Display : PAL.& In issue three of APDR I reviewed&v1.11 of this program as found on Fish&disk 554. This version has quite a few&improvements and is about twice as$fast at drawing it's scenes as well.& The most obvious difference&compared to the old version is in the&number of parameters you have control&over. This has jumped dramatically and&there's now a screen-full of them to&play with. It's much easier to use too&with sliders for nearly all the values&as apposed to entering numbers at the keyboard.& So to the improvements. The output&is still only in 32 colour low-res but&an interlace option is now also&available. Shadows have also been&added plus a method of placing the sun&where you want it to make use of the
feature.& Waves on the sea are now possible&and this addition works very well.&Along with waves on the shorelines&this also give the appearance of reefs$being under the sea. Very realistic.& Lakes and rivers have also been&added though why you need both is a&bit beyond me. Is not a lake just a&river with nowhere to go? No matter.&They're both here and it's just a case&of clicking on the 2D map to place&them in your scene. Rivers will have&waterfalls too if they go over a steep&enough cliff. How steep the cliff has&to be, as with most of the other&considerations such as where the snow&lies or the trees can grow, is&determined by the user. All are easy
to understand and implement.& "Trees" are also a new feature&according to the docs but I never saw&an individual tree as such in any of&the scenes I rendered. As you can't&pick an individual point on the map as&your view-point it's hard to check if&they are there, but I did try to find&them. They may just be too far away in&most scenes but I suspect it refers to&the colouring of the scenes and not to&individually drawn trees. Pity. Rocks&are also mentioned in the docs but I
never saw any of those either.& In the previous review of Landscape&I criticised AMOS rather a lot, the&language used to write this program,&and a wee bit unfairly as it turns&out. (See the Letters column for my
Waves on the sea are now! possible. Along with them on! the shorelines this also give
the appearance of reefs
being under the sea.
[23m&full apology.) It does multi-task,&sort off, but I still stand by my&other complaints about the language.&As I was getting to grips with the new&features in Landscape I thought how&useful it would be to have the docs&available from within the program and&in AmigaGuide
format. Somehow I don't&think this would be all that easy to&do using AMOS, though I may be wrong&about that. Has anyone done it yet?&That said, at least I knew how to look&at the docs without having to exit the&program this time, which made learning
it's features a lot easier.& A HAM option for Landscape and real&trees and other features would add a&lot to it's output. The ability to&render frames for an animation would&also be a welcome addition. Do you get&the feeling a program like this could be a lifetimes work for someone?& But as it is, this Landscape has a&lot more features and is much easier&to use than the earlier version&reviewed. The interface is now very&user-friendly and apart from not being&able to select an individual viewpoint&and the direction of view covers most&of what you would wish for in a&scenery generator. A good upgrade to a&good program. May future versions
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