Bird Of Prey CD

Domhnall Dods tries out "the ultimate" Falcon specific CD

Yet again Falcon owners have been treated to another CD aimed fairly and squarely at their machine. Unlike many of the other offerings out ther, this one hails not from Germany but the good ol' US of A. Produced by Floating Fish Studios and published by respected American Atari dealers Toad Computing, this CD claims to avoid the trap many other CDs fall into, namely filling out the space with endless folders of gifs, mods and "endless file descriptions". It all sounds very promising, but does it live up to the promise? Well "yes" and "no".

The CD contains 662 Megabytes of information and is divided up into the now familiar categories such as demos, graphics, sound etc etc. The proportions taken up by each category can be seen in figure 1. Now those of you familiar with other CD ROMs on the Atari will know that the sound and graphics categories more often than not contain vast amounts of gif files and mod tunes - not exactly ground breaking software. This is what the compilers of Bird of Prey have tried to avoid. So what have they put in place of the gifs and Mods?

Well as you can see some 23.7% of the CD is taken up by the "FFS" area. What is "FFS"? You guessed it, "Floating Fish Studios" the recording studio run by the compilers of the CD using Atari Falcon computers. At first it actually looks promising with folders for Videos, Films, Apex etc. Unfortunately once you delve a little deeper it becomes apparent that most of the files are either stills or FLI files of the band "Any Questions". Never heard of them? Well the band members appear to be the very same blokes who have compiled the CD. There are no samples of their music but given that their latest CD is called "Death" and that many of the images contain one of the band members carrying a womans severed head I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions. If you're a fan of the band these file areas will no doubt be very welcome, otherwise they will be of extremely limited interest. The idea of excluding endless amounts of Mods etc is admirable but simply replacing them with lots of shots of your own band is not really a useful alternative for most Atari users.

Another annoying feature is the fact that in their quest to remove "endless file descriptions" the compilers have left the user with no real idea as to what is actually on the CD. The only way to figure it out is to guess what might be in the folders and then search (often in vain) for a readme file or some form of user manual. I'm all for eliminating unnecessary text but come on guys, some form of overall guide to the CD would be useful.

So is this CD a complete write off? Does it have any good points? Thankfully it does. The rest of the CD is packed with Atari software, all of which appears to justify the claim on the cover of being TOS 4.0x friendly (apart from one folder which appeared to contain software for a certain Windows based platform!)

One of the difficulties faced by many owners of CD Roms on the Atari is that the vast majority of the software found on CD is German and has no English documentation. In this area Bird of Prey scores a big plus point. Being American, there is a much higher proportion of software in English than on many other CDs. There is some German software, even some Dutch and French, but the non linguists amongst you will have little difficulty in finding your way around most of the software. One point I should make is that although a recent arrival in the UK, this CD is not a new release. Most of the software and documentation dates from around December 1995 or earlier. As a result much of it is out of date and will have been seen before, especially by those of us who are on-line. Nevertheless there is a great deal of useful software to be found - much of which I had never seen before.

The diskmags section contains most of the well known disk based mags on the Atari Scene (except AtariPhile) including FOG and Maggie, but these all date from before December 1995 and are therefore of limited interest and use. Similarly the "Info" section contains large numbers of postings from the Atari conferences on the American Genie system as well as details of various hardware modifications which can be carried out on a standard Falcon. With the advent of products like Nemesis these will probably be of little interest to the average user.

Some of the more useful files are to be found lurking in "apps". This folder contains a large number of templates for Atari Works. Not having Works I was unable to test these but judging by the titles there is a template to automate vitrually every part of your life!

There is also a very comprehensive comms section featuring all the "standard" comms packages such as Connect , STorm, and Teddy Term as well as the offline reader Kivi, albeit not the latest version. There is certainly enough to get you online although there is very little in the way of documentation to guide the novice user.

The Text Editor, Database and Word Processor folders all contain a wide variety of packages including many of the well know ones such as Everest, Edith, Papyrus (demo) , Address, Twist (Demo) and Texel (Demo), as well as lesser known offerings such as MultiWriter.

The Games area unlike many of the other areas contained nothing out of the ordinary. The list of games is comprehensive but pretty much the same as found on other Falcon CDs such as "All Things Falcon" or "Transmission". This is not a criticism of this CD, more a reflection of the fact that there have never been huge numbers of games witten for the Falcon.

"Graphics" is a category which on most other CDs contains vast quantities of pictures - not here. True to their word the compilers have instead concentrated on giving the user packages to manipulate images. There are sub categories for programs which convert files from one format to another, demos of commercial graphics packages, paint programs, fractal generators, screen grabbers and image viewers. Again the compilers seem to have gone out of their way to provide as wide a variety of programs as possible as well as the standard programs found elsewhere.

There is the usual section for demos which appears to contain all the usual Falcon demos but not having an RGB monitor I was unable to run any of them. If you are a demo fan though you should have plenty here to keep you amused.

One unusual feature not found on any other CD that I have seen is the "Net" section which contains the WWW130 archive with everything you need to get your Atari onto the internet. Apart from that there are a number of other utilities including the Swedish browser from Firestorm and a set of utilities by Swampdog.

Although the compilers have promised "no mods" thay have included an extremely comprehensive selection of mod players, in the "Modworld" section and an equally comprehensive "Sound" section. As well as the usual programs for playing, converting and editing sound files, there is a dedicated section for Cubase users. Having no musucal ability whatsoever, far less a copy of Cubase, I cannot comment on how useful the contents might be. Given that the CD is compiled by a band with their own recording studio however, it is likely that they will be very useful indeed.

Finally, no CD would be complete without a section for Utilities. In this area Bird of Prey certainly appears to live up to its claim to have "every Falcon utility ever". The progams are not always the most up to date versions, given that the CD is just over a year old this is not surprising, but the list reads like a Who's Who of Atari PD Utility software.

Overall this CD doesn't quite live up to it's promise. Having set out to eliminate the "filling" found on many other Atari CDs, the compilers have simply added in publicity material for their band and recording studio - this can be of only limited use to the average Atarian. This minor grumble aside, the ramining 75% of the CD is filled with a good selection of Public Domain software, most of which ran without problems on my Falcon even under MagiC and with Nemesis. Those few files which refused to run may simply require an RGB monitor.

One way the CD could be immeasurably improved would be to include some form of assistance for the user to find his or her way around. The over zealous exclusion of file descriptions simply makes the contents less accessible to the user.

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