Volume 1

MINEENNIall A Database Publication

Number 2
July 1988
E1.95

C O M P U T I N G

AMIGASOUND
Five super samplers
are put to the test
AMAMI'

AMIGAVIDEO
A guide to the
ultimate in
animation

• ••••
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AMG
I AGAMES
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A n e w generation in Amiga
•

• Exodus
—
•

• Sentinel
programming takes o f f
• Footman
• Barbarian .
• Ferrari Fl
• Star Fleet 1
 e--

The trilogy
—

Interactive fi ction
fromLPTIPi
tures - Lords of Time, Red Moon and The
T Price of Magik - come together in one
hpackage. Each has been enhanced and enlarged .1
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with
r more text than ever before - 60,000 mind- •
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it I /NM notJim gni'
gtio I I i • 4 NiromaItohimIona
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round every corner. There's a powerful new 1
eparser, and most disc versions include stunning 1 IS k g 1
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digitised pictures that help to dramatically 1 1 1 1 1

fheighten the atmosphere.

Screen shots from
LWhat the press have said: Atari ST version

eLORDS OF TIME: "Destined to become a classic" -

vComputing with the Amstrad.
eRED M OON : B e s t Graphical Adventure o r Best
Adventure
l of the Year- Zzap 64, Crash, Amtlx, e

CC!, and Amstrad Computer User. Spectrum (cassette) Plus 3 (disc) Atari ST
9 Commodore 64 (cassette or disc) Commodore Am iga
THE PRICE OF MAGIK: "Another superb adventure... Amstrad CPC (cassette or disc) Macintosh
'their best y e t" - Commodore User. A ls o a Crash Atari XL/XE (cassette or disc) Amstrad PC, IBM PC
sSmash. Amstrad PCW (disc) and compatibles
Apple II (disc)
m E19-95
o
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t Europa House, Adlington Park, Available f ro m a ll good stockists o r order direct b y sending a 1
Adlington, Macclesfield SK10 4NP. cheque or postal order made payable to Mandarin, together with
a your name and address. Price includes P&P. AccessNisa owners:
ENQUIRIES: 0625 878888 ORDER HOTLINE: 0625 879920 Phone our hotline or send your card number with your order,
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Fully guaranteed 3.5" 135IPI Verbatim discs
Single Sided Discs Double Sided Discs
Quantity Price Quantity Price
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 AMIG A SCENE
Managing Editor
DerekMeakin

Group Editor
AlanMcLachlan
7 NEWS
LATEST
W!
&Mot An update on the new Amiga prices. as
Simon. Rockman Plus hol gossip from America, Canada ba
and Germany as the Amiga shows it
Pmditchon Editor can offer the world a challenge.
A n ima t e d A
PeterGlover mig a

ADVENT!, IRES AZZE1311111•1

P a g e

1
.4r1 Editors 2 4
Mark Nolan
DougSteele

Editorial Assistant: THROUGHTHE SCULPT AND THEPLAIN MANS

ElaineRawlins PORTAL ANIMATE 3D GUIDETO CLI
Phil South continues his explanation El
DaveEriksson looks at two classic A pair of programs which work fa
News Editor 0111 games which have proved that even together to make the Amiga shine of what happens when you click on
MikeCowley the a l icon and face AmigaDos la
the ravages of time cannot harm a brighter than any other computer fii
but are extremely easy to use. naked. This month ASSIGN.
well written computer fantasy.
-tch ertisempot%tanager
lohnStomden
DTP GRAPHICS
Advertising Sales
WendyCothourne

GOLDDISK PHOTON
Erktorial Or; 234459
Adminastratiop 9625 M N PAGESEITER PAINT
Adverlimon: 0623 mem F
eas tinsio With a high resolution screen and a Trip the light fantastic with a great
Substriphons
ITSIAGooI fast processor the Amiga is a great new artists' package from ACtiViSiOn
Telecom ti
Ielei 295971 C . machine for desktop publishing, but Something which will make IIAM
Quoting lief 72,MAGse1 it needs good software to do it. mode far easier to manage.
Prestel 614561A1

1'0111
Dalabase
, Publicalioni Ltd. SIMULATION
Europa House,
411NiAdlinglon Park.
Adlinglon•bMacclesfield
o: SEM4NP.
11.15N 0 9 5 2 - 3 0 1 4

Amiga Computing welsomes articles for publi- INTERCEHOR

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primed and preterablv dookilevpacisd.Propram Electronic Arts latest game release is F/ A
Togsshould 6, 4(1ompaamedbs disc. Nose mit lase certainly its greatest. A military flight -
astamped seltaddrmsed envelope. otherwise the
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 1
PRINTERS
32 STAR I.C40 Vs
OKIMATE 20
Whenone printer costs half as much
as its nearest rival ii looks like a
bargain but in the printer stakes you
may often find less means more.
ge 24
• ilOUSE CALI.
ELECTRONIC
ARTS
lion
Electronic Arts has been an Amiga
on fan since well before Commodore
launched the machine, John Minson
finds out more about the company.
SOUND
3 SAMPLE
BAME
Five of the lop Amiga sound samplers
arecompared and put to the test for
three major criteria: Sound quality,
ease of use and value for money.
SOFTWARE
AMIGA
ARCADE
?19 The joystick hotshots rate the newies
in the shops, killing Barbarians and
avoiding the evil Sentinel: racing
Formula I and joining Star Fleet.
HINTS
GAME
KILLER
Join Max l'he Hacks" Tennant as he
and his friends explain how to win at
Bubble Bobble and find your way
round Activision's ['framer.
• C O N T E N T S I
S Y MP OS IUM
DEVELOPERS
FACETO FACE
Toeavesdrop on the Washington
conference Dave Parkinson battles This month sees the launch of the Amiga
Kennedy airport and wins, but loses Computing Awards. These are given to
out to Autoboot and a Copper. outstanding products reviewed in our pages. in
LANGUAGE
Olympic tradition there are three types: Gold.
Silver and Bronze.
The Silver award is given to a product which
offers outstanding value for money. A Bronze
award goes to one which is particularly we ll
made or a program which shines_
The supreme Gold award can only be won by
TRUE a product which is both exceptionally good
value and well made.
BASIC
Very few products will win an award - fewer
When the original authors of Basic get
still an Amiga Computing Gold. Don't expect a
together again to do things properly Gold winner every month - they will be saved
they have the benefit of hindsight— for the cream of the Amiga crop.
and it really shows in the end result.
ADVICE
QUESTIONSAND
ANSWERS
Whatever your problem we have a
panel of Amiga experts who are here
to help you solve it. Ask and we'll do
our best to put you on the right track.
LETTERs
Samp a t t i c Page 39
FROMOUR
POSTBAG
Our readers write and we reply:
ElL a , IRONIC ARTS
Views on piracy and first comments
on the first issue of Amiga Computing.
Plus prizes for your best letters.
ENDPIECE
GURU'S
HAUNT
We've all seen the Guru meditation
message, But who is the Guru and
why is he meditating? To find the
facts we delve back into history. Electronic Arts Puge 36
M u MIMI A M I G A W I W I TI NG 5
 Link your Amiga to the outside world with...
mucroLiDK
Electronic ma il - The cheapest
and fastest fo rm of
communication possible. It costs
the same to send a message to
II
one ma ilb o x as to 500
1
Telex - u p with 96,000 telex
subscribers in the UK and 1.5
million wo rld wid e . You can even
send and receive telexes after
office hours o r wh ile travelling_
Telemessages - Type in yo u r
message before Bom and
delivery is guaranteed by fi rst
post the next day lexcept Sunday),
anywhere in the UK and USA.
Tele-booking - Reserve train•and
theatre tickets, check fl ight details
worldwide, o r order f ro m a vast
range of products - fro m fl o we rs
to floppy discs.
Advice - on a team of pro-
fessional, legal and financial
advisors as and when you need
them, f o r both business and
personal problems,
Company Obtain facts about any
British limite d company in
seconds, and fu lly analysed
financial information on over
100,000 companies.
Translation - Access the biggest
and mo st up-to-date
multi-lingual dictionary
in the wo rld , with
over 380.090 words.
News - Use the powerful search
commands to pinpoint vital
business information fro m the
wo rld s leading news services,
newspapers and periodicals.
Radiopaging - If you also have a
pocket radiopager yo u 'll be
alerted each time an urgent
message arrives in yo u r mailbox.
So you're always in touch.
Gateways - Get through to Ne w
York in just five seconds - o r key
into the EEC computer in
Luxembourg, wh ich links you to
600 databases throughout Europe.
When you join MicroLink you've got
the whole business world at your
fingertips - 24 hours a day. You'll
have immediate access to ALL the
facilities offered by Telecom Gold
and a great deal more besides.
All y ou need - apart f rom y our A mi g a - is a
modem, whic h plugs int o y our t elephone wall
socket and s uit able c ommunic at ions software.
We have prov ided a list of possible c ombin-
ations (left), ranging f rom the very cheapest to
ones whic h can aut omat ic ally dial t he Mic ro-
Link t e l e p h o n e n u m b e r a n d c o n n e c t y o u
Typical comms packages directly t o t he s erv ic e - all y ou hav e t o do is
type in y our pers onal s ec urit y pas s word.
A Pace: Ni g h t i n g a l e V21, V 2 3 Whic hev er equipment y ou use, y ou wi l l be
ma n u a l - d i a l m o d e m 4 - able t o c all Mic roLink , o p e n y o u r mailbox ,
Rub ycomm Sof t ware R S 2 3 2 save t o dis c any mes s ages wa i t i n g f o r y ou,
lead (1199 inc c arriage & VAT) and dis c onnec t in as lit t le as t wo minut es -
Pace: Linnet V21, V23 aut odial
m o d e m * R u b y c omm s of t -
ware + RS232 lead (1257 inc
c arriage and VAT)
More than
90 per cent
C Mi r a c l e : W S 4 0 0 0 V21, V 2 3 of subscribers
aut odial m o d e m + Ru b y -
c o mm s of t ware + RS232 lead can connect to
the Microlink
(f
- computer at
2 local call
8 rates.
6
i
n
c
c
O M N I. . 4 1 • ,
a 1 1 0 ,
Please send me full details about Microlink, and information
1 1 0
r f fi
sheets about the following hardware and software options
l a b
•
I rT O FIND OUT MORE 'please circlel: •
Fill in the coupon and •
A B C
i send it to the address •
•
a below. You will receive
Name
g
1fu l l details of services
e and costs, together with
Address
I 8a n application form,
,Complete this and
I i w i t h i n days you and
V your Amiga will be Postcode
A able to use all the
services of Micr olink Send to: MicroLink, Europa House, Adlington Park,
T
1) and Telecom Gold. Adlington, Macclesfield SK10
Aimc7
J
r
• • • • • • • •
AMIGA SCENE
PRICE CUT GIVES AMIGA
PARITY WITH ATARI ST
T N a mov e that has s ent
's hoc k waves thr ough the
computer industry, Commo-
dore has slashed E100 fr om
the pr ic e o f the entry-level
Amiga.
This puts the Amiga 500 —
at E399.99 — i n t o d ir e c t
c ompetition w i t h A t a r i ' s
520STFM, w hic h was only
recently on the receiving end
of a price hike, thanks to the
world shortage of dram chips.
And w i t h t h e t w o
machines c o m p e t in g f o r
essentially the same market,
Commodore is confi dent the
Amiga's reputation w i l l b e
the dec iding fac tor for end
users.
On the whole, dealers also
welcomed the news. " I was
delighted to see prices go up
on t h e A t a r i " . s aid Stev e
Kingston o f Bath Computer
Shack. " An d a reduction on
the Amiga w i l l mak e even
fur ther inr oads f o r C om-
modore".
But h e had reservations
about the long term benefits
of price cutting. c a n ' t see
Atari sitting back and doing
nothing — there have already
been rumours of reductions.
But a Dutch auction between
the t w o w i l l mak e things
MICROLINK HOLDS THE LINE ON EMAIL PRICE INCREASES
DESPITE t h i s m o n t h ' s
surprise Mic r onet/Pr es tel
price increases, Mic r oLink
says it w ill not be forced by
BT into raising its charges in
line.
From J uly 1 M ic r o n e t /
Prestel subscriptions w ill go
up from E66 to E79.95 a year
for home users, w it h bus i-
ness users paying f:119.95.
Peak time charges are to
rise from 6p a minute to 7p,
and free off-peak usage has
been scrapped — users w i l l
now h a v e t o p a y l p a
minute.
For the first time, full peak
very l i v e l y f o r t h e c u s -
tomers".
A Northern dealer had no
reservations: " I t ' s jus t t h e
shot in the arm the machine
needs — sales s o f a r hav e
been s t eady r a t h e r t h a n
spectacular", he told Amiga
Computing.
" A n e w p r ic in g p o lic y ,
taken w i t h t h e r a p i d l y
inc reas ing s oftwar e bas e,
makes t h e A m i g a a v e r y
tempting p r o p o s i t i o n —
especially w h e n it ' s meas-
ured against the ST".
Surprisingly, some dealers
are n o t par tic ular ly happy
with the idea. John Daniels
of Cut Price Software thinks
the Amiga sells well enough
on it s o w n mer its any way
and that a price war is hardly
needed.
"It's a s low s eller at this
time o f the year, but it was
ahead of the ST two months
ago and w i l l be again", he
said. " T he ST is a glorifi ed
games machine — I have one
myself but I wouldn't dream
of using it for business.
"There s hould b e a pric e
distinction of at least £100 to
reflect the difference in the
c apabilities o f t h e t w o
machines".
time rates will also apply on
Saturdays between Barn and
6pin.
However, although s ome
c ommunic ations in d u s t r y
observers are predicting that
Mic r oL in k w i l l h a v e t o
f ollow s uit , t h e c ompany
says its annual subscription
will remain at E36 for home
and business users alike and
it w i l l c ontinue t o operate
off-peak rates for the whole
of Saturday and Sunday.
Head o f Mic roLink Derek
Meakin said: "The increases
in the cost o f using Prestel
stem from pressures that we
V E T another Amiga virus
has been identifi ed — but
fi nding it is another matter.
Christened t h e R y t e
Bandit, the new virus makes
its presence felt — after an
apparently random length of
time — b y f r e e z in g t h e
mac hine, c o r r u p t in g t h e
Workbench and los ing any
program running at the time.
The net result is that users
are r e t u r n in g a p p a r e n t ly
damaged machines to dealers.
and s w a mp in g t h e m w i t h
calls f o r reassurance a n d
S CHOOLS
to benefi ti nf rCanada
o m a n ar
e we
Commodore marketing exer-
cise w h i c h o f f e r s t h e m
Amiga software at a quarter
of list price.
Project Software inc ludes
more than 100 educ ational
software t i t l e s w o r t h
$10,000.
When a school board buys
between 3 a n d 5 0 A m ig a
N Amiga c an e n jo y t h e
O
thrill
who
o f becoming the man
W br ok e the bank a t
Monte Car lo — and i f the
a
winnings
n aren't real money,
neither are the losses.
y Casino Roulette from CDS
o
Software (0302 21134) is an
inv
n itation t o t h e w o r ld o f
high
e society gambling for up
to eight players at a time.
w ablished roulette betting sys-
The p r o g r a m a u t o -
i
t
h
a
have b e e n s u c c e s s f u lly
n
resisting s inc e M ic r o Link
started over three years ago.
" We h a v e r ejec ted a l l
arguments t o inc reas e t he
cost o f our services — even
when Telecom G old upped
its charges substantially last
year we were able to protect
our users from their effect.
"As a result Mic rol.ink has
grown by leaps and bounds
and it is not surprising that
our subscribers for m by far
the largest s ingle gr oup o n
Telecom Gold".
Protests f r o m c o m m s
enthusiasts have been fl ood-
Lurking
bandit
advice. A n added c ompli-
cation is that the Byte Bandit
is undetectable b y ex is ting
Virus Killers , though it can
be tr ac k ed d o w n w i t h a
sector editor.
And users are compoun-
ding the problem by unwit-
tingly t r a n s f e r r i n g t h e
hidden virus to uncorrupted
discs.
Soft sell
to schools
500s it can get the entire lib-
rary for $2,500. I f an order
tops 100 machines then a ll
the software is free.
Canadian schools already
get one free Amiga 500 for
every two they buy.
Break
the bank
ma t ic a lly c a lc u la t e s w h a t
each play er has w o n a n d
how they stand, and gives a
s tatis tic al analy s is o f the
previous 370 s pins o f the
wheel.
It als o inc ludes s ix es t-
tems. Price E19.99.
ing i n t o Prestel follow ing
the announc ement o f the
increases in charges.
Ty pic al M i c r o n e t u s e r
Dave G ilber t f r o m Der by -
shire estimates his average
bill w o u ld r is e b y 120 per
cent,
He said: " O f f peak use of
Micronet — 50p an hour Brit-
ish Telecom and the new 60p
an hour Prestel — means that
as m y B T b i l l is presently
E100 f r o m N e t u s e t h i s
would mak e a new cost o f
L220. "This I could not afford
—I w o u l d hav e n o ot her
choice but to say goodbye".
tly I 988 . 4 AftG.4 CO MP/ M N (
 ermany's software
slow to emerge
GREGOR NEUMANN
reporting from West Germany
C O M P A R E D t o England,
the G er man s o f t w a r e
scene is a rather unprofess-
ional o r g a n is a t io n . T h e
industry consists mainly o f
s mall s oftwar e c ompanies
founded by computer freaks
who tr y to s ell products on
their own.
The w h o le G erman s oft-
ware market is controlled by
two m a j o r d is t r ib u t o r s .
A riolas oft a n d Rus hwar e,
who handle products for the
big Br it is h a n d Amer ic an
software houses.
Given the lack of German
software houses, ther e has
been no strong competition —
no o n e has been a b le t o
establish a successful label to
become a n effec tiv e t h ir d
force.
The lac k o f German soft-
ware houses meant a dearth
of German software as local
programmers f elt they had
no outlet for their products.
In 1983, for example, there
was only one small indepen-
dent c o m p a n y K i n g s o f t ,
ranged against the giants.
Kings oft s t a r t e d w i t h
budget s oftwar e, a n d has
since g r o w n s l o w l y t o
become the leading label —
but not distributor — in Ger-
many. In fact, today the com-
pany employs many German
software developers.
With the rise of 16 bit com-
puters, notably the Amiga.
two more companies rapidly
established themselves in the
marketplace — Rainbow Arts
(Garrison, Bad Cat. G r eat
Giana Sisters) a n d Mic r o-
Partner ( Wes ter n G ames ,
Pink Panther). The two com-
panies a r e b a c k e d b y
Rushware a n d Ar iolas oft,
8 ANHG A CO MP UTI NG P l y Iglia
which are now trying to acti-
vate German program devel-
opers.
Rainbow Arts especially is
growing r apidly and has its
sights set o n bec oming the
biggest s oftwar e hous e i n
Germany. T o this end the
c ompany has entic ed t h e
hest team of programmers —
Magic By tes — away f r o m
Micro-Partner.
While t h is was the fi r s t
time a label had s witc hed
companies. the move has its
echoes in Andy Braybrook's
decision to work for FIT.
T wo ques tions r e ma in .
however: Who owns the pro-
grams s t ill under develop-
ment, a n d w h o ow ns t h e
name of the label?
Micro-Partner bought the
licence to publish the offi cial
T om a n d J er r y c omput er
game with the intention that
Magic Bytes should write the
game. But once Magic Bytes
joined R a in b o w , n o o n e
seemed to know who exactly
had the rights.
The c o n f u s i o n w a s
compounded b y the welter
of contracts inv olv ing v ari-
ous per mutations between
Magic Bytes, Micro-Partner,
Ar iolas oft, Rus hwar e a n d
Rainbow Ar ts , and a t one
stage i t seemed that only a
court case could unravel the
tangle.
In t h e event, however, a
s olution w as w or k ed out .
Both t h e Magic Bytes label
and the licence for Tom and
Jerry b e l o n g t o M i c r o -
Partner — o n l y t h e p r o -
grammers s w i t c h e d t o
Rainbow Arts.
We'll have to wait and see
whether Mic ro-Partner c an
fi nd new developers to fi nish
Tom and Jerry for the Amiga.
The Micro way (Europe) Flicker Fixer
Board for the Commodore Amiga
Easy on
the eyes
n ETTER k nown for its PC
numerics and maths co-
processors. Mic r oWay has
entered t he Am ig a mar k et
with the Flicker-Fixer board.
Managing direc tor Simon
Shute said: "This is our first
ever product for the Amiga,
but i t fi ts in %rery w ell w ith
our s tr ategy o f o f f e r in g
upgrades that mak e genu-
Amiga to
the rescue
r i ROWING success of the
. with the strong performance
in CAo m m o d o r e I n t e r -
national's third quarter prof-
m cent o f our revenue i n the
its of $9 million and sales of
i
$200 million.
g
a
Short of
i
ribbons
s ribbons", s aid Meedmore's
t
IT whould appear that Com-
modore
e can produce a prin-
ter — but not the ribbons to
m "One of the reasons for the
go with it. At least that seems
to hea the case with its latest
i
offering f o r the Amiga, f o r
owners
n of' the n e w 1500C
machine
f have been hav ing
great d i f fi c u l t y t r a c k i n g
a
down extra cartridges.
Incfact the situation proved
too tproblematic for Commo-
doreo— it recommended cus-
tomers
r to seek adv ic e fr om
Meedmore D i s t r i b u t i o n
(051-521 2202).
"We have had a number of
inely useful improvements to
system performance.
"Previously. Amiga users
have had to contend w ith a
high resolution mode that is
so bad it almost hurts to look
at it. Mos t users have stuck
w ith t h e l o w o r m e d iu m
resolution modes.
"The Flicker-Fixer allows
the Amiga to achieve its true
potential f o r d i s p l a y o f
superb graphics — something
it has never done before". It
costs E345 fr om Mic r oWay
(01-541 5466).
In t h e s ame per iod las t
year Commodore profi t was
only $1 million with sales of
$5170 million.
Chief ex ec ut iv e I r v i n g
Gould said: "We'r e pleased
of the Amig a pr oduc t lin e
which accounted for 45 per
quarter".
inquiries fr om ir ate 1500C
owners w a n t i n g p r i n t e r
manager Geoff Hall. "After a
great deal o f searching w e
managed t o secure supplies
from a European dealer.
delay in being able to fulfi l
orders w a s t h a t i t w a s
extremely diffi cult to identify
the ribbon type", he added.
"Howev er, n o w that w e
have supplies the only other
hurdle t o overcome is the
price. At E24.97 each it may
seem a little high but we are
trying t o have them manu-
fac tured o n o u r b e h a lf ,
which should reduce the cost
considerably".
 • A M I G A S C E N E E

Activision early VCS cartridges.

New t i t l e s i n c l u d e
becomes AfterBurner, which is being
forecast as number 1 for next
Mediagenic Christmas, Time Scanner - a
pinball game, R-type - the
latest scrolling shoot-ein-up
Albest
crIvisioN, oneAmiga
established of the and a n u m b e r o f o t h er
software h o u s e s , h a s arcade conversions.
changed i t s n a m e t o Mediagenic w i l l explore
Mediagenic. The Activision different markets - and not
name w i l l remain, as t h e necessarily computer based
games label, w it h t h e re- ones - with an emphasis on
introduction o f t h e lo g o presentation tools and inter-
which graced the company's active video.
Picking software and
Teletext plus pictures and sound in
any country using the PAL countering the virus
for Amiga colour system.
Other facilities, including JIM BUTTERFIELD
the ability to save o r print
to pages, allow the user to get reporting from Canada
A N of international version
Nlicrotext's Teletext more f ro m Teletext. A n d
Adapter is now available for Microtext (0705 595694) has rT1 FIE Amiga has acquired a ANY programs?" Today, the
ers
a the Amiga. T h e modifi ed also included a system t o respectable number o f Amiga question is: -
tis product copes with the dif- speed u p page availability serious programs. I n North can
H oI wpick my way through
ferent television frequencies and allow instant recall o f America, Commodore did its the huge mass o f free pro-
ok
and standards - which are the last 16 pages received. bit t o g i v e t h e softw are grams?"
LCk
im not compatible with those of Connected to the computer industry m o m en t u m b y Free, o r almost free pro-
the U K - used b y various via the parallel printer port, sponsoring a promotional grams come in three classes.
countries. the T elet ext A d a p t e r i s deal for user groups. The leg al interpretations
ws And in addition to hand-
rue supplied as a free standing The deal tied together new vary. Pu b lic domain pro-
of ling t h e s e t h e a d a p t e r case coloured to match the users, user groups and soft- grams are common property;
provides access to teletext Amiga. Price E169.50. ware houses b y making a you may give them away,
ng
It bundle of programs - home sell them, copy them, change
or business - available at an them, or feed them to your
a Take over attractive p rice t o system budgie.
: Free distribution ones may
purchasers. The offer put a
lot of professional level soft- be copied and given away.
St B ETTER Deadofthan
is the name Alien
a the first ware into user hands. An d but not sold or changed. The
as Amiga game o n t h e n ew since one of the most impor- author retains copyright for
of label Electra. legal purposes, and often
tant buying-decision ques-
It i s written b y Oxford tions is: "Wh o do I know insists that a program may
Digital Enterprises - ODE - who has it?", a lot of good be copied o n ly i f accom-
ed 1Arhich started the scrolling over". The game is described panied b y f u l l documen-
programs d e v e l o p e d a
ce shoot-'em-up as a spoof. but as slime, so you might have credibility base. tation.
ne according to ODE's David trouble holding a copy, and Shareware programs are
er Pringle: "The aliens just took it will cost £19.95. Deluxe Paint I I leads the
those w h e r e t h e au t h o r
he field o f drawing programs.
WordPerfect is undoubtedly hopes that the user will send
Bundled to more than &MO. the m o s t re v e re d w o r d money. The last have been of
only limited success
An Introductory Graphics processor. SuperBase, from
software pack - Express Paint, Page- Precision Software i n t h e The free program distri-
bution system i s o n e o f
flipper and introCAD - is UK, is highly rated for data-
's available at E99.95. w h ile base a p p l i c a ioyful turmoil. The telecom-
a S ERIOUS so f t w are abe
t munication networks buzz
sensible prices should would-be sound samplers t i There's
o n s . no clear winner in w
on the way for Amiga users can get started with Perfect the spreadsheet race, b u t
es with a promotion recently Sound a n d E C F M i d e i
products, questions, boasts
Maxillan w as p art o f the and rumours. But there is
launched by Precision Soft- Interface for £124.95. t
Commodore promotion and fear of the dreaded virus.
ware (01-330 7166). The D T P bundle, Viz a- h
u
r The company is offering Write and Citydesk, is now
seems to be well regarded. In
other areas - sound, an i- n
Commodore has a team -
IS discounted software bundles priced at E149.95. VizaWrite CATS - whose task is, in
mation, communications - e
fy for a variety of applications. also features in the £199.95 part, t o track and counter
the best package may be the w
viruses. A n d a separat e
And while the promotion is Business Pack, along w ith one that fits your particular
aimed at dealers, end users Logistix and Superbase Per- group
v i s d evelo p in g a
needs, budget and hardware reward fund to help locate
too will feel the benefits. sonal. e
configuration. and prosecute virus-creators.
Savings are considerable. Precision's 2 5 0 - p l u s On t h e non-commercial r I'm n o t su re about t h e
The Professional I m a g e dealers will have the option s
Processing bundle - Digipic, to sell the bundles intact or side, group librarians fi nd prosecute part; apart from
PIXmate and Paxall Video themselves swamped w it h i legal side, can you effec-
the
split them, and the promo-
Camera - n o w retails a t free programs. In the early o
tively sue someone who has
tion w ill be backed b y an
E499.95: Bought separately extensive advertising cam- days of computers, the ques- the
n mental maturity of a four-
tions was "Where can I find year-old?
s
the packages would add up paign.
o
f lull' I 981i AM / G A ( i ) M P ( ,
I1NG 9
• A M I G A S C E N E E
Deeper
into space
C TAR Wa r s t h e m o vie
L./eventually spawned Star
Wars the coin-op for Atari -
and Domark's bestselling
conversion for the Amiga.
Now D o m a r k ( 0 1 - 9 4 7
5622) i s following u p it s
success with the release o f
The Empire Strikes Back, a
one-player g a m e w h i c h
bears more than a passing
resemblance to the movie.
The player controls both
Luke Skyw alker' s sn o w -
speeder and Elan Solo's Mil-
lenium Falcon
Strong Amiga showing at Comdex
C O MMOshowing
DO RE m ad
strong at ethea
recent Comdex show in the
USA w h en i t u n veiled a
number of Amiga add-ons.
The twice-yearly Comdex
presentation i s aim ed a t
Commodore d ealers a n d
value-added retailers, t h e
main attendees.
Commodore's presence is
as much f o r sales as f o r
public relations — and does
wonders f o r boosting an d
maintaining t h e company
name in the minds of profes-
sional computer buyers. An
appearance is an expensive
proposition, but it pays off in
many ways.
The show, held in Atlanta,
Georgia, d r e w a re c o rd
60,000 visitors.
Much interest was shown
in t h e n e w Commodore
products, although no indi-
cation was given o f prices,
nor when they w ill become
available.
The only surprise was a
20Mb SCSI hard disc for the
Amiga 500, with sockets for
2Mb o f additional memory
in the expansion box.
The other products had
been previously hinted at to
some extent — an expanded
Chip memory graphics chip
set, a 6 4 0 x 4 0 0 n o n -
interlaced display chip set, a
Commodore bi-sync monitor
to w o r k w i t h t h e n o n -
interlaced display, the new
AmigaDOS 1 . 3 , a n d t h e
68020 coprocessor hoard,
with a n d w i t h o u t U n i x
System V. release 3.2.
a A m t a i M N I P I T I N T ; j I v 7FIRR
After Star Wars Luke Skywalker takes to space again
courtesy of Domark*s The Kmpire Strikes Rack
BY JOHN FOUST*
Aside from a modest booth
on t h e t rad e show fl o o r.
Commodore held a press and
dealer e v e n t i n t w o
ballrooms at a nearby hotel.
One ballroom held about
125 Amiga 500s and 2000s
while the other housed a
large projection television
screen and several Amigas
for the various presentations.
After a series o f enthusi-
astic speeches from Commo-
dore management, musician
and p ro g ram m er R o g e r
Powell gave a performance
of Amiga Midi music, using
his Textures program.
Los Angeles artist Brumm-
bar w a s a l s o o n h a n d ,
showing the animations and
still images he makes with
VideoScape and paint pro-
grams. Commodore printed
a poster with a montage of
his images, which Brumm-
bar autographed.
Brummbar w o rks w i t h
celebrity Timothy Leary —
now a figurehead in the sci-
ence fi c t i o n c y b e rp u n k
movement — making an i-
mations a n d im ag es f o r
promoting Leary's recent
books.
Pro image
APART f ro m t h e creative
and entertainment potential
of the Amiga, i t was clear
that Commodore is hell-bent
on cultivating a professional
image for our machine. Most
.market,
Amigas in the Comdex stand
had FlickerFixer boards t o
avoid t h e annoying in t er
flicker. so the Amiga dis-
plays were indistinguishable
from the other EGA-style dis-
plays at the show.
Presentations
THE Amiga 2000 can attract
IBM PC compatible buyers.
Many corporate purchasing
departments require an IBM
PC compatible machine, and
the Amiga 2000 is a way to
get t he I B M compatibility
along w it h t he video pre-
sentation ab ilit ies o f t h e
Amiga sid e. I n t his w ay.
Amigaphiles can sneak the
2000 into a company to do
presentation graphics, while
retaining t h e ever-popular
PC compatibility.
One example of a profes-
sional application was Com-
modore's Professional Video
Adapter, o r PVA. The PVA
includes a digitiser and two-
source switchable genlock. It
was shown connected t o a
video camera attached to a
microscope. Micro sco p ic
organisms swam on a slide,
and the PVA digitised and
genlocked their image.
On t h e t a i l o f recen t
announcement of the Amiga
2500 AT and U X machines,
another part of the Commo-
dore stand showed the 68020
co-processor running Unix.
Several w e e k s a g o , a
debate ensued as to whether
Conversions
lining up
I its stamp o n t h e 16- bit
N O cean So f t w are
(a0 6 1 - 8 3 2 6 6 3 3 ) h a s m o r e
than
d 2 0 products d u e f o r
release over the next f ew
e
months — an d a siz eable
tProportion are destined for
e Amiga.
the
r Jackal and Gryzor are in
the
m pipeline, as are Platoon.
Army Moves, Green Beret
i
and Co m b at Sch o o l, a l l
n
established f avourit es i n
e
othere formats w i t h
armchair
d warriors.
b
i
d
t
o
the Amiga 2500 would ever
s
be released in the US.
e In a Wall Street Journal
tinterview, CBM chairman of
the board Irving Gould said
that the machines would be
sold in the US. Within days
of this interview , several
other Commodore u p p er
management members
denied this.
While the 2500 machines
are actually composed of off-
the-shelf C o m m o d o r e
boards, availability o f the
Unix so f t w are i s a k e y
problem.
Chances are, i f the soft-
ware is available in the US at
all, i t w i l l b e so ld o n l y
through a f e w .
dealerships
s e l e c t that can handle
the extra level o f support
necessary f o r the complex
Unix operating system.
The 68020 board's Un ix
was demonstrated running a
proprietary w i n d o w i n g
interface. Most probably, the
Unix w ill b e shipped with
Commodore's version of the
X-Windows w i n d o w i n g
interface.
One Commodore engineer
was willing to talk about a
recently developed 68030
coprocessor board f o r the
Amiga 2000. I t runs at 25
Mhz. but it has not been of-
ficially acknowledged in any
way. •
*John Foust has been an Amiga
writer a nd Amigaphile since
Day O n e . H e h a s re gul a r
columns i n several US Maga-
z in e s..

T IM ESOF T
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ProWrile (V2.0) W o rd p ro ce ssin g fully Integrated with graphics £ 7 9 . 9 5
VizaWrite Desktop H ig h performance desktop I:Ka/listing wordreccessor E 8 9 .9 5
Word Petted A m i g a version DI the No. 1 be st selling wordprocessor , £199.95
Publisher Plus E n h a n c e d version 'of the original desktop publisher E 9 9 . 9 5
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hoiy M R A M I G A CO MP V TI NG I I
r• % f a ; •
( y 1 5 .

T appeared in the mid-seventies
H was to be found on many
and
E
mainframe computers. For all its
success,
o there were some who wanted
to
r see an improved operating system,
ias Adventure only accepted a simple
gshowing each character's status. This
i In 1977 a group at the famous
Massachusetts
n Institute of Technology
developed a new parser that would
a
understand commands like: KILL
lTROLL WITH SWORD. OPEN GREY
A
BOX and GET ALL BOOKS EXCEPT
d
THE RED ONE.
v The first game to use this was Zork.
e
Originally developed on a Dec 10. it
n later converted for other
was
t
computers but in each case required a
u
memory of megabytes rather than
r
kilobytes. With the rise of the micro.
the
e operating system for Zork was
rewritten
g in Zit.. Zork Implementation
Language.
a The saving in memory was
fantastic.
m always get a useful answer.
e Presently Infocom has games for
most tastes but recently discontinued
production of over half of the Amiga
titles. Some are real classics and
should be in everyone's collection. If
you act quickly, at least one mail
order house has many for only E12.
Buy now. I'm sure you'll not regret it.
A feature of an Infocom game is
P highly descriptive text. Although
the
A
complex commands are possible they
require the first six letters of a word
R defeat its present manifestation.
to
T be typed in, rather than the more
usual
f four. Infocom games are as
good
r as anything else on the market,
but I feel that we should not be
o >( 0 ) ( 2 ) < N I P
blinded
m by hype. I wonder how many
players actually type in TAKE
iEVERYTHING EXCEP'I"l'HE BLUE
tBOOK, rather than TAKE ALL,
s
followed by DROP BLUE BOOK.
p Underground Zork 1 is a great
a 0 : 2 5 4
adventure. Of all the early Infocom
rofferings. this is the one for the
sbeginner. It is not easy, but is fun and
e
brings a great sense of achievement
r
when you win through each puzzle.
. Also known as The Great
tUnderground Adventure, Zork 1
starts
h outside an apparently deserted
house in the middle of wooded
e '
country. The entrance to the
m v 4rip
aunderground domain is in the house.
i
hut the countryside around also has
hidden treasures. Your prime aim is
n
to gather treasures and put them in a
trophy case.
Drawing a map as you go is vital
but complications arise when
exploring the two mazes. The
standard method to map a maze is to
drop objects so you can identify a
location when you go back to it.
However there is a thief roaming
around, so objects dropped may not
be there when you return. You will
meet other characters. some of whom
you will have to fight. This was a first
For the original Zork.
DIAGNOSE will display your state
of health and, if wounded, the
number of turns to full recovery. The
location descriptions are very
colourful and you may choose their
length with VERBOSE. BRIEF or
SUPERBRIEF.
There is the unusual option of
being able to ask questions with
commands such as WHAT IS XXX?
or WHERE IS XXX?. You may not
Try asking WHAT IS A GRUE?
Grues are Infocom's own special
nestles that will grab you if you stay
too long in the dark. A battery
operated lantern is found in the
house. Use it with care, as batteries
will not last forever. There are
matches, candles anti a torch so. keep
your eyes open for sources of light.
The underground system is not a
natural cave system as in the original
Adventure, but is createdaby a
mixture of magic and really high
technology. You will come across a
hi-tech dam, a coal mine and the
entrance to Hades. This game is
devious: watch your score closely to
§
t
f EARN 1 1 : 7 5 L : 1 6
r North
- ti.f
> fR E4S 4T • N. I N O <
4 4 4 • tr.
4 4 1 near
Escaping l am, monsters V 4 1a small l awn the
r4
- b• y
4 4
E A D V E N T U R E S E
see how well you are doing.
Do not take too much undergromul
to start with: you will not be able to
carry many treasures hack to that
trophy case. You can find several
weapons. some of which are more
effective than others. Read books very
carefully. Remember that they may
have more than one page. and SAVE
your game position before pressing
any buttons.
If Zork is a classic text adventure.
then Exodus: Ultima III has got to
have a similar standing in the field of
computer role playing games
(CRPGsl. It is produced by Origin
Systems and distributed in the UK by
Microprose.
N OT
the surprisingly,
third in a series
Ultima
of CRPGs.
III is I
and II are not available for the Amiga.
but IV should be here any time. and
V is in the final stages of completion.
Several early CRPGs gave you the
option of assuming the persona of
various different classes of character —
fighter, cleric or magic user and so
on.
Ultima III was one of the first to
enable you to venture forth with three
companions, each haying attributes
anti characteristics of their own.
The underlying plot of the Ultima
series is the rise of evil in the land of
Sosaria. Called through time anti
space by Lord British, your mission is
to gather a team of adventurers to
Although the setting anti weapons are
111.
> 140
. UDR
H 14
:30 L : 5 2 G
F:
KIR
FET 1 1 : 0 0 1 : 3 1
F :
801 1
NBC N : 9 1 0 1 : 3 0
1 : = 0 F•
4: 1,oc5n F : 0 a 3 5
North
North
South
South
Pass
F o
Z tr at t hs f o r u -
pail h'N ship is engul fed by a whi r i pnol
,rt)11- twat AMI GA I I I MPI r l i NG
 would be ranger. thief, druid and
4 > (2 ) ( 6 ) t< wizard, providing good fighting
PT O R
•• H: 3 0 ability and characters who can cast
•• healing and offensive spells. You are
a
1*. „ •• K IA now ready to journey into the
F unknown lands of Sosaria. The wind
•. H: 0 0 L : 3 1
F: in your hair, open rolling plains
-. 3
B OR IS behind you and a small walled city
H: 9 9 L : 3 0 before you.
F:
III o w
Mt M
MO M O
I illie MB TA N IS
MI — I
• imil I N FAN H : 7 5 1 : 1 6
• M R ROB M I WM
= OOP .
: 6 5 0 F:0333 T one character indicating your
I I= =1 = = = . = =
=
I S== . OM
= MO
a = =. = •
= OM= E=n =
I
M1 = I=
I= •
WM S I %
I NM UM IMP In --CONFLICT!! H
party's position. Water is shown to
–>
-C- -O O L I N S
M B OM i= 1 i O M En 1 M I I I I1S _ = I I
• EMI M E O W I Imi El
I = I M = I = t I M P Me . _
I
_
M in n M E M
_ mn _ • I• • I the
E right of the map and two
buildings represent a castle and small
&N.X97al I I — P L A Y E R - 1
N
d
- -o r t h town. You can see some woods to the -
iwest.
OPBON A T T A C K s To the right of the map is a display
,
pshowing each character's status. This
S
Fighting goblins on board ship lprovides such information as food
O
a
supplies, hit points, magic points
O
PT O R y(spell casting ability) and their level
T HOP H : 3 0 L : 5 2
F: i(all start at level I). By typing Z, you
N 2
K IR sare told how much gold they have,
what they are carrying and their
N: 0 0 L : 3 2 apresent statistics.
F:
010 3 p Each character starts with a dagger
B OB IS land cloth armour, but you must tell
4 F: athem to 'R'eady the dagger for use
nand •W'ear the armour.They have a
TANS
FHA 1 1 : 7 5 1 : 1 6 vlimited amount of gold. The sensible
:1611. F : 0 3 ithing to do next is •E'nter the town to
buy additional weapons and armour.
East eVisit the tavern where gossip may be
• • w
••••• leo heard, or bought for the price of a
_1 6 4 ' 4 4 >MIMOSA ,few drinks.
• *4 -•
1
• - -• 4 w Most towns have a grocers for food,
iand some other interesting places.
MINI4 ,_ •
+ 2 D O N 18111TOCE
IN–
tExplore towns carefully and talk to
Fighting a group of renegade wizards hthe people – you will pick up all sorts
of useful information. Purchase a
4 party. You can go adventuring with bow, even if this means pooling your
less than four but this is not wise. In team's gold.
mediaeval, there are hints that-this
4 creating each one, you must choose Out in the open, everything that
civilisation is on the downward spiral the name, sex and race (human, elf, moves will attack you. If you can kill
some of them before they can get to
4
from a past that knew much more.
The spawn of evil from the past
dwarf, hobbit or fuzzy). Each race has
different potentials – dwarves are you, it will save some hit points.
strong, elves are dexterous and so on. Kilted out to the limit of your purses,
overshadows any other concern, as
you and your team struggle to unravel Next comes choice of profession – leave the safety of the town. Monsters
the clues to its existence. Origin may barbarian, thief, wizard or ranger. come in a variety of different guises,
not produce the cheapest games on There are 11 possibilities and care from ores, trolls, ghouls, zombies and
the market but its standards of quality must be taken to finish up with a giants, to daemons, dragons, devils,
balanced party. Finally you have 50 balrons and even sea serpents.
and presentation are of the highest.
points to apportion for your When combat takes place, the
Ultima III comes with a cloth map
of Sosaria and three manuals. One is characters' strength, dexterity, display shows a larger scale map.
wisdom and intelligence. with the four members of your party
general and the other two describe
Fighting types need strength, towards the bottom and the foe
the various priestly or sorcerous
thieves dexterity, clerics wisdom, and towards the top. Once conflict has
spells your characters may use. A
simple reference card covers all the magic users intelligence. A table in begun there is no retreat.
the manual lists the professions and Battle at a distance is possible with
options open to the player.
Before wandering into the wilds of tells you what type of armour. a bow, magic or by throwing daggers.
weapons and spells each can use. Your team may only swing or
Sosaria you must create your
A good combination to start with throw weapons to the north, south.
characters u
p t o
14 2 0A CO MP UTI NG p l y I9IIR
A MI G
 • A D V E N T U R E S •

magical or clerical type it is wise to

s allocate the maximum number of
nJ, S Ream :Fe m a le
ce : E l f 1E- m i t points to the appropriate attribute.
P r o ef e s s i o m : T h i e f As you explore coastal areas, you
Stremsth:20 may find yourself under attack from a
O eH xterits:PS0 Gold:0736 -
I m t e l loi s e m c e : 0 5 Food:0322 pirate ship. If you beat the pirates, the
Misdom:05 Kess:05 - HANDS 1 1 2 ship is yours and you can explore
m Ge m s :0 4 H Sosaria more thoroughly. There are
H i t P oei m t s : 2 5 2 0 T o r c h e s : 5 6
H ox im om :2 5 5 0 P om de r s : 0 1 e many pirates at sea, so be prepared to
E x p e r :; e m c e : 3 1 3 3 a meet them either with cannon or a
LKe v e l : 3 2 4 boarding party.
- r
HI a9ic:00I B Another means of travel is via
o
S t a tAus — SAK IN A t O Moon Gates, ancient structures which
Good r m
LE A TH E R A t N only appear at certain phases of
C a r ds —H a r k s m s Sosiria's twin moons. Entering one
Heath F o r c e o — will teleport you to another gate. To
Sol F i r e
Hooms S m o k e u help you to understand the working'
K i m ssss of these portals, the phases of the
r
moons are included in the main
-
Status screen for one o f the team display.
Exodus: Ultima III presents a real
challenge and has much more to it
west or east, and the enemy may also additional experience points. than just bashing monsters. There are
strike on a diagonal. Each time a Initially, for each 100 gained. Lord 26 commands issued with a single
member of the team is hit his hit British will increase your potential hit
points decrease: letter input —the mouse duplicates
points. Time ticks away inexorably some of them. There is an option to
but the games pace is quite type in additional commands such as
acceptable. You may pause to take DIG or SEARCH, It is not too difficult
breath and consider your options by to learn to stay alive, but solving the
O found the combat and magic selecting to use a weapon and then real puzzles behind your quest will
balance
N one of the best I have come delay in aiming it. take a little longer.
C
across. Every time a member of your Having won, the vanquished foe
party
E kills an attacker, he gets leaves behind a treasure chest. These
p are often booby-trapped, but may be
a opened safely using a priestly spell. ZORK

s Thieves may be used as they are more inf oc om 01-131 1101

EXODUS: UL TI MA I I I likely to spot traps. Less t han £15
tOrigin/ Mic ropros e If it has been a costly battle do not STORY LINE
tZ24•95 " ' M V P 11i111
hurry to open the chest as a spot of Archetypal fantasy with enigmatic
hSTOR Y LINE - healing may be worthwhile. You can
1 origins o f underground empire only
eBelievable alternative universe in need
1
1 use chests as a barricade to protect apparent after quite some time.
iof help. Yo u 'll want to give it.
1
1 your flank. Hit points lost during
1
combat will come back as time AURA g a l l I M M E U D
nAURA 1
4 Good descriptive passages keep the
iCreating and believing in your team o f passes; the same goes for magic interest active however often you play.
points expended in casting spells.
tcharacters is a s imple part of the him Many towns are dotted around STAYING POWER 11
iSTAYING POWER a nt e •ur Sosaria—explore them carefully to Lots o f puzzles maintain pressure to
aWill take you many enjoyable weeks to keep you up until the small hours.
map and to learn its hidden secrets. find out what and who they contain.
l In some places injured or poisoned GAMEPLAY .11811 11111
sGAMEPLAY 111 characters may be healed— for a Basic text adventure with many good
puzzles and mazes to tax the player.
tWell balanced operating system that price. Keep a pencil and paper handy.
makes the whole thing hang together. Dungeons are 3D mazes. The four
a
keys that you've been using to move
V A L IT .11111111,111AL
gVALUE l Excellent. just because Infocom has
Must N,S,W,E now refer to forward, retreat stopped producing the game it is nosy
e work i out at fractions of pence per and turn left or right. Dungeons are sold at bargain prices. Buy quickly.
hour o f pleasure, despite the high
s
American 1price on the shiny box. dark. Spells will light your way but
INFER:117-Y l u a l u m m u D
, last only a short time, so you are
1
DIFFICIII,TY m m e n n m m E D better off with a torch. These and
Infocom games involve some
I
Stamina needed to explore and map devious thought. This is a good place
1 levels. Worth the effort.
o f its many other useful items may be purchased for the novice to learn the ropes_
1 from guild shops found in some
OVERALL 5 8 1 / 4 towns. Initially only a few spells are OVERALL 6 4 %
-
Winner for role players, lots to get your available to you as their use depends Ooes not show its age. A game with
teeth into.1Totally absorbing. upon the number of magic points a heritage, which has sired many more
character has. When creating a adventures. including Zorks if and
1
1
1 uly 1988 A y liG it ( M i n !TING 1 5
T
H
desktop publis hing program to
rival Aldus PageMaker on the
Making the
headlines
EMacintosh or Xerox's Ventura
APublisher on the IBM PC. But, a little
mlower down the scale, it can compete
iwith other computers.
g Of the DTP programs available, the
adeservedly dominant one is Gold
lDisk's PageSetter. This really shines
when used w ith PageSetter
John Walker looks at Gold
a
c
LaserScript, a good PostScript driver Disk's DTP package
for an appropriate laser printer such
k
as Apple's LaserWriter.
s is also compatible with Scribble! and airbrush, and produce fi lled or
PageSetter is capable of producing
awork o f a professional quality, Textcraft, so it w ill preserve styles, outlined rectangles and circles. A
talthough this requires considerable such as italics, from the original zoom gadget magnifies part of a
oeffort. It is used to produce the document. picture so that you can add fi ne
pAmerican magazine Robo City News. You set different text styles within detail.
- With it, I typeset and illustrated a the editor by entering a backslash You can c lip part of a picture and
c150-page book — The Desktop Guide followed by the appropriate letter use it as a brush. The artwork can be
l to Desktop Publishing. around words or phrases. Thus, \ b copied, re-sized and fl ipped
a You can create school magazines, would put words that followed it in horizontally and vertically. You can
bold and \ n would return them to also play around with text, changing
sclub bulletins, c ommunity newsletters
normal. Av ailable styles are bold. its size and shape to create interesting
sand flyers. For such productions, you effects, something that the manual
w ill hardly notice that it has no italic, normal, outline, reverse.
automatic page-numbering or that it shadow and underline, whic h can be fails to tell you.
lacks such typographic niceties as mixed in any combination. PageSetter converts colour graphics
automatic hyphenation (splitting The graphics editor is used for to monochrome, adding grey scale
words at the correct point when they loading and altering illustrations. You shading that is sometimes unpleasant.
are set in columns) and kerning can draw lines in various thicknesses, It may also distort the original, since
(altering the amount of space between
adjacent letters).
PageSetter comes on a single
unprotected disc together with a small HAL
and inadequate manual. This raves Arm
about the joys of desktop publis hing •0 •••

Ole
but fails to tell you everything it
, -
0 •
1 •

should about the program. P r

-
•
4
•
•
•
4 •

Came •
-
•
•
• •
• •

Tend •
•
•

W
•
Peach
many desktop publis hing
Hprograms is that it allows you to Other
Eswitch between three screens — the 15% 30%
A simple bar chart 0%
Rpage layout screen, a text editor, can enhance the
Ewhich provides many of the facilities appearance o f a page
Pof a word processor, and a graphics
aeditor whic h doubles as a simple
gdrawing program.
e The text editor allows you to copy.
S
cut and paste text, to search for words GET IMPACT Get Impact
e
or phrases. and replace them. But it is
INTO YOUR Into Your
line- rather than page-orientated,
twhich makes updating the screen
HEADLINES Headlines
tsomewhat jerky. I found it too
euncomfortable to use as a word
r processor. Get Impact Get impact
d The text editor's main purpose is to
into your into your Four styles o f headline
i fine tune words created on another
f word processor. You can load Headlines headlines settings. Current practice
favours the lower case
approach
f documents saved in Ascii. PageSetter
e
l b rA M / G A CO MP UTI NG J u ly 1988
s
 E RE V I E WE I

r•
r'": k t i t „ : 4 1
its resolution of 640 x 200 pixels is ne
non-standard_
a ll
Desktop Publishing for the AMIGA
PageSetter's greatest limitation is
:41•
that graphics cannot be re-sized on
the layout page. A full-screen 9411
Since the desktop publishing
illustration in the graphics editor boom started in 1982, the industry
shrinks to something much smaller, has exploded. Software, hardware, flexibility o f pare design. Us e
books and even trade papers have magnify t o zoom i n for detailed
less than a 4 x 3 inches. when mushroomed t o fi l i a ma rk e t, work, o r pull back for the ful l
printed. It can he shifted, moved at a which is expected t o reach SO page. Combine te x t (I n different
pixel at a time and masked to show billion dollars world wide by t990. fonts and styles) and graphics
14ot s inc e t h e a dv e nt o f t h e with c omple te fre e dom, a n d
only part of it but it cannot be made spreadsheet h a s a s i n g l e enhance them with a variety of
an bigger. application made such an Impact lengthy
shadings a n d borde rs . S p i l l
on the computer industry. La rge articles a c r o s s
companies, small groups and even Several
individivals a r e us i ng t h e i r boxes
c
professional flyers, newsletters, linked
I is a selection of clipart to provide o
signs and resumes quickly and
N m
easily, a t a fraction of the cost and l e t PageSetter handle th e
you with instant illustrations. It is of
p c omme rc ia l ty p e s e tti n g , tedious t a s k o f for m a tti ng.
C
uninspired and uninspiring stuff, but Desktop publishing has brought the Create s tunning a r tw or k and
u
power of the press to the peopiel ha rd-hitting copy quickly and
L
occasionally useful. t PagaSetter Is a easily using the built
U You can move text and graphics revolutionary new and
- i tenyxot ueditors
e or import theta
D
between the layout pages and the software t o o l from r f a v o u r i t e AMI CA
r designed t o t u r n Ag r a p h i c
editors
E at any time. Transfer from one Your 4mir.4 into a
s r agaSet ter includes an extensive i
screen
D and another is almost Powerful de s k top library of clipart and fonts to
t a away,
instantaneous even when there are a p u b l i s h i right
allow youyt o get up and running
o o workstation. A n p
lot of words in the system. Using a 'intuitive' n g
user interface roinhines
n p o f operation h And a t all times,
CSC with complete
512k
t Amiga I've worked on layouts r i
that
h ran to 17 pages. contained 6.000 o _ c
TAW' Mti. low' viz*orc
words and half-a-dozen illustrations Otter Feature
e
without much slowing down. You
d
u
o,
P
couldn't do that on an IBM PC Foir. iostificaticmmodesincluding micrtr-fustification. r
s
a c
Automatic article fay:kitting, tfrough colunns andbetween w
without a hard disc.
g The page layout screen is the heart e
Grap
Tenthstyles includ
icsmayinclude
be sized or Lropped
gw_liast. at will.4kaiSlimmil,and o_ _ •
zeriati,
c r
e PageSetter. To create your layout
of e:
ttulti-paye deo/amts. with v &
Hrulevs,strids, colisins, and margin indicators. d E ilg e L g t e r
S use the mouse to access pull- Neast
- rement in inches or Ei_c4s.
you i
Prints on any printer in muipreterences p C l e n f h a comipaula
t ta unt
e ia ble s i z e s
down menus at the lop of the screen s r
t a toolbox at the righthand side. a n d
and Me
f po r m a t s . o
The
t display initially shows a blank I Got , /lox c
page
e with on-screen rulers. DoI L Streetsville
Measurements are in either inches
2C2 Rvili'0137'egives you the Creative Edge
r 2 s
or
d picas, that peculiar printing _5 _ _ s
Thgs d
measure
i with six picas to the inch, In _1( o cu o
order
s to make design easier, a grid 1 m a it r
can
c be superimposed on the page. t
s
w
combinations of straight lines. o
A .
e another, or in an opaque form, so that
shadow can he added to the cbox. r you can cover up mistakes. Using the
e
One minor bug is that PageSetter see-through option allows you to put
W in boxes which can be a t
will not print the righthand shadow
e text over shaded boxes or graphics.
O
drawn on the page or defined in a of a box unless there is another
d box A box can be changed in size and
R
page requester that allows you to w
beneath and to the right of it.i shape by simply pulling at its bottom
D
enter the size of the page and its Boxes can be linked so thatt text will righthand corner. It can be shifted
S
margins with the number and size of flow from one to another, over
h
r as around the page by putting the cursor
the
a columns, after which they are many pages as you like. Changesi to within it and moving the mouse.
drawn
n automatically. the text in one box will affectm all of
a The page itself can be displayed at
d You can define a default box, in them. This is useful because itg means three magnifications. At its smallest,
which
p you specify how the text is to you can produce a basic layout e
for a
t the whole page is shown on screen.
be justified — either centered or set regular newsletter, which cant be
i At its second size, you can see half a
ragged
c left or right, the tracking — e
saved as a series of empty boxes. page on screen at a time. At full
r
spacing
t between letters, and leading — Then, when occasion demands, you magnification, which shows an eighth
the spacing between lines. load your text and pour it through the
u of a page, what you see will be what
You can choose a font and whether pages.
r box is to have a border around it. you get when you print.
the Boxes can be overlaid, either so that
e PageSetter uses the Amiga's built-in
There is a choice of five borders, all what is in one box will show through
s
a
r A I N 1 9.98 . 4 M I C A a m p t r n v c I 7

e
• R E V I E WE

.111
fonts, whic h are acceptable for the
main text but don't make good
fl F T
display types for headlines.
Headlines themselves can either be
1101,11)1EFILI
written in the text editor and then
added in their own boxes or written
on the page using a small pop-up
'CD F
QuickText box in whic h you can type tallaIr
up to 100 characters,
If you want more interesting
tLiitMitit
2
typefaces. you w ill need to invest
either in one or more of the three TICE
volumes of Zuma Fonts or the ,
cheaper three volumes of Earthbound
C
' — osDON
O
L L N . . . . A . , . • • • • , . . A. aw ,•••

D
6.0 4 .104 a.m.
4 , 4 ,,, l i k •
p Preferences drivers for its 4 ,,1 1 0 4 , 4 •4 , 4 • • • • • • 4 1 . 4 • • 4 • • • • • • • , • • • •
0 4 . • 4 Oa . S . ", w i a • vs mg, _ , 1 oa o•c 4 h
A
printed output. This is a pity since the m o r m 4 a m , i , 4 4 4 s 4 1 da
. A, • O m s k Emod,
*
G1.2 drivers are limited to 9-pin dot IC •

E
matrix printers and some do not work
•
•
PostScript lets you
• manipulate images,
S
well, leaving thin white lines. The .
m
reducing and
E
improved Workbench 1.3 drivers cure o angling them
this, but I'd lik e to see some custom
T •
O

r
printer drivers, incorporating the sort
T N
b
of smoothing algorithms whic h are
E want. It also permits the manipulation
o
REPORT 'CARD
o
available on DTP programs for other
R of fi nished pages, whic h can be
n
.
micros. shrunk, rotated or laid one or top of
.

-
u another to create unusual effects.
. PageSetter
Some problems may be solved by a .
s O 11B Ma r k e ti ng. Te l : 01495 4 4 4 4 3 3 .
page-printing program included on w E79.95
e
the PageSetter disc. To use it, you first •
a
s USEFULNESS
save your pages. quit PageSetter, load .

tthe printing program and print them. I unlikely to crash. However there is Turns simple documents into
hBecause it occupies less memory, the F
one annoying little bug. Sometimes, pmfessional looking pages but takes
some time.
eprogram holds a whole page at a time O
when dealing with long documents,
Ain ram. whic h eliminates the white U first line on a page w ill not justify
the EASE OF USE 1111111111•1111
m line problem. A further program to
N the leithand margin but w ill be set While the commands are not
one immediately obvious they can be
i included allows you to save a page as D character in and w ill resist all
picked up quickly
gan HT fi le whic h you can then load attempts
t to change it. I found the only
ainto Deluxe Paint or a s imilar way to deal with it was to go to the
h INTUITION 11111 I I I

' graphics package. first

s It takes about five minutes to print
a page using a dot matrix printer. The
results are good with a 9-pin printer,
but better with a 24-pin using a driver
from the 1.3 Workbench preferences
which is beginning to appear on the
updates to some programs — mine
came from ProlArrite 2.0.
PageSetter LaserScript, an extra
program that is an essential buy for
those lArho want the best possible
results, allows you to drive a
PostScript laser printer. It comes with
four PostScript type-faces — Courier,
Helvetica. Times Roman and Symbol
—which can be scaled to any' size you
15 .1 l•fruil c om P uTi NG / o r 1988
e page of the document, switch Fully intergrated along Commodore
from the layout screen to the text guidelines but is ram and processor
p hungry.
editor and then return to the layout.
r
Otherwise PageSetter is a good, SPEED H
o
Professional results take a while
g
uncomplicated program suitable for Ubut
with the Amiga's horsepower it should
non-professional use. I prefer it to
rsuch rivals as City Disk and Publisher not be quite as slow as it is. M
a1000, although its supremacy may be
VALUE 1 1 = 1 1 1 1 1
mchallenged soon. At only .1•80 this is priced much mom
r The others are being updated, and keenly than you would expect for an
o
there are newer ones on the horizon Amiga package which has a small
market_
b
such as Publishing Partner
uProfessional and Gold Disk's own 0 VERALL 6 6 " o
sProfessional Page. In the meantime.
A fu ll Desktop Publishing package
tPageSetter provides excellent value
PageSetter takes some mastering but
afor money and w ill more than meet produces creditable results.
the
n requirements of many users.
d
 • R E V I E W E

Roger... Wilco S i m o n Rockm

is cleared for take-off

a choice of the land-based F16 or

O possible. It's Commodore's carrier borne F/A-18 jets to play with
N
slogan, and so often a true one. But As soon as you unwrap the
games
L software houses with an eye to program y ou know that you've
the
Y quick buck so often let the bought something special. The
machine
t down. Electronic Arts has documentation advises that you
hung
h in there supporting our machine disconnect a second drive on an 512k •
since
e the days of prototypes, so it is machine, grabbing the precious ram
fiAtting that the company should have that it needs. The carrier icon
produced the greatest ever Amiga appears. Antic ipate blast off. Double
m
p r o g r a m. click to load and a pilot launches into
i
F/A 18 Interceptor is a fl ight the blue.
g
simulator — that's a bit lik e • ng that The Amiga' drive does its stuff far
a
Buckingham Palace is a ho True, too slowly, the seconds . h e d hy
m
but
a an u n d e r
:k
July 1988 A•W/G.4 COMPUTING 19
ae r t .
Ys o
 your impatience. The title screen
captures the atmosphere of the battle
Two jets locked in a dogfi ght over a
, c r y s tal clear Californian sky whic h

. 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 k nown for
I .•scontains
,' k impingthe
on kinds
documentation. The
of blues you only
confrontation on your retina is
complemented by s imilar aural
stimulation thanks to Dave Wahol's
sound.
F/A 18 Interceptor is a game of
Orers n o t I e carrier and loop round
missions, but before you can take
those on you need to learn to fl y the
crate. The game is its own trainer.
1 T h e demo mode shows what can be
done. Simple options to take off and
fly around familiarise you with the
controls.

A at some set manoeuvres. An

sinstructor goes through a prescribed
set
p of loops, turns and rolls. You have
to
e follow in a chase plane. I f you can
do
c this then the next stage should
seem
i easy. Take off from the carrier,
climb
a to at least 10,000 feet and then
land back on the carrier.
l
You have an inc redible amount of
m
power in your engines. Thrust can be
o
controlled in 10 per cent increments
d
by using F l to F M Pressing F1 when
ethe engines are at 10 per cent w ill keeping a constant height. Then use complete the circuit. Again it should
tswitch them off — something best the rudder, the < and > keys, to turn. be possible to turn without banking.
edone when you have landed — If you are not c limbing or div ing the Once you are pointing north dip the
spressing F horizon w ill remainiev el. nose. The carrier lies ahead. Use the
tcent
- turns on the afterburner, giv ing Keep an eye on the compass. From zoom function to make sure that the
syou
10 an unbelievable boost. More an initial starting position of going blob is the carrier and prepare a
ywgentle,
h e per cent, increments of
3 north it should rotate to pointing steady glide path. Drop the thrust to
othrust can be selected by using the south. If you fl ip to the map the between 30 and 40 per cent.
n
uequals carrier looks to be ly ing east-west.
y o and minus keys.
ru The best tactic for take-off seems to That is because it is too diffi c ult to
draw it north-south and s till look lik e
aabe locking
r
the brakes and switching
to at least 90 per cent thrust. Allow an aircraft carrier.
be ,
the power to build, and then release While you are travelling south pull
ia t A enemy fi ghter may attack. It is
the brakes. This ensures that you have back on the joystick and c limb to at
l1 least 10,000 feet. Then push gently s
possible to pull up and spot it
enough oomph to stay in the air when
i0 forward, drop the nose a little way without
y banking. Hit Return to select
you run out of carrier. Lift the
t0undercarriage as soon as you take off below the horizon. Reduce thrust so ao heat-seeking missile. Target the
yp—it reduces drag signifi cantly. Resist that things w ill happen less rapidly bandit.
u The HUD w ill light up like
ethe temptation to bank. and descend to less than 4,000 feet. Blackpool
a Illuminations. Once the
r Climb a little, say to 1,000, feet and Switch the radar from its 40 mile commie
p is vignetted by a large
en level off. The crosshair in the limit to 10 or 2 miles, just enough to diamond,
p squeeze the trigger. This
ad up display (HUD) should he one keep the carrier in view. The further w ill loose an air-to-air missile. Fire
r
xel below the horizon. Check the you are the easier things w ill be later. and forget.
o
Level off and use the rudder to Bring the nose back down to point
a
e sure s are
c
20 A M I G A CO MP UTI NG & I v 1980 h
t
 E R E V I E W E

provide the speed and graphics he F-16s in the game trying to defect I
I Bob Dinnerman. It is his first wanted. Nigh on 90 per cent of the thought I'd let you fl y one", says
N
commercial home computer game program is written in assembler, Bob.
T the Amiga his first home
and with menus and set-up routines in The Amiga needs more class
computer.
E C. The program was developed on programmers lik e Bob Dinnerman.
R No one, not even a genius lik e Electronic Arts' Artists Work Interceptor is the first of a new
1 Bob
C D., picks up enough
programming experience to
Station (AWS).
It is a shame that Bob's next
generation of Amiga programs.
E
produce
P a game of Interceptor game is for the PC, but he hopes to
proportions
T in the year and a half return to the Amiga after that. Ile
it took to write. claims that Interceptor II would be
O
Bob used to be a programmer for easy with new missions, locations
R
Bally — the arcade game and different planes.
w
manufacturer. He wrote the arcade The existing planes were
a
smash Discs of Tron, whic h despite carefully chosen, The Ft A 18
s
hitting the arcade market in mid because it is new, exciting and
w
nose-dive still took a lot of money. carrier-based. It was also chosen
r Discs of Tron used a mere Z80 because it is a single pilot
i
with 56k of rom. So it is not aircraft.
tsurprising that Bob has worked The F16 was chosen
such
t wonders with a 68000 and "for variety, and because
half
e a megabyte. Some of the work. I have a couple of
mainly
n fl ight algorithms, for
Interceptor
b was a development on
ay fl ying game which Bally planned
and scrapped.
Bob had not bought a home
computer before the Amiga
because he felt that nothing could

aid
ng.
p the
the
he

to

NDG 0 912 (I TS B S FT

an
I is
at the carrier and lose any extra
ect height rapidly. The deck is 145 feet
off the sea. You want to be 100 feet
above this as you come in to land.
While you are still some way off,
lower the arrestor hook. This catches
wires on the deck surface and hauls
you in to land.
Closer in, drop the undercarriage.
int Then put on the brakes. This not only
1
The game has an accurate
41
map of SIM Francisco !
locks the wheels but engages the air
brakes. A s yo u Hy o ve r the ca rrie r
bring the nose down and cut the
engines. You should plop on to the
deck. Bring the nose up in a
controlled stall to land on the rear
wheels.
Real carrier pilots come in at full
fl ying speed in case the arrestor hook
does not catch. You shouldn't worry
MEM
about this. Overshooting is a much
greater danger. Your reward for the
task is a pair of sweaty palms and the
right to go on to a mission.
Now you have proved that you
have the right stuff you can take on
the world, The first mission is to fl y
out, identify an enemy plane and fl y
back. Easy and boring, it is the k ind

July 1988 AMI GA COMPUTING ; I I

• R E V I E W E
411
of mission that Nato pilots (I() all the
time. The temptation to blast the foe
is dreadful. Don't do it.
The first mission where you are
actually supposed to shoot something
down oilers an enemy plane whic h is
after the President's jet, Air Force
One. Succeed and you are presented
with a great graphic sequence of AF-I
ding.
ther missions have you trying
to persuade two defecting
E-16s that they really love mom,
apple pit! and the American way
enough to turn around and not defect.
You have to fl y in front of them —
failing that you can blast them. All
the while a couple of Migs are out to
get you.
was while I was just about to talk
F-Ifi around that a Russian missile
GUN 2 9 0
23102
will lear
22 AM117A CO MP UTI NG July 1988
I a code wheel, something of
N
which I approve. Along with
T
Magnetic Scrolls-type novella
protection,
E this allows the honest
user
R to make disc back-ups. and
often
C allows the transfer to hard
disc,
E but it reduces the problems of
piracy.
P
T Sure the crooks w ill r ip apart the
code and produce an unprotected
O
version, but at least we don't have
R
to suffer if our discs get corrupted.
i
The Interceptor code wheel feels
slike part of the game, not a bid to
pprove your innocence.
r I lik e the way you can run the
o
demo without using the wheel, a
ttaunt to the person who steals a
homed in on me. I pressed F for flare. e
copy. lie can see what he is
C for chaff and E for electronic cmiqsinu! xvitlinut plav in
counter measures. What I really t,
wanted was J for electronic jammer. givese:! a better o f depth.
Instead I got E for eject. At least the dThere are so u g s . I have
missile didn't get me. managed
w to fl y over the carrier and
The enemy gets harder to attack — a
• have i the wing disappear under the
cruise missile can only be shot down, ship.t It is common practice to land
as I found out after I'd wasted a load the h sea. but none of these matter
of missiles on it. .when you take into account the
Interceptor is br illiantly designed. It of fun y ou'll have when ' o u take to
stretches your playing ability the air w it Ihn t e r c e p t
progressively. It is also full of great
touches. REPORT CARD
You can view the plane from inside
the cockpit. look ing all the way FiA 18 Interceptor
Electronic Arts
around to check for enemy johimies Price E24.95
on your tail. You can watch the action, rr
S OIND
from a third person position at one of
Wonderful sampled sounds which get
the eight compass points outside the louder when you view from outside.
plane, or you can watch from the
control tower. These views work just GRAPHICS 1111111111
Fast 3D solids with a surprisiii.g
as well when you are parachuting
down after a missile hit. A zoom
1
amount of detail including the EA
offices in California and Alcatraz.
19WEI
GAMEPLAY
A good range of missions, Spaced in
difficulty gives sense of achievement.
USE OF THE
AMIGA
A game only possible on the Amiga. It
uses the Winer and sampled sound.
VALUE
Hours of fun packed flying time. You
will want to go back for more when
you have finished all the missions.
OVERALL 9 6 " , 0
The greatest Amiga game ever. You will
believe a computer can make you 4y.
 I Bridge Street
Geleshiels
701 1 SW
V i r 4 RL DWI DE
• S O FTWARE •
40 Stone y Street
Nottingham
N g ' 1 LX
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Salerno of P o n t 2 1 6 5 kamafgragge 2 1 116 Smar Hand On 1 . 1 6 in the UK
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So it is hardly surprising that reviewers confirm that
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0 the Independent
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MACROASSEMBLER MCCPASCAL
Prolessional macro assemblei. this is THE
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 Amiga to generate images and create objects without graph paper
S has played host to many animations. The first of the packages and ty ping lists of numbers. You
I
stunning examples, either painted or was Videoscape 31), whic h does not generate images with a technique
N
digitised, of its graphics capabilities. provide any means of easily known as ray-tracing. This uses a
More
C recent items have been describing the world, but gives large amount of computer time to
generated
E by the computer itself from animation, generate realistic pictures inc luding
ai description of a world, resulting in Dr Eric Graham, the creator of the shading, shadows and reflections.
at static or animated picture. luggler program, continued his work The fac ility to animate a scene is
s Until recently, there have been no to produce Sculpt 3D from Byte-by- provided by Animate a l l Used in
tools
i to explore the potential of the Byte. This has a user interface to help conjunction with Sculpt 3D, Animate
n
c
e

Tour through
p
t
i
o
n

Sculpt and
t
h
e
A

Aniivate 3D
m
i
g
a

Since Boing, other micros

have tried to emulate the
Amiga's demos. Sam
Littlewood tests a couple
of programs which will
help it stay out front

Ed1 t T o o t ,
F Painting
°cation Snapshot
4 Target VPhoto
3 Lens Wipe frame
= m,Expostire —
Image size
K N Hi-res
5 No-interlace
Tilt /_
= Start L
I Bit •lanes
E Sh,p,
l o
t
b -4444 -I
rn
e
t
se
r
l
a
c
e

24 A M / G • ilL I NI P / TI NG M y 9 8 H
 E R E V I E W S E

describes how objects move and not take over the machine, and can be down. The 'edge* gadgets on the
change with time. The resulting run from the Workbench or CLI and it windows create edges between
sequence of images can then be knows about PAL machines. The user selerfted vertices. Existing sets vertices
compressed and played back in real interface is through normal windows,
time or recorded frame-by-frame on can be easily manipulated by using
gadgets and menus. various options to drag, rotate,
to a flying erase head video recorder.
expand, contract or delete them. It is
In both Videoscape and Animate
easy to forget that there are unseen
3D the individual frames of an
selected vertices outside the 'Fri-View.
animation are generated one by one, F Awindows, collectively known as
taking between seconds and hours and accidentally include these in a
D I 'Fri-View,
the T representing a box in manipulation.
apiece. To play the images at the Ithe
N three
G dimensional space. The It would be possible to build an
correct rate, they are compressed into three
o b windows are views of the bit of
a special file format that can be object by simply creating each vertex
the
j eworld within the box from the and joining them together by hand.
played back in real time. If a special
video recorder is available it is top,
c t west and north. They are normal Often objects or bits of objects are
Intuition
s windows that can be depth- themes on common elements like
possible to record each image directly arranged and re-sized. Additional cubes, spheres, discs and so on.
on to video tape as it is created. This i
gadgets
n move the box around in Sculpt 3D has a menu-driven way of
allows much longer animations, as
space
v and zoom in and out. incorporating them into the scene
they are not limited by memory A cursor within the box indicates being made.
needed for playback. o
positions in space. Shown as a blue The new object is dumped in the
l v
cross in each of the windows this can middle of the Tr-View box at a
e
be moved by clicking the left mouse sensible size. It can then be dragged,
s
button. As the windows are only two- scaled and rotated to the right place.
S disc containing the main t
dimensional, it may be necessary to
C
program and a set of example objects h in two windows to position the
click
U images, It can be used on a 512k
and r
cursor exactly where it is required.
machine,
L but it is limited, as without e A scene manipulated with Sculpt A up objects is to take an existing
aPmegabyte or more, complicated 3De consists of' vertices — points in N of vertices and do things with
set
T
objects and higher resolution pictures space, edges — lines joining vertices, O
them. Sculpt-3D can make a straight
3 cannot be generated. and faces. Faces are the triangular T
copy — a copy connected to the
D Sculpt 3D does shapes implied when three vertices original
H with edges and faces. a
c are joined by three edges. The Tr- "spun"
E object like a vase starting
o View displays only the vertices and from
R a silhouette of one edge, a
m edges. reflected copy and others.
m
e To create a vertex, the cursor is With these tricks it is relatively easy
e
s moved to the correct position inside to
t build up a complicated scene by
o the Tri-View, and the right mouse starting with a few simple objects and
h
n button is clicked while then cutting, stretching, copying, and
the left is held o
a rotating until the shapes are formed.
d
s A useful last resort is that Sculpt 3D
o
i can be driven by a script from a text
f All the creation and editing
file.
n '
actions are available, so common
g b
complicated command sequences can
l u put in a script and a program
be
e i
written that describes an object, for
l
example, lettering. This opens up the
possibility
d of converting other
Systems
i data files into Sculpt-3D
scripts.
n
gTo get a p ictu re o f a scene, there
must be more than the objects: Things
like colour, lamps and an observer.
Faces can have colour, texture and
smoothing. Colour is controlled by a
requester. It allows red-green-blue
control, as well as hue-saturation-
value, like Deluxe Paint. Texture can
be one of dull, shiny, luminous,
mirror or glass:
If a face is smoothed it appears to
110-

/Lily / Wig A NfiG,4 M M P U T I V G 2 5

 411
be curved in line with the faces
around it. A dodecahedron with
smoothed faces would look more lik e
a sphere.
Several parameters are associated
with the observer. There is the
position of the eye, the point being
looked at and the focal length of the
lens, or zoom. The two positions can
be set by selecting a point in the T r -
View and then selecting a menu
option. The zoom can either be
selected from three pre-defined values
or given an exact numeric value.
Lamps, with colour and brightness,
are created by selecting a position in
the Tri-View, and then a menu
option. A further option is the ground
and sky. The ground can be a solid
colour or checked, and the sky can be
graduated fr om one colour at the
zenith to another at the horizon.
W picture can be taken. There
Iare various options at this point. The
Tfirst is the method that w ill be used to
H render the image. Choices are
tWireframe, Painting, Snapshot or
hPhoto. Wireframe is used for
epreviewing, and just draws an outline
srepresentation of the picture. This is
cdone in a second or so — good for
checking the positions of objects and
e
whether the observer is set up
n extraordinarily useful, and should
correctly.
e colour printer or another computer. A
Painting renders each face in a
sfixed colour. It doesn't do shadows,
ereflections, smoothing or the more
tcomplicated lighting. This technique
uis also used by VideoScape 3D. It
ptakes maybe 10 seconds to generate
,the image, and gives a better feel for
a,what the fi nal ray-traced image w ill
be like.
Snapshot is a ray tracing mode,
giving correct shading and smoothing
without the shadows and reflections.
rhis may lake an hour or more to
generate for a full size image and
finds a use in producing fi nal images
where shadows and reflections are
not important.
The most realistic mode is Photo.
which copes with shadows and
reflection, but takes several hours for
a full size image. By using the other
modes for previewing. Photo mode
can be avoided until the fi nal image is
produced.
26 A M I G A CO MP UTI NG I ui y M i n
'NW
A way to cut rendering time is to
make the image smaller — useful for
checking out shadows and the
lighting. The image size can be full
screen — an overscan image that fi lls
the borders, or half, quarter and
eighth of full size.
The number of bit-planes and the
display mode used for the image can
be controlled: Low resolution, high
resolution, interlace and HAM are all
possible.
A further option is not to render the
image 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 on
the Amiga, it might be possible on a
nice feature is that during image
generation Sculpt 3D w ill attempt to
show how much time is needed to
fi nish the picture.
The editing interface takes time to
master, but once understood, is
powerful and easy. It does allow
creation of objects, as opposed to
fi ghting with numbers and bits of
folded paper. The choice of rendering
techniques is excellent, leading to the
time-consuming ones only being used
when it w ill be worthwhile. The
manual is well written, inc luding
tutorial and reference sections. The
result is a useable tool, not a toy.
A two discs — one for the
N
program. and the other containing
I
example animations. It requires
Sculpt
M 3D. pushing the memory
A
T
E
requirement up to a minimum of
1Mb. with more needed for
complicated work. There have been
no problems running it in 2Mb as
long as nothing else big is running as
well.
The user interface is the same ai
Sculpt 3D's with additional menu
items to handle the animation. Some
features have been added to the basic
modelling commands, the main one
being splines. These extras are
have been in the original Sculpt 3D.
A line of vertices connected by
edges can be made a spline. A few of
the vertices become control points
and the rest follow in a curve
between them. The "stiffness" of the
spline and several other attributes can
be modifi ed, giv ing a powerful tool.
A second new feature is that a
scene can be named in a hierachical
fashion. So "fan" could have children
"base" and "head". "Head" could
then have children "motor " and
"hub". " H u b " could then have four
blades as its children. It is possible to
select/erase/toad/save a named group
of vertices.
Animate 3D can be used for static
images in the same way as Sculpt 3D.
When a "tak e" is selected, it becomes
an animator. A "tak e" is not a static
scene, but all 'the information
pertinent to a complete animation. It
consists of scenes describing how the

w
il
world changes over time. along with
how many frames the animation
consists of. if a ram animation is to be
used, if it is a loop animation and so
on.
li
As more than one scene is used in a
take, it is important to remember to
save the changes in one scene before
going on to edit another.
time.
s
This
n
P
I complete scene for every frame of
T animation; Animate 31.) has two
the
i
ways of describing the changes with
The first is the global scene.
is a single scene, as in Sculpt 3D,
that
o is present for the whole
s
an
t
n A new type of object is a path, a
set
e of vertices connected by edges.
possibly a spline, describing motion
c •••
over time. Parts of the named
e INTUTTION
hierachy can be attached to the path
t
s fi rmly in mind. A kosher program.
by making them children of a path.
s 1
Paths can be attached to paths. A
a
plane could be attached to a straight
rpath, while its propeller spins on a
y
circular path relative to the plane, An
t
object can be rolled, pitched and
1
o VALVE E I C I M I K E D
yawed as it travels. Objects. the eve,
e point being looked at and lamps .
the
can
d all be attached to paths.
i The second method of animating is
to
t edit scenes that describe how the
world
a looks at key points in time,
"
letting Animate 3D interpolate the
• R E V I E W S •
scaled, and stretched as necessary.
• T h e inbetweening process not only
covers vertices, but colours, lighting.
observer positions and zoom. A
global scene and inbetweening can be
mixed in the same animation as
appropriate.
T rendering an image are also
available
H for an animation. In
addition,
E there is a fast wire-frame
preview
c of the animation. Single
frames
o can he rendered for checking
—
n they w ill not be re-rendered when it
comes
t to the complete animation. As
ray-tracing
r is so time consuming. it
may
o be worth using painting mode.
Movement can distract from a
l
inbetween frames. Objects can change multitude of rendering sins.
s
shape and size in any way. Animate 3D gives access to all three
a
A limitation when using this aspects of animation: Modelling,
v
technique is that two key frames with animation and rendering. As with
frames in between must have the a
Sculpt 31), it is a tool that once
same number of vertices and the i
mastered, does not get in the way of
vertices must have been created in the l
creation.
same order. This is so that Animate a The manual is harder work than
31) can do the inbetweening. A good b
Sculpt 31). not giv ing as much in the
way to create key frames is to edit the way
l of a tutorial. If the area of
first one normally, then copy it to the computer
e generated images and
other key places. The vertices in these animation
f is of interest to you, then
other frames can now be dragged, both
o packages w ill be rewarding.
r
REPORT CARD REPORT CARD
Scullil 3D
Amiga Centre Scotland. Tel: 031-557
4242.
E69,95
USEFITNESS a a n i l l i t t a ]
Animate 31)
Amiga Centre Scotland. Tel: 031-557
4242
E69,95
......
Great for producing rolling demos but
Sculpt makes it passible (or an_vone
with patience to create picture. needs an A500 to be expanded to
EASE OF I
, • • • • • . .
II EASE OF t!SE
Splines make shape definition easier
Eases the complicated problem o f
than in Sculpt. Friendly interfame.
creating and editing shapes in 31.1.
11111MTIME111 A T I Tr i (Ar
Written with the developer's guidelines
Fully multi-tasking and runs from
Workbench. Uses masses of memory.
SPEED
SPEED I I L H I H I
Helped by nut having to1re-render
It can take 20 hours to ray-trace a frames but still processor hungry.
1 1 1 1 1 1 111 I L E M
scene. A reflection o f the processing
power not a programming fault.
Needs Sculpt which brings 1 up the
overall cost, but can produce
Vol exactly a bargain but a sensible 1 un-
rivalled graphical results.
price for an advanced graphics tool. 1
OVERALL 7 18 %
OVERALL 8 2 %
Ideal for producing stunning demos
A we ll thought out package with wider once yOlf have made the1investment in
appeal than most design programs. money and lime to master1 it,
l
i n A 1
. )
% 1 7 1
 Printed using11 e r u A 40/ 20

It mum
MOW

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

28 A H G A CO MP/ ,
7TVG h i l t '

Arty facts
Simon Rockman takes a look at the program which
could oust Deluxe Paint from the artist's garret
A Electronic Arts' universally
Ipraised Deluxe Paint. So anyone who
L
lArants to sell an art package needs to
A
make sure that it is exceptionally
good
m to persuade a Deluxe Paint-
Owning
i Amigaist to spend hard
earned
g shekels on another program.
Photon
a Paint is the thing to do lust
that.
5
0 Deluxe Paint can't cope with the
4.096 colour Hold And Modify
0 Iextra, machine-taxing. facility whic h
(HAM) mode, Photon Paint can. The
s I
advertising claims that it w ill expand
c E
your paint capabilities as never
o s
before, No package is going to make
mem a great artist. but what Photon
e
Paint w ill do is allow me to start with
w
some simple building blocks and
i
produce a creditable result.
t One look at the packaging reveals
h Photon Paint is truly
that
international. li is sold in the UK by
Activision which has the rights to all
the products from the Californian-
based Microillusions. It in turn has
bought the program from Bazboo
Soft, a company in Tel Av iv .
The program feels right from the
moment you load it. It has clearly
been designed by a programmer who
uses art packages. The menu can be
moved around the screen or toggled
off. An extended menu allows you to
play with colours.
The menu selection can be a little
tedious since many sections are stored
on disc, no doubt to leave room for
the pictures.
The package supports NTSC and
PAL TV standards. with overscan for
the video production fraternity.
Changing from NTSC to PAL means
that you can keep the menu on the
screen without obscuring the picture.
One strange problem is that the
alternate screen has to he wiped to
change modes while the displayed
screen is sate.
At fi rst I th o u g h l that th is wa s a
• R E V I E W •
ram limitation, but on a 3Mb machine
I was able to save the alternate
screen, change modes and then
re-load. The ram management is very
good, with plenty of warnings if you
are about to run out of memory,
inc luding the option to disable the
Undo command to release extra rain.
T
and turn it into a brush has the
allows you to cut around a shape
freehand and turn that into a brush.
Unlike DPaint. you cannot draw with looks as though the authors have
t brush, only position it and plonk
a looked at Dpaint and thought "How
the
a image on the page. can I improve on that".
n One of the great features offered by The fonts menu has a wide number
a
d brush is the blend option. This of options, with italic , bold,
makes
a it translucent, so that the underline, outline and reverse. If you
background
r shows through. You can have shading on, the letters w ill be
control how much shows over stippled. Great effects can be achieved
d
different areas of the brush, an effect by cutting the text as a brush, then
o
which would be almost impossible to blending and creating a drop shadow.
p
achieve by just drawing. There are many special effects
t
Everyone who is familiar with controls. Pictures can be pixelised — a
iDeluxe Paint w ill feel at home with feature much enjoyed by pop videos —
o
Photon. A good number of the which enlarges each pixel to produce
n
controls are the same, things lik e I to a chunky image. lust think, we've
t
swap screens, and a s imilar pen spent years watching computer
control.
o There art! lines, dots, arcs. graphics improve. getting less chunky
c
hollow and fi lled rectangles. It often 11%!
u
t
a
b
o
x
di pic t ure is n i n t h ei ihmt_swod w o r d
s
"
h th • ; I ( • ) %11't \
• R E V I E W •

Standard
brushes

Go to
Workbench
Freehand
line draw

Line draw
Switch off
menu Rectangle
draw
and fi ll
64
Directly Circle draw
accessible and fi ll
colours
Fill area

Cut out
for brush
Arcs Ellip s e / Use
Colour mix ing controls a n d r ad w fi ll last Undo last
Freehand Powerful brush operation
pixel draw magnify
function
Current pen Pixelise
and background Text
colours

and now we have an option to do the
reverse.
The main special effects allow you
to play tricks with the brush, notably
the ability to wrap a shape around a
3D object. A cone, tube, ball and
block are defined as standard, but
you are free to draw your own shape
and then wrap the brush around it.
Experience has taught me that you
need a picture with all the detail at
the centre and plenty of colours at the
edges to show that it has been
wrapped around a shape. Lighting
effects can be used to really give the
impression of 3D.
Photon Paints documentation is
clear; printed in a crisp, spiral bound
book it is very easy to follow. It does
err on the "I don't k now anything
about computers" side, and perhaps
fails to get technical enough.
I thought the greatest failing was
the lack of pictures. Describing icons
is less effective than showing them.
and in the case of special effects a
picture is worth a thousand words.
Pictures apart, the manual is well
written. The tutorial takes you to a
stage where you really feel in control
of the package. although I kept on
.7() AM / G A Ca S fl 'I r l i NG 1
, r
running before I could walk and REPORT CARD
trying things too soon.
We are asked to believe that the
Photon Paint
manual was written by one Heidi Mi cr oi l l usi onsftaz hoo Soft/Activision
Turnipseed. This nom de plume 01-431-1101
leaves me wondering if there really is £611.95
some poor woman in California, born LISEFI I S E S S UI
out o f the fl ower power years. who A
has to liv e with such a name on her which can cope with the HAM mode.
-
driving licence. fE.-4SE OF I•cf JIM
u combination o f intuitive and Deluxe
A
ll
Paint type icons mean you do not need
the
y easy to follow manual supplied.
T Photon Paint are the brush
f
H
controls, whic h are great fun. Even if 1A71.1710A
e
E package did not offer all its other
the rA proper multi-tasting program, but it
ais necessarily ram hungry. Would not
ogreat features, speed and overall t
always swap to Workbench.
uslickness, I'd buy it for the brush u
tmenu alone. rSPEED M 1 1 . 1 1 1 1 . 1
s Combine the features it does have Amazingly fast with good prompts to
ekeep you informed when performing
tand the program is a winner. As ever, dprocessor-intensive operations.
athe price is steep. Activision has it at d
09.95, whic h means that you have to
n rVALUE
aNot
be pretty serious about artwork. that expensive when you look at
d how we ll the program performs but it
however good the package is. w
i I'm not saying that Photon Paint is priced beyond many users' budgets.
i
nisn't worth £70, just that there are an
n OVERALL 8 8 %
gawful lot of people who can't afford
g
fto spend that much on any piece of The best paint package the Amiga has
pseen. A good example o f hots' one
esoftware and who would get a great rprogrammer learns from another.
adeal of pleasure from using it. o
t g
u r
a

W
E
Amiga
ground in last months
Computing, talk ing about
c
AmigaDos
o
and its purpose in life.
This time I thought we'd dive right in
and
v cover a few common problem
areas.
e In particular we'll be talking
about
r the ASSIGN command.
eASSIGN is much misunderstood as
adcommand, and people who only
know
a of its existence through altering
their
f s/startup-sequence to read Dos
words from RAM: rather than disc are
a
starting from a disadvantage, Lik e as
i
not you fi nd it lurk ing in a short
r A500 1.2 in drive 0" sort of thing.
listing in a magazine, along with a
a discourse about logical devices
little
m not much else. So let's take it one
and
o at a time.
step
uTo aid expansion the Amiga is an
open
n architecture machine. This
means
t nothing is ever in the same
place
o in any two programs (a slight
generalisation,
f but bear with me).
On a familiar 8 bit machine, lik e
the C64. every character in the default
font lies in its own location in
memory, accessible at any time. In
Amiga computers the fonts are
ASSIGNed to a directory (which
could he anywhere on the disc) as the
logical device FONTS:. Note the
trailing colon, the symbol that
denotes a logical device.
Whenever AmigaDos needs the
fonts directory, it knows where it
resides due to the ASSIGNment, and
so goes straight to it. There are other
logical devices, too. Here are some of
the ones you need to k now about:
SYS: System disc root directory
C: AmigaDos commands directory
L: Library directory
S: Sequence library
LIBS: Library for OpenLibrary calls
DENTS: Device for OpenLibrary calls
FONTS: Loadable fonts for OpenFonts
T ANY program can refer to and
H y k now about the operating system
utilise an important function, library
E command, regardless of whore it
or
p
actually is. Let's look at each logical
device in turn, and see what we need
u commands. You can build more
to
r k now about them.
p SYS: is the system root directory.
When
o you first boot the system,
AmigaDos
s automatically assigns SYS:
to
e the root directory disc in drive
DEO:.
o So any programs on that disc
which need the boot disc know whic h
f you the pathname you're currently
volume to ask for: "Please replace WB
a CDed
l l
l y
t o
• I N T E R F A C E E
The plain man's
guide to CU
This month Phil South delves into
the little understood ASSIGN
function o f AmigaDos
away.
C: is a very important logical ASSIGN its elf is used to direct
device, as this is where AmigaDos program fl ow to the function,
looks for all the commands in command or library it wants in this
AmigaDos. That sounds a little syntax:
contradictory, but we are talk ing two
different levels of AmigaDos here. ASSIGN <Jog' :a dev ic e><direc t ory >
The system level looks for commands
for the CLI command level. So assigning your c directory to the
ramdisc would take the form:
The C: directory can be assigned
anywhere, but a good place to assign ASSIGN c: ram:c
it is to the RAM: disc, after having
copied the c directory there of course. From then on all your AmigaDos
This means all your AmigaDos commands w ill be read Out of ram:.
commands w ill be in memory rather The other main use of ASSIGN that
than gr inding off of disc every time presents its elf is when you need to
you type one. tell AmigaDos to read system
L: is the place where all the information from your new hard disc
"overlays" for big commands and or DHO:. You would s imply type a
non-resident parts of the operating simple sequence of events like:
system are kept, in the library
directory. Things lik e Ram-Handler, ASSIGN SYS: IMO:
ASSIGN C: DHO:C
Disc-Validator and Port-Handler are
ASSIGN L: DH0:1
hiding in here, and they are blipped ASSIGNS:
out whenever you need them. Hmm,
it does seem lik e there's a lot to load and so on.
off of disc whenever you want to do
anything on the Amiga, doesn't it?
The operating system part of
AmigaDos needs this directory to S really wanted to k now about
Operate at all. O
ASSIGN, but didn't know where to
The S: logical device looks for all t
look. As always, the best place to
the sequences in the Sequence h
look — besides Amiga Computing, of
Library. These are used by the course!
e — is in the AmigaDos
EXECUTE AmigaDos command, and Reference
r Manual (Bantam), where
the sequence — otherwise referred to yeou'll fi nd more than you really want
as batch files — runs them. Batch files to
are the rough equivalent of programs of
o your computer.
in AmigaDos, but are perhaps best
looked at as mere lists of useful u Incidentally, if you get lost when
you're
h in AmigaDos, just type
ASSIGN LIST, or even just ASSIGN,
powerful c directory commands using
a
if you're feeling lazy. This w ill
batch files. v
present you with a little road map of
The remaining functions are just for e
the current assignments and mounted
providing a pointer towards the more i
volumes, just to put you in the
complex library functions of the t
picture. By the way, this trick also
Amiga. To delve into those would .
works for CD 'on it's own, whic h tells
take a whole feature to themselves, so A
let's drop them before I get carried l
to. Happy CLI-ing.
! lily 198n A MICA COMP1177N17 •
 Hot impression or
major impact?
Two printers head-to-head. Who'll be first
past the ribbon? Rupert Goodwins looks at
their performance on paper, and finds out
who's hue suits him best
32 A M I G A CO MP UTI NG J uly 1988
I trembling hands, the new Amiga
T
owner opens the boxes, plugs in the
'monitor, turns on the power and
Sloads Dpaint In seconds. the
aglistening deathmask of King Tut is
tilluminating the liv ing room. The
osilence is broken only by the gentle
usound of jaws dropping.
But dissatisfaction soon sets in. " I f
c
honly." thinks our new owner. " if only
I could print it out". But this is not to
i
be. A s wift perusal of the prices o f
n
colour printers has the same
g mandible marooning effect as
s that fi rst encounter with Tut.
c The curse of the fair old price.
e However, there has been a
n more affordable alternative
e around for a while — the
. Okimate 20. This faintly
W
i
t
h
PP"
—
odd printer has had the fi eld to itself
for a year or so. but at last there's
some competition. The Star LC-10
Colour; more conventional in its
technology but more than a little
exciting pricewise.
Why has it taken so long for the
massed ranks of the Japanese printer
industry to come up with more than
one colour device? Asking a printer to
Faithfully reproduce 4.096 colours is
one thing. Asking it to also print
clear, well-formed text in black and
white is a different kettle of
monochrome herring. And you want
it cheap, you demanding so-and-so.
liga
The two printers use different
the technologies to harden your copy.
The Okimate 20 is a hothead: a set of
minute heaters sweep past a wax-
I is coated ribbon and melt a pattern on
to the paper. The Star prefers to make
itle an impact. A set of pins pushes an
inky ribbon into contact with the
, "If womipulp and builds up characters
'only and pictures. However. both produce
tot to
polychromatic output in a s imilar
of
manner; by overlaying the primary
coloured red, cyan and y ellow wax or
ink a wide range can be printed.
ye
B and blue were the primary
ly E
colours. There's a lot of confusion
T
over this and now's not the time to go
into
y the physics, but the famous RGH
triplet
o only works for transmitted
light,
u as seen on your monitor.
Printed
t mailer relies on dyes
absorbing
h light and mix ing red.
yellow
o and cyan on a white
u ,a 1
g 0
h l
t 1
t 1
h 1
a 1
t l
r
e .
d
,
g
r
e
e
n
background can reproduce
any hue.
Next time you pull apart a packet of
cornflakes examine the flaps of the
box. You'll fi nd blobs in those three
colours where the printing process is
checked.
Away from the cereal parallel, let's
look at the Okimate first, It's one of
the smallest printers on offer. colour
or no, and it sports a number of
interesting design features. Uniquely .
it has no form feed or line feed
buttons: all paper movements — apart
from normal pr inting — are achieved
by twiddling a knurled knob.
There's a fi ve-position switch on
the front whic h sets the overall
darkness of the fi nal output and a
Select red button whic h starts or
pauses printing. Those and an Open/
Close paper lever are all the controls
you get. The paper feeds in from the
back, and both single sheet and
fanfold can be handled.
The wax-coated ribbon comes in a
large cassette with a marked
resemblance to the musical variety.
There are two sorts, all-black and the
colour version where seven inches of
yellow is followed by seven of red
and seven of cyan. Due to the nature
of the mechanism, where all of the
wax on the tape is transferred to the
paper at a hot spot, any stretch of
ribbon can only be used once.
Printing in colour from Basic is a
complicated process. There is a
special command code whic h gets the
Okimate to fi nd the beginning of a
' h
1 e
" 1
6
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 are
spaces — appears in yellow, the next
line in red and the last in blue. All
three appear on the same line on the
paper, and thus you can mix colours
by printing things at the same
position. Only when you've sent three
complete lines should you tell the
printer to advance the paper, and
before you try and pr int any more
you should send the fi nd-beginning
code again.
Of course, most people w ill just use
the Okimate-20 driver from the
Preferences printer setup. But spare a
thought for the poor programmer who
wrote it.
T dot matrix printer. Although
H
considerable care has obviously been
E
taken in its design — the lines are
S
smooth and curves take the place of
the
t usual angular edges on the case—
the
a principles of operation draw
heavily
r on Star's experience with
ordinary
i low cost (OK, cheap)
printers.
s
f That's not to say that there's any
lack of refinement, Buttons on the
a
front
r allow you to select any one of
three near-letter quality typefaces or
m
fast draft (draht as the manual calls it,
o PP'
r
e
t
o
d
s
t
y
e
1988 A M I G A a I M P I /TING 3 3

(louble-draht) without fi ddling with
control codes, and condensed. italic
and proportionally spaced output can
be invoked in the same way with just
twinkle of the l'il
Paper feeding is s imilarly stylish. A
hatch at the -back of the printer lifts
off to reveal the tractor mechanism,
and a variety of slots allow for some
imaginative configurations. There's a
massively clever scheme whic h feeds
single sheets of paper in from the top
while unwinding the fanfold just
enough to prevent tangling. The idea
of this is that you can pr int a letter
without having to unthread your
listing paper, although in practice I
COURIER - A m i g a
COURIER - A m i g a
COURIER - A m i g a
COURIER - A m i g a
tex
found it a smidgeon unreliable unless
the fanfold was hanging just so. That I mix of two of the primaries, then
was the only aspect of the paper F printer overstrikes automatically.
the
ref
handling whic h even s lightly During
y the time I had it, it worked
is t
displeased; overall the thing fed with reliably
o but there was the occasional
attic
elegance and is the best in that bleeding
u of colour where ink from
alll
department of any printer I know. one
s colour got carried over (on the
an(
The Star has an altogether more head?)
e after the change for a couple
Jan
straightforward approach to painting of
l characters. Also, something
of
by numbers than the Okimate. The streaked
e the y ellow band with a thin
ribbon is ink-soaked fabric, with four line of black after a few pages of
c Mi
horizontal bands — black, red, cyan screendump. but this was barely
t
and (you guessed it) yellow. It sits on noticeable on the page.
a A nice extra with the Star is its
a plinth whic h can, in the manner of cability to cope with embedded control
Thunderbird 2's launch pad, hinge up
o
codes sent to it in plain text. For
and down. This brings one of the four
lexample, there's no way with the
bands in between the print head and
o Pa
the paper. and pr inting continues in
u thi
the appropriate colour.
r
w sv,
h ge
i TI
Computing c -sn
ba
Computing h
i
Computing s
a
Computing

COURIER - A m i g a C o m p u t i n g
word processor that I'm using to
COURIER - A m i g a C o m p u t i n g write this review that I can make a
sentence or paragraph a different
SANGERI Amiga C o m p u t i n g colour on output with the Okimate.

GANGERI - However, by bunging in a little magic

Amiga C o m p u t i n g along the lines of (IC))0 I can tell the
Star to switch colour — and also
GANGERI F - Amiga C o m p u t i n g character size and other effects —
without having to worry about
GANSERI F Amiga C o m p u t i n g esoteric escape codes or special
printer drivers.

GANGERIF - A m i g a C o m p u t i n g
T limitations though, as the word
GANGER I F - A m i g a C o m p u t i n g iprocessor w ill think of ( ( CP as a
lword and format the rest of the text i t
ORATOR - AMIGA COMPUTING laround it, although it won't be

- AMIGA COMPUTING Sprinted. Also. I can't have the word

ORATOR m((C))0 in my printer output; this might

ORATOR - AMIGA COMPUTING enot matter to anyone else but when

tthe time comes to print the printer
ORATOR - AMIGA COMPUTING h
o
review...
I had a little fun play ing guess-the-
printer-driver with the Star; the
dhandbook lists a number of printers

ORATOR - AMIGA COMPUTING

dWhich can reasonably be supposed to
olook lik e an LC-10. and of course

ORATOR - AMIGA COMPUTING enone of them is in the Workbench 1.2

sPreferences. However, an adequate
hperformance with screen dumps and
Samples o f the colour output from the Ster
a 1-
v 1
34 ANUG A CO MPUT7NG e
i
 • H A R D W A R E •

is a lext was squeezed out of the Epson
then IX-80 driver, colour and all.
rally, The handbooks made interesting
ed reading next to each other. The Star's
ional is better written. better organised and
im altogether more professional in feel:
the although the Okimate's was adequate
aple and free from the worst excesses of
janglish. From a programmer's point
thin of view, there are more useful sample
code snippets in the Star and just
more information generally.
5 blacks are really black, but the
ontrol
B from the Epson habit of putting
O
power switches and cable sockets at
T back where the paper gets in the
the
H And both have the evil DIP
way.
switches
p where the dipsomaniacs can
get
r at them without resorting to tools.
The
i Star has them under the main
smoked-plastic
n cover, on a chunk of
bare
t printed circuit board (naughty),
whereas the Okimate has them on the
e h looks rather nice.
Personality Module.
r e But for both the best way to do
The Personality Module (great
s Speed is another place where the
name - do Sirius Cybernetics know?)
h Star is a comfortable winner. It's
is a small printed circuit board with
a almost twice as fast on dotty text,
the main cable plug on it, By .
v
unclipping a plastic shroud, the PM
e be removed and the switch
can
b
settings changed: alternatively the PM
r
can be changed and replaced with
a
one
o for a serial interface or even for a
ito. different
k computer. Not that you're
likely to.
nagic
e nE l 59
the n It's intriguing. but the PM is a
complete
a computer. There's a
microprocessor
w - the humble 8051:
not much to look at but a member of
a
the
y biggest selling family of
microprocessors in the world. There's
probably one in your washing
machine, one in your microwave and
two in your IlumgiiNumgi 1,'CR.
%and There's some ram, 16k of ram and a
3 few lumps of chipperyr to provide
ext input output. Not long ago that would
have outgunned many a home
computer.
3r d
might
ion
Cr
colour performance is adequate - a
useful adjunct but the results are a
little dull. With a lot of care in
programming, however, I get the
feeling that the Star could shine.
The Okimate is a bit of a
conundrum, It's capable of excellent
pictures - the wax surface is
wonderfully glossy - which while no
photograph, is up to cheap colour
newspaper standard. Its text
performance is defi nitely iffy (can
anything be defi nite and iffy?); the
characters are lumpy and not as good
as the Star. And the Okimate is
horrendously expensive to run.
Expect, paper and wax, to pay about
a fl for every full-size full-colour
screen dump.
The Star is going to be between 5
and 10 times as cheap to run, and the
difference in costs w ill be even more
pronounced when used with black
ribbons and ordinary text. The
Okimate can use thermal paper as
well: although this obviates the need
for a ribbon it isn't cheap.
REPORT CARD
S t a r I . C•10
S t ar M i c r o n i c s
£285
USEFULNESS W 1 1 1 6 0 1 E 0
A good all round printer which offers
colour as a bonus. Strong and looks
reliable.
EASE OF USE
Sensible positioning o f cables and
sockets, with good paper feed and front
panel controls.
SOFTWARE III
The Epson IX printer drivers from
Workbench produce acceptable results
but the Star might benefit from custom
drivers.
SPEED
Reasonable for a nine pin dot matrix
printer. Needs up to eight passes in
colour mode but still fairly fast.
where it can manage about 120
characters per second, about the same
speed on NIA.) (but produces nicer
characters), and signifi cantly faster on
screen dumps. This last is heavily
infl anc ed by the software that's
driving the printer, of course, and
neither the Okimate nor the Star w ill
have finished Tutting by the time
you've drunk your coffee.
' printer, and in fact I suspect it
would
C work well in that role. The
O
wide selection of' standard typefaces,
together
U with the simple way to
choose
L them and the extra little
touches
D in the design department
make
h this a printer to watch for. The
Okimate
a has the edge on the glossy
pictures, whic h might make it a good
v
buy if you've already got a good
e
monochrome printer and just want
t
the occasional hard (but not fast) copy
thai
S
things is to have a black ribbon for
t
day-to-day work, leaving the colours
a Sunday best.
for
r
a
s REPORT CARD
m
yO k i m a t e ZO
oL O M A 0 7 5 3 72331
l 11SEFIINESS
yReally only designed Mr colour work
the Oki is too slow and expensive to
use as a print workhorse.
EASE OF I ISE , 1 . 1 1 1 1 M M E E I
Good paper feed and dean ribbons
make it simple to set up. Programming
Mr colour is complicated by the poor
manuaL
S O FTW A RE = M E T R E
With either IBM or Amiga roms
installed the preferences driver will
work, hut the IBM mode leaves gaps
between lines.
SPEED
The Okimate's Achillies heel is the
need to print every line three times.

VALUE II VALUE
the- A print? The Star is a standard The cheapest colour printer to run and While it is exceptionally cheap to buy,
L
NLQ printer: a year or so ago it not too expensive to buy. Look out for the printer suffers bad& from high
ers L
would have been classed as very discounts. running costs, even when printing text.
to t
good. but these days we're all used to
h
seeing miraculously good quality
OVERALL 78% 0 1 ER A L 6590
h1.2 from
i a printer. It's probably as good A natural choice for Amiga owners Ideal as a second printer but very
to as who want colour but don't think they limiting i f this is to be a prime source
s you'll get without going to 24-pin - can afford it.
and and incidently losing colour. The o f hard copy.
i
s
f july 191111 A M / G A M A I M lTING 3 5
i
The Californ an
coders
John Minson heads west to interview of many British companies, where, if
the software house which you want a drink of corporation pop,
you have to rely on staff loci.
wears an Amiga on its heart Now, before you start sending
angry letters to the editor saying that
if you'd wanted this sort of thing
you'd have bought Water Cooler
see in all those Hollywood movies,
T Monthly, let me explain. Electronic
Langley may seem an unlikely complete with three taps for hot,
H
liome for a selection of international warm and cold: Red. white and blue Arts believes in treating its staff
E decently: It gives them what they
companies. but Honda's offices lie like the Stars and Stripes. need to make life comfortable and in
s
across one road of the elegant, This seems to symbolise EA's way
modern Business Centre, while return they give 101 per cent back to
m of working. After an initial period.
the company — and that goes all the
Epson's
a logo can he seen from when the company's products were
another window. But I'm here to visit way from programmers to warehouse
l licensed through Ariolasoft, it set up staff.
American
l software giant and Amiga its own British operatipn, bringing
specialist, Electronic Arts, whose In addition, every employee of EA
B with it working practices which are
is also a shareholder in the company,
latest
e offering, Interceptor, is raved perhaps best described as Californian.
about elsewhere in this issue. giving them an added interest in its
r Certainly they're totally unlike those
success. The result is that everyone
I'm sitting drinking coffee with PR
k makes a real effort to guarantee that
person Lesley Mansford and
s its product stands out from the crowd
photographer Tony Sleep. But despite
h —and as anyone who has ever
the fact that Lesley wants to tell us all
i puzzled over The Bard's Tale, got
about EA and its thrilling new creative with Deluxe Music
rproducts, Tony and I are more
Mark Lewis. head Construction Set or been driven nuts
e
interested in the water cooler. o f EA, UK and
t It's a drinks fountain, just like you by Marble Madness will tell you, it
Neuf ball juggler
o
w
n
o
f

36 1 AIK; A CO MP UTI NG ha y 7g88

 • H O U S E C A L L •

works. EA is truly at the leading edge photograph of the founding team

of software. 'Electronic Arts taking on this mighty task.
It's not just Stateside hyperbole that was t h e 136th fi r m With this in mind, I started by
came up with the Arts tag. EA fi rmly to e n t e r t h e h o m e asking this enthusiastic American
believes that its programmers, about the company history. It all
musicians and graphics specialists are computing field when statied in Silic on Valley with a
artists — and it treats them as such.
its first products were visionary by the name of William M
Hawkins, better known as Trip, who
shipped in May 1983 was at that time work ing for Apple.
Today the Elec- Mark picks up the story.
R aren't best served by nine-to- tronic A r t s b r a n d "Trip realised that it was software —
E hours and impossible deadlines, not hardware — that made people
five
A assigns each of its projects a
name i s t h e m o s t want to buy computers. He had a
EA
producer
L whose role, just lik e his respected consumer dream of a company that would bring
namesake
I in the fi lm industry, is to people a new depth of interactive
act
S as a buffer between the software brand y entertainment, so he brought together
commercial
I interests of the company a team of people, each with
tre. if and
N the freedom of the programming experience in different areas".
pop, team. This group included Tim Mott, who
G
It's this sort of liberal attitude that had previously been with Xerox. to
t
has make sure that people got the tools
h helped EA attract — and keep —
that some of the leading talents in that they needed to do the job (did
a that inc lude water coolers, I idly
software development today.
t wondered) and a guy called Dave
Only a few months ago Rob
c
Hubbard, doyen of British computer Evans for talent seeking.
r
musicians, whose work was to be Together Dave and the team drew
e
heard on dozens of products from up a lis t of every name they could
rid in a
almost every major publisher, decided think of in the Bay area who might be
ck io t give up his fl ourishing freelance
to interested in work ing for the
the work
i for a contract with EA. It's company, then they invited them all
house hardly
v surprising when you consider to a big, glitz y party to test their
that
e contract meant the opportunity to reactions. Somehow it seems fi tting
I EA work
m both in the States and in Britain that EA started w ith a party.
pany. and,
i perhaps more importantly, the All this was taking place in early
its opportunity
n to keep on top of all the autumn, 1982. Eight months later, in
me latest developments in the software May 1983, the first product was ready
d
world,
that to be shipped. Now one of the places
s
:rowd which chose to stock it was a shop in
iCan a computer Pennsylvania where Mark was
31 working. "These were the best games
make you cry?, I'd ever played. I wanted to work for
nuts (Electronic Arts' first advertisement.) The water cooler. imported from the US the company"
, it
Coffee over, Lesley takes Tony and Lesley introduces us to the Director of
me on a short tour of the offices. European Publis hing (head honcho,
There's the bustle of busy people, but UK). Not for Mark Lewis the heavily T reach the UK came via
though they're on the phone or fortifi ed office with guard dog H
Ariolasoft. " It was a good experience
poring over papers, there's a relaxed secretary and gold key to the for
E a couple of years but we weren't
atmosphere, almost as if they were... executive too. Instead his "c ube", as in
f touch with the consumers", Mark
(gasp) enjoying themselves. Maybe everyone calls the open-plan cubicles, recalls. "Als o, when you're dealing
i
they are. I know from past experience is just lik e anyone else's. In fact, Mark on a license, it's diffi c ult to attract
tells us, its smaller than some, r
that it's not unusual to fi nd people artistic talent. That's one reason we
because he needs less desk space. s
still hard at work at seven in the decided to sell direct".
t
evening — not because they have to
but because they want the best for the E Bringing the Californian philosophy
to Britain appears to have paid
company. l
dividends. EA in the UK now has
And when Friday comes round A pieces of EA memorabilia, e
three production staff, headed by
there's none of the POETS day R
including the "Can a computer make c
associate producer Joss Ellis, backed
mentality (Push off early — O cry?" advertisement that first
you tby Kevin Shrapnel and Rupert
tomorrow's Saturday). Instead, at five. U
brought the company to the public r
Easterbrook. As well as overseeing
everyone gathers for an informal eye.
N It set out the philosophy of o
conversions for British formats, they
meeting in whic h views can be freely taking
D game design further, deeper are
n also involved with the
aired, they can sink a few cans of than
t ever before, so that it could start i
development of home-produced
Bud, and let off steam throwing to
h elic it the emotional responses we product.
c
featherlight foam balls at each other. take
e for granted in other media suith A The fi rst British EA program is
But the biggest surprise is when as the cinema. Next to it was a r to-
w
a t
h ilt
l s ,
g 1
• H O U S E C A L L E
44
likely to he Hyperdrive from
newcomer Michael Powell. Though
Mark Lewis says that only one in 300
speculative submissions makes the
grade, this one did impress them
enough to take it further. Nobody
wants to say too much about it, as
completion is still a couple of months
away, but apparently it concerns
futuristic, sophisticate bobsled type
machines. All should he revealed in
the early autumn though.
EA will back teams that it believes
Inn, even if the programs submitted
aren't suitable but show talent. And if
somebody comes to the company
with a great design but doesn't know
their assembler from their hex, they'll
arrange for him or her to work for a
week with a programming team, to
see if they hit it off together. It all gets
the best from people.
The truth i s that
Commodore hasn't
built or sold as many
Amigas as we had all
originally hoped,
(Trip Hawkins, EA President)
Obviously one of the burning
questions for readers of this magazine
is Electronic Arts' attitude to the
Amiga. In the past it's supported it to
the full, with games like Ferrari -
Formula One and the superb Deluxe
series of creative applications, some
of which, like Deluxe Video, are now
being used professionally by
advertising agencies and production
companies.
But there's no denying that Amiga
sales have been slower than
everybody hoped, and that for various
reasons the machine has not yet had
the success that it deserves. Can EA
afford to continue to back it, I
wondered. Mark Lewis had no
hesitation in assuring me that it can
and will.
"The Amiga is a beautiful machine
—both an auditory and visual
experience. And you can do so much
with it. There's Deluxe Paint at one
end and arcade games at the other".
He went on to explain that EA's
romance with micro goes back a long
way. "We worked closely with the
development team. They were based
within 20 miles of us and we caught
their enthusiasm.
"The popularity of the PC is killing
the market for the Amiga in the US",
38 A • I G A CO MP t!I I NT; Jul y igloo
he continues "but it's doing much
better over here. When Atari raised
the price for the ST. that was a great
help. When the two are at the same
price the choice should be obvious to
potential purchasers. There are two
ways to make it take off — for
Commodore to push hard and for
Electronic Arts to develop leading
edge software".
A that EA has in the machine,
Mark
S hands me a copy of Deluxe
i
News, a glossy magazine which is
automatically
f sent to all registered
users
t of the Deluxe series, on both
sides of the Atlantic. The cover story
o machines are going into a decline, he
dis about Deluxe PhotoLab, a package
ewhich lets you take an existing image
mor digitise one, manipulate it, then
print it at any size up to a ten foot
o the development of really great
square poster.
n But the thing which could really set
sthe Amiga soaring is Mark's
tconfidence that it will lead into
roptical disc media. He dislikes the
aoverused acronym CDI (Compact Disc
t—Interactive), but loves its potential.
eEA already has a demo of an
tinteractive adventure up and running.
h "Your screen is like a cinema, and
e
f with his ideas. The UK will surpass
a America in terms of making the most
i of the technical side. It's one of our
t responsibilities as publishers to
h develop it properly".
Lesley Mans ford— prowl of interteptor
what you see is just what you'd see if
you were walking round. Our demo
has you walking round EA's
headquarters, solving a simple
mystery. It's hardly animated but it
could quite easily be. In terms of
interactive entertainment we're just
beginning to realise the possibilities".
He also lets slip that Rob Hubbard
is working on the sound-storage tools
—which has to be one reason he
deserted these shores. "With the
Amiga you currently have graphics to
match the Saturday morning cartoons
—but with compact discs you'll have
the movies," Mark enthuses.
Britain will play its part in that
revolution. Though Mark professes
himself extremely happy that the 8 bit
believes that there have been many
advantages in their dominance of the
UK market for so long. "You've had
technical expertise." he said. Your
programmers have made the C64 do
things the rest of the world couldn't
believe".
Already Solar Systems, an associate
of Argonaut, has been commissioned
to produce an Amiga game. And
Mark is in fairly regular contact with
ace designer Mike Singleton: "He's
waiting for a day when there'll be a
machine great enough to catch up
It seemed a good, optimistic note to
end on, and to leave Mark to get back
to work. As we go he consults his
desktop computer to check for
messages. Another of EA's
revolutionary practices is to link
everyone by electronic mail, so that
communications for individuals or to
everybody on the staff, from Langley
or San Mateo, can reach their
destination immediately. It also
provides an open forum to for the
germs of new ideas.
O End Tony and I are both
N
boggled by what we have seen. Can
the
t method of working really be so
perfect?
h Nothing has suggested
otherwise
e — end the end product
suggests
w that it works too. If I had to
bet
a on a company to create a
computer
y game which will make you
laugh,
b think — yes, even cry — then I'd
become a patron of Electronic Arts.
a
c
k
 •
M
see if U

Samp batt
demo S
I
ut it C
of •
just
Mies".
)bard
Btools

hics to fez San casts a critical ear over a collection

rtoons
have of boxes all designed to get super sounds
It
into your Amiga
ses
B8 bit
le, he
'fly unsuitable. Its playback fi ltering let it
I programmer I've traversed the
ofthe get away with lousy sound quality
N
audio wastelands in search of the and background hiss — unacceptable
had
m
ultimate sound sampler. Video games when transferred to the Amiga. A
, y
need sampled title music and Prophet 2000 was hot on features and
digitised
q sound effects. Back in the in b e t t e r sound quality. but it
udo
In't early
u days — 1985 - none were didn't have any easy ways of' getting
r
available.
e I rented an Ensoniq Mirage the samples into the Amiga. so all
r.jate synthesiser
s so that I could sample these rental synthesisers turned out to
Hied some
t speech, the famous - be less than prophetable.
M i s s
launched"
a i l evoice of Clare Edgeley at An Amiga sound sampler, the
Rainhird — and transferred it via the Mimetics SoundScape, came along
with s
Midi
a port into the s T and Amiga for just in time. This little black box
playback. connected upright into the second
ea g
Alas the Mirage proved to be
a
iss m
nost e
tor
s

le to
balk

at
r to
:ley

ou

1
1
 E M
U S
I C
E

mouse port on an A1000, and

produced some very effective results.
It was way ahead of its time. Since
then. I've had more than my fair
share of samplers M im e t 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 hands
on.
My criteria were simple: Sound
quality must be superb, money no
object. A ll very well for a games
programmer to scoff at price but it
turned out there was no simple
solution. None of the units excelled in
a way that made them superior. They
all had their features and drawbacks.
The more expensive ones didn't
appear to be any better.
Some of the samplers under test are
little more than toys, others semi-
professional tools. Nothing currently
available for the Amiga is comparable
to true studio quality. It is unlik ely
you could make a record with any of
these samplers, but you can have a lot
of fun trying.
They are very s imilar in design,
made up of three stages. The input
stage whic h sometimes has an
amplifi er, the fi ltering, and lastly the
digitising section. Samplers skimp on
some or all of these options, to the
detriment of versatility or sound
quality.
Mimetics' Soundscape
T unfortunately the software
H
doesn't take advantage of them, and
I
will only sample in mono. Mimetics
supplies
S sampling packages with its
unit
h for making musical instruments
for
a packages like Deluxe Music, by
sampling
s and creating L H files.
s Samples are limited to 32k in
length
t — about three seconds at the
typical
e 10KHz sample rate — fine for
digitising instruments, but useless for
r
long pieces of music or speech. The
e
program also has the ability to
o
interpolate sounds — to move them
i
around and alter their frequency
n
without having to re-sample.
p The software runs from the
u
Workbench in little windows, and
t
pops up more windows as you select
s
different options. Fully icon-driven, it
,
tries to be frie n d ly. No d o u b t reading
b ma n u a l wo u ld help.
the
u A second p ro g ra m su p p lie d is a
t T
40 1 : 4 9 A i t q T I N G 4 (0
.
DTI: DTI: DF2: DRS: RAM: PAPT'
DI,MERI:Samples
'
SageSample
Brass1,0
CrashCymbal
D D pa
iHan
t i cdClap
Plucked
FILE 'Sample 7 1 1
1:11:
OX
Pro-Sound nil, t r t m ( fq1(1
demo for sampling long contiguous
pieces of speech or music. Its samples
can only be replayed with their
proprietary software being specially
encoded. This is because Mimetics
does clever tricks to enhance the
quality of the sound by recording it
with DBX fi lters and compounding
the master volume control over the
top of the sound sample. It gives the
samples an accuracy of 14 bits when
the Amiga can usually only do 8 bits
the other 6 bits are the volume
control.
The Mimetics samples really are
impressive in quality, and suffer little,
if any background hiss. I got the
impression that the hardware
potential inside the Mimetics box was
being inc redibly underused. The
sampler has a software controlled
gain fac ility that the accompanying
software barely utilises, A shame
really.
was generally impressed with the
Mimetics box, but frustrated at the
lack of portability with the demo
programs data fi les to any other
program, inc luding my own. But as a
sampler for creating musical
instruments there is nothing to fault
it. Obviously this sampler was
intended f o r musicians, not
programmers.
Applied Visions'
FutureSound
F coloured b o x that attaches, via a
U
ribbon cable, to the parallel port at
U
1111111:3
111111111
1
1FILE 0
lcmcal
the rear of the Amiga, lik e almost
every other box. It is a mono-only
digitiser, has a gain (volume) control
and two inputs, one for a microphone
and one for a phono line input.
The microphone supplied with the
package 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 mik e from the
package is beyond me. This is the
only sound sampler that has a switch
and passthrough connector to let you
use your printer while the sampler is
plugged in.
The software supplied with
FutureSound is reasonably graphical
and powerful. It presents your sound
sample information in a friendly
manner on the screen, showing the
applicable waveforms and allows you
to zoom in on any interesting
sections. You could also specify start
and stop points by clicking on the
waveforms with the mouse.
Full control of the sampling and
playback rates is supported, as are
various edit effects like reversing,
mixing and copying waveforms. Most
imp o rta n t feature is the a b ilit y to do
long samples that span the entire free
chip memory. This gives a max imum
sample length of about 37 seconds at
the usual l o KHz sample rate.
The sound quality, is excellent, as is
its ability to show you a VU-meter
peaklevel to let you k now the correct
volume at whic h to sample. Too loud,
and you get clicks and pops — known
as Clipping — too quiet, and the
background noise becomes
 unacceptable compared to the sound
signal level. I ended up using
FutureSound to sample StarGlider's
title music — the digitised version —
and most of the speech too.
Futuresound is a great package.
with good sound quality and nice
software. Unfortunately, it is
expensive— possibly because it
features a quality digitising circuit
incorporating an amplifier and filter
circuits that really show their effect in
the quality department. The software
is friendly and easy to use but I was
frustrated by its lack of capacity to
hold huge larger than 380k) samples.
Various companies have promised
ability to use fast memory in the
future — something that Futuresound
sorely needs.
SunRize Industries'
PerfectSound
rol
one I FIRST
softwaresaw
on the PerfectSound
PeopleLink, the
American computer system renowned
he
for its Amiga software support. I
downloaded this free program and
was impressed by its capability and
friendliness. It rates on par with
it, FutureSound for features, with the
.added bonus that it supports stereo. It
allows you to name each sample you
tch have loaded and click on them to
rou
select them — a more powerful
•is
approach than FutureSound.
More importantly, it brought news
:al
nd
you
art
Lost
lo
i•ee
Pin
at
sis
act
tad,
wn
Clue meter levels — perhaps irs a video game
of a really cheap stereo sound
digitiser available from the author's
company. I phoned him up, and
within days I had a prototype board.
It looked like two pieces of cardboard
held together by chewing gum and a
bit of circuitry.
It connects to the parallel port, but
this time without any ribbon cable, so
it stands precariously out of the hack
of the Amiga. It has two phono inputs
and two gain controls.
I later received a final production of
PerfectSound in a smarter metal case,
with the two volume knobs poking
through holes in the top. This makes
it difficult to plug into an A2000
because they stick out. It suffers the
same problem of not having any
ribbon cable to connect it
conveniently to the back of the
Amiga. Hopefully they will make it
more accessible in the future.
I wasn't particularly impressed with
the sound quality, but it scored very
highly in the ease-of-use department.
it managed to sample everything I
asked of it but there was some
background hiss. This is because they
use an inferior analogue to digital
chip. the flash converter variety.
rather than the more expensive
sample-and-hold type.
PerfectSound represents the
cheapest reasonable entry into sound
sampling, but the sound quality
leaves a lot to be desired. For a little
extra cash there are other, far superior
alternatives.
The S5, by Sophus
Software and ASAP
I W is A S most
the eagerexpensive
to see thesound
S5, since it
sampler available for the Amiga.
Glancing through the manual I soon
noticed it had some really
sophisticated features — fast Fourier
transformations (Fri's) allow you to
plot frequency graphs and there are
some really useful fast ram modes.
The hardware is impressive stuff: A
full stereo sampler which connects to
the parallel port via a ribbon cable. It
has a gain control and a switchable
input with different impedances for
microphones or line inputs.
Unfortunately it is the software that
lets it down — it lacks some basic user
interface routines.
You can ask it to do something. like
play back your long sample, and it
would go to sleep for minutes without
even printing a message saying it was
busy. A simple "Please Wait" would
have gone down a treat, especially for
some of the more time consuming
functions like resealing the sample. or
Fri's.
On the plus side, the S5 is the only
sampler I tested capable of really long
samples. It utilises Fast memory when
you request it. This means if you have
3.5Mb you can sample an entire track
from your favourite CD. For that Fm
grateful 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 library
of functions to allow programmers to
replay digitised sounds from the S5
Sampler. The software defaults to
sampling Deluxe Music instruments.
In terms of sound quality the S5
was probably the best. It came on par
ith FutureSound, but has stereo
inputs. If you can grasp how to use it,
the software is much more
sophisticated. Definitely designed for
the professional programmer.
Pro-Sound Designer
from Eidersoft
T for buying American_ There is
unusual in that its software
H
supports both the FutureSound and
EPerfectSound hardware, as well as
PEidersofrs own. Pro-Sound is a stereo
rsampler in a small self-contained
oi:artridge with no external controls.
-Having no cable, it connects to the
Sparallel port, clinging upright to the
oback of the Amiga. Since it's been
udesigned for the A1000 a gender
changer is supplied to allow you to
nconnect it to an A2000 or A500. The
d Tel: 0 1 - 8
box has its volume preset internally to
pwhat Eidersoft thinks are line levels.
aThis means you must fiddle a little
cwith the volume on your source.
k Pro-Sound is definitely a user's
apackage. The software has a cute,
gfriendly icon-based feel to it.
eAlthough some of the icons were
iunusual in function. What struck me
swas the attention to graphical detail.
AmiG.4 rovpr. TING ? .
It's supposed to be a sound sampler
and not a video game. But I had a lot
of fun, so maybe it was a game after
all.
It's an amazing package with really
flexible controls, and so easy to use.
The waveform viewing and analysis
tools were the most powerful I've
seen — the cute meter levels look like
an oscilloscope with true real-time
waveforms being displayed as you
adjust the volume control. The ability
to hold numerous samples in memory
while you edit them is a feature only
Perfect Sound is able to duplicate.
The flexibility with which you could
instantly call things up with function
keys is a joy. Eidersoft tells me that a
future version of Pro-Sound will cope
with Fast memory, but until then.. the
maximum sample length is about 30
seconds at 10 khz.
Sound quality is reasonable,
although not up to the S5's standards.
However I certainly sound it better
than PerfectSound. The loss of an
external volume control was a bit
frustrating for me, since I hate having
to play with my Discman's volume to
stop the clipping problems caused by
high levels. Minor grumbles apart, I'd
class the Pro Sound Designer as an
above-average product, for a very
reasonable price. Excellent.
Summary
D samplers are really quite subtle.
IMost support the same basic features,
F only oiler minor improvements.
and
However.
F I would class the
PerfectSound
E as little more than a toy.
The
R sound quality just isn't up to
scratch,
E but then it is the cheapest
Nunit and so possibly a good entry
Clevel box. Buy this only if you can't
afford
E anything better.
In terms of home use, I would
S
definitely recommend the Pro Sound
b
Designer. Being relatively cheap and
e
so easy to use, it has got to be the
tmost fun, and oilers quite reasonable
wresults,
e The best sampler was undoubtedly
ethe Sophus S5. but it's a shame the
ntop-class hardware was let down by
tpoor software. It was technically the
hmost sophisticated both in terms of
esound quality and features, but it was
a pig to use. For professionals this
represents the best you can buy at the
moment. Hopefully Sophus will take
another look at its software. A few
minor changes will turn it into a
grumble-free package.
FutureSound and Mimetics come
somewhere in between. Both are
badly priced in England, due to
importers slapping on huge penalties
oohing wrong with the samplers —
they are quite good hut they just don't
offer value for money.
Where to buy
PerfectSound — E75
Amiga Centre. Scotland
Tel: 031-557 4242
Future Sound — 0 7 5
KB Mar keti ng
,
1Pro-Sound
4 Designer — £79
1 2 0
Eidersoft
2
Tel: 0268 541212
Sophus S5 — 0 9 9
Appl i ed Systems & Peripherals
Tel: 0724 280222
Tha nks t o M o n ke y file a ne va , t it i Vict o ria R ood.
RornTortf. Esse x M r the loa n o f the Ku m r vim a r d .
 r'
IIIPP
r
ume to
sed by
iart,
ri Armga Arcade's
s an
ry

placing yourself on top. But although

it allows you to make big jumps in
le height, having so much energy tied
subtle. up in boulders ofter proves to be too
atures, risky a strategy.
lents. As soon as a Sentinel or Guardian
starts sapping your energy you have
na to'. to transport to a safe part of the land-
scape or risk premature death. This
to
means leaving behind all the boul-
est ders. Although from your. hopefully,
now safe point on the landscape you
can begin reabsorbing the boulders.
you are now competing with the
Sentinel which, even though you've
•ound moved, will still absorb any other
and energy source it sees.
he Frequently. a policy of little and
often is the key tosuccess.Move from
nable
I relying one ot the 19.000 tevels place to place. always staying one
step ahead of the Sentinel, without
itedlv worth two trees and Sentinels three. simple, but far from easy in practice. ever having too much capital inves-
the T rarest of rarities, an original Sentinels are like giant Oscars that Imagine you're standing on the ted in boulders.
nby O
game. was released by Firebird. slowly rotate on their elevated plat- ground with an empty square beside Compared with earlier 8 bit ver-
the Cal
W le d Sentinel. it was the latest mas- forms. Whenever a Sentinel, or vou. You can create a boulder on the sions and the ST conversion released
gof terpi
A ece by Geoff Crammond. who Guardian, turns to face you, it begins late last year. Amiga Sentinel, pro-
il was earlier had proved that the BBC absorbing your energy. randomly grammed by Steve "Goldrunner"
R Bak, is faster and has been given a
is Micro could support top class soft- redistributing it throughout the land-
D
ware with suchelTorts as Aviator and scape in the form of trees. complete sonic overhaul in the form
at the
take lS
ater the excellent Revs, still regarded The only way you can absorb the of an incredibly atmospheric set of
by
t many as the definitive driving energy of the Sentinel, or its Guard- eerie, almost surrealistic, sound
game.
h ians, is by reaching an elevated pos- effects and musical cameos courtesy
Sentinel consists of 10.090 land• ition in the landscape from which of David Whittaker.
e
scapes. each containing a Sentinel you can look down on its platform. Although the lack of effort put into
e Amiga conversions is often disap-
M and up to six Guardians whose life You can only absorb an objecls
e n
energy you must absorb before gain- energy when you can see the square pointing. Firebird has wisely decided
d access to another landscape.
ing on which it stands. You start each to slick closely to Crammond's
'Nes o Eachlandscape is rather like a con- level in the lowest point of the land- original 8 bit graphics, although they
toured
f open plan chess board with scape. often only able to see the tops are brighter and crisper than in
s- valle ys, mountains and plateaux on of a few trees and the Sentinel tow- previous versions.
1
don't which trees almond. The key to the ering above you. Any attempt at major modification
9 e game is energy. The smallest
whol Getting high enough to be able to empty square. Then, on lop of the would have been a big mistake,
8 of energy is a tree: boulders are
unit absorb the Sentinel is in principle boulder, you can create a "copy" of purely because the original was so
6 yourself into whic h y ou can perfectly crafted.
t transport. If you've never experienced
h You're now standing on the boul- Sentinel, treat yourself to the nearest
a der looking down on the 'old' you thing yet to the perfect game. Unless
which you can absorb so as not to you're an out and out death merchant
t have lost any net energy, except that you Avon't be disappointed.
tied up in the boulder. David Bishop
From your new vantage point you
cansee bits of the landscape visible
because of your extra elevation. You sentinel
may already be able to see the bases E19.99
of afew of the trees the lops of which Fire bird
you saw earlier. If so, absorb their
energy, you're bound to need it later
to create more boulders.
Graphics
And you're not limited to just
building one boulder at a time either. •
Apart from the fact thai each one
14•11
did
costs two units of energy to create.
there is nothing stopping y ou
6Value .1_1111111I1111
Overall — 90%
1
the tree.; for ertergl building a tower of boulders before
a
hOly 1 1 G . t M i l -
1
m
1 ' 7 7 N C 4 3
 1111.1111111.111111111M
FOOTMAN

this case is a bog standard ripola You from one end of ihe screen to the
W the first program that is ever Pacman clone with very few frills. other.
E eased for
rel You use joystick or cursor keys and Gameplay, when you get down to
If
a that's
d n e truew - arid it is if you think troll off round a whole bunch of it, is not particularly fast or start
about
cl o m then the main contender for
it - mazes y o u get SO on the disc - ,lingly responsive.
the second has gut to be Pacman. or while being pursued by some So far. so standard. but the
lin this
p u case
t e Footman. arthritic ghosties. redeeming feature of Footman is the
rk It's been a long time coming. and 'up. there are dots. power pills comprehensiveMaze Editor. This lets
n thing
R
the e is, was it worth the wait? which give you the ability to put the you design your own mazes in which
voWell,esortr of. ghosties out of their misery, and to weeble, providing all sorts of
What
sw i . you get from TopDown in wraparound corridors that'll take opportunities to shock maiden aunts
and generally be terribly rude.
t That apart FOOlincil at this price is
h simply, well, adequate b u t only
e just.
o John Baker
l
d
loolman
j t 4_!Hi
o l'opllon n Developments I.
k • '611
e Sound 1 1 1 1 I 1
• • • • •
a Graphics at
b
a •
o GameplavITill M I N H [1
• • • l e SI •
u
Va lu e 1 1 1 1 = 1 1 1 0
t
Overall Zo' Its ghosthunting
i
cr

NEJE
bits, especially when a well aimed red at the end. I haven't got there yet, but
p fighting for the love of Maria blow decapitates him. a
every
e lifelike manner especially in it gives you an incentive to fight ever
the onward.
I
Whittaker (down boyst You are not The head falls to the ground with a m isword fighting.
al The games designer, Steve Brown. All in all it's a good game and
Cone in your desires and have rival spurt of blood from his severed neck ng somewhat addictive. A bit more
Sun accompanied by a scream and satis- videotapes himself wielding swords
T readers to fight off. They come at fand a kicking. and then watches the detail in the characters wouldn't have
you one by one in the forest for a fying thud as the torso tumbles.
U
"discussion", each with enormous Wholesome stuff. ctapet to produce the graphics. gone amiss.
R The graphics on Barbarian are a bit o Ther digitised sound is very good, This must be the last in this series
broadswords and very little on.
E Prepare yourself before battle com- of a lei down. It would seem thai the ithe gurgles screams and thuds being of two guys beating each other up in
ymences. You spend the first half hoar Atari ST graphics were simply sparticularly realistic. All good blood very nice scenery. Ifs wearing a bit
dumped from one machine to the curdling stuff. forget your karate thin. but no doubt someone will
ogetting killed, very, very quickly. t come up with yet another scenario
other. The ligures are very basic, in games and get into this.
uAfter a while things get better and h If there's a digitised piccv of Maria with different graphics and surpris-
you hire i ti to enjoy hacking the foe to colouring ar id i n for m. O ne
r a ingly familiar gameplay
s t Agood one for all the hackers out
e t there. that s the violent ones, not the
l h quiet key tapping types. or are you an
Arnold Sr bwarzenegger in Woody
f e Allen clothing?
a y Brian Chappell
s m
a o
b v Barbarian
a e El 9.95
r i Palace
b n Sound I
a
r P
Graphics 1111111111MED
i 1111
Gameplay
a
n Value '1111•11111111111
,eral
squelch asthe head rolls
44 , 4 MI G A O M I T T I N G f u l y 7988
 • R E V I E W S E

FERRARI FORMULA 1

badly - and two months can, at

A into full swing. Electronic Arts
h
, asreleased its latest attack on the
Ami
t gagames player in the shape of
Ferrari Formula 1.
h
e Designed to bring the thrills and
spils of a Formula One racing team
F your screen, the game revolves
to
oosely around the 1986 Ferrari team
cl
of
r Michele Alboreto and Stefan
lo
mhansson - even though fohansson
hassince been booted out in favour
u
of the faster Gerhard Berger, who in
l
this game is racing for Benetton!
a Apart from Acornsoffs Revs, most
software
1 houses have been too
terrified
s to release a game which
actual
e ly involved the technicalities of
driving a racing car. Games such as
a
Pole Position and Super Sprint are
s the car is in the corner of thescreen_
simply arcadegames with a car as the
o
theme, as opposed to a fish or a
banana.
n used to, this small point is suf-
g Ferrari Formula I sets out to rectify
this
e situation, not only giving you
control of the machine as it hurtles
t
around the various world cham-
s
pionship tracks, but also allowing
you to act as team manager.
Holding this post for a high profile
car manufacturer like Ferrari must be
aterrifying proposition, arid thank-
fully the game does not stretch to the
reality of being fired although alter
losing a few races resignation feels
close at hand,
You must not only get your car to
and from each race - allowing
enough lime for testing. modifi•
cations and travel - but you must be
able to set your car up correctly for
each different track.
Avariety of alterations can be done
to your car - the F186 model, a 1.5
litre turbocharged job producing
more than 800 bhp. Theserange horn
turbo and engine adjustments, with
the help of a dyno at Fiorano. right
through to choosing different tyres
for different wheels at Detroit.
In order not to make the game too
offew
It'ind
thescreen scrolls left to right and you
control the driver's head.
This means that in hard corners
vou can be turning full lock and yet
Although it is nut too difficult to get
ficiently annoying to make the first
few attempts at driving around the
track 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 is
keeping up with everyone else_ On
average. I was running about 15
seconds slower per lap than the
seven computer-controlled cars -
those of Mansell, Piquet. Senna,
Prost, Berger and Alboreto.
This is when you should take the
FR
111111111=1
plunge arid choose the Formula I car.
with its gears. turbo boost and mas-
sive overstuff.
Changing from a supposedly
Formula 3 car where the gears are
automatically selected to a Formula I
car with manual gears is not quite as
easyas I had imagined. Even with the
turbo-boost set at its lowest, the car
still goes into corners far too fast. and
unless you have been methodic
enough to learn the track, excursions
into the undergrowth are all too
frequent.
Thankfully, unless you are actually
in mid-race, these crashes do not
affect you too adversely - apart from
the seconds lost.
In a race, however, you can lose up
to a couple of months if you crash
worst, mean four races - 36 possible
points.
The graphics are good. but by no
means exceptional. Attention to
detail - track dimensions. and so on -
were obviously considered more
important than artistic graphits.
Onthe other hand. the instrument
panel is small and lacks an accurate
rev counter. which is a pity. The
animation, too. is good. But as the
game is written in C rather than
assembly language, it is still not as
smoothas perhaps it should be.
On the other hand, the sound -
both music and effects - is excellent.
A natty little tune plays while the
game is loading. The sounds during
the game are excellent ranging from
the roar of a turbocharged Ferrari
engine to the whirr of an air-powered
spanner.
Ferrari Formula 1 is , when
compared to everything else avail-
able for the Amiga. an excellent
driving simulation. It combines an
emotive subject w it h enough
substance to provide many days of
satisfaction that shoot-'em-ups or
flight simulations could never give.
That is not to say the game is not
flawed - it is_ The most unfortunate
thing about Ferrari Formula I is that
it could have been THE definitive
Amiga game. Unfortunately that
accolade will have to go elsewhere.
Francis lago
1urmula
C24.95
tletirtnik .irts
Sound [111f111111•111
Graphics 111
rrIPPla% - U W E =
1o 11
I T I
p
D v
ILT6
C r i a l

difficult to get into, a friendly iets bum behind 111)1, T

11
mechanic will help you with advice
whennecessary.
The first few hours are spent at the = 1
test track trying to learn how to con-
trol the car.
Thankfully, y ou c an choose
whether or not to operate the gears
manually, something which makes
driving a little simpler.
Using the mouse, the right button
accelerates, the left button brakes and
pressing both down engages the
clutch for drag starts.
Moving the mouse from left to
right steers the car and it is this
which presents the most difficulty.
Unlike every other driving game I
have played, instead of the front of
the car pointing wherever you steer. Ferrdri viewed from dben,•

b ilt I
,
 STARFLEET 1

6 destruct sequencer and starbase

.ESANiki status readouts.
,AN in sector 1, 6 destroyed! Computer systems are used to con-
3 trol damage. navigation, shields,
,lorpedoesweredeflected. torpedos. phasers, tracter beam.
TACTICALPT"'Av transporter. internal security and
reconnaissance probe launches.
---
181 -7
2 3 iii 2 , 2 Within each of these systems are
various menus and sub-menus used
) ? at 313.5deg
1 41 ? ? • a 161 for controlling that part of the simu-
- I 1 4 • K I , 3220(TOT) lation.
24 83 1IcIA ? The amount of detail is almost
8
838.8 8 8 t ? t .5- • ' - m m • / 885/ 805/805 •bewildering. Take security for
8-8 481 2 ? 1 example: This can be compromised
? ?•- •- - _ , PRIMARY in one of three ways.
- ? •l i Enemy agents can get aboard,
9 •. ' . P / 5 0 0 hidden in the supplies you pick up at
- •O 9 / 60 starbases. Prisoners, captured during
A r . battle, can escape and wreak havoc
' N
, I A.
throughout your ship. Finally, agents
canbe beamed aboard if their ship is
-
Absorbing all the information on Star Fleet takesa while within two sectors of yours.
- Internal security control gives you
the latest information and allows you
- behind the ears, but hungry for every doing. You are to deplete the enemy to start or stopsearches to apprehend
W aproduct which has a quick scrap of knowledge you can gain Beet sufficiently so that our main intruders. You can also opt for a
reference
H guide1longer and more from the Star Fleet Officers' Acad- battle Beet can be assembled and maximum security deck situation, in
detailed than many which one deck is given blanket
E 1 games' full emy. There. you w ill be given defeat them before they canreach our
instructions, you know you've got a command of the training ship OCAS colonies. cover at the expense of all others.
N
problem. Star Fleet
ypoint.
1 1 is a case in Republic. If you prove yourself a Each briefing ends with the spe- Should you outguess the villain,
and he goes on to this deck, he will
worthy enough student, you will cific requirements of the mission
o Complete with4 a 68-page Star Fleet have a choice of 36 starships to which include the number of enemy almost certainly be caught. or at least
training manual, not to mention a command. warships you must destroy and the prevented from sabotaging any vul-
u 1 training manual, Missions are many and varied but time in which vou have to do so.
100 page officer's nerable systems.
'this is a combat simulation and role- all involve the location and destruc- Finally you are given the number of Thesame attention to detail can be
r
playing
2
game of mammoth propor- tion of enemy craft. A typical mission starbases in the region. seen throughout Star Fleet 1,
tieons. If vou can locale and dock with an Whether such a mass of information,
3
Set some time in the future. Star
briefing might go something like this:
Alliance starbase—providing they'll documentation a n d dis play s
a
Fleet is a strategic4war game between LEllective immediately, you are to drop their defence shields long amounts to a great game. you could
s assumecommand of the M G Duke enough to let vou through—you'll be only say after spending plenty of
k opposing forces.
two 5 Natural!e stdemoc- of York. After relieving Captain able to refuel and re-arm your ship,
p
,yre
h
g
u
o
n hours on the bridge.
eracy. the American the Bertsch, you will proceed directly' to as well as carry out repair work. Certainly the package is impress-
universe and
6 way of life,T he
everything. the Antares lii region, Your ship is controlled from 23 dif- ive, the depth of the game unques-
d tionable, and the scenario one that
baddies are the 7 evil and incredibly It You are hereby ordered to seek out ferent command menus, which
thostile Krellans and Zaldrons, and engage the forces of the Krellan embrace 13 separate computer sys- most gamesters hold dear to their
o re builders on
empi 8 a galactic scale. and Zuldron Empires which have tems,as well as other functions such heart.
r You begin ;lc a cadet s till wet invaded the Alliance territory. In so as emergency hyperspace. self- Although the lack of graphics may
e
9 put many ofir, this shouldn't necess-
arily deter Amiga owners from con-
v 1 sidering the package. especially if
i D ECXHUBE0R26 they like pure simulations or role
e MARVFUNCTIONSEngineering/MainEngines playing games. But be prepared to
w VMEIABLE iSYSTEMS: MainEngines work hard at getting the most from
this game.
last
T , f e d on this deck at 15.38 David Bishop
M E Ni ImM
T 1 1 1 W=11111111.11111.11 Star Fleet I
L'24.95
T 111 Electronic Arts
,
M
111
I 1
E 111
SIAM DECK
4 1 1 1STANDARD
;!, being missi,on-based Star fl m °Hes much to MI* Star Trekgames

5
46 A A•fGA CO MP UTI NG J uly 1988 111
 • H I N T S E

perfect purple and bubbly blue. The

first allows you to blow bubbles at
twice the normal rate and the purple
rbase sweets increase the range of your
bubbles. Bubbly blues are useless, a
Dcon quick chomp to no effect. The hest of
ie.lds, both worlds, dropping yellows and
ieam, purples is known as -
; and
Up".
Super
is are B u b b l e
;used
simu-
U open brolly to allow Rub and
Imost Bob
M to fall down either three, five or
; for seven
B screens. Very useful for
msi ed avoiding
R the nastier screens.
E It helps to get cross when the cross
oard,
in
L q uest ion is a magic one. The blue
upat water cross fi lls the screen with
luring L
havoc water,
A k illing all the baddies on that
[gents level,
S the purple lighting cross calls
hipis down
a several bolts of lightning to
smite the evil monsters. The red cross
r
syou sets either Bob•or Bub breathing balls
il e fire; unfortunately this ability
of
e
rhend t
expires with the end o f the level.
ofor a u The teapot can be the hest drink of
a
un,in e day, A red teapot bestows super
the
ankei l
bubble up on whoever drinks its
Is-
l
contents dry. The next item is more
ewill a a storm in a teacup. Get it to
than
tleast release
. a storm to destroy all your
niL- enemies.
G Last, and certainly least, the
blue
r teapot. in keeping with its
an be Max "The Hacks" Tennant is the master o f confectionery
a cousin, does nowt.
et game play. Whatever the game he'll win at it, The secret levels are something
ation, b
which only more experienced players
plays fair means or foul - often with a little help t
should look for. I f either player
could h
ity of
from his friends. I f you have a tip for a game manages to survive more than 20
e
send it in. For every one we print we'll send screens without losing a single life. a
secret door w ill appear instead of a
Prrss-
ques-
you a game f r o m o u r goodie d r a w e r - magical item, Enter this portal to
i that together with a Konix Speed King joystick travel to one of the secret screens.
their Then i f you manage to survive
another 10 screens without losing any
may 30,000 points, Any bubbles on the Jives another door w ill appear. This
Xess- T is Adrian Curry from Firebird. screen w ill turn into the same fruits can happen up to four times, the fi nal
I Cori- H
An ace games player, he has turned worth 500 points each, so make sure One being a teleport of 20 levels. The
Ily if E attention to Bubble Bobble, and
his you blow lots of bubbles before writing at the bottom is more than
•role f
presents the advanced Bubble Bobble k illing the last baddie. just a scrawl - try pausing the game
el to
i
Player's Guide. So if you have been A s imilar magic item is the treasure and decoding the secret message.
from
r
bitten by a Benzo, bounced on by a chest. The huge fruit is replaced by a Two's company, and Bubble
ishop Bonnie-bo
s or bowled over by a diamond worth 50.000 points. Bobble was designed as a two player
Boa-boa
t you need some Amiga-type The potions are tasty - upon game, so although one player can just
help,
f quaffi ng a bottle of the stuff the about fi nish i l
r On almost every screen two special screen w ill be decorated with a two.
l s fT,, a see
r , the end and secret screens
items w ill appear. The first w ill be special type of fruit. You have to f a people
most r use a kamikaze tactic.
i
m.rorth loads of points and the second collect as many as possible within a One
e aplayer s i must do all the work
e
will be a magical object. Knowing time limit. I f you gel them all the while
e r the other should save his skin
n
which object does what is the key to player who gets the most scores a and
w hide i from trouble. I f Baron von
d
points prowess. 100,000 point bonus and the runner Blubba
t h should appear the kamikaze
o You don't need a sweet tooth to
up 50.000. I f the players get half each player should try and c ollide with the
f
appreciate the candy stick. Pick this Baron to save his friend.
they both get 100,000 points.
M
up and k ill all the baddies, The huge Your bubbles are your main If you ever come across a monster
a whic h falls down the centre of
fruit defence. Bubble up sweets come in
the
x screen is worth between 10 and three flavours - yummy yellow.
t
h M y 1988 A AliG.4 W W 1 rt iNG 4 7
e
4
1
who
1 won't come out of his hiding
place stand on the platform directly
above his head. The baddie in
question will come out to find out
who is making such a racket on his
roof.
I J screens which have proved to be
.
very difficult. The hints and tips here
should
I allow you to bounce where no
brontie
S has bounced before.
T
Level
E 13; Fall through to the top of
the
D heart and wait for the water
bubbles
b to come up. Pop these to
flush the Bubbas out.
e Catch the letters for an !AMINO
l
Level 32: You have two options on
o
this screen - either wait to see if a
w Ginger, Goodbye bonnie-has.
magic item appears. or just time it so
a
that all the Boa-boas are moving away
rfrom the centre when you fall down
ethe hole.
s
oLevel 42: A really great group, famed
mfor Mark King on bass guitar. Nothing
eto do with Bubble Bobble.
o on your Own bubble, bubbling all the
fLevel 44: Stand on the far left or right
tledge and bubble the Grumpies,
hjumping to avoid their fireballs.
e
Level 63: A tricky one. You have to
jump from your own bubble on to the
first ledge. Repeat this to get to the
second ledge, and again to get on to
the top one. Once up there stand on
the ridge and bubble away.
Level 70: Fall through on to the torch
and work your way down to its
bottom ledge. Once there stand as
close as you can to the edge and head
butt the first fire hubhle which comes
Watch out for the fireballs
M4 rtu r ompuTtv c Jnfy q81-1
mrerhead. Then it's chocks away
level 71; To get to the monster
trapped in the pit, Poop on your own
bubble and bubble through the wall.
Level 72: To get out of the pit stand
with your back to the wall and jump
way. You will probably have to try
this several times to escape.
level 88: You will need to help the
tire bubbles along when they get
stuck. To do this just blow loads of
bubbles around them and gently
nudge them along - the fire bubbles
should resume their course. Once
over the heads of the haddies, just
pop them and on you go.
Level 95: Bubble up the sides of the
screen and once you reach the top
stand on the ridge and bubble those
had dies.
Level 96: Wait for the invaders from
space to get stuck in the pits then just
free-fall close fry and bubble them
one by one.
Level 99: Bubble the Blubbas through
the walls and drop fire on the
bonners. Then return to the bottom of
the screen and Pimp on your own
bubble, up past the Boa-boa. When
you are near the top. pop your own
bubble and move left. Free fall down
and bubble the Boa-boa as you pass.
Final level: The first thing you should •
do o n e you reach this screen is grab
the lightning potion at either the top
left or right corners of the screen. You
will then be able to blow lighting
bubbles, the only thing which can
harm the King of the Banners.
The best tactic to finish off the giant
Bonner is to jump on your own
hobble which will float up the side of
the screen. While you rise up you
should blow bubbles, then, once you
reach the top. fall down and pop the
bubble chain which has been created.
You will have to do this a couple of
times but once the King turns blue he
is close to death. Then once the
Bonner is bubbled it is every
brontosaurus for itself and "pop that
bubble", because it is worth one
million points to whoever gets there
first.
T the cheat modes for StarGlider
and
I Gold runner. To become
invincible
I in your AGAV take the
velocity
V down to zero, press II for a
O
h
i
 • H I N T S •

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5
.
One of the single pia; er Amaps for Eimpuwer a I • 1
; • ,
you b • - , ,
?
the b ,
fixed crosshair and press the , m ;•, A , ,
Med.
r A & biisk ,:Sam
bHacks ' ', 0, 4 c & r E 8
Littlewood. A
of backspace to pause the game. Type
uehe "is arg s", then press backspace againa N ,
Unix hacker by day and Amigaphile
and type I s arg s" again. The b k :Sam
O night. ~ 1 0 Building
by is responsible for the
instruments w ill all go to fixed levels
to indicate that von are in cheat
a Firepower
T map you see here. ral Prison
that z H He also offers some great advice for
mode, Pressing Z w ill put you in the Arkanoid fans. Pause the game and Start
, E
ere shape editor while P tops up your type DSIMAGIC. A cylinder w ill r oll
missile collection. s R
down the screen. Catch it. Now
Nissen Hut
f
Finally a hint for all Goldrunner 4 getting
r the cylinder you want is a Red
411 Bu ildCross
in g
players. You can make your ship doddle. lust press the appropriate
r are i
invincible by running the first ship off key. I. for lasers. c for catch and the Fuel Dump
der e
the building and pressing Pi. Then Vans w ill he freed. Really lazy players
n Bunker
press I t o pick tip a special bonus. can press F for fi nal screen and get
Thanks Phil. your joystick is in the d
straight to the end. Perhaps F stands
o screen fi rty free.
O Gun Emplacement
ra post. for
f
M
f ah
a ,
TOP QUALITY DISKS
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L i
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a
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AMIGA SPECIALIST a
f
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Gamesitaleure F i i n t s i o n e e 1 3 50 Gemestaleure e ( C o n L ..l T h u n d e r b o y ..
Nina M issions. . 7 95 T y n e Banda . . ....... ... 13.50
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Obliterator . e . 1650 u t t m a ill .. „ . „ ...... 19.95
Arkanoict . 1 8 . 5 0 F OOt h a f t 1 0 50
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9 5
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BMX Simulator . 1 0 00 H u n t kw Red Oclober 1 8 . 5 0 Rockford 1 3 . 5 0 t ilt illt le sillu sin e ss
Bubbie Bobbie 1 3 . 5 0 I m p a ct 1 0 . 0 0 Rolling Thunder 1 6 . 5 0 Ad r u m . .
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10 00 Shad:isolate ........ 1 6 . 5 0 D e lu xe M usic COrtellatiliart . _ 4 9 _ 9 5
Crlo Cit 1 0 00 J A M 1 6 . 5 0 Shanghai . 1 6 50 D e lu ca Paint 11 (PAL)., 4 9 . 9 5
Sherlock. . . . . ....... 16 50 D e lu xe Print _ ,.., 17.50
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Sinbed .. .......... ... . . • 19.95 D r u m St u d ° 2 4 . 9 5
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8 ...........•
5 ,„
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Designer 1 6 50 Kid isia rt 11 , „ . . . .. . . . . . . . ...... 7 ps Space R a n g . , 7 9 5 G it r n o t . . ........... 3 7 . 5 0
JDiablo u. m 1 Stateroom ..................................19.95 I n st a n t M usic . 2 0 . 9 5
3 50 K r o g of Chicago 1 9 95
pOr Fruit 7 . 9 5 Kn ig h t Orc 1 3 . 5 0 Starglider • 1 6 .5 0 K Se ka . . . 36.50
S tar Wa r e . 1 6 SO K $pread I I . . .... . . . . . .
JEmil M e le e e Bilsoball 1 6 . 9 5 L a s Vegas 7 . 9 5
tEnforcer . . 7 . 9 5 Leadertxmind (A-500 Vsmion) 1 6 50 Strange New World 1 0 0 0 Lattice C . . . . . . . 1 3 9 .
Strike Force Herder . . . 16.50 L o g ist ic . . . . . . 9 9 95
1Fairytale Adventore .......................3 1 50 La sde rtom O Tournstre nt 7 . 9 5 9 5
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0
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Flight11 Scenery Oe skll . . 1 6 . 9 5 M O U 0 * Trap . . 1 0 . 0 0

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50 A M I G A CO M M rrI NG 1 9 0 0
 EISYMPOSIUMII

,/ •
4
Y
n face
Preliminary —
April April28th
t O
there, of
whom a good

f
proportion
come from
Outside the USA,
which is all rather
K is absolute murder. encouraging. Keynote

F to
E
Non-USA residents have to speaker is Gail's boss
N
queue for ages at passport and the man who lead
N
control, then go into customs. the original A2000
E
which is an absolute shambles design team, Dr Henri

*
and
D takes even longer. I discuss Rubin. Henri previews
Y
Kennedy later with an Amigaphile the new Amiga developments
professor
A from Utrech University — to be discussed in detail later
ye agree to have one airport in the conference.
i

a
somewhere
r in Europe. with one entry- The main point he makes concerns
point
p marked "AMERICANS", with a Amiga multi-tasking — this is
time for a programmer. something which other computer
small
o notice under it saying
"Remember Kennedy!". An American We stand in line while bleary-eyed companies are falling over themselves

,
r but willing Commodore people hand
friend later tells me that he trying to get working, but which the
t out T shirts, schedules and conference
sympathises, but not to bother Amiga has had for years. Is current
N notes— real Gail Wellington (General
because Heathrow is pretty well like Amiga software exploiting this
Y already.
that Manager worldwide software and capability properly? Henri clearly
C product support) specials consisting feels that it isn't, and I must say that

c
of an enormous hinder stuffed with agree with him.
technical information. I wonder about The conference splits into three
C paving excess baggage to cart it back. concurrent sessions. The first three
at 7am next morning — this is

4
O Gail says hello to everyone and are an introduction to Amiga for new
about midday for me and the others introduces representatives from the
N Europe. so we are the only ones
from programmers, something on the
F different countries who are attending Copper for more experienced
getting up at a sensible and normal in all there are more than 300 of us
E

e
R
E
N

Washington Diary
C

,
E
r
e
g

*
i
s
t The 1988 USA Amiga developers' conference was held in

o
r
a Washington over bank holiday weekend, A p r i l 29 to May 1.
t Dave Parkinson o f Ariadne Software was there and reports
i
o
n l u f r 19•98
s
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a

programmers, and something on
A500 peripheral design for the
hardware freaks. I can only report on
sessions I go to — my multi-tasking
isn't all that wonderful. sorry — which
in this case is the Copper talk by Jim
Mac kraz.
If vou ever make it to an Amiga
conference, take any chance you get
to listen to Jim Mackraz. Jim knows
the Amiga really well, having taken
over Intuition from R.J. Mic al after
version 1.1; he is also a natural
speaker, informative and very
amusing.
O how to pull tricks with the
N
Copper without upsetting the rest of
t system, by setting up a "user
the
h
Copper lis t", to be integrated with
what
i the graphics libraries want to do
with
s the Copper. This turns out to be
o
quite straightforward, but not to agree
too
c well with the documentation
(sigh).
c Jim provides an example
program
a whic h does it right.
The trouble is that tricks with user
s O
Copper lists can upset graphics co-
i than one might lik e — the optimum
o sw
n ei
. Pt
J Gh
i AmigaDoS: The Amiga's operating
msystem, w hic h apportions jobs f or
the hardware to do when it receives
' a command from a program. It looks
s after t h e hous ek eeping o f t h e
t system.
o AN IM: A fi le for mat w h ic h has
p become accepted as the standard for
showing animation frames. It allows
i loads
screens to be compacted and then
c replayed at speed.
i Autoboot: A process whic h allows
1 programs and demos.
s the c omputer t o s tar t- up ( boot)
without using a Workbench fl oppy
disc. T he c omputer w i l l autoboot
from ram, a hard disc or a network.
Barrel shifter: A type of register in
the computer which can multiply or
divide by two. This can be used to
change t h e g r a p h i c a l r e s u l t s
produced by different numbers.
Binddr iv er s : A p r o g r a m w h i c h
checks w h i c h p e r ip h e r a ls a r e
attached to an expanded Amiga. It is
necessary for connecting a hard disc
or network.
Copper: T he Amiga's graphics co- •
processor, w hic h handles a good
number o f t h e d r a w i n g a n d
colouring functions. It needs its own
special machine code instructions.
existing with Intuition's idea of
multiple draggable screens, with the
result that dragging down the last
screen can produce garbage. This
seems to be non-fatal, and w ill be
fixed in version 1.4. In the meantime
it may be better to reserve Copper
tricks for your own private non-
Intuition ViewPort.
Jim goes on to talk more about the
system's use of the Copper, and about
how to use Copper lists to implement
efficient double-buffering on the
Amiga. This turns out to be trickier
Double buffering: Flicker can b e
avoided b y dr aw ing a screen i n
memory a n d t h e n s h o w i n g i t
c omplete. W h i l e t h e c o m p le t e
screen is being shown the nexc one
is dr awn in memory. T he two are
then swapped and the process con-
tinued.
Fish discs: Fred Fish is a Texan who
compiles Public Domain (PD) discs.
These c ontain a v ariety o f useful
Guru: T he er r or message system
used by the Amiga. A G uru Aler t
provides system infor mation when
the machine crashes.
UT: Interchange File Format — Com-
modore's s t a n d a r d f o r m a t f o r
storing sound, graphic and text files
whic h a id c ompatibility between
programs. By keeping t o Commo-
dore guidelines dev eloper s c an
make sure that fi les produced w ith
their pr ogr ams c an b e us ed b y
future programs from other manu-
facturers.
! I B M : I nt er leav ed B i l M a p t h e
screen for mat used b y U T , devel-
oped by Electronic Arts for Commo-
dore Amiga.
Intuition: The part of the operating
• SYM PO SI U M E
solution presented involves setting up
two alternative Copper lists for the
two screens and swapping between
them on the vertical blank using a
low-level graphics library function
called LoadView(), plus setting up a
Copper list interrupt to signal your
task when it's safe to resume drawing.
T general presentation of recent
H
developments in IFF by Carolyn
E
Sheppner of CATS, who should be
s
known to UK Amiga developers from
the
e offi cial [FT Fish discs. She runs
c
over the most recent developments,
and
o considers a few problem areas.
such
n as uncertainties remaining in
representations
d of overscan images.
andt of colour cycling. She then hands
over to Lattice to discuss the new
a
PGTB
l (ProGram Trace Back) form,
then to Sparta to discuss ANIM.
k
PGTB seems lik e a very neat idea.
s
t
a
Tr new startup module so that the
t
Amiga doesn't just give a guru alert if
us
Ta
system t h e pr ogr ammer uses. I t
B
chops up the jobs it is given by the
programmer
y a n d s ends t h e m t o
AmigaDos
o . A n in s t r u c t io n l i k e
OwnBlit()
u is an intuition command.
Kickstart: The program whic h sits
l
inside the computer and comes to
i when y o u s witc h i t on. T his
life
n Workbench.
Multi-tasking:
k A special feature o f
the
w Amiga w hic h allows i t to r un
more than one program at once. Not
i
allt Amiga programs co-operate with
this.
h
Overscan: T h e s tandar d A m i g a
a
screen has a maximum resolution of
640 by 400 pixels (dots). This is all
you can see on a screen but some
applic ations — n o t a b ly Des k top
Video, need the pictures to go off the
edge o f the screen. T his is c alled
overscan.
Vertical blank : A television picture
is not displayed a ll the time. T he
vertical blank is the time between 4
frames being s hown. I f the c om-
puter tries t o dr aw o n the screen
during the vertical blank the result
will not be seen until the next frame.
Frames are drawn at a rate of 50 per
second.
JuIi 1988 A M I G A ( I M P U T I N G 5 3

something goes wrong. Instead it
writes out a fi le containing a p u r B
form, then gives a guru alert.
The PGTB form holds debug
information such as seglist addresses,
registers, parts of the stack, memory
status, and any special data obtained
by c alling an application-specifi c
dump routine. The user can then send
this fi le back along with the usual
hug report ("Er, it keeps going
wrong"), so it can be attacked by a
variety of debug and trace back
utilities. This could be a real help in
program testing — let's hope it catches
on.
The situation as regards the ANIN1
form is less satisfactory. AN IM is
really rather a mess. The problem is
that it has been allowed to evolve into
a de-facto standard, while in fact it
contains two major problems. Firstly,
it uses an ILBM form to contain what
is actually delta information, whic h is
nasty. Secondly, AN IM should not in
fact be a form at all — it is a
succession of WE objects inheriting
common properties, whic h should be
dealt by seriously under-used WE
structure called a LIST.
T "all together" session, this one
on
H Commodore's new hardware and
E
software developments, presented by
a Porter and Andy Finkel. Since
Jeff
these
f have been reported elsewhere. I
won't
t go into detail.
e need at least a megabyte total on your
r machine.
n The monitor w ill really come into
o its own when we get the new
oF Commodore products
O a megabyte of chip memory.
npresentation we form an orderly
I Full software support for the A2024
squeue (ho ho) and shuffle out to pick
L
tup copies of the offi cial conference
adisc
O pack. These include gamma test
versions of Workbench and Extras
rW
1.3. plus three discs of sample
tI
sprograms
N and so on from the
conference.
G We then split into three
w when you move the mouse out of the
groups again, and I settle for a session
iton the new A2024 high-res
thmonochrome monitor.
he This session is hosted by Hedley
an
Davis, the Amiga hardware engineer
newho developed the A2024, aided by
owJim Mackraz. Hedley starts by
tshowing off the A2024. This is a
hreally nice-looking bit of hardware.
ecapable of producing a very sharp
1008 x 1024 PAL non-
rdisplay u p to
1
54 A M I G A CO MP UTI NG l ul l ' 1988
/ might learn something. In the event I
7IFace
to r
) face
)4;1
interlaced four-level monochrome. It
looks great. Together with the new
fonts it should help a lot in areas lik e
desktop publishing.
The way the monitor works is quite
simple. You set up an enormous
bitmap — say by opening a big
Intuition screen — whic h you then
render into precisely as normal. The
system outputs this as four successive
frames — or six frames if you want to
avoid cycle stealing by the PAD. The
monitor then puts them back together
in an internal frame store which it
outputs as a very high resolution non-
interlaced image.
Note that the effective full-screen
update-rate is reduced to a quarter (or
a sixth) of normal, so fast animation
could be a problem. It appears quite
adequate, however, for normal
output. Note also that very high-res
screens take a lot of memory, so you
extended c hip set whic h allows up to
w ill be in Kickstart 1.4: meanwhile it
is possible to get it to work on 1,3
with a fair amount of patching. There
is an "emulation" mode where an
A2024 is faked on a current monitor,
with the display lurching violently
current v is ible area. This looks
horrid, but should be useful for
software developers who don't have
A2024s
this point I decide to go to
the session on new Kickstart
and Autoboot - Amiga start-up and
expansion.library is something I've
never really looked at, so perhaps I
don't learn much, as the session is not
particularly successful. Still just one
dud in a day isn't bad.
The s'ession starts well enough with
Bart Whitebook (autoboot software)
giving an overview of the boot
process. Joe Augenbraun (hardware)
then takes over and gives a very brief
description of how to set up a boot
ram. Bob "Kodiak " Burns
(recoverable ram disc software) then
manages to confuse me completely.
The basic idea seems reasonably
simple. First. expansion.libraty looks
at each board in turn, and if it
recognises a v alid ram it copies it to
an "image" somewhere in ram. and
calls a "rom/diagnos tic " vector which
allows the rom to patch itself to
reflect its current ram position if
necessary.
Next a new library is invoked.
called romboot.libraty . This checks
though the expansion board ram
images look ing for flags CONFIGME
If found, it searches the ram image in
question for a valid "Resident"
structure; if found, it calls a routine
InitResident() allowing the board's
driver software to initialise.
This allows the board to get its
Exec device or whatever sorted out, in
a neater way than loading off a boot
floppy using the old Binddrivers
program. It also gives it an
opportunity to say it wants to
autoboot. It does this by link ing a
structure called a BootNode into a
linked list maintained by
expansion .library.
Later on, the Dos is woken up by
something called strap.library. This
first of all checks for a boot disc in
DEO:— if so, it boots off this, so that il
is possible to overide auto-boot to run
a game or something. Otherwise it
tries to boot by calling the routine
specified by the highest priority
BootNode. This is handled by calling
a romboot.library routine called
RomBoot(). I f both fail — if it can't
find a fl oppy or a ram that wants to
boot — it puts up the old "please give
me a Workbench" image. Note that
the Dos brought up by RomBootO
w ill normally be ArnigaDos. It doesn't
have to be, so it would be possible to
use this to bring up an alternative
Dos, say if you were booting off a
network.
As I said — the principals are
simple, but the details are tricky,
particularly when it comes to how
 • S Y M P O S I U M •

've
is I this process is gimicked by Kodiak's around in c hip memory very quickly. RastPorts together. The answer is that
Tut recoverable ram disc. But what you really want is a Bit handling the "arbitrary move"
is not Witter, capable of transferring an a bit problem through the layers logic is so
One pattern. The way to simulate a Bit complex that two blitter input
Witter using a word blitter is to make channels get tied up doing it, using
[with F low-level blitter access, use of the barrel shifters attached to 'onlo_f one left over to the application.
I
presented by Torn Rokicki of Radical two of the inputs. This discussion leads me to
Ire)
N Software, author of Amiga TEX.
Eye In order to sort this out, Tom has understand the graphics library rather
Hitting
A the blitter hardware is very done a fair amount of blitter research better. The program doesn't have to
are)
brief easy
L on Amiga. The simplest - not - inc luding some graphicshbrary tackle the usual problems of writing
tot necessarily
s the best - method is to disassembly - and has written a really lots of assembler to move stuff around
call
e graphics library routines nice PD program called BlitLab for in memory as fast as possible, since
hen OwnBlifter()
s then WaitBlit(), hit the easy experimentation with the Witter. this is looked after by the hardware.
ly. blitter to your heart's content, then Tom's BlitLab demo is followed by A further question Dale gets asked
s
ly give it back using DisownBlitter(). an interesting question session. A lot concerning speed relates to the
i
oks Note that this should be followed by of these involve use of the blitter by function BitilitNlapRastPort(). This is
o
another WaitBlitIl if you are going to graphicshbrary, whic h Tom passes very useful, since it allows you to set
n things up using the blitter in your
t to examine the blitted data. This gives on to graphics author Dale Luck. One
f
you max imum Witter performance question concerns the use of own private off-screen BitMap
nd
o
without messing up the OS. alternative Witter access mechanisms without worrying.
thich
r Getting access to the blitter is ( Mit( ) and QSBIlin. These allow you Dale admits that this was put in late
t
simple; using it once you have it is to queue blitter requests as BliNodes, and done by c alling a load of
h so easy however. The problem is
not to be processed as soon as the Witter functions he already had written. It
partly
e that the documentation is can get round to them, optionally in a could be made faster, and he hopes to
ks rather
d sparse. and to make life more beam synchronised manner. look at this for version 1.4.
interesting,
a just a teeny bit wrong in A further question to Dale is why By this time exhaustion is setting in
places.
y More fundamentally, the the graphicslibrary doesn't offer fast - the session comes to an end
WE.
e in problem
i is that the Amiga has a Word much in the way of multi-channel around 6.30, 111/2 hours after
blitter
s whic h blasts 16-bit words bills such as ANDing or °R ing two registration. Phew,
te o
n

it, in
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 future. It was already available on the point out that your version may be
B College, two gentlemen along PC and Mac — the Amiga was the next different. Thus it isn't as portable as
A
with w illing undergraduates designed in line to see the light. Adam Webber True Basic Inc would lik e you to
C implemented a language that
and was the actual author of this version, think it is.
K
would be easily grasped by beginners though he has received little credit for A typical True Basic display
i an aid to learning Fortran. Those
as his work. consists of a source code window, a
gentlemen
n were John Kemeny and True Basic is certainly a big enough command window, and an output
Thomas
1 Kurtz, and the language was package. consisting of a language window, The last two are optional
Basic,
9 now the standard language disc, a 307 page users guide, and a and can he opened or closed at will.
supplied
6 with nearly every micro. 331 page reference manual. The users If the output window is not defi ned
3 Over the years Basic evolved, and guide w ill doubtless come as during output, or has been closed,
due
a to memory restrictions on the something of a shock to those then output goes to a full screen, the
early home micros its authors took unfortunates who are used to Basic contents of which are lost when the
t
short cuts to make it completely manuals that Commodore normally program is stopped or ends.
D
hardware-specific. A program written supplies with its machines. It is both Once a program has been entered
a one dialect of Basic stood no
in clear and helpful for the beginner. the editor can be brought into play to
r
chance of running on a different with many tutorials, and yet contains cut, copy and paste sections whic h
t
machine. vital machine-specific information are marked by clicking and dragging
mKemeny and Kurtz watched this that all standards of programmer with the mouse. Alternativ ely the
o
process with some horror, and fi nally require. Function keys can be used to mark
u
decided to do something about it. The reference manual is the same blocks, as well as perform other
t
True Basic was the result, a portable for all versions of True Basic, and as useful editing tasks such as moving to
language
h that they hoped would be such has the irritating habit of the command or output windows,
the structured language system for the div ulging juicy little secrets, only to moving to the start or end o f a

Basic strikes back

program, and deleting characters or
Mark Luckham finds that a grown up the line to the right of the cursor.
computer merits an adult approach to In a s imilar word processing vein,
it is possible to search and replace
programming. Structure reduces the specific words, or parts thereof, in the

bugs and the LET statement returns
Scirroarr fromthe (rwason0,1 knit;
Ing
program. This operates from the
cursor position onwards and w ill fi nd
key words as well as variables.
An interesting feature is the ability
to mark a part of the program, say
just a couple of lines, and delete the
rest — useful if you are trying to build

up a subroutine library, as the

selected lines can he saved to disc as
one.
When entering a program it w ill
normally be displayed justifi ed to the
The Structured LangutzgeSystem for theFuture left of the source code window. hot
this can be changed to show the
John G. Kemeny structure of the program. Select the
Do Format option and watch as the
Thomas E. Kurtz structures are indented, key words are
changed to upper case, and REM — or
as they are referred to here comment
—lines are straightened out.
As with any modern Basic, True
Basic does not ordinarily use line
numbers, but they can be added at
any stage in program development.
and lull line renumbering is also
AE) H i s o N - WI t s L Er PU BL I SH I N G co M PAN Y, I NC, available The max imum number of
characters that can be used on one

l A l t a l CO MP UTI NG July

line is 32,000, which is a far cry from
the 255 C64 days. The largest line
number as well is impressively high
You can have line numbers running
up to 999.999.
Large scale numbers indeed, but it
doesn't stop there. Numbers have 14
digit accuracy, the maximum string
length is over a million characters,
variable names can be 31 characters
in length, the maximum record size is
Le over 16 million bytes and, quite
astonishingly, the maximum fi le size
is four tr illion bytes. In theory. I
didn't have a fi le that could test that
to claim. Roll on optical discs.
As far as general structure goes,
Kemeny and Kurtz have attempted to
make the language as structured and
orderly as possible.
Going back to the line numbers_
to Concatenation is not allowed in the
source code, and there can only be
one command statement to each line_
So a program containing an
IF - T HENALSEANDIF construct
would have to have IF..THEN..
one line. ELSE all by itself on another
and ENDIF again all alone.
SELECT CASE isn't something that
many Basics support, but as you
might have guessed, it is here. This is
similar to IF..THENALSEIF as it lets
you try several tests and execute a
block of statements, depending on
which test fulfi ls the conditions
required. When assigning variables
the almost forgotten LET becomes
compulsory. It isn't optional.
Neither is using the variable name
in conjunction with a NEXT
statement. You must specify the
variable name, What is interesting is
the option to jump out of a loop
before it has finished. There are few
Basics indeed that w ill allow you to
do that.
Also in the fi eld of loops can be
found DO .J .001
executes
3 endlessly, unless it fi nds dil
EXIT
, % yDOh statement
i c h in there
somewhere.
s i m p DO l WHILE..LOOP,
UNTIL—LOOP and combinations
y lair old stab at it. Graphics are not
thereof are far more fl exible, and w ill
execute the loop while certain
conditions are met or until they ale
not. And if no conditions are lik ely to
be met then there is always EXIT DO
to save you from the programmel s
nightmare — the endless loop.
Your friend and mine, the
procedure, has of' course not been
forgotten, though it has undergone a
name change. Functions can be
defined and then CALLed, as can
Test Tru e
Basic Basic
Amig a 1
1 0.06 0.04
2 0.22 1,94
3 0.68 3.94
4 1.02 4.64
5 1.16 5,04
6 For your money, you can plot
1.7 8.86
7 2.6
3.76
11.5 17,68
I sing standard Bask benchtests you can
see that True Basic is very much faster
than Amiga Basic
subroutines. Name them with SUB
name (p a ra ml, param2.,) and end
them with END SUB. Exactly the
same as PROC, especially when you
call pass variables to the subroutine.
A variable within a subroutine, or
within any section of a program, is
i,,cal to that particular section. I f you
want to share values around then you
have to pass parameters with your
subroutines.
What is particularly interesting is
thdt a subroutine can be internal, or
external, saved on a disc. This allows
the programmer to build up libraries
of useful functions and procedures,
save them on disc, and only call upon
them when needed, by using a
LIBRARY command.
K. so structured programmers
are doubtless feeling pretty
smug, having been served up with
virtually everything they could ask
toe What about the graphics? This
after all, is what the Amiga is famous
for.
A language that claims to be truly
portable surely cannot fully exploit
lee graphics hardware that is so
,,,achine dependent.
Well. True Basic certainly makes a
related to on a pixel basis, they use a
coordinate system of your own
defi nition. Thus a program with
graphics on one computer w ill
, orrespond to the display on another
computer, even if the desired effect is
reduced.
So before drawing or anything else.
you must defi ne your window, in
whatever numerical terms you like.
For example, your Y coordinates
could range from 1945 to 1988, and
E R E V I E W E
the program would assign the
intermediate values, and the X
coordinate could range from 0 to 25.
After defi ning this window, all
subsequent graphics commands
would then be in terms of these
coord inales_
points, draw lines, draw and till a
complex shape, fl ood fi ll and,
strangely. box. The BOX command is
used in conjunction with LINES,
ELLIPSE, AREA. CLEAR. KEEP and
SHOW, and provides those functions
inside a rectangle, the size of which
you specify.
KEEP and SHOW are the two dark
horses of the collection as they are. in
fact, Witting commands. KEEP w ill
store part of the display in a string
variable while SHOW w ill spiel it
back again. Crude animation can he
achieved this way.
R the other graphic commands are
A
nothing special, there are five special
T
effects commands_ With these you can
slide
H a picture. change the scale,
rotate
E it and shear it. When you can
call
R pictures that have been defined
just
s lik e subroutines, and call them in
conjunction
u with one of the effects
commands. you have a very powerful
r
tool indeed.
p
What it is possible to achieve is in
r
some ways far more impressive than
i
that whic h The Director, whic h
s
purports to be a professional display
i
and a n ima tio n language. can manage.
n The system used b y Tru e Basic is
g no means as easy to get to grips
by
l
with and produce the desired results
without
y a lot of trial and error. But as
a, language that makes no attempt to
be
g portable, what can be achieved is
far
i more than you would expect_ Even
ifv sprites are not catered for at all.
e Should the range of commands not
be
n powerful enough for your needs
then True Basic Inc w ill supply you
t
with a language extension dedicated
h
to just that task. The price is a heavy
a
one. As well as being expensive, bang
t
goes portability.
Sound is the other area that Amiga
owners love to crow about. but once
again portability and compromise are
the order of the day_ It is rather
disappointing this area, as all you are
allowed is PLAY music$ where the
iuhr ma a , -I MI CA CO MP UTI NG 5 9
• R E V I E W •

the Amiga's powerful and individual

string contains the musical notation
REPORT CARD
facilities_ Well, the quick answer is:
for a tune, and SOUND frequency. -
duration. No envelopes or specific very
N valiant attempt in areas that you Tr ue Bosi c
Pr ecison 0 1 - 3 3 0 7 1 6 6
channels to make your sound effects. would
o not have suspected. It is also £99. 95
Never mind. string handling is surprisingly
t fast at most things,
superbly done and the handling is coefficients
r excluded. ,
treated far more comprehensively It's worth noting that it is a good A'Roodcompromise between slow
e Amiga Basic and difficult to !mister (i.
with the ability to question files for idea to read the reference manual first S
a
specific details, as well as the usual for the general situation regarding
lavailable facilities, And then look
E
EASE OF [WE ' 111
byte, data, and program loading and T
Looks and feels much the same as
l Amiga
I Basic hut runs very much faster.
saving functions. through the users guide, in which
I don't know whether the authors of y I
extra commands, helpful tutorials.
- INTIFITION
N
1111
True Basic anticipate that every and quirks native to the Amiga As Amigaized as a portable language
computer their language will run on .version are detailed. E he expected. Windows supported.
can
will have a mouse and windows, hut B For the programmer who will S
these are catered for on the Amiga u
use an Amiga, True Basic can be seen SPEED
S 111
version. While windows can be made ast a structured, modular and Programs compiled using True Basic
run an average of three limes faster.
to happen on systems which don't T
undeniably stylish language that
normally use them, reading and using r
i,von't help that person get the very VALUE 111111
the mouse may prove more difficult best
u from his computer. For anyone Priced a bit high he a home user. really
aimed at conipanies who want to
to port across. who
e is interested in portability,
produce products ler various
I asked the question at the standardisation,
B and working on the
. m a c h i n e s .
beginning of this review as to Mac
a and the PC, then True Basic can OVER A LL 7 0 %
whether a language whose primarily be
s seen as a very fine piece of
aim was standardisation and software, and be heartily A log aced progression for the dedicated
i Basic programmer. Pricey for the rest.
portability would make good use of recommended.
c
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 •ADVICEIMI

Amiga Answers
Why don't some of my older all the icons in the window, being
games work when I have Solve y o u r Amiga anx iety w it h a careful not to double click, and then
insta led extra memory? letter to Amiga Answers. O ur panel select Snapshot.
o f experts is ready to sort out tricky
Amiga pr oblems . F r o m mac hine
code t o mid i. c ommunic ations t o
A work with a system which has compilers. Whatever your problem How can I open a window
S that covers the whole screen
more than 51 2k installed. The way to our experts are her e t o help y ou and a s no border?
overcome
o this problem is to select solve it.
SlowMend.ast
m and NoFastRarn from
We c annot deal w it h enquir ies
the
e system drawer of your personally so please don't send any A command does not allow
Workbench disc before clicking on
e game icon.
the SAE"s. We do need loads o f ques- T
windows without borders, hot that
a If the game selfboots you w ill have tions. So wr ite to Amiga Answers, does
h not mean that they are not
r remove the ram. Note that fi tting a
to Amiga Computing, N o r t h Hous e. possible. By using the Intuition
e
second
l driv e uses up a tiny bit of 78-84 O n g a r Road, Br e n t w o o d . library routines OpenWindow() and
Essex, CA415 WIG. A
ram,
y so a really big game. such dS CloseWindow() you can open a
m
window to whatever specification.
Firepower
g w ill only work on a 5 12k
machine if you unplug the second i
a
drive. planned. but it is s till a way from g
m production. l e t Height
a POK(.W Wind11+46,15
e The A2000 is aimed at businesses.
B f or WBench)
s It can be made IBM-compatible, is
easily expandable to 9Mb and comes a
w I have seen some cheap idPointt OpenWindowt (Windi)
Amiga IBOtis advertised and with 1Mb as standard. An s CALL freeMemg(Windg,48)
i unexpanded 2000 is no more useful i
am templed to buy one in preference
tol an Amiga SOO, I can't see what the than an expanded 50tr c IF P o i n t ' 0 THEN
l
advantages of an Amiga 2000 are. Which you buy depends on what W PRINT "Failed t o open window"
you want to do. If you just want to GOTO Q u i
n
Which one should I buy? I ENDt I F
u play games you could get away with
a MOO. Remember that they come N
t D RastPort& PEEKL(WPoint &+50)
with 256k as standard and you w ill GOSUB Openlnput
A have to buy the ram pack I f you O APen& . I
want to spend. There are some
Ireal bargains to be picked up if you don't plan to expand your system W WHILE INKEYS: -
straightaway an A500 is the best all CALL
shop
t around for a WOO. Many of round bet. A second disc drive and SetAPenUitastPortg,APenti)
these
d are "grey " imports front France the 51 2k ra in p a ck are sensible CALL Rec t FiLI S(Ras t Port g, 0, 0,
and
e so w ill have an azefty keyboard purchases. but can be left u n t il yo u r 640,256)
with stickers to turn it into an English bank account has recovered. APen& A P e n i XOR 1
p
qwerty keyboard, WEND
e Diehard Amigaists feel that 1000s An A2000 is only for the rich k id
n visually the nicest Amigas. who wants the better keyboard and to Quit :
are
Commodore has a declared intention add peripherals immediately, or for GOSUB Clos elnput
d the businessman who needs the extra CALL CLoseWindowt(WPoint&)
to
s support the machine. although it is ram. Quit l:
no
h longer made. This means that new SCREEN CLOSE 1
Kickstarts w ill be made available on Make sure you get the latest
o version. whic h is k nown as a B2000 LIBRARY CLOSE
disc. END
w But many of the add-ons you w ill because this is faster than an A2000
m
want to buy in the future w ill come and has an extra expansion slot,
OpenInput:
from
u thir d party companies. These art: WINDOW2,'Input Window',(11,200)
unlik
c ely to be readily available in the (3211,201),142,1
future. A1000 is very expensive to RETURN
h How can I drag more than
expand beyond 512k, The A500 is its one icon at a time? Whenever
vimmediate successor and is easily Clos elnput :
se ect a second icon the first is WINDOWCLOSE 2
o
expandable to 1Mb. with plenty of deselected. RETURN
third
u party support and altogether a
rosier future.
The keyboard is not as nice as that If you haven't done so already, you
of the A1000, and Kickstart is in ram, A will need to create the intuition
click on subsequent icons.
whic h is less fl exible but easier to H can then do anything with the
You .
use. Once you want to add more than o
group of icons that you would . The input fi lename is:
half a megabyte things start to get —
otherwise
l do with one icon. A really b
expensive, as are hard discs. useful application for this is to select E
The
d m output fi lename is
Co mmo d o re has an expansion u n it Clean Up from the menu bar, select x-
d a
tE
o p
rx lu iv 0188 A
w 'a M / G A
t
 TRYBRIDGE SOFTWARE
DISTRIBUTION KP1081 NLO:
ONLY
fide A m i g a Tito A m i g a Title Amiga
Men Syndrome 1 1 . 9 5 Fli Pink Pander 13 50
Aaargh 1 5 . 5 0 Ferran
ni k ak is ' Ore 1 9 . 5 0
Poece Quest 20.50
Auiciduel 1 7 . 5 0 Frightnight Pandora „..,. ...............12,50
1 3 . 5 0
Arm Fox 1 5 . 0 0 sGryaor
b Pawn
1 6 . 5 0 16.50 Universal Iliknewl Adapter C
Adv Cons Set 1 2 . 5 0 o runship _
G Ouuan1 E 5 0 21.50 Inc. A500 lead
Army Moves 1 8 . 5 0
kkanoid 2 5 . 0 0
Gol
i e den P M 1 3 . 5 0
Rocket Rama.. ...........19.50 111111110L
-
Goldnirret 1 6 . 0 0
Road Blasters 15.50
sGobrumer II , 1 2 , 5 0
Bobble Bobble 1 2 . 5 0
Bbnic Commando _, 1530 .
Guid
Riling Thunder
of Thieves_ 1 6 . 5 0
Rockford
16.50
12.50
1
oo.000
Bernd Zodt, ........
BlastabaN 7 . 0 0
Gee
Garrison
Return to Atlantis
1 Bee As Rely 1 6 . 5 0
- 1 E 5 0
Roadwars
18.50
13.50
5
3 FR EE S O F T W AR E !
Backlash 1 3 . 5 0 Garrison II 1 8 50
Sherlock Riddle ....... __ASS°
Barbarian P th17131i1 - 1 6 . 5 0 3
Hitchhiker 2 0 . 5 0
Shadowoale 19.50 can ba downloaded Itw
T EL ET EXT A T V AD AP T E R
9
Barbarian Palace 1 0 _ 0 0 Hot
0 Footbd ...................16.50
Silent Service 1E50
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Hollywood He Sinbad 2030
Black Shadow 1 6 3 0 CEEFAX, OR AC LE sic pages, colour T v
Hunt for Red Odober _16.50
Skytox 11.00
- video a nd sound outputs for Amiga a nd
Battleships 1 4 _ 5 0 Starreet
Infarcts:ger 1 6 , 9 5 19.50 Ph Mos monitors. Normal price : £99.95.
Balance of Povier 2 0 50 re
Impact 9 3
Strip Poker 2 0 9.00 Snow onto: E79.95
Bad Cat .........................15.50 Seven Cities ol Gold-11 00
1 0 .Flight 1 6 . 5 0
insardy
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Bards Tate 1 or 2 _ _ 1 8 , 0 0 Star ( d e ( 2.
Inteistype 2 1 . 0 0
Carrier Cornmeal 1 6 . 5 0
Combat School 1 6 . 5 0
Inlemabonal Soccer 1 3 3 0
5.0.1
Jet ...........................26.50
S. Ha rrie t ............ .....
19.50
1 Mb FDD:
Crash Garrett 1 8 . 5 0
Crazy Cars . 1 3 . 5 0
Jelits ........ ...... . . . . . _1550
Joe made
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13.95
£79.95 Inc.
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Terrorpods
Dark Cable 1 6 . 5 0 Jewels of Darkness ......13.50
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Defender of Crown _ 2 0 . 5 0 King al Chicago . . . . .20,50
Trinity
T 1 0 . 0 0 price e ve rt
Deb Vu 2 0 . 5 0 kickslart 2. 7 . 0 0
Testdrivis 1 7 . 5 0
Deluxe Video. 4 5 . 0 0 hTime 8 . . . 1 3 . 5 0
Knight Oro ........... .......13.50
Deluxe Print ..... .______17.00 leaderboard 1 6 . 5 0
rUnit, Military Sim _____16.50
Deluxe Produdion Leather Goddest 2 0 . 5 0
Delwe Paint 2 4 5 .00 eUninwed
Legend of Sobel 1 5 . 5 0 1 6 3 0
Deluxe /aux Con Set _45.00 eVampire Empire
Marble Madness 1 9 . 5 0
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Mickey /Axes 1 1 . 9 5
mach 3
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1 3 . 5 0
Winter & m i l d _____.12.95
15,SO PHONE 0702-354674
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mean 18 Gal ..„ ..... 1 6 . 5 0
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Trybridge Ltd, 72 North Street, Romford, Essex
e RMI I DA.
Please remember to state the make and model ofsyour computer when 17 SWEYNE AVENUE, SOUTHEND-ON-SEA,
ordering. P&P inc. UK on orders over El Under .LS and Europe add I ESSEX SS2 6..10
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0708 765271 . Tiede & Ex port worldwide

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All o t t e rs su b le ct t o sif siia b iiit y.
T EL EX:3 3 3 2 9 1 F A X : O M 7 0 3 5 e LT e1l :c ( 0 3 8 6 ) 7 6 5 5 0 0
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AMIGA ca t t p u n vc p m 8 tul

Virus problems
I AM a member of a user group and
therefore get quite a hit of public
domain software. On almost every
occasion I fi nd it has the virus. I have
two virus killers and a detector whic h
sits in memory and tells you if a virus
is present. This is useful because you
can fi nd a virus before it spreads.
Is there a virus which can destroy
the Amiga's ram? I've been told there
is by several sources, inc luding a
computer shop. Other people have
told me that it is impossible to change
the rum, inc luding Commodore repair
staff. r v e been told that Commodore
won't fi x the computer under
warranty because it said you can only
get the virus from pirated software.
This means an expensive repair bill.
Now, anybody who has an Amiga
w ill have some PD software and the
virus can easily come from this.
D. Cadywold.
Darlington.
You cannot damage the computer
with a virus. Turn the machine off
and on and it w ill recover. People
who c laim that the virus can damage
a rom do not understand how a ruin
works —
Mistakes
I ENJOYED reading issue 1, especially
the bit about Workbench 1.3. How
much is it anyway? There was an
error in the Plain Man's Guide to CU.
The author said that it is important to
use capital letters. He is wrong, it
doesn't matter whether you use upper
or lower case. The Amiga treats it the
same.
Now on to the hidden messages.
For the last message you omitted to
mention that you must hold down the
function key while you eject the
Workbench disc and replace it with a
non-Workbench disc.
Also on the subject of hidden
messages do I qualify for a free game
with a hidden menu? Hope so. All
you have to do is enter the CLI and
type: LO ADWB —DEBUG. When the
Workbench has loaded up the debug
menu go to the menu bar and hold
the right mouse button.
Move right from the "special"
menu and a previously hidden menu
w ill appear. This causes debugging
information to be sent down the serial
port at 9600 baud, So if you have an
RS232 terminal you can tap into it. I f
this does qualify me for a free game
(Ito I have Photon Paint marketed by
Activision?
Leszek Wolnik -Kurianowic z
Ealing. W5
Commodore hasn't yet fixed a price
for Workbench 1.3. Sorry we don't
have any spare cqpies of Photon
Paint. O ur review copy was one of the
first half dozen Activision had.
send you a copy of finks instead — Ed
Bare shelves
SOME of my friends bought a copy of
your magazine in London, but when I
tried to get it in my local shop I
couldn't fi nd it on the shelves. It has
loads of other computer magazines
hut not yours. Why?
David °bor ne,
Swansea
It is always possible that it has sold
out. I f not it could be because it onlv
stocks magazines whic h have a record
Write t o T h e E d i t o r , A m i g a
Computing. F i r s t F lo o r . N o r t h
House, 78-84 O ngar Road, Br ent.
wood, Essex, CM15 9BG. T he best
letters each month w i l l be sent a
game from our goodie drawer.
E L E T T E R S E
o f selling well, Of course with a new
magazine there is no way to prove
this. I f you are in a shop which does
not have Amiga Computing on the
shelves you should ask why.
In a big shop you should ask to
speak to the news manager. He w ill
be able to tell you when he expects
the next delivery and if it is sold out
whether the shop w i i be getting some
more. — Ed,
Piracy problem
I WAS very interested to read in your
first issue about the sales of the
Amiga catching up with those of the
ST. I work in a shop in London
where we sell all kinds of computers,
and the Amiga runs second only to
Amstrad PCs. But ST software outsells
Amiga products. I attribute this to the
lack of really good Amiga games and
the huge amount of piracy on the
Amiga,
Most of the games are straight ST
conversions. I f I wanted an ST I'd
have bought one, but the Amiga has
far better graphics and sound. Piracy
is a serious problem, and I implore
Amiga owners to buy their games and
not copy them.
If you have a stolen game whic h
you play a lot, go and buy the
original to show the software house
how much you appreciate the game.
This is the only way that software
houses can be persuaded to carry on
supporting the Amiga. One good
thing is the bundled software whic h
comes with the ST. Every Atari comes
with loads of games, whic h cuts
down the number of new games ST
owners w ill buy, and so makes the
Amiga sales look proportionately
better.
Your first issue was great, keep
rooting for world's best computer,
Alex Walsh,
Newbury
July 1988 AMI GA COMPUTING 53
 \ Y
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using our top quality
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M E N D P I E C E •
ADVERTISERS'
INDEX

Guru's A
Calco
m Software
23
11

haunt
CBS • 50
W usually locks up, leaving the i
Centec 50
H
programmer or user to wonder why g
that
E happened. The Amiga is no Cestrian Software 3
a
ordinary
N computer. It doesn't crash. It Clik 67
Gurus.
a The black and red screen P 55
Cut Price Software
contains
c magic information on the D
Date! Electronics 56, 57
state
o of the computer before it pointed
its Evesham Micros 62
m toes skywards.
The name is due to a bit of Amiga the joyboard and stay as s till as 23
p ICPUG
history. When the company was set possible. The more relaxed, the
u
higher you scored. Although the Kuma 68
up it made joysticks for the Atari VCS
t
and Commodore 64. Among these company has been bought by Melton Computers 60
e Commodore and the joyboard is no 23
was a tiny stick whic h you could use Metacomco
rwith one hand and a huge stick longer, it is touching to note that i l l s
cwhich you stood on. The big joystick MicroLink 6
commemorated by a magic number
rwas called a joyboard. It was on every Amiga screen. Shacksoft 66
a
designed for skiing and surfi ng • The Commodore logo, the CI Solidisk 62
ssimulations. symbol, is well k nown to all Amiga Timesoft 11
h A couple of games were written for users.
What is less well known is the Triangle Music/Television 66
ethe VCS but nothing really came of
sthe joyboard. One program whic h Commodore in-house name for the Tryh ridge 62
iAmiga did put together was a logo. To Commodore the CE is the Worldwide Software 23
tmeditation package. You had to sit on "chickenhead",

THE AMIGA GRAPHICS

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OW Our
23 Our Title S.S.P Price Title &S P P r i c e
Title SSP Price Plutos E14.95 £11.50 The Jewels of Darkness £19.96 C I 5.50
11 Arkanoid £26.00 E20.50 Port of Call £39.95 £26.50 Time and Magic E E
Alien Strike £24.95 £18.50 Phantasie Ill £24 99 E18.50 Annals of Rome £24.99 £ 1 8 . 5 0
50 Ara2oks Tom b £29.95 £21.50 PowerPla £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 0
50 Adv Con Set £29.95 C2I .50 y
Power Struggle £14.95 El 1.50 Shedock £24.95 E 1 8 . 5 0
Back Gammon £9.99 E7.50 0 Ball C19 95 £16.50 Jinx E24.99 £ 1 8 . 5 0
3 Battleships £19.95 E16.50 Red October E24 95 £18.50 The Armageddon Man £19.99 E 1 6 . 5 0
Blacks hadow £24.96 £18.50 Rockey C9 99 £76.0
67 Borrowed Time £24.99 £18.50 Roaclwars C19 95 E16.50 I M U T Y US T
Bubble Bobble C19 95 £16.50 Roadwar 2000 E24.95 El 8.50 Adrum £39.95 E 3 2 . 5 0
55 Barbarians C24 99 £18.50 Return to Atlantis E24.95 E18.50 AC Fortran E295.00 E202.50
Blast Ball C9 99 £7.50 Seven Clues of Gold E14.95 E11.50 Art Parts I £9.95 £ 7 . 5 0
6, Si Balance of Power
Backlash
C29 99 £21.50 Starwars £19.96 E16.50 Art Parts II £9.95 C 7 _ 5 0
CI 9 95 £16.50 Strike F0(0. Harrier £24.99 Ei 8.50 Assembler Metacomco £69.95 £ 4 9 . 5 0
62 Ball Raider C19 95 £16.50 Surgeon £49.96 E32.50 Animator/Images £103.50 £ 7 5 . 5 0
Brainstorm E9.99 £7.50 S D.I. £29.95 £21.50 Aquisition 1.3 £249.00 E185.00
23 BMX Simulator £14.98 £11.50 Strip Poker £9.95 £7.50 Analyze II £149.95 E102.50
Crack £19.95 £16.50 Strip Poker II Plus £14.98 £11.50 Audiornaster £46.00 £ 3 2 . 0 0
68 Chessmaster 2000 £24.95 E18.50 Skyfighter E14.95 £11.50 Animate 3D £129.95 E l 05.00
Chess Art of £24.99 E18.50 S WOOP Or E19.95 E16.50 AC Basic £195.00 E132.50
60 Cra2y Cars E24.95 E18.50 Seconds Out E19.99 E18,50 Butcher £29.95 £ 2 1 . 5 0
Computer Hits £29.95 E21 Slaycon E19.95 El 6.50 C64 Emulator £69.96 E 5 0 . 5 0
23 Cougans Run £14.98 E11.50 Sidewinder £9.99 £7.50 City Desk £114.95 £ 8 5 . 0 0
Casino Roulette £19.99 E16.50 Space Guest £29.99 £21.50 CLI Mate £39.95 £ 2 9 . 5 0
.,..• 6 Dark Castle £24.99 E18.50 Space Ranger £9.99 £7.50 Calligrpaher £69.95 £ 5 0 . 5 0
Defender of the Crown £29.95 £21.50 Starways £19.95 £16.50 Dos to Dos £39.95 £ 2 9 . 5 0
66 Deja Vu £29.96 £21.50 Star Glider £24.95 el 8.50 Deluxe Music Con Set (Pal) £69.95 £ 4 8 . 5 0
Destroyer £24.99 C18 50 Silent Service E24.95 El 8.50 Deluxe Video £69.95 E 4 8 . 5 0
6'2 Deep Space C24 99 £18.50 Silicon Dreams £19.95 E16.50 Deluxe Print E24.95 E 1 8 . 5 0
Earl Weaver Baseball E24,95 £18.50 Skyfox £14.95 E11.50 Deluxe Paint II (Pal) E69.95 E 4 8 . 5 0
..11 Eco C24 95 £16.50 Shadowgate E24. 95 El 8.50 Dvgipant (Pal) E59.99 E 4 2 . 5 0
Eagles Nest £19.95 £16.50 Space Port E19.99 E16.50 Digi view 2.0 (Pal) £185.00 £142. 50
• 66 Eye £14.95 el1so Sonbad & The Throne of Falcon .C29.95 £21.50 Dgi view Ado', £29.95 £ 1 9 . 5 0
Enlightenment - Shanghai E24.99 E18.50 £57.50 £ 4 2 . 5 0
01
•62 Firepower £24.99 £18.50 Scenery Disks 7 & 11 £ 2 4 . 9 5 Ea.E18.50 ea Draw
9 a Plus £184.00 £135. 00
Flintstones £19.95 E16.50 £19.99 £16.50 Express Paint £79.95 £ 6 2 . 5 0
▪23 Ferran Formula One £24.95 £18.50
Strange New World
Soccer Supremo £14.95 £11.50 Future Sound £175.00 £155. 00
Flight Simulator II E39.95 C29 50 Terrarnex £19.95 £16.50 Grabbit E29.95 £ 2 3 . 5 0
Feud £9.99 E7.50 Temple of Apshai E24.99 £18.50 Hot 'n• Cool jazZ £9.95 £ 7 . 5 0
Faery Tale Adv £49.99 E32.50 Terrorpods £24.99 £18.50 Hai Cato E59.95 E 4 5 . 5 0
Football Fortunes £24.95 0850 Tetris £19.99 £16.50 Intro Cad £59.95 E 4 5 . 5 0
Frost Byte £14.96 £11.50 Time Bandits £19.99 £16.50 Instant Music £24.95 E 1 8 . 5 0
Formula Grand Prix £14 E11.50 Testdrive £24.95 £18.50 Lazerscript Driver e32.95 £ 2 9 . 5 0
Footman £14.95
. £11.50 Thunder Boy E14.98 £11.50 Lisp £149.95 £102. 50
Falcon F18 - £24.99 £18.50 Lattice C 4.0 £172.50 C122_50
Thunder Rolling
Garrison 9 5 9S
C24 £18.50 Ultima III £24.99 £18.50 Mcrofiche Filer £79 95 £ 8 2 . 5 0
Grid Start E9 99 £7.50 Uninvited £29.95 £21.50 Module II Developer £149.95 £110. 50
Guild of Thieves C24 99 £18.50 Vyper £14.98 E11.50 Module Standard II £99.95 £ 7 2 . 5 0
Goldrunner C24 95 £18.50 Vampire Empires E19.99 E16.50 Modual II £129.95 £ 9 5 . 0 0
ER Gnome Ranger
Galactic Invasion
£14.95
£24.95
E11.50
E18.50
World Games
Witness
£24.99
E29 99
E18.50
£21.50
Maxiplan A500
Maxiplan Plus
£99.95 £ 7 2 . 5 0
£149.95 E110.50
Golden Path £19.96 E16.50 Winter Olympiad E19.95 E16.50 Music Studio £34.99 £ 2 4 . 7 5
Hardball E24.95 E18.50 Western Games £19.95 E16.50 Mi ao APL £99.95 £ 7 2 . 5 0
Hollywood Poker £19.95 E16.50 Winter Games £24.99 £18.50 Marauder II C39 95 £ 2 9 . 5 0
Hitchhikers Guide E29.99 £21.50 The Wall C14 98 £11.50 MCC Pascal C89 95 C 6 9 95
Indoor Sports C24 99 E18.50 Xenon E19.99 £16.50 C99 95 £ 7 2 . 5 0
Organise
Impact £14.96 £11.50 Exiensor £9.99 E7,50 Publisher Plus e99,95 £ 7 2 . 5 0
Insanity Fight £24.99 E18.50 G.L.F. Football £24.95 £18.50 Pro-Board £475.00 £375.00
Jet £39.95 E26.50 Pro-Net £475.00 £375.00
..inxter £24.95 £18.50 SPECIAL OFFERS Al ' LOW PRICES Pro-Video £159.95 E127.50
Jigsaw Mania £9.96 E7.50 Cruncher Factory Pi xrnate £49.95 E:39, 50
Joe Blade £9.99 £7.50 Cutthroats E 2 9 . 9 9 E12,00
Kickstart II £9.99 £7.50 Rock 'n• Roll £9.95 £ 7 . 5 0
Challenger £ 9 . 9 9 E 5 50
£29.99 £21.50 Demolition £9.99 E5.50 Shakespear £129.95 E105.00
King of Chicago
£24.95 C18_50 Dr. Fruit £9.99 £5.50 Superbase Proteselonat £249.95 £185. 00
Knight Oro
the Kart no Grand Prix E9.95 £7.50 Deadline £24.99 £12.00 Superbase £89.95 £ 6 9 . 5 0
lust Karate Kid II £24.95 £18.50 Final Trip £9.99 £5.50 Songs £57.50 E 3 9 . 5 0
Karate £19.95 £16.50 Hacker E29.95 E12.00 Softwood Write & File £99.95 £ 7 2 . 5 0
Kampegruppe £29.99 C21.50 Hacker II E29.99 E12.00 Scri bble II C99 95 £ 7 2 . 5 0
you Kwasirriodo £9.95
E24 95
C7•50
£18.50
Infidel £29.99
E9_99
E12.00
£5.50
Shell £49.95 £ 3 4 . 5 0
ther Kings Quest Pack
Lurking Horror £24.95 E18.50
Las Vegas
Mindshadow £24.99 E12.00
Sega Assembler E49.95 £ 3 4 . 5 0
E9.95 £ 7 . 5 0
Seasons & Holidays
the Little Computer People £34.99 £24.75 Phalanx £9.99 £5.50 Sculpt 3D (Pat) £59.96 £ 5 9 . 5 0
it to Leviathan
Leaderboard
£19.96
£24.96
E16.50
£18.50
Space Battle £9.95 £5.50
Sculpt 30 Animate (Pal) £129.96 C105 00
Spelibreaker E29,95 £12.00 Toolkit £39.95 £ 2 9 . 5 0
Leaderboard Tournament C9 99 £7.50 Suspended E29.99 E12.00
TV Show (Pal) £99.95 C7 2 _ 5 0
Leisure Suit Larry £24.99 £18.50 Suspect £29.99 £12.00
Leather Goddess C29 95 £21.50 Station fall E29,99 E12.00 Tv Text (Pal) £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 0
Mind Forever £34.99 E24.75 Seastalker E29.99 £12.00 V.I.P. Prolessional £228.25 £165.00
Mercenary E24.95 £16.50 Trinity E34.99 £12.00 Videoscape 3D £143.75 £110. 00
Moo bius £24.95 C18 50 Thai Boxing £9.99 £5.50 Video Titter 1.1 £110.00 £ 8 5 . 5 0
Moon Mist £29.95 £21.50 Tess Times E24.99 £12.00 Word Perfect 4.1 028.85 El 75.00
Mouse Trap £14.95 £11.50 Vaders E9.99 E5_50 Works The £149.95 £105.00
irny Mean 18 £24.95 C18 50 Wishbringer £29.99 £1200 X Cad £460.00 £325.00
Mats Mission Elevator C19 99 £16.50 Zork I £29.99 £12.00 Zuma Fonts 1-3 C34.95ea E24.75ea
E6. 95 Mac 3 £19.95 £16.50 Zack II E29.99 £12.00 Blank Disks 10 £27.75 1 3 50
W O Mission E9 99 £7.50 Zook III £29.99 £12.00
Nakarnoto C9 99 £7.50 NEW RELEASES NOW IN STOCK
Nord and Ben C25 00 £19.00 NEW RELEASES NOW IN STOCK Silver £ 1 3 9 . 9 5 E115.00
Othello £9.99 £7.50 Arnegas E 1 4 . 9 5 £11.50
Obliterator £24.95 £18.50 £7.50 Resi de C 9 9 95 £ 7 2 . 5 0
Flight Path 737 C 9 95
£24.99 C18 50 Wizball £ 2 4 . 9 5 £18.50 On Line £ 1 1 0 . 4 6 E99.50
Ogre
Pawn £24.95 £18.50 Stock Market £ 1 9 . 9 5 £18.50 Prisim
Portal £34.99 £22.50 StOtlef Conflict intellitype
fasg-to-wes gollltroes•fasg-to-hoe 00//47
t High quality — Easy to use software —Fully supported
SPREAD2
0l i g
£79.95
ind

GADGET
Intuition based spreadsheet with business
£29.95
ind VAT

graphics combining a comprehensive

specification with exceptional ease of use.
* Fast operation and data entry
* Over 60 functions incl Trig, Maths,
Conditionals. * Alpha/num er ic Sort
* Block Move/Copy/Delete * Macros
* Comprehensive printer control.
A Gadget and Requester editor, generating C
Source Code for Gadgets and Requesters.
Visual display of gadgets during editing
* Generates Boolean, Proportional and String
gadgets
Gadgets rrray have any numbers of pieces of

DATA £49.95
ind VA1
text in addition to images and borders for
both plain and selected forms
Requesters may have text and borders
* Sizing and positioning of gadgets by mouse
Intuition based fl at card database, ideal for Programmer defined Source names,
mailing lists, library catalogues etc. GadgetID, MutualExclude and UserData
* Easy to use record layout design — no fields for all gadgets, also for text, borders,
programming language to learn. images and requesters.
* Num ber of records limited only by the disc
capacity
* Fast Search, Sort and Report facilities.

M E ' ' o w
SEKA E49.95
ind V A T

A high speed 68000 assembler, operating at

30,000 lines of code per minute.

COMM2 E29.95
Ind V A T

Easy-to-use Communications package

Including Prestel and terminal emulation.

ROGET E49.95
incl VAT

Based on Longmans Pocket Roget's Thesaurus.

Contains over 150,000 words and phrases.
Operates as a background accessory, making it
accessible from most word processing (and
TEXT 09.95
ind VAT

other) programs.
Text processor —
Coming
s o o n Phone
! or send for full details NO W:-
12, Horseshoe Park, Pangbourne, Berks RG8 7JW
07357-4335 Telex:846741 K UMA G
Telecom Gold: 81:KUM 001

P R OF E S S ION A L • S OF T W A R E