Archive Magazine 1995/ARCHIVE95.iso/text/products/volume_02/issue_03

Text File | 1995-02-21 | 11KB | 192 lines

Å  Repton 3 is here! Well, just about Ö it should be available before
Christmas. We have the pre-release version of John Wallaceæs adaptation
of the ever popular BBC celebrity. The Archimedes version, which runs in
mode 9, has four different tunes and an Éoffæ option(!), it runs 25%
faster than the BBC version and it has a very useful extra feature of
allowing you to save the position you have reached so that if you have
just negotiated a difficult bit, you donæt have to go back to the
beginning if you get killed. There is also an editor so that you can
design your own screens (16 colours) and your own men. Itæs called
Repton 3 because youæve got three of the Repton stories in one: The Life
of Repton, Around the World in 80 Screens and Repton through Time. All
the passwords are different from the BBC ones as are the competition
codes, so itæs start from scratch time for all you BBC Reptonians.
ú19.95 from Superior Software. (ú18 through Archive.)
2.3
Å  Jet Fighter Ö Minervaæs latest games program ú14.95 (ú14 through
Archive) Ö öAlone on a forgotten planet, you must defend yourself
against all-comers whilst, aided by your jet powered back-pack, you re-
build your broken rocket ship, then fuel it and take off to the next
level.ò
2.3
Å  PacMania Ö At last, the only game I ever spent time playing on the BBC
Ö PacMan Ö has now been converted to the Archimedes. Grandslamæs
PacMania (ú19.95 or ú18 through Archive) is a 3D version where you can,
amongst other things, jump over the monsters! (Needs 1 Mbyte minimum.)
2.3
Å  Home Accounts Ö ú49.95 from Minerva (ú46 through Archive) is their
first application that will run under RISCOS in single or multi-tasking
modes. Designed to keep club or home finances, it will control multiple
bank accounts, credit cards or building societies and does automatic
posting of standing orders and transfers of funds between accounts. It
includes budgeting and cashflow forecasts, provides a full analysis and
even warns of bank charges or overdraft situations. Also includes simple
bank reconciliation. N.B. this is self-standing software and not an add-
on to System Delta Plus as is the case with the Business Accounts
software. (See small ads if you need a copy of Business Accounts.)
2.3
Å  Claresæ Alphabase Ö This has rather got for-gotten, but it is a
perfectly respectable database for the Archimedes at ú49.95 (ú46 through
Archive.) We have a copy for review if anyone is interested.
2.3
Å  Software Developeræs Toolbox from Acorn contains a Symbolic Debugger
and a set of utilities working in C, Pascal, Fortran 77 or BASIC: Common
Ö lists the most common words in a list of files, Dbug Ö machine code
debugger for use with multiple languages, Diff Ö compares two files and
lists their differences, Grope Ö searches files for a given pattern,
Libfile Ö manipulates library files, Link Ö links object files and
libraries to form an image file, Amu Ö controls compilation of multiple
sources in large programs, Memtest Ö tests the application memory of the
machine, Objlib Ö lists the symbols in a library file, Shell Ö allows
BASIC to be used as a command language, Squeeze Ö compresses image files
to conserve disc space, Wc Ö counts characters, words and lines in a
file. Acorn price ú199 + VAT, Archive special price (while stocks last)
ú130
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Å  Nine discs of programs Ö Weæve had a list of nine program discs at
ú5.99 each from David Pilling, P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Black
pool, FY5 1LR. (Buy four, get one free!) They are: EMACS programmers/
text editor, Micro Spell, Fortune Cookie, XLISP, C Toolkit, Kermit,
Chess, Cross Star, File Tools.
2.3
Å  PDÖPROLOG Ö A public domain version of PROLOG is available from The
Advisory Unit, Endymion Road, Hatfield, Herts, AL10 8AU. It works under
the PC emulator, so just send them a formatted MS-DOS disc along with a
return envelope and postage.
2.3
Å  Extended Precision from within BASIC. Ö EpBAS from Abacus Training
allows you to use all 27 floating point uniop & binops from within
BASIC. You can get 19 significant figure precision in BASIC and use
numbers from 10^Ö4931 to 10^+4931. Extended precision numbers are stored
in BASIC strings or Ep registers. EpBAS is ú30 inclusive and comes with
examples on disc e.g. 2 x 2 determinant, the square root of 2 as 2*SIN
(ATN(1)) and the solution of a triangle.
2.3
Å  Maths Co-Processor Ö No, not available yet, but I thought youæd like
an up-date. The latest target is 2nd quarter É89 and the price is still
quoted as Ébetween ú500 and ú1000æ.
2.3
Å  ArVis Videographics Expansion Ö Video Electronics Ltd have a range of
products for the Archimedes: a PAL encoder board, a video Controller
board and a very exciting looking Videographics podule. The podule
extends the display capabilities of the Archimedes from 256 to 32000
colours and is complete with a built-in real-time colour digitiser and a
384 kbyte x 16 bit video framestore. It also combines the digitised
video images with live video and the normal Archimedes graphics output
for professional videographics applications. Video Electronics sent us
some very impressive screen shots of digitised images.
2.3
Å  Colour Converter improved Ö Lindis Inter-national have added some
extra software for their colour converter. This is in addition to the
original software and registered users will automatically be up-graded.
There is now öerror correction dith-eringò which allows the simulation
of 256,000 colours and a mode 12 facility to allow you to import
digitised pictures into Artisan or First Word Plus. (The colour
converter basically takes a colour signal from a recorder or a camera,
splits it up into the three colour elements and allows you to feed each
colour separately through to the Watford digitiser. The three digitised
images can then be superimposed to give the colour picture. Matthew
Treagus will be reviewing it in due course.)
2.3
Å  Yet another art package Ö Pax is a 256 colour art package from Z & Z
Software, price ú15.95.
2.3
Å  Cobra Ö a snake-eating-up-the-bits game for the Archimedes, ú6 from
Richard Millican 10 Stokesay, Bidston, Birkenhead, L43 7PU.
2.3
Å  RISC OS Ö next month we will be giving a lot more detail about the
RISC OS 2.0, but you are now able to place advance orders for ú33 inc.
VAT + ú3.00 p&p. (We canæt say exactly how much it will be for overseas
customers because we donæt know how heavy it will be, but I estimate
that you will have to add ú10, ú12 or ú15 postage, depending on the
postal area, instead of ú3.) If you want to place an advanced order,
place send a separate post-dated cheque (April 1st 1989!) which we will
hold until we have the RISC OS packages ready to send out to you.
Remember that after an initial period, the price of RISCOS will revert
to the full ú56.35 + postage.
2.3
Å  Euclid up-grade now available Ö Euclid, the 3D graphics package has
been up-graded and registered users will get a free up-grade. New
features include lighting effects and the ability to colour objects by
selecting from a range of colours in a colour wheel. The viewing of
scenes from different angles has been simplified as have the methods of
constructing scenes and there is a new help facility. (Euclid costs ú45
from ACE comp-uting or ú42 from Archive.)
2.3
Å  Wimp Template Editor has been delayed a little but should be ready by
the time you read this. Adrian has been making sure that it is compat
ible with RISC OS, rather than having to up-date it later.
2.3
Review Software Received...
2.3
Apart from reviews already being written we have received review copies
of the following software: Alpha-Base from Clares (months ago someone
offered to do a review though nothing came of it), Cobra from Richard
Millican, Extended Precision in BASIC from Abacus, Floating Point
Assembler from Abacus, Ovid Toolkit module, Pax, 256 colour art package
from Z & Z Software, P.R.E.S. Archimedes Utilities.
2.3
Shareware Concept Takes off!
2.3
Since the early days of Archive, weæve been intend-ing to get going on
setting up the Shareware concept but itæs never really taken off until
now. We did do the graphics demo disc fairly early on and then the first
Shareware disc, both of which are valuable in their own way, but this
latest Shareware disc really is in a different league. Last month, I
wasnæt exactly sure what we had available to put on it Ö all I knew was
that there was quite a bit of it. When Adrian presented me with the
finished disc, I was certain that it would be well worth ú3 of anyoneæs
money. Just look at the list below and youæll see what I mean. Iæm not
saying that all the programs are wonderfully well written, though some
certainly are, but if just one of the major programs is of use to you,
itæs well worth ú3.
2.3
More of the same, please!
2.3
So what we want now is more of the same! It is in everyoneæs interests
(apart from the commercial software houses Ö Sorry chaps!) to generate
and distribute more of these Shareware discs. So if you have a program
or programs that you have written that are at least reasonably good,
send them in. Also, if you take one of the existing programs and add
various new facilities to it or improve others, send it in and we can
put the modified program on a later disc. If the program needs documen
tation, please send it as a readme file with the program.
2.3
Here is a list of what is on the discs that we currently have available.
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Graphics Demo Disc Ö 49 graphics demo programs plus öMenuMasterò Ö a
program which allows you to add in your own demos, and edit the order in
which the programs are run, including repeating some demos and making
the demo into a complete loop.
2.3
Shareware Disc N╝ 1 Ö MenuMaster  with 7 more graphics demo programs
plus Life, Mandelbrots, European Geography, Structured Directory Lister.
2.3
Shareware Disc N╝ 2 Ö DFS reader, backup and archiver. Nine more
graphics demos, 256 colour Sprite Editor, CMOS ram Editor, Disc Copier,
LQ printer Font Definer, Matrix Functions, Memory Mappings & Vector
Listings, BASIC Fast Screenload, Connect Four, Mastermind, Solitaire and
Star Trek.
2.3
Monthly Program Discs
2.3
We are still getting requests to organise a monthly program disc
subscription. The position is, as I think we said in an earlier issue,
that we will accept pre-payment for any number of program discs at ú3
each, so you can pay for 3 at a time, 6 at a time, 10 at a time or pay
for the next 5 yearsæ discs all at one go if you really want to! Iæm
afraid we just do not have time to formalise it into a disc subscription
and I think that at ú3 (compared with A&Bæs ú7, Acorn Useræs ú50 for 12
and RISC Useræs ú5.25) you are getting good value for money.
2.3