@database 002726e0-0 @master Alink:AmigaLink#1.guide @$VER: 1.0 @remark Created with Heddley v1.1 (c) Edd Dumbill 1994 @node "Main" "Amiga Link #1, March 1, 1995" @next "Editorial" Welcome to @{fg shine}Amiga Link@{fg text} Issue 1 on this fine March 1, 1995! Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Li Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Ami Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link A Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Li Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Ami Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link A Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Li Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Amiga Link Amiga Link Ami Amiga Link Amiga Link A Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Link Amiga Li Amiga Link Amiga Amiga Link Ami Amiga Link A @{bg highlight}Amiga Link@{bg back} @{"Editorial " link "Editorial" 0} An introduction to this mag. @{"General   " link "General Menu" 0} General articles on the the Amiga. @{"Games     " link "Game Review Menu" 0} Reviews, previews and info on the latest Amiga games. @{"Letters   " link "Letters" 0} Letters (mostly hate mail!) to Amiga Link. @{"BBS List  " link "BBS List" 0} Where to find Amiga Link. @{"Info      " link "Info" 0} Products and service Amiga Link highly reccomends. @{"Next Issue" link "Next issue" 0} What's coming in issue 2 of Amiga Link! @{"Writers   " link "Writers" 0} Write for Amiga Link! @{"Legal Bull" link "Legal Bull" 0} Don't read this unless you're an insomniac. @endnode @node "Editorial" "Editorial" @next "General Menu" @prev "Main" Note from Editors: Hello, my name is John Vlachos, the Chief Editor of the new disk magazine Amiga Link. Amiga Link will try to focus on everything about the Amiga, like games, video production, how to get Amiga software & more! I hope you enjoy the magazine, Josh Galun and I have worked hard on making Amiga Link good. John Vlachos Editor in Chief Wl-Static-Bea@Society.Com @endnode @node "New Products" "New Products" @next "Game Review Menu" @prev "Polyester" THEY always scoffed at the mention of the Amiga. THEY always laughed and asked you why you hadn't bought a PC. THEY said that all it had was some games. Who? PC owners ofcourse. Whenever you show a PC owner an Amiga there instinct reaction has always been, "So what? Who cares that it has great games? I have Word Perfect!" So you went and showed him some demos. Once again, he replied "So what? I have Word Perfect!" when he grilled you on whether you had Word Perfect, you had to admit that all you had was an old version. But now, the time has come to throw off the shackles. We finally have the software we need to make the Amiga a business machine (plus have a little fun playing games on the side). Not only are most of the software titles mentioned in this article good, but ALL of the them are NEW! The first field we will look at is that of word processing, a type of software that almost no computer doesn't have on it's hard drive. Just a year ago we had the American Amiga users using Softwood's Final Copy 2 and New Horizons' ProWrite 3.3, the European users using Digita's Wordworth 2, and a few using a smattering of different word processors, such as Excellence!, Turbo Text, or Pro Text. Then both Softwood and Digita came out with new version of their products, and both made claims of being the best word processor on the market. With such bold claims, and Softwood's new attention on the European market, a rivalry was bound to start, and that has made both companies continuously upgrade their products in the hope of coming out with a new feature before their counterpart, and thus winning more of the market. Because of this constant upgrading, we now have Final Writer release 3, Wordworth 3.1, and Wordworth 3.1SE, a cut down version of Wordworth 3.1 for machines not as blessed in the CPU and RAM departments. These word processors are light years ahead of their earlier incarnations, sporting such features as spell checking as you type and table generation, and with this rivalry they can only keep improving with time. Ofcourse, you can still get other word processors, some notable ones are Pro Text 6.5, a great program for documents without pictures, Rashumon v3.0, which has multi-lingual support, Turbo Text II, and Maxon Word. Another product that no Amiga should be without is a directory utility. These programs allow you to point and click to delete, rename, copy, move, decompress, view, edit, and do a multitude of other tasks on files and directories. In 1993 and 1994 we could use Directory Opus 4.12, which was one of the most popular, and most highly rated, programs of all time. You could also use Disk Master 2, but the company that made it had gone out of business, so the outlook for upgrades was not good. In early '95, however, we got both an upgrade to Directory Opus, v5.00, and a new challenger to the crown, MaxonTools. Hopefully these products will start a rivalry as Final Writer and Wordworth have, although Directory Opus is supposed to be so good that it will destroy MaxonTools under its foot like Godzilla crushed Tokyo. The most depressed portion of the Amiga software market had long been the money management field. Sure we had Phasar, Home Accounts, and PFM, but when we saw Quicken and MYM our jaws hit the floor. Well, you can stop drooling now, because two new programs came out in 1994, and eight more are coming out in early 1995! These programs are Money Matters 3 by Digita, which is essentially Home Accounts 3, Invoice-it by Legendary Design Technologies, Pretium by Intelligent Design Inc., Best Business Management by Software Technology, General Ledgers by GP Software (makers of GP Fax) and Jonathan Potter (Directory Opus), CheckitOut by Bug Free Developments, Easy Ledgers by Small Biz Software, a new version of Phasar, MicroTrader by MicroActive, and Checks and Balances by Amisoft. With all these programs to choose from you should have no problem finding a good program. And there should be no problems with new updates, because with so much competition, these companies have to keep on upgrading their products of have their software get looked past in the stores. Moving onto telecommunications, we can't really say that the Amiga has been left out of the field. All you really need for it is a modem, which are compatible with all computers, and some telecommunications software. However, this year we are getting some upgrades and new products that should make the Amiga comm market better. GP Fax and TrapFax, two fax programs, are both being upgraded, as were Phone Pak and Advanced Voice Mail, two programs which allow your Amiga to receive phone calls and handle them like a voice mail system. A new commercial comm program came out, named Termite, although the PD/Shareware programs Term, Terminus, NComm, RIPComm, and many others are very good Comm programs, and well worth checking out if you need some Comm software. Buying a modem itself has never been a problem, because modems are normally connected to the Serial of Parallel ports, and all Amigas have these two ports, but if you own an A600 or A1200, then you can now buy a PCMCIA modem thanks to Scala, who released software that allows you to connect a modem that supports speeds of up to 28,800 baud. In no other software field on the Amiga had there been such domination by one piece of software as in database programs. For a long time SuperBase had been the acknowledged winner. It was upgraded all the way to SuperBase 4, with both Personal and Pro editions for home and office use. But in 1995 we will receive 5 new database programs, ranging from low end to high end. Softwood was the first to announce its database program, Final Data, and, Digita, not wanting to fall behind, announced their own database program, Data Store. Data Management and Research are also programming a database program, MultiFinder, Maxon continues their entry into new fields of the market by introducing Twist, and Merian Software & Design are upgrading Database Professional to v2.00 to compete directly with SuperBase Pro. These programs will face a tough challenge to form a niche out of the Amiga database market, as SuperBase not only is one of the best database programs on any computer, but there is also a PC version and many software packages that work directly with it. Now I can hear you thinking that this is all great, but there can't possibly new spreadsheet, because the Amiga never gets spreadsheets. Personally, I could care less if the Amiga didn't get a new spreadsheet, they seem to be the most useless programs in the universe to me, but for any Amiga users who have been holding their breath waiting for nine years waiting for a spreadsheet, 1995 just may be your year. First, TurboCalc is being upgraded to v3.0, and the goal is to make the program good enough not only to challenge Microsoft Excel, but to beat it! And back once again, Softwood is releasing yet another great product, Final Calc, and are also claiming that it will be on the level of Excel. If their past word processors are any indicator, this program should be great. Ofcourse, there is more software being released, but if I kept on writing I'd never finish. I haven't even touched graphics programs, still the biggest field of software titles for the Amiga, and I haven't looked at the hardware or games being released! As you can see, a few companies have really ratcheted up their Amiga productions, like Softwood, Digita, and Maxon, and hopefully, if any other companies go under, as has been rumored with Innovatronics, those bigger companies, who have a lot riding on the Amiga market, should pick up their products and programmers. Doesn't that make you feel better about your Amiga? And hey, if that PC owning friend scoffs at your Amiga again, give him a punch in the nose for me, OK? ******************************** *Joshua Galun is the sysop of * *The Wolf's Lair BBS (201) 666-* *9472 and co Editor in Chief of* *this excellent mag! Mail him * *JGalun@maple.nis.net. * ******************************** @endnode @node "Game Review Menu" "Games Reviews" @next "Lords of the Realm" @prev "New Products" @{i}@{fg shine}Games Reviews!@{ui}@{fg text} Where we review all the hottest Amiga games: the good, the bad, and the ugly! @{"Lord of the Realm " link "Lords of the Realm" 0} Will this game by Impressions be the king of all strategy games, or just another pretender to the crown? @{"Litil Divil CD32  " link "Litil Divil CD32" 0} This will hail in a new wave of CD32 games ...or maybe not. @{"Fears Preview     " link "Fears" 0} An EXLUSIVE preview of the first Doom clone to hit the Amiga! @{"Short Reviews     " link "Short Reviews" 0} Three quicky reviews for those with short attention spans! @endnode @node "Lords of the Realm" "Lords of the Realm Review" @next "Litil Divil CD32" @prev "Game Review Menu" PRODUCT NAME Lords of the Realm BRIEF DESCRIPTION Real-time strategy game, land management, and castle building in ye olde England. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Impressions Address: 222 3rd Street, Suite 0234, Cambridge MA USA 02142 COPY PROTECTION None Hard drive installable. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 1200 w/WB 3.0 2 MB Chip, 4 MB GVP Fast Seagate130 MB HD Supra 880K external drive REVIEW "Lords of the Realm" pits six different lords in a contest to become king of England. The winner will have managed the various counties of England through farming, ranching, castle-building, diplomacy and warfare. I was instantly attracted to "Lords of the Realm" by its multi-player fan of capability, since multi-player games are rare on the Amiga. I am also a 'god' games and strategy games, and "Lords" has elements of both. It is unfortunate that "Lords" does not fulfill either of my expectations. Up to six persons can play "Lords of the Realm." The game is turn- based, so each player has to pass the mouse around to the next person. Null-modem or modem support would have been very helpful so the computer desk would not be overcrowded. According to the manual, the IBM-compatible version does have that capability; why is the Amiga version lacking? "Lords" claims to have a "detailed economic simulation." Perhaps it is detailed, but any idiot can skip the details. Each county has peasants who can herd cows, herd sheep, tend the fields, grow crops, mine iron, cut timber, make weapons or build castles. Players must adjust the numbers of peasants at each task in order to make the county prosper. All this work is totally unnecessary. Apparently, your peasants earn so much money that taxes can help you buy all the materials you need from traveling merchants... The strategy element of "Lords" is poor as well. For about 10,000 gold pieces (a very low price), you can raise an army of 200 merc crossbowmen and 200 knights. The army can annihilate almost any force thrown at it by surrounding the enemy with knights and pouring crossbow bolts into the crowd. The enemy is almost certain to run away eventually. What kind of strategy is that? Castle building is the most exciting part of the game because it is like a paint program. You can make funny faces, mazes and the like with it. Honestly, the most effective castle in the game consists of one keep, surrounded by a low wall and dozens of wooden mess halls. Yes, in "Lords of the Realm" wooden mess halls are impervious to catapults, trebuchets, infantry, siege engines and probably fire. Any army sieging your castle will just sit there and try to starve you out, but you'll have so much food in the mess halls you would certainly outlast them. The computer's castles can be captured easily with a band of peasants because the game's castle combat system makes all troops--from peasants to knights-- EQUAL STRENGTH. There is no sense in that. The last heralded feature of the game, diplomacy, fails to be much more than a way to send personalized insults to other human players. Games versus computer players are over so quickly that the slowing tactics of alliances and flattery are next to useless. To summarize: Don't buy. There is little depth in "Lords of the Realm." Your money would be better spent on "Abba's Greatest Hits," volumes I and II. @{i}@{fg shine}Sound@{ui}@{fg text}: Below average @{i}@{fg shine}Graphics@{ui}@{fg text}: Good @{i}@{fg shine}Gameplay@{ui}@{fg text}: Poor @{i}@{fg shine}Lastability@{ui}@{fg text}: None @{i}@{fg shine}Value@{ui}@{fg text}: Poor @{i}@{fg shine}Overall@{ui}@{fg text}: Poor **************************** *If you want to talk games,* *argue about his review, or* *just contact Carl Chavez, * *he can be reached at: * *foregone@u.washington.edu * **************************** @endnode @node "Info" "Info " @next "Next issue" @prev "British BBSs" In using our Amigas and making Amiga Link, we have come across some products and services that we believe exemplary. They are: Amiga Report: This is a wonderful disk magazine, which partly inspired the making of Amiga Link. It has many good articles on the Amiga, inluding hardware reviews, and if there is any news on the Amiga, it's editor, Jason Compton, will know it! Heddley: This is a program to make Amiga Guide documents (such as the one you are reading write now), and it is incredible! Not only is it very easy to use, but it also quarters the time it takes to make an Amiga Guide doc and has many great features! It's so good that we use Heddley here at Amiga Link! You can find Heddley on Aminet. The author is Edd Dumbill. @endnode @node "BBS List" "BBS List" @next "American BBSs" @prev "Main" Amiga Link may be found on Aminet, or at any of these excellent BBSs, plus, many others not on this list. If you wish to become a distribution BBS, you must have either a Fidonet or Internet mail address, and you must send your BBS name, telephone number, location, and address to: jgalun@maple.nis.net OR Joshua Galun@1:107/590.0 (Fidonet) @{"America" link "American BBSs" 0} @{"Germany" link "German BBSs" 0} @{"Canada " link "Canadian BBSs" 0} @{"Britain" link "British BBSs" 0} NOTE: Amiga Link is also in the process of setting up a distribution system for readers who want to receive the magazine each month. Look for more info on this in Issue #2. @endnode @node "Letters" "Letters " @next "Next issue" @prev "British BBSs" As you can see, no one has actually written to us yet, but that's only to be expected; nobody has read Amiga Link yet! =) We at Amiga Link want all of your feedback, suggestions, and responses to the magazine, so that we can make it as good as possible! (Note: if you include a FTP site for dirty gifs at the end of the letter, your chances that the letter will be published and read are greatly improved! =) ) If you don't want your letter to be published in the magazine, please say so in your letter. Mail all letters to: jgalun@maple.nis.net with the topic: Letters to the Ed. You can also mail them to Joshua Galun@1:107/590.0 (Fidonet), Zool on The Wolf's Lair BBS (201) 666-9472, or DCC them to Zool on IRC on the #amiga channel. @endnode @node "Paint Tutorial" "Paint " @next "Coders1" @prev "Emplant" PLANET OPERATIONS Wrapping maps of the earth on spheres is probably something everyone has had a chance to do by now, mostly because all it takes is to wrap a square brush into a round hole. This is also what I am doing today, but as a last step to a more involved procedure. To get started, go into a paint program like Brilliance or DPaint. We will first make a brush of a square grid, so we can see how the warping effects will look on a sphere. Turn on the grid option, it's default settings are good enough for this example. Using the filled rectangle tool, draw a rectangular area with a vertical dimension about 30 pixels larger than the horizontal dimension. Make a grid pattern on this surface, using the grid option and a color that shows up on the rectangle. When the grid is finished, save it in one or two of the spare brush wells, clear the screen and turn off the grid tool. This technique will involve viewing the sphere from an orbit in the northern hemisphere using the grid brush we just made. Grab the grid brush from the spare brush well. Select "bend-vertical" from the brush distortion control panel, and Bend the center of the brush about 30 pixels down. This gives the grid sort of a "sagging" effect. Put the brush on the screen, and grab the largest square area from the center of this new grid. Now we will wrap this new brush in the usual way. Select the filled circle tool, then select "stretch" in the draw modes control panel. Now draw a circle in the center of the screen. The sagging horizontal lines of the grid have now become lines of lattitude on a convincing sphere, and we can see over the top of the north pole. The vertical lines of the grid don't converge on the north pole where they should, but this is ok since if we use a planet map, as there are no lines to give this away. There are many places to get a planet map. There is a two color map that comes with DPaint, I have a hi-res 16 color map of the earth on Aminet, included in my Splatterpaint paint program, or you can make a map yourself rather quickly. My planet map contains the extreme polar areas just to use this technique. This technique works best in animations, and you really get the feel of being in a polar orbit of the planet. I have put my animation of the earth onto Aminet, PlanetaryFlyBy.lha in gfx/anim so you can see how to effectively use this technique in a planetary fly-by animation. ************************************ * Pete Storonskij is the Developer * * of Incinerplex Games and the * * of the paint program Splatter- * * Paint. He can be reached at the * * following address: * * Pete W Storonskij * * 200 A Street * * Lincoln, NE 68502 * * USA * ************************************ @endnode @node "Litil Divil CD32" "Litil Divil CD32 Review" @next "Fears" @prev "Lords of the Realm" Product Name Litil Divil Brief Description Puzzle/Arcade action game - you control a guy named Mutt; Mutt has been sent on a quest for a pizza in a maze with different levels and no one has ever made it out yet! Publisher Gremlin Interactive Software Carver House 2 - 4 Carver Street Sheffield England S1 4FS (0114) 2753423 Copy protection None Cost approximately $42 US (mail order price) Special requirements CD32 only game It appears to work fine in PAL and NTSC modes on my NTSC CD32. Review This game has been out for some time now; I think in some respects it is a ground breaking game for its artwork alone. The game play is another story. I myself had been eagerly awaiting this game. I have had it over a month now. I have managed to get to the second level. The premise of the game is you control a little red guy called Mutt. Mutt is on a quest to find a Pizza. The pizza is somewhere in a maze with 5 levels. The levels consist of hallways and rooms. Each room is unique; some are variations on a theme. You control Mutt with the CD32 control pad thing. Mutt is little red guy with short wings and horns; hence the title 'Litil Divil'. You start out each level at the edge of a bridge spanning a chasm. To get past the bridge you have to defeat a big troll who is armed with a club. Mutt is armed with a staff of wood. It is basically a bit of arcade a style mini-game. The animation is really quite good here. There are so many frames of animation that the action is quite fluid. Obviosuly, the artists behind his game know how to animate things. after you defeat the Troll, you can enter the maze. I should mention the mini game is presented from a side view. When in the actual maze, the view is like something like the classic Dungeon Master. You have the perspective of being in a maze with Mutt centered in the view. There is a bar indicating Mutt's health. As soon as you are in the maze, Mutt's health will start to go down. When Mutt runs out of health - game over. You are presented with Mutt getting tossed in a magically conjured hole in the maze by the game's villain; some guy called the Entity. But there is food in the form of apples, cheese and other things in the maze scattered about. There is also gold; gold is very important because to complete some of the obstacles in the mazes Mutt will often need some sort of weapon or item and to get said item you go to a shop to buy it - how convenient. You have got to wonder about how come so many games have shops in them where everyone is out to kill you. How do these shopkeepers make a living? Well, you never actually see the shopkeepers in Litil Divil; if you enter one of the shop rooms, you are presented with whatever items are available. This is part of the puzzle aspect of the game; you have to figure out through trial and error what item is needed in which room. Once you the have the approraite item in some rooms they are automaticlly used or you have to use them by pressing the blue button on the controller. As well, in the corner of the screen when exploring the tunnels, there is a autmap showing where you currently are. Gremlin was also kind of enough to provide some graph paper with the game to make maps. And thoughout the tunnels are pits, flame thrower, and other things that get in your way. You have to make Mutt jump around a great deal in some parts of the tunnels. There a waste of time and mostly just cause Mutt to lose a lot of health are some tunnels that are because of the perils. The other way to regain energy is if sucessfully complete a room; also if you leave a room without completing it your engery will drop down. When a room is completed the room is gone from the maze. Sometimes when you complete a room, a new part of the maze is opened up. There are many types of rooms, some are puzzle games where you have to repeat sequences; others you have to fight something and defeat it to get past. And some involve pulling ropes and levers to get to the right combination to advance. There are something like 50 rooms to explore. Some rooms are downright stupid because skill does not have does not have much to do with it seems like if you stumble around long enough you will finish them or you won't. But the graphics are great; that is one of things that appeal to me in this game is the variety of different rooms and creatures you encounter in them. It keeps in interested in playing the game. Gremlin have gone the distance with the artwork in this game. You encounter things like mermaids, witches, sumo wrestlers fire breathing trees (yes, fire breathing trees). The rooms are presented from various angles. Some rooms are bigger than the screen size and scroll around if neccessary. The background art for the rooms are often superb. You have to be bit patient to play this game because you end up having to do things over and over and over again to sucessfully get past some obstacle. There is a save feature in 'Litil Divil' but you can only save what level you are on. Say you are halfway through level 2, you can only save the game at the beginning of level 2. Which is frustrating because you have to do everything all over on that level again if you continue a saved game. This is not Gremlin's fault; it comes down to the lack of of non volatile RAM in the CD32. A lot of games have suffered because of this. The manual for 'Litil Divil' claims that it will take advantage of an expanded CD32 for saving game but it does not say how. I was playing the game with a SX-1 attached to the CD32 and nothing special occured when I tried to save the game. The SX-1 has an internal hard drive. I have not finished the game; I do wonder if I will ever find the pizza. I hope there is some sort of end sequence in the game; one would think so; I myself like to see some kind of animation or fanfare if I sucessfuly complete a game. (note:I am back on level 1 trying to get past this room; I had erased my saved game a while ago inadvertantly) This game may not be to everyone's tempermant but if you don't get too easily ticked off by wandering through tunnels and stupid rooms and you appreciate good animation this must be a game for you. I think this game is something of an achievement for its artwork. It shows that Gremlin took some time to design the artwork and rooms in this game but as I have said many of the puzzles in the room are hard to get past and not very fun to repeat over and over to get through them. I would look forward to sequel to this game. This game shows the potential for the CD ROM format. 'Litil Divil' is basically an interactive cartoon. Control For the most part the game control is fine using the game pad. But on some rooms it is a little awkward to precisely control Mutt. The problem is worse with rooms that are isometric views at some faked perspective. Sound The sound and music are fabulous. 'Litil Divil' has some of the best music I have ever heard in a computer game. The music is played from CD tracks. Mutt does not really talk but he make all kinds of noises when he gets hurt or does something. In one room if you complete it he looks at you and makes a snickering laugh. The sound and music really add to game making it that much richer. @{i}@{fg shine}Sound@{ui}@{fg text}: 9 @{i}@{fg shine}Graphics@{ui}@{fg text}: 9.5 @{i}@{fg shine}Gameplay@{ui}@{fg text}: 6 @{i}@{fg shine}Lastability@{ui}@{fg text}: 6 @{i}@{fg shine}Value@{ui}@{fg text}: 7 @{i}@{fg shine}Overall@{ui}@{fg text}: 7.5 @endnode @node "General Menu" "General Menu" @next "Jason's Compton!" @prev "Editorial" @{"One Life to Give" link "Jason's Compton!" 0} An article by Jason Compton on the Amiga and it's future. @{"Emplant         " link "Emplant" 0} About the Emplant Mac and PC emulator and how to install it. @{"Paint Tutuorial " link "Paint Tutorial" 0} Tutorial on painting by the maker of Splatterpaint! @{"Coder's Clinic  " link "Coders1" 0} Learn how to code C by our resident expert! @{"PA-RISC         " link "PA-RISC" 0} All about the HP PA-RISC, CPU that may be the Amiga's next CPU, by two who use it! @{"C= Story        " link "C= story" 0} Part 1 of a story about an incredible discovery about C= in the future! @{"Polyester God   " link "Polyester" 0} A story about polyester, God, scientists, and some guy named John. Not Amiga related, but it was so good, we just HAD to put it in! @{"New Products    " link "New Products" 0} Some new products for the more serious side of your Amiga that will finally make the Amiga a complete machine. @endnode @node "PA-RISC" "PA-RISC" @next "C= story" @prev "Coders1" @{b}@{u}PA-RISC CPU and the HPUX OS@{ub}@{uu} Hello, Amigaphiles. Here is some information on the PA-RISC CPU. This is one of the potential RISC CPU's for the next generation Amiga computer, code named 3D-RISC. My company develops CAD/CAM software for the textile industry on Hewlett Packard RISC workstations. The models we develop for are the 9000/712 /715 /720 and /735. In this artical I will try and shed some light on the PA-RISC CPU and the HPUX operating system. The PA-RISC is one of the CPU's being investigated as the future Amiga's processor. HPUX We use the HP UNIX (HPUX) Open View operating system that comes as the standard operating system of the 700 series workstations. This is a UNIX operating system with a X-Windows based GUI. You can launch programs using icons or UNIX commands. Along the bottom of the screen is a control panel that contains the following items. -Clock ; Self expanitory. -CPU activity meter ; Shows CPU and HD activity -Shell button ; Opens UNIX command line interface -Screen Buttons ; Six buttons, each one brings you to another screen. -Desktop ; Allows you to personalise your environment. By pressing the screen buttons you can move between screens 1-6. Each screen can have multiple windows (or programs) running. This is similar to how the Amiga screens work with the following differences. 1) In HPUX each screen is a copy of the desktop screen (ie. Workbench). - The Amiga can only have one Workbench screen with programs allocating the other screens. 2) In HPUX all of the screens (limited to 6) must be at the same resolution. - The Amiga can have as many screens as there is available Chip Ram and each can be at a different resolution. The Amiga also allows you to "pull down" screens. How well does HPUX and the PA-RISC multitask? Flawlessly. Our current office system consits of a 720 with 128 MB ram, off of this system we have 6 Xterminals. An Xterminal allows you to have a GUI of the system, basically our configuration is like a system having 7 independent graphics cards. We have tried having one program running on each screen of each terminal at the same time. Let's see thats 7 terminals X 6 screens each = 42 programs multitasking! Of course this does slow the system down. Now you can see how the Amiga's pre-emptive multitasking is based on UNIX. Now remember while HPUX is is a powerful mutitasking OS, since it is a UNIX OS the system code is 2MB in size but needs a minimum of 16MB RAM to get the GUI up. Imagine the Amiga's small and efficient operating system running on a PA-RISC CPU, do the words "Speed, Speed, SPEED" make your pulse rise? Below are some of the HP systems using the PA-RISC and what type of power they have.   712/80 715/64 715/80 715/100 735/125 Clock 80MHz 64MHz 80MHz 100MHz 125Mhz SPECint92 84.3 66.6 83.5 100.1 136 SPECfp92 122.3 96.5 120.9 137 201 MIPS 92 78 97 122 154 MFLOPS 30.6 24.3 30.5 37.8 57.4 Cache 256kb 256kb 256kb 256kb 256kb RAM Potential 128MB 256MB 256MB 256MB 400MB All in all I have to say the the above numbers are pretty impresive. The most powerful system we have in hose is a 715/100. We can manipulate a 16MB 24bit graphic image with amazing speed (mere seconds for image proccessing). Trying to mearly rotate a 4MB 24 bit image on a Mac Quadra 650 (25Mhz 68040, 32MB RAM) takes about 3-4 minutes. A 100MHz PA-RISC CPU as the engine of the Amiga that uses about 1MB for its OS (after Workbench is loaded) starts to make me salivate. Pedro Aguiar A4000/030 6617-3 Reafield Dr. Charlotte, NC 28226 sophisus@cybernetics.net @endnode @node "Coders1" "Coders1" @next "PA-RISC" @prev "Paint Tutorial" @{fg shine}CODE CLINIC #1: UP THE HILL...@{fg text} -------------------------------------------------------INTRODUCTION It seems like only yesterday, I was slaving away at C64 Basic (1983) and knew that someday I would learn to write killer code; Then I bought an A500 (1989) and began rewriting my 64Basic to AmigaBasic, again I knew that someday I would write killer code. I now own an A1200 and SAS/C 6.0 (waiting for my upgrade to 6.5). I own several books with titles such as C by example and Teach yourself C, and while these books are very helpful in learning the C language, you will not be writing killer code by the end of the exercises. In this column I will try to guide you "up the hill" to writing killer C code. This column is not for beginners, it's assumed you have an understanding of ANSI/C coding. If you don't, any bookstore will have books such as the ones I listed above. I myself will be learning new skills as we go "up the hill." Oh yeah, our goal is to reach the top. -------------------------------------------------------------PREP #include main() { printf("HelloWorld\n"); } This is the first code every C programmer will learn. In this first column we will `Amigatize' this code. Basically, when I say `amigatize' I mean use Intuition. Intuition is defined in the ROM Kernel Manual- Libraries as: the collective name for the function libraries, data structures and other elements needed to create a graphical interface for Amiga applications, AMIGATIZE!!!@{bg fill} @{bg back} How would you `amigatize' this simple program? Here is a list of things we will do to make this an Amiga program. o OPEN A WINDOW IN WORKBENCH WITH A CLOSEGADGET TO END THE PROGRAM. -----------------------------------------------------------LETS GO- This article is intended for NEW Amiga C language coders. Those of you who have genius IQ's, forgive us mere mortals. OK, with all that out of the way lets' dive into some code! *****------------------------- *****------------------------- * N * ALL CODE IS INTENDED | * N * I COMPILED THIS CODE | * O * FOR VERSION 2.0 OR | * O * WITH SAS/C V6.0 AND | * T * ABOVE... | * T * HAD NO ERRORS OR | * E * | * E * WARNINGS | *****------------------------- *****------------------------- .C..C.O.D.E.............................................................. #include /* THE INCLUDE FILES WE NEED */ #include #include #include #include #include #include #define INTUI_V36_NAMES_ONLY void handle_window_events(struct Window *); /* FUNCTION PROTOTYPE */ fill} struct Library *IntuitionBase = NULL; VOID main (int argc, char *argv[]) { struct Window *window; /**************************************************************** * Open the intuition.library so that we can access its funtions * * in our program * ****************************************************************/ IntuitionBase = OpenLibrary ( "intuition.library",37); if (IntuitionBase != NULL) /* did intuition.library open ? */ { /* YES it opened ! */ window = OpenWindowTags(NULL, WA_Left, 20, WA_Top, 20, WA_Width, 400, WA_Height, 80, WA_CloseGadget, TRUE, WA_IDCMP, IDCMP_CLOSEWINDOW, WA_Title, "Hello", TAG_DONE); if(window == NULL) /* Window filled? */ { /* NO, Window Failure */ } else { /* YES, do somthing */ handle_window_events(window); CloseWindow(window); /* Need an explanation? */ } /* AllWays close the Libraries we opened */ CloseLibrary((struct Library *)IntuitionBase); } }@{bg fill} @{bg back}back}back}/***************************************************************** ** * This event loop is very simple they can get complex, but for our * purpose this works fine.... (I will explain this soon) * *******************************************************************/ handle_window_events(struct Window *win) { WaitPort(window->UserPort); } .E.N.D..C..C.O.D.E....................................................... Overview of the code: Included all the include files we needed. Prototyped our functions. Made IntuitionBase a pointer to struct Library. Called Main(). Made window a pointer to struct Window.@{bg fill} @{bg back} Opened intuition.library. if intuition.library opened we tried to open a window. if not we ended. if the window opened we called handle_window_events() passing it the window pointer. if not we closed the intuition.library and ended. handle_window_events calls WaitPort and it waits till it gets the CLOSEWINDOW message after CLOSEWINDOW message is received return to next line of code after the call which is CloseWindow() which ends the program. Well, that should be enough for the first dive into the world of writing code for the Amiga. I do urge anyone who wants to know more to do the following:@{bg fill} @{bg back} 1: Get the AMIGA ROM KERNEL MANUAL - Libraries This book has a wealth of information and you fill} will turn to it often. 2: Study source code that some Public Domain hacker supplies with his/her code. 3: Just Do It!!!! Next time, I'll show you how to print text to a window... ********************************** *David H. Loeser, Jr. of Sythesis* *Software can be reached at: * * dloeser@iglou.com OR * *309 Evergreen Court *@{bg fill} @{bg back} *Clarksville, IN 47128, USA * *His games Hawk and Knight's * *Quest can both be found on * *Aminet! * ********************************** fill}@{bg fill} @endnode @node "Emplant" "Emplant" @next "Paint Tutorial" @prev "Jason's Compton!" @{u}Mac In a Box, An Amiga Box That is@{uu} You've saved your money, read the advertisements, scoured the magazines hoping to find the discounts and at last you've done it. You've bought your EMPLANT board! The wonderful day arrives and the EMPLANT is here! You eagerly tear open the package and there it is, glimmering in the sun, somewhere music strikes up and your vision is softly blurred. No? Well, that's not what happened to me either. When I first purchased my EMPLANT, little did I realize the path that I was on. A path fraught with Mac DOS, ROM images and when exactly do I use 32 bit memory anyway? By the end of this article series, you will have some insight into the installation and setup for the EMPLANT. I must say that even with all the work to set up and get it running, the EMPLANT is one of my most prized Amiga addons. The very bragging rights alone are worth the aggravation that you encounter trying to get the board set up! There's nothing I like better than to tell my friends who are bragging about their Pentiums and Quadras, that I run all the major brands of software on one computer. Yes, Amiga, Macintosh and IBM. Ha! Just in case you are not aware of what the EMPLANT is, EMPLANT is a hardware (board) and software combination that installs in your Amiga that will allow you to run Macintosh software. EMPLANT is made by a company called Utilities Unlimited from Lake Havasu City, Arizona, USA. The emulation is so exact that Macintosh viruses have been known to infect it! EMPLANT comes in four flavors. They range from the basic board, a bare bones version, no serial or SCSI to versions with serial only, SCSI only, and the EMPLANT Deluxe with both SCSI and with serial ports. The version you choose depends on the use that you will make of the system. EMPLANT can share the SCSI and serial ports of your Amiga, but if you use the Amiga side while the EMPLANT is running, it is better to get one of the higher end versions. If you only occasionally want to use the EMPLANT to run a favorite word processor or game, the basic board may be more to your liking. Utilities Unlimited will upgrade your board for the difference in cost between models. EMPLANT costs less for the Deluxe version than many god SVGA and all current multisync monitors. EMPLANT is different than most software/hardware combinations because to use the EMPLANT board successfully in your Amiga you need several things beyond the basic board and software supplied with it. You will need: * An Amiga with ZII or ZIII bus, ADOS 2.04 or greater, at least 2 Megabytes of fast ram (depends on the Mac DOS), and at least a 68020 CPU. * A dedicated hardrive or partition on your existing hard drive. * A high density floppy or, A low density Mac floppy and some other special hardware for interfacing it to your Amiga. * A copy of Mac DOS or at least a system disk. * Mac software to format your hard drive. * A set of MAC ROMs. Whew, and we still haven't bought any applications programs to run on the Mac! The Required Computer EMPLANT is designed to run on an accelerated Amiga 2000 and above. This is because it must have the Zorro bys to operate. There are also special addons that operate a Zorro bus for the Amiga 500 and 1000 that are no longer in production to my knowledge. If you have one of them, the board should work with it as well. Also, the vanilla A1200 is left out (no Zorro bus) although Utilities Unlimited has at least discussed the possibility of an A1200 board. As far as memory goes, the minimum configuration varies with the version of Mac DOS that is to be used (called System X.X in Macese). A minimal system can theoretically be run with System 6.X as a 24 bit machine in only 2 Megabytes of FAST RAM. System 7.1 is much better and can be configured (depending on your Amiga situation) as a 32 bit machine, but requires at least 4 Megabytes of FAST RAM. To achieve either of these two memory configurations will require that you strip the startup configuration to as minimal an installation as possible. No cute Commodities, no User-Startup assigns beyond the minimum required for EMPLANT, no WBStartup, and if you can handle it, no Workbench. Mac DOS is such a memory hog that if you have this configuration, you will have a small memory available for running programs. Given this, the "REAL" minimum system is at least 8 Megabytes of FAST RAM; 12 is better and should give the ability to run most reasonable Mac software and usually two or more application programs at once. To give you an idea, on my 8 Megabyte A4000, with a full startup on the Amiga side (a few Commodities and Workbench), I have around 3.3 Megabytes left for System 7.1 and my applications. Your Amiga must also have at least a 68020 CPU as well. This rules out the older unaccelerated machines such as the 2000 or the 2500. Are we beginning to sound like an accelerator board which allows added 32 bit memory yet? Speaking of accelerators, Utilities Unlimited recommends the WARP board. GVP Boards work as well, but incompatibilities have been known to exist. Finally, the EMPLANT is required to run under at least System 2.04. If you don't already have it, don't worry, just tell your spouse that you need it, he or she will understand I'm sure. The Hard Drive My personal choice was to use a partition on my main hard drive. Depending on the type of EMPLANT you have purchased however, you can use: 1. A dedicated real Apple hard drive connected to the EMPLANT SCSI controller, 2. An Amiga Hard Drive connected to an Amiga SCSI controller, 3. A partition on an Amiga Hard Drive connected to either a SCSI controller or to an IDE controller. This partition can be either present as a Mac formatted partition or as a hard file. In any event, you will need a megabyte or two for the emulation software itself and at least 10 megabytes for the Mac System software (v. 7.1), assuming of course that you do not want to have any programs stored there other than the system configuration. A tip here, don't use the name "EMPLANT" for your partition. EMPLANT (the program that is) uses an assign with that name and you will receive an error on startup. The Floppy Drive If you own an A4000 like me, you more than likely have a high density floppy drive. If you're not sure, test it by formatting a high density diskette and then look at the capacity. 1.76 megabytes, you're in luck; 880K, sorry. To happen to have a high density floppy, you are in luck. Your drive will read Macintosh high density diskettes once you install and run EMPLANT. If you have a low density drive, you are left with one of two choices. Either upgrade to a high density floppy or get some additional hardware/software including a Mac low density drive. The additional hardware/software can be of several types. EMPLANT supports the following floppy devices/formats: 1. Its own propriatary EMPLANT format. 2. Amax (a competing Mac emulator) 3. Mac high density format 4. Mac low density (800 K) format 5. Sybil 6. AMIA Of these, I most highly recommend the high density format. Next the AMIA with a real Mac low density drive is probably best. I have no experience with the Sybil however, I understand that production was discontinued anyway. Users I have noted on Internet seem pleased with it. The AMIA (sold by Utilities Unlimited) device is a hardware connector that allows you to connect the Macintosh floppy directly to the Amiga drive port (or an external drive pass-through if you have an external drive). Mac DOS The type of DOS that you should get depends on the Amiga hardware that you have to run the Emulation. If you have either an A4000 or a memory expansion in a lesser machine that gives you 32 bit wide memory, go for at least System 7.0.1 (7.1 is better; 7.5 is the latest available, but is quite buggy so I hear). I run System 7.1 on my A4000 and it works without any flaws so far. If you don't have 32 bit memory, System 6.8.4 is the latest. It will only run in 24 bit mode. Make sure that you have a system diskette formatted in the style that you have floppy drives, AMIA, HD drive, etc. Normally, Mac DOS comes with several other diskettes as you would expect. My version 7.1 came with six diskettes. Now for the bad part. Usually, Mac DOS does not contain software to partition a SCSI hard drive. In line with the usual Mac mentality of "you don't need anything we don't give you", hard drives come preformatted, often with the system already installed. If you are using an Amiga drive space, you will need software to format and partition your drive. I recommend "Quicksilver", but any Mac software that supports drive manipulation will do. Mac ROMs You must use Apple 256K Mac series II ROMs for EMPLANT. The 512K and higher versions supplied with the newer, consumer-version Macs such as the LQ, etc. and the older 128K version such as is found in the Mac SE and Mac Plus will not work. The Mac models that support these 256K ROMs include II, IIx, and IIcx models. Next time, I will describe how to install the the SE-30, Mac ROMs on the EMPLANT and/or grab the ROM images. The ROM image can be grabbed while the ROMs are still in the Mac or with them installed on the EMPLANT board, we'll discuss both. The SE-30 ROMs come as a ROM-SIMM board. The others come as a set of four, 28 pin DIP packaged ROMs. Sources for these chips are another matter altogether. I was lucky enough to have a Mac that I could dump the ROMs from. If you are not so lucky, some vendors will sell the ROMs to you. Check Amiga magazines and the Comp.Sys.Amiga.Emulations newsgroup on Usenet for other sources. Purchasing the ROMs from individuals is also possible over the Internet. You can probably forget obtaining them directly from Apple or from an Apple dealer. Sometimes they will sell them to you, sometimes not. Many people will confuse the 128K ROMs that can be used with the Amax emulator as being the ones that work with EMPLANT. Remember only 256K ROMs will work. There are three versions or revisions of the 256k ROM that were created. Any version will work. Version 1.3 is the latest and most expensive. Versions 1.1 and 1.2 were missing certain desirable characteristics such as high density drive support. EMPLANT has the appropriate drivers, etc. built into the software so it really doesn't matter which version you use. Obtaining a copy of the ROMs (Dumping as it is called) carries certain responsibilities with it as well. To dump ROM files and then sell them is software piracy. The dumping process writes the "programs" built into the ROMs to a computer file. If multiple copies of this file is distributed, it is all the same as copying commercial software and distributing it. Purchasing the ROMs, dumping them and then selling them to the next EMPLANT owner while you keep the file is also piracy. Having a set of ROMs that you have dumped or owning a Mac and dumping the ROMs is not piracy. That's all the space I have in this issue. In future issues, we will examine the process of installing the EMPLANT, dumping the ROMs, partitioning the hard drive, setting up the EMPLANT, installing MAC DOS, and eventually running applications. ******************************** *William Jones has been a * *technical writer for over 14 * *years and has over 200 * *technical training manuals to * *his credit! He can be reached* *at: * *lakes!wjones@galois.ncsf.org * ******************************** @endnode @node "Fears" "Fears Preview" @next "Short Reviews" @prev "Litil Divil CD32" ARTICLE TYPE Preview PRODUCT NAME Fears BRIEF DESCRIPTION Doom-like game AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Author: BOMB company: Manyk (a new english company) COPY PROTECTION Yes Not Hard drive installable MACHINE REQUIRED Amiga 1200/4000 (AGA only) RELEASE approximatively in one month WARNING This version of Fears is not the one released in shareware (the window was small and the walls were green) but a TOTALLY NEW version. "Fears" will be the first Doom-like game for the AMIGA. It is developed by the BOMB team who made demos like Motion, Real and ORIGIN (under the label Complex for the two latest). The game is based on the algorithm used for Motion and is now 85 percent complete. Let's have a closer look at Fears. First of all, you have to notice that Fears isn't like Wolfenstein but like Doom (the main difference between the two is that you have stairs in Doom). The technical specifications are incredible considering the limitations due to the Amiga (no chunky mode). Everything is mapped (not only the walls) in 256 colors with up to 80 differents patterns. The differents monsters are animated (15 frames for each type of monster) and you'll be able to blast them with 4 differents weapons (perhaps more because the game isn't finish yet). There was no music when I saw the game but only the sounds of the weapons. The speed of the game is very good considering its specifications. I saw the game running on the Amiga of the programmer of the game (an accelerated A1200 with Fast memory and a 50Mhz 68030). Fears was nearly one frame on this machine. This will be different for owners of an unaccelerated A1200: actually, the game is about 5/6 fps but the programmer told me that he was planning to double this speed (I don't know if he'll succeed). If you want to see yourself the speed of this game you can have a look at the demo Motion (which won 3rd place at the Party94) but be careful because the speed has been increased after the release of Motion. Moreover, the size of the display is resizeable to accelerate the game. I played with Fears in a level created to test the speed and the look of the game so I can't say if the global gameplay will be good. I can only say that the game looks great and that it was more than funny to play with it. Imagine: you are walking in a strange corridor when suddenly two monster appear just in front of you. Oops, that was the bad way, you should turn back to the first floor and try an another stair. OK, but what do I do with two "happy" guys that are trying to kill me? Blast them with your gun and search for an hidden room filled with health pack....(to be continued) You'll have 30 levels to complete before reaching the end of "Fears". Before leaving you, I just want to present to you the makers of "Fears". The BOMB team is composed by Frederic Heintz (GENGIS) -programmer-, Corentin Jaffre (SUNY) -graphist-, laurent Sebire (TITAN) -graphist-, Stephane Elbaze (HOF) -graphist-, and Mathieu Berthaud (CLAWZ) -music- **************************** *Frederic Rose, our French * *correspondent, can be * *reached at: * *rose_f@epita.fr * **************************** @endnode @node "C= story" "C= Story" @next "Polyester" @prev "PA-RISC" SOME BITS of TREASURE by Brian Strayer Wiping his sleeve across his face, Tom Armstrong hurried into the shade of the stone opening and leaned against it, taking quick, deep breaths. Peering down the dusty, stone steps into the shadows, he thought over the past few days and how fast the events had happened. He had just been helping out in the Archaeology Department for a month, when John had come in needing assistance on this trip. With evertone else out, he had had no choice. The plane to Cairo, the hot overland ride to Minya, and the offroad trek to the dig had come in such quick succession that he hardly had time to think about what was next. Tom moved slowly down the steps and along the almost dark tunnel until he reached his goal. The chamber was lit by a sole lantern which cast contorted, moving shadows on the rock face from Jonathan Delacroix who was hunched over a keyboard and a small stone tablet. The tablet had been found only yesterday, just before the laborers were released back to their village. A smaller version of the tablet, which John had acquired in the states, led them to this site and then to the location inside of the larger one. Closer examination showed the tablet to be just like the smaller one, and not a stone tablet at all. It had the feel of stone, but was harder than steel. And this could not be filed, scratched, or dented. The encryptions on both tablets were multi-lingual, and enabled John to translate these new, unknowm symbols. "I thought your laptop was out?" Tom said puffily as he came in and perched on a ledge. "Oh, " John replied, "I got this today at the marketplace. Gzeem the tanner got some off a camel caravan. It's just a clone." "Ummm," mused Tom. "What have you got from the large tablet?" John sat up and ran his hand across his face and through his rumpled hair. "Well, these guys, whoever they were, had made many devices that were to be distributed around the earth. This was for some event in the far future that was to happen or that they were to make happen. All I know of the devices is that they were a little larger than the tablets. I do have the location of a third tablet that has more. Just give me a minute to run spatial coordinates for the chamber." "If you're running 3D visuals on that we'll be here all day," Tom replied frowning. "No, I'm just doing the math. We'll step it off," John said. They paced the numbers and came to a rock two feet high. "Hand me the doublejack, would you Tom?" John asked. A few quick blows showed a hollow inside half filled with sand and pebbles. John stuck in his hand and removed another tablet. It looked just like the last, except for a large 'C' with two pointed bars near the bottom of the tablet. John brushed the sand from the letter with a puzzled frown. Tom straightened up with a growing recognition and his eyes wide. "I know where I've seen that before," he exclaimed all at once. "That's the Commodore Logo!" ...to be continued! ******************************* *Brian Strayer, who wrote this* *excellent work of fiction, * *can be reached at: * *bstrayer@efn.org . * *If you like his writing, tell* *him so, and tell him that * *you'd like him to write more * *Amiga Link. * ******************************* @endnode @node "Polyester" "The Polyester God" @next "New Products" @prev "C= story" POLYESTER--A New Religion! Since the early days of humankind, man has looked to the stars, to the sea, and to the earth in wonder and amazement. Such awesome beauty, all around. The serenity of a perfectly calm lake, the power of a thunderstorm in flatlands, the indredible ability of ants to organize without even grunting at each other, and the crying of a tiny infant in a wife's arm. And, since these early days and the ability to wonder at such things came to be, so also did the ability to be curious about them. Why does a great light flash and a big boom sound sometimes when it rained? Why is there a great ribbon of colour splashing across the sky when it rains,and then immediately suns? Why does a baby pop out of a wife nine moons later after you boink her? Their puny intellects simply couldn't comprehend the facts. They couldn't use the scientific method of empirical data gathering to prove or disprove hypotheses. They didn't have telescopes, they didn't have Newton, or Einstein, or tunneling electron microscopes. This worried them. For, being curious, they wouldn't stop wondering about these things until they could understand them. And this devotion of mental power wasn't exactly helpful to their early crops. Great famines ensued. Many, many friend died, and often, when they'd be staring up at the sky wondering, they'd bump into each other annoyingly and feuds that have lasted throguhout the centuries and beyond were started. (See Atreides, House of, and Harkonnen, House of.) There was a great leader of the time, and his name was John. Now, John was a very curious man. But, he was also stunningly wise. Intelligent beyond his years, and he knew that people bumping into each other and not tending to their crops could never be helpful. He understood the need to be curious, but he knew he had to do something about the dilemma his people faced. So, one day when the Great John was playing with his fingertoys, he thought of a grand idea. The next afternoon, he called a following together and spread the word the there was a Great Man in the sky, playing with them, controlling them all as he would playtoys! Everyone went away smiling, joking, and laughing. Of course! Why didn't they think of that! So everyone's curiosity was satisfied, except for a very few who wondered how this Great Man came to be. Were there other even Greater Men controlling the Great Man? John quickly put a stop to these "anarchists" by throwing them in the first dungeons, much to the surprise of the imprisoned people, and the first censors were born. (See Government Censorship of Free Thought) Many centuries later, after the now Not-So-Great John (his idea of the Great Man was good, and occupied his people, but his idea of imprisonment wasn't received too well, and he was quickly beheaded by angry mobs of fishermen who claimed John was Not-So-Wise after all. Unfortunately, the Great Man theory stuck) was long gone and dead, another Great Curiosity struck the people. Science, then a strangely quack-like profession, took over because of its odd ability to convince people that it could explain everything. But, now that everyone thought it could explain everything, some asked how the Great Man came to be. (The anarchists were released after the death of John, and managed to spread their ideas before John's son took over. And this time they weren't so vocal about the whole affair.) Science delved deep into its misshaped imagination and decided that the Great Man didn't exist after all. Instead, Universal laws and theories replaced the Great Man idea. After all the confusion ended, the curiosity of the people remained, and now the questions was not "How did the Great Man come to be," but instead, "How the laws and theories came to be." Science, by this point, had become so fed up with the people they threw up their hands and, learning from the Great John's ideas and thoughts, came up with a new cheap material called polyester to occupy the people with something other than Great Curiosity (See "Oooh Lookit the Pretty Colours.") It turns out John was a Great Man after all. Or at least his method of dealing with his subjects was. His dungeons were just replaced with insane asylums this time around, and his Great Man theory was replaced with polyester. A main difference between the Great Man and polyester, is that polyester can be worn. Which makes it a much better choice. And the people were happy.. For the time being. @endnode @node "American BBSs" "American BBSs" @next "German BBSs" @prev "BBS List" The Nostromo BBS The Kobayahi Alternative (TKA) (407) 575-5320 (207) 784-2130 Auburn, Maine Jupiter, Florida The Wolf's Lair Eden's Exile (201) 666-9472 (718) 206-1861 Westwood, New Jersey New York City, New York Delta Computer's BBS The Stygian Abyss (201) 398-8559 (312) 384-0616 Hopatcong, New Jersey Chicago, Illinois Star Streams Gus's BS BBS (214) 938-7115 (407) 366-6274 Waxahachie, Texas Orlando, Florida The Fileworks BBS Mystic Caverns (716) 377-3695 (619) 442-7030 Fairport, New York El Cajon, California The Aquarium/AWE BBS The AmiTrek BBS (716) 885-8468 (407) 348-3365 Buffalo, New York Kissimmee, Florida Amiga Lynx BBS (201) 368-0463 Hackensack, New Jersey @endnode @node "German BBSs" "German BBSs" @next "Canadian BBSs" @prev "American BBSs" The Redeye BBS Subspace BBS +49.89.546-0535 +49-202-644125 Munich Wuppertal @endnode @node "British BBSs" "British BBSs" @next "Info" @prev "Canadian BBSs" Quark's Bar 44-1274-617508 Bradford, Yorkshire @endnode @node "Canadian BBSs" "Canadian BBSs " @next "British BBSs" @prev "German BBSs" London and Region Amiga User Group Flash in the Pan BBS (519) 645-1890 (403) 686-3783 London, Ontario Calgary, Alberta AMUC Express (403) 282-5137 Calgary, Alberta @endnode @node "Jason's Compton!" "One Life to Give" @next "Emplant" @prev "Editorial" @{i}@{bg fill}I Regret That I Have But One Life To Give For My Amiga @{ui}@{bg back} It's getting tougher and tougher to keep a bright and cheery disposition. After all, as I write this, we're just days away from the 10th month of Commodore's liquidation, and all we have to show for it are a load of promises, magazine articles promising a quick solution, and what seems like a gigabyte of Usenet articles proclaiming that Company X has REALLY bought out Commodore! What has that meant for the Amiga community? It was hardly growing at a breakneck pace while Commodore was hanging by a thread, aside from making inroads into Europe's game console market. Now, of course, both the user and the developer bases are eroding. At the same time, we're looking at new, seemingly bizarre products. A "laptop" about the size of a 3000, Bring Your Own Motherboard. A pseudo-clone in production with an astronomical price but capable of powering the VLab Motion non-linear videotape editing system. And at least 3 independent projects to replace the Amiga OS with something similar. Certainly, these aren't signs of rejuvination, but of innovation- workarounds for problems that can't be solved in the conventional manner anymore. So, what is there to do? Bail out of the Amiga market? I've given it a bit of thought myself. Then it occurred to me-there is absolutely no good reason to. I don't rely on my computer for income, I rely on it for entertainment, and I'm getting that much. Besides, the "other" computers will likely always be there for you later, so why not ride the storm out now and see where it leads? Clearly, those who DO rely on their machine for money are faced with serious quandries, and I feel for them, and understand when they switch machines. But that can't be helped. What does the future hold? A huge challenge. It can be argued that a new computer platform has not been successfully introduced to the mass market in over 10 years-if you define success by "The parent company still exists", that would be the Macintosh. Any new company is faced with having to beat those odds. What's the key? Software, of course. The purchasing perception of the mass market is based on the availablility of software-usually a few catchy and popular titles. I would submit that grabbing one major developer in the business field would be sufficient. MicroSoft would be a logical, but unsavory, choice. Aldus/Adobe would be nice. Novell wouldn't hurt. A few others would fit the bill-with their software suite ported to the Amiga, it would appear to be a "serious" contender. On the other side of the coin, winning the consideration of a major software publisher is critical. Electronic Arts would be the most logical choice-their sales figures are absolutely staggering, and they would bring some of the "hottest multimedia titles", especially through Origin. CEI, Commodore UK, and whoever else thinks they want a shot need to court these players now, or the Amiga may be dead-on-rearrival. ************************************** *Jason Compton is the Editor-in-Chief* *of Amiga Report, possibly the best * *Amiga online mag(not including Amiga*. *Link, ofcourse). He also contribute* *to Amiga Game Zone. With all this * *running around, it's no wonder he's * *one of the most respected Amiga * *experts around! He can be reached * *at: * *jcompton@xnet.com * ************************************** @endnode @node "Short Reviews" "Short Game Reviews" @next "Letters" @prev "Fears" @{b}Theme Park@{ub} From BullFrog Software Sim City lovers, this is a MUST-HAVE game! The game is very fun, and takes a lot of time to play. The object of the game is to build a theme park. The game has many options such as adding guards, chickens (Chickens? -Josh) to entertain the visitors, and much more! You can build many rides such as a roller coaster, ghost house, merry go round and more, you can even build shops that sell ice cream, french fries, and other items. This game will keep you busy for a very long time, in fact, this is pure addiction: once you play you can't stop! Graphics: 8 Sound: 6 Fun Factor: 10 @{b}A-10 Tank Killer@{ub} Very nice plane game, the flight panels are identical to a plane. Five on the PC's. I recommend you have at least 2 meg RAM to play it well. All through you can adjust the screen to reduce its size, which will make the game go faster. You are basically in a plane with another person, who controls something else. The game is fun, with detailed bridges, tanks and planes. This makes a very good game. The sound is pretty good, but while flying the shooting noise is annoying. Graphics: 9 Sound: 7 Fun Factor: 8 @{b}Wing Commander@{ub} Another plane game, (if you forget that this one is a more like a plane in space -Josh) but this one is really good, I love the music and graphics, this game gets the Editors Choice! The game is very fun, the missions are good enough to keep you coming back for more. Graphics: 9 Sound: 10 Fun Factor: 9 Editors Choice* Note: Rating's range from 1 to 10. 1 at the lowest and 1 at the greatest 10. ******************************* *John Vlachos is the co-Editor* *in Chief of Amiga Link and * *the Editor in Chief of C=64 * *Link. He can be reached at * *wl-static-bea@society.com or * *John Vlachos@1:107/590 * ******************************* @endnode @node "Writers" "Writers" @next "Legal Bull" @prev "Next Issue" Writers for Amiga Link aren't faceless gods eating apples on Olympus, they're people just like you! If you want to write for Amiga Link, all you have to do is write an articles, and send it in to Joshua Galun and he will be sure to contact you as to your article! Now that doesn't sound very hard, does it? @endnode @node "Next Issue" "Coming Next Issue" @next "Writers" @prev "Info" Coming April 1 in issue 2 of Amiga Link: o Fears reviews o Continuation of the paint and coder's tutorials o Two new graphics tutorials o Review of the game Reunion o An article on the complete Amiga solution o The revelation of the Amiga Link CHICKEN SEAL OF QUALITY! Ofcourse, there will be many many more articles beyond that, including a review of Dungeon Master II, most likely, and maybe even an article on the end of the C= Commodore buyout... @endnode @node "Legal Bull" "Legal Bull" @prev "Writers" The views expressed in this magazine are not neccasarily those of John Vlachos or Joshua Galun nor anyone related to them. Amiga Link and the articles in it are copyright Joshua Galun and John Vlachos. You may not reproduce Amiga Link's articles in any way, or edit the magazine, in any way without John Vlacho's and Josh Galun's express written consent. Amiga Link may be freely distributed on any BBS or online services as long as it is still in it's original archive and form. Public Domain resellers may sell Amiga Link for a maximum of $4.50 or £3.00, or in any currency as long as the amounts are equal to those, using the exchange rates of March 1, 1995. You may not use Amiga Report in any other way than putting it on BBSs and reading it, and selling it for the amounts specified. If you wish to use Amiga Link or an article in it for something else, you must first contact on of the editors. Amiga Link is not affiliated with Commodore-Amiga, Commodore Business Machines, Ltd., or any other Amiga pbulications. All items quoted in whole or in part are done so under the Fair Use Provision of the Copyright Laws of the United States Penal Code. Any electronic mail sent to the Editors may be reprinted, unless specified otherwise. @endnode