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RISC World

Disc World

David Bradforth and Aaron Timbrell on this months DISCWorld

This months DISCWorld roundup

RISC World is twelve months old. Let's celebrate with one of the biggest games ever to be included on an Acorn cover disc. David Bradforth explains, and introduces the other items featured.

If, unlike me, you can remember back to issue four of RISC World it had a number of defining characteristics. Of course, the new editor/new design thing was quite clear, but the programs section of the disc included commercial software for the first time. Being quite keen on this idea, David, Aaron and myself sought out a number of commercial items for issues five and six and indeed we have made the guarantee that a commercial program will be on every disc.

With issue seven - the special edition - this is now starting to pay off. We have on offer this month perhaps the most graphically impressive game ever released for RISC OS. Wizard Apprentice, previously priced at £35, is complete and free to all RISC World subscribers - as well as a number of smaller, actually new, commercial offerings.

I'm actually taking a slightly different approach to the Wizard Apprentice feature - we've linked a number of items in, as they all relate directly to the material on the disc. It may make sense to print each of them out before you install the game, and from that point in play like mad!

Hope to see you in the new volume, where we hope to offer (for Volume 2 Issue 1) a number of superb ArtWorks modules, a complete commercial game and a complete commercial spreadsheet.

David Bradforth

Wizard Apprentice from APDL

Complete game - original rrp £35.

Wizard Apprentice, originally released in the late part of 1997 by The Datafile, was considered by some to be somewhat over priced at its time of release. For a high quality game, the average at the time was perhaps £25 - Wizard Apprentice weighed in at £35. After a few months, the price came down to allow a much wider circulation to occur.

When APDL bought The Datafile, they took on Wizard Apprentice and at the first opportunity brought the price down to £7.90. Now, for the pleasure of those who have yet to experience it, we present the complete game - free, with no limitations whatsoever. The only thing we have had to do is remove the Introducion sequence and a few other non essentials to get it to fit on the CD. If you wish to acquire an original Wizard Apprentice CD-ROM, send £2 (coins or stamps only, please) to the APDL address, providing your name and address (as known on the RISC World database).

RiscAction 1 cover disc

Complete disc archive - contains software worth £70

RiscAction (latterly Smash) got off on a good start with it's cover discs. Contained within this archive, you'll find the first issue's disc - the second issue featured the Professional Typography CD-ROM which isn't particularly practical for fitting onto a RISC World disc.

Some of the goodies you'll find here include...

  • Master Break
  • DrawWorks SE

All of the items are still copyright material, and should not be treated as anything but.

Impression Junior from Computer Concepts

Complete desktop publishing program - originally £120

I had hoped we'd fit this in last time, alongside reviews of Ovation Pro and Sleuth 3 - still I know it's a good program, and that's all that matters! Okay, enough of the cheek: Impression Junior was released around the same time as CC announced Impression 2. It very quickly became a highly used word processor and desktop publishing package within a number of schools.

Indeed, the person writing this article got his first ever taste of Acorn journalism while writing using Impression Junior. That, and having been forced to design the school newspaper (which made for an interesting experience, at the best of times).

These days, Impression Junior can seem to be a little old: and it is, but it's still a very capable program of which you can gain many hours usage. To use it fully on a Risc PC (or RISC OS 4 machine), you should first ensure that you're in a numbered mode (e.g. 28) otherwise the program may seem to act quite oddly.

For those who don't yet have it, Impression Style is available as an upgrade to owners of the RISC World edition of Junior. To order, at just £49 + VAT, call Computer Concepts on 01442 351000 or email kate@xara.com for details of other ordering methods. You may even receive a larger discount than you originally expect!

HTML Search

A complete index to the entire first volume of RISC World can be found on the root of this CD. Type in a key world and HTML Search will search every article from every issue. Once completed a save dialogue box will open and you can drag out an HTMl file containing links to all the articles that feature your keyword. Now finding information in RISC World is even easier and much quicker.

The Complete DiscWorld list

So in alphabetical order this months DiscWorld contains:

  • ARCHIE - Run RISC OS on a PC!
  • ARMCODE - Files supporting the ARM Code articles by Brian Pickard.
  • BEGINPRG - The examples from the BASIC programming series.
  • BRANDY - BBC BASIC interpreter for Windows and Linux
  • BUBIMPACT - Demo version of Bubble Impact.
  • DWSE - DrawWorks SE
  • JUNIOR - Complete version of Impression Junior from Computer Concepts.
  • MBREAK - Complete version of Master Break from Superior Software.
  • PERL - Example programs from Richard Goodwins article.
  • PERL2 - a copy of the PERL programming language.
  • PD - The latest PD software from our PD column.
  • WIZAPP - Wizard Apprentice - from APDL.

Utilities

This CD-ROM contains a number of utilities and pieces of software to accompany the articles in the magazine. The magazine now uses GIF and JPEG images rather than having two versions, one with Sprites and one with GIF. The magazine can be found in the HTML directory from the root of the CD.

There are three utilities to help you read this disc (RISC OS users only). These can be found hidden inside the !RiscWorld application in the UTILITIES directory (The !RiscWorld application automatically uses these utilities if they are required):

  • A file-only copy of Fresco, to display the HTML. This will only run if you don't already have a copy of Fresco installed, so that it won't overwrite your cache.
  • ArcFS, which can be used to read some of the archived software on the disc.
  • SparkPlug, an alternative de-archiver which can also read Zip files.

Usenet archive

Also included on the disc is an archive of the comp.sys.acorn.* newsgroups since early December 2000. These are stored in a special read-only version of Messenger Pro which will allow you to view the messages, but nothing more complicated. The archive is presented 'as is', and RISC World doesn't make any guarantee about the usefulness, relevance or acceptability of any information contained in it.

Index