Ball C9 99 £7.50 Seven Clues of Gold E14.95 E11.50 Art Parts I £9.95 £ 7 . 5 0Balance of Power C29 99 £21.50 Starwars £19.96 E16.50 Art Parts II £9.95 C 7 _ 5 0Backlash CI9 95 £16.50 Strike F0(0. Harrier £24.99 Ei 8.50 Assembler Metacomco £69.95 £ 4 9 . 5 0Ball Raider C19 95 £16.50 Surgeon £49.96 E32.50 Animator/Images £103.50 £ 7 5 . 5 0Brainstorm E9.99 £7.50 S D.I. £29.95 £21.50 Aquisition 1.3 £249.00 E185.00BMX Simulator £14.98 £11.50 Strip Poker £9.95 £7.50 Analyze II £149.95 E102.50Crack £19.95 £16.50 Strip Poker II Plus £14.98 £11.50 Audiornaster £46.00 £ 3 2 . 0 0Chessmaster 2000 £24.95 E18.50 Skyfighter E14.95 £11.50 Animate 3D £129.95 E l 05.00Chess Art of £24.99 E18.50 S WOOP Or E19.95 E16.50 AC Basic £195.00 E132.50Cra2y Cars E24.95 E18.50 Seconds Out E19.99 E18,50 Butcher £29.95 £ 2 1 . 5 0Computer Hits £29.95 E21 Slaycon E19.95 El 6.50 C64 Emulator £69.96 E 5 0 . 5 0Cougans Run £14.98 E11.50 Sidewinder £9.99 £7.50 City Desk £114.95 £ 8 5 . 0 0Casino Roulette £19.99 E16.50 Space Guest £29.99 £21.50 CLI Mate £39.95 £ 2 9 . 5 0Dark Castle £24.99 E18.50 Space Ranger £9.99 £7.50 Calligrpaher £69.95 £ 5 0 . 5 0Defender of the Crown £29.95 £21.50 Starways £19.95 £16.50 Dos to Dos £39.95 £ 2 9 . 5 0Deja Vu £29.96 £21.50 Star Glider £24.95 el 8.50 Deluxe Music Con Set (Pal) £69.95 £ 4 8 . 5 0Destroyer £24.99 C18 50 Silent Service E24.95 El 8.50 Deluxe Video £69.95 E 4 8 . 5 0Deep Space C24 99 £18.50 Silicon Dreams £19.95 E16.50 Deluxe Print E24.95 E 1 8 . 5 0Earl Weaver Baseball E24,95 £18.50 Skyfox £14.95 E11.50 Deluxe Paint II (Pal) E69.95 E 4 8 . 5 0Eco C24 95 £16.50 Shadowgate E24. 95 El 8.50 Dvgipant (Pal) E59.99 E 4 2 . 5 0Eagles Nest £19.95 £16.50 Space Port E19.99 E16.50 Digi view 2.0 (Pal) £185.00 £142.50Eye £14.95 el 1 so Sonbad & The Throne of Falcon .C29.95 £21.50 Dgi view Ado', £29.95 £ 1 9 . 5 0Enlightenment - Shanghai E24.99 E18.50 0 1

9 a£57.50 £ 4 2 . 5 0

Firepower £24.99 £18.50 Scenery Disks 7 & 11 £ 2 4 . 9 5 Ea.E18.50 ea Draw Plus £184.00 £135.00Flintstones £19.95 E16.50 Strange New World £19.99 £16.50 Express Paint £79.95 £ 6 2 . 5 0Ferran Formula One £24.95 £18.50 Soccer Supremo £14.95 £11.50 Future Sound £175.00 £155.00Flight Simulator II E39.95 C29 50 Terrarnex £19.95 £16.50 Grabbit E29.95 £ 2 3 . 5 0Feud £9.99 E7.50 Temple of Apshai E24.99 £18.50 Hot 'n• Cool jazZ £9.95 £ 7 . 5 0Faery Tale Adv £49.99 E32.50 Terrorpods £24.99 £18.50 Hai Cato E59.95 E 4 5 . 5 0Football Fortunes £24.95 0 8 5 0 Tetris £19.99 £16.50 Intro Cad £59.95 E 4 5 . 5 0Frost Byte £14.96 £11.50 Time Bandits £19.99 £16.50 Instant Music £24.95 E 1 8 . 5 0Formula Grand Prix £ 1 4

.9 5

E11.50 Testdrive £24.95 £18.50 Lazerscript Driver e32.95 £ 2 9 . 5 0Footman £14.95 £11.50 Thunder Boy E14.98 £11.50 Lisp £149.95 £102.50Falcon F18 - Thunder Rolling £24.99 £18.50 Lattice C 4.0 £172.50 C122_50Garrison C24 9S £18.50 Ultima III £24.99 £18.50 Mcrofiche Filer £79 95 £ 8 2 . 5 0Grid Start E9 99 £7.50 Uninvited £29.95 £21.50 Module II Developer £149.95 £110.50Guild of Thieves C24 99 £18.50 Vyper £14.98 E11.50 Module Standard II £99.95 £ 7 2 . 5 0Goldrunner C24 95 £18.50 Vampire Empires E19.99 E16.50 Modual II £129.95 £ 9 5 . 0 0Gnome Ranger £14.95 E11.50 World Games £24.99 E18.50 Maxiplan A500 £99.95 £ 7 2 . 5 0Galactic Invasion £24.95 E18.50 Witness E29 99 £21.50 Maxiplan Plus £149.95 E110.50Golden Path £19.96 E16.50 Winter Olympiad E19.95 E16.50 Music Studio £34.99 £ 2 4 . 7 5Hardball E24.95 E18.50 Western Games £19.95 E16.50 Miao APL £99.95 £ 7 2 . 5 0Hollywood Poker £19.95 E16.50 Winter Games £24.99 £18.50 Marauder II C39 95 £ 2 9 . 5 0Hitchhikers Guide E29.99 £21.50 The Wall C14 98 £11.50 MCC Pascal C89 95 C 6 9 95Indoor Sports C24 99 E18.50 Xenon E19.99 £16.50 Organise C99 95 £ 7 2 . 5 0Impact £14.96 £11.50 Exiensor £9.99 E7,50 Publisher Plus e99,95 £ 7 2 . 5 0Insanity Fight £24.99 E18.50 G.L.F. Football £24.95 £18.50 Pro-Board £475.00 £375.00Jet..inxterJigsaw ManiaJoe BladeKickstart II

£39.95£24.95

£9.96£9.99£9.99

E26.50£18.50E7.50£7.50£7.50

SPECIAL OFFERS Al ' LOW PRICESCruncher FactoryCutthroats E 2 9 . 9 9 E 1 2 , 0 0Challenger £ 9 . 9 9 E 5 50

Pro-NetPro-VideoPi xrnateRock 'n• Roll

£475.00 £375.00£159.95 E127.50

£49.95 E:39,50£9.95 £ 7 . 5 0

King of Chicago £29.99 £21.50 Demolition £9.99 E5.50 Shakespear £129.95 E105.00Knight Oro £24.95 C18_50 Dr. Fruit £9.99 £5.50 Superbase Proteselonat £249.95 £185.00Kart no Grand Prix E9.95 £7.50 Deadline £24.99 £12.00 Superbase £89.95 £ 6 9 . 5 0Karate Kid II £24.95 £18.50 Final Trip £9.99 £5.50 Songs £57.50 E 3 9 . 5 0Karate £19.95 £16.50 Hacker E29.95 E12.00 Softwood Write & File £99.95 £ 7 2 . 5 0Kampegruppe £29.99 C21.50 Hacker II E29.99 E12.00 Scri bble II C99 95 £ 7 2 . 5 0Kwasirriodo £9.95 C7•50 Infidel £29.99 E12.00 Shell £49.95 £ 3 4 . 5 0Kings Quest Pack E24 95 £18.50 Las Vegas E9_99 £5.50 Sega Assembler E49.95 £ 3 4 . 5 0Lurking Horror £24.95 E18.50 Mindshadow £24.99 E12.00 Seasons & Holidays E9.95 £ 7 . 5 0Little Computer PeopleLeviathanLeaderboardLeaderboard TournamentLeisure Suit LarryLeather Goddess

£34.99£19.96£24.96

C9 99£24.99C29 95

£24.75E16.50£18.50

£7.50£18.50£21.50

PhalanxSpace BattleSpelibreakerSuspendedSuspectStation fall

£9.99£9.95

E29,95E29.99£29.99E29,99

£5.50£5.50

£12.00E12.00£12.00E12.00

Sculpt 3D (Pat)Sculpt 30 Animate (Pal)ToolkitTV Show (Pal)Tv Text (Pal)

£59.96 £ 5 9 . 5 0£129.96 C105 00

£39.95 £ 2 9 . 5 0£99.95 C72_50£99.95 E 7 2 . 5 0

Marble Maddnese £19.95 C16 50 Starcross £29.99 £12.00 Visa Write £99.99 £ 7 2 . 5 0Mind Forever £34.99 E24.75 Seastalker E29.99 £12.00 V.I.P. Prolessional £228.25 £165.00Mercenary E24.95 £16.50 Trinity E34.99 £12.00 Videoscape 3D £143.75 £110.00Moo bius £24.95 C18 50 Thai Boxing £9.99 £5.50 Video Titter 1.1 £110.00 £ 8 5 . 5 0Moon Mist £29.95 £21.50 Tess Times E24.99 £12.00 Word Perfect 4.1 028.85 El 75.00Mouse Trap £14.95 £11.50 Vaders E9.99 E5_50 Works The £149.95 £105.00Mean 18 £24.95 C18 50 Wishbringer £29.99 £1200 X Cad £460.00 £325.00Mission Elevator C19 99 £16.50 Zork I £29.99 £12.00 Zuma Fonts 1-3 C34.95ea E24.75eaMac 3 £19.95 £16.50 Zack II E29.99 £12.00 Blank Disks 10 £27.75 1 3 50W O Mission E9 99 £7.50 Zook III £29.99 £12.00NakarnotoNord and BenOthelloObliteratorOgrePawn

C9 99C25 00

£9.99£24.95£24.99£24.95

£7.50£19.00

£7.50£18.50C18 50£18.50

NEW RELEASES NOW IN STOCKArnegas E 1 4 . 9 5Flight Path 737 C 9 95Wizball £ 2 4 . 9 5Stock Market £ 1 9 . 9 5

£11.50£7.50

£18.50£18.50

NEW RELEASES NOW IN STOCKSilver £ 1 3 9 . 9 5 E115.00Reside C 9 9 95 £ 7 2 . 5 0On Line £ 1 1 0 . 4 6 E 9 9 . 5 0Prisim

Portal £34.99 £22.50 StOtlef Conflict intellitype

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irnyMats

E6.95

g EJ A M I G A SPECIALISTSUnit 1, Willowsea Farm, Spout Lane North,Stan well Moor, Staines, M id & M i l 9 6814/

Telephone: (0753) 682988

fasg-to-wes gollltroes •fasg-to-hoe 00//47t0l i g

High quality — Easy to use software —Fully supported

SPREAD2Intuition based spreadsheet with businessgraphics combining a comprehensivespecification with exceptional ease of use.* Fast operation and data entry* Over 60 functions incl Trig, Maths,

Conditionals. * Alpha/numer ic Sort* Block Move/Copy/Delete * Macros* Comprehensive printer control.

DATAIntuition based flat card database, ideal formailing lists, library catalogues etc.* Easy to use record layout design — no

programming language to learn.* Number of records limited only by the disc

capacity* Fast Search, Sort and Report facilities.

SEKAM E ' ' o w

A high speed 68000 assembler, operating at30,000 lines of code per minute.

COMM2Easy-to-use Communications packageIncluding Prestel and terminal emulation.

ROGET

£79.95ind

£49.95ind VA1

E49.95i n d V A T

E49.95incl VAT

Based on Longmans Pocket Roget's Thesaurus.Contains over 150,000 words and phrases.Operates as a background accessory, making itaccessible from most word processing (andother) programs.

P R OF E S S ION A L • S O F T W A R E

E29.95Ind VAT

GADGETA Gadget and Requester editor, generating CSource Code for Gadgets and Requesters.

Visual display of gadgets during editing* Generates Boolean, Proportional and String

gadgetsGadgets rrray have any numbers of pieces oftext in addition to images and borders forboth plain and selected formsRequesters may have text and borders

* Sizing and positioning of gadgets by mouseProgrammer defined Source names,GadgetID, MutualExclude and UserDatafields for all gadgets, also for text, borders,images and requesters.

TEXTText processor —C o m i n g s o o n !

£29.95ind VAT

09.95ind VAT

Phone or send for full details NO W:-12, Horseshoe Park, Pangbourne, Berks RG8 7JW

07357-4335 Telex:846741 KUMA GTelecom Gold: 81:KUM 001