ÿÿÿÿVOLUME6/ISSUE5/ADJUST/INDEX.HTM Volume 6, Issue 5, Configuring RISC OS Adjust
Configuring RISC OS Adjust
David Bradforth continues his exploration of the RISC OS Adjust configuration system.
This time we're skipping the 'Logging' and 'Network' sections of the Configuration system, as they merit a larger article themselves; and hence will form the conclusion of this piece in the next issue of RISCWorld. In the meantime, we're moving on to the 'Pinboard' settings.
Pinboard
The Pinboard section allows you to make changes that affect how the pinboard and RISC OS desktop is presented to the user. Click the Pinboard icon to open this window.
Let's start with the Backdrop & Icons section. This allows you to alter the use of a backdrop graphic on the RISC OS desktop, or to select a standard colour. Click the Backdrop & Icons icon to open this window.
This window is concerned with setting how the desktop background or backdrop will appear. There are three options available.
You can choose one of the standard tiles supplied with RISC OS. These are selected by using the bump icons beside the title panel
You can import a Sprite or JPEG image to be used as the backdrop by selecting Custom Image and dragging the image to be used to where it says Drop image here. This can be either scaled, centred or tiled. There are disadvantages to using a large JPEG or Sprite in that it will slow down the redraw speed of your computer, especially if the source image is not the same size as the desktop. It will also take a lot of memory
You can have a plain coloured backdrop, the advantage of which is that it takes very little memory. If you choose to select a 'Bottom Colour' you can force RISC OS to place a rainbow backdrop between the two colours; using very little memory at that time
The Icon Text colour is the colour used for icons placed onto the RISC OS background.
You can test any settings by hitting the 'Try' button, return to the default by clicking 'Default', cancel the changes by clicking 'Cancel' or activate the new settings by clicking 'Set'.
Let's move on to the Options section.
The Pinboard Options window is concerned with the placement of icons on to the pinboard. It defines what happens when you send an icon to the RISC OS backdrop or choose the 'Tidy' option.
When it comes to options for the 'Iconise' function, you can iconise individual windows to a 'Button', the 'Icon Bar' and one of the four corners of the desktop. Stacked either horizontally or vertically.
Against the 'Tidy' function, you can tidy icons to any of the four corners of the desktop, again stacked either horizontally or vertically.
The 'Grid Lock' option allows you to create a virtual grid on your desktop to which each icon will be locked. This ensures that you do not have one icon overlapping another on the desktop, and hence that you can see everything going on with your system at a glance.
The 'Filer-like clicks' option forces icons on the pinboard to behave as they would within a standard filer window.
You can restore the default settings by clicking 'Default', cancel any changes made by clicking 'Cancel' or confirm the changes by clicking 'Set'.
Recycle Bin
RISC OS Adjust has brought into the operating system for the first time a recycle bin function. Integrated into the operating system, just as Windows XP and Mac OS X have their own integrated trashcans, its control window is available by clicking Recycle bin. The window opens as shown.
The 'Enable recycle bin' option needs to be ticked if you wish the Recycle Bin (or Recyclone as it's known) to be active.
With 'Force delete on Shift' enabled you can bypass the recycle bin by holding down the 'Shift' key when initiating a delete.
The 'Expire time' is the length of time for which data should be stored within the Recycle Bin before being automatically deleted. This can be anything from a day to a thousand days.
The 'Edit Exclude List' option allows you to prohibit the recycle bin from working with any given operating system. Whether it's IDEFS or SCSIFS, and for whatever reason, using the format given in the example file you can ensure that any given filing system will always delete files directly rather than send them to the recycle bin.
Finally the 'Location' section allows you to specify whether the recycle bin should be global or on a per-user basis.
The 'Cancel' option will cancel any changes you've made, while 'Set' will confirm them.
Sound
The Sound section allows you to configure the computer's sound system. Click the Sound icon to open this window.
We'll start with the Frequency section. Click the Frequency icon to open this window.
Here you have control over the RateTracker module. This attempts to use the highest frequency available for any sound sources making use of the 'SharedSound' interface while also maintaining compatibility with the legacy sound system. Basically, if the function is enabled your sounds should come through better.
Let's move onto the Internal section, the window for which looks as below.
The top item is a slider which sets the default volume. Most people will want this set to maximum as the internal speaker is not very efficient and most external speakers will have a volume control.
16 bit sound should be On unless you have a very early Risc PC which has not yet had a 16 bit sound upgrade.
Oversampling should be On.
System beep is the sound that the computer makes when it wants to attract the attention of the user. By default this is the sound known as Wavesynth-Beep, but you can alter this if you wish or even add a special sound effect module.
There are two sound levels available for this; usually Quiet is loud enough but you may wish to set it to Loud.
Click 'Try' to experiment with the current settings on the selected sound, 'Default' to restore the system defaults, 'Cancel' to escape without confirming changes or 'Set' to confirm your changes and continue using the computer.
System
The System section allows you to update the system resources on your computer. Click the System icon to open this window.
If you wish to make use of an application that uses later versions of system modules than those available in your system, the easiest way to merge them into your computer is through this window. Take the !System folder off of the supplied disc, and drag it into this window. Click 'Merge' to confirm the merge and the process will take place.
VAPower
If you're running Virtual Acorn we next have the VAPower section; providing power management functions through RISC OS. Click the VAPower icon to open this window.
Towards the top of this window you can either enable or disable Power Management through Virtual Acorn and RISC OS. This is ideal if you're running Virtual RPC-Adjust on a laptop and prefer the RISC OS environment to the battery management functionality offered by Windows XP.
VirtualAcorn recommend that you always have Power Management enabled, even on desktop machines, as it will use less power and will run the CPU at a lower temperature.
Enabling the 'Battery Manager' by placing a tick in the 'Load Battery Manager on startup' box will ensure that you always have an eye on the available power left in your battery.
To confirm the changes click 'Save changes and Quit'.
David Bradforth
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME6/ISSUE5/ADVENT/INDEX.HTM Volume 6, Issue 5, 4TH Dimension Adventure Game CD
4th Dimension Adventure Game CD
Matthew Thompson
4th Dimension Adventure Games Collection.
This latest collection of 4th Dimension games sees 10 adventure themed games brought together on one CD, and as games collections goes this is a pretty good one as there are some classic RISC OS games included. The compilation line up is as follows :
The Time Machin
White Magic 1 +
The Wimp Gam
Enter The Real
Haunted Hous
Pandora's Bo
Demon's Lai
Cataclys
Darkwoo
Installation
As with the previous 4th Dimension compilation CDs, the installation is easy - load the !Install program and you will see the following window appear.
Select which games you want to install to the hard disc. Then drag the Joystick icon to the required filer window where you want to put the games, the file path will be added into the installation window. Then click OK and the installation will begin which takes a couple of minutes, and that's it!
Cataclysm
Cataclysm is different from the many games I've played over the years, it is not like any other game really (apart from a few clones which appeared later on). Despite it looking very basic and not very appealing it is a great little game. The object of the game is to guide the water from the top of the screen into the collecting vessel at the bottom of the screen, you do this by guiding the water down the screen using blocks, pressure valves and filters.
The way the game works is as follows - the water enters the screen and will gradually fill up the tanks at the top. This water will go nowhere until you remove the grey bungs that are holding the water in place. Remove one of these and the water will flood out everywhere, so before you do this you need to plan your route below so that when you do remove the bungs the water will flow through the level and into the collecting vessel at the bottom of the screen.
You do not have to collect all the water on each level, as it is never ending, what you do have to do is collect a certain amount which is indicated by a bar on the bottom left hand side of the screen. When this bar reaches it's limit the level is cleared and you can move onto the next one.
You have a number of building blocks which you use to guide the water around the levels. There are also the pressure valves, these will hold the water above for you, whilst you arrange the blocks, you can even use yourself as an extra block if you need to. There will come a point when the pressure valve cannot take anymore and the water will begin to come through, you will know when this is happening as you will hear the valves beginning to give way.
The game is reasonably easy to get into, and the first few levels are quite straight forward and let you get used to how the game plays, before introducing more difficult levels. These make the guidance of the water much more difficult by the introduction of a number of monsters. Some of these are harmless and generally get in the way but others are nasty and can kill you on contact. Another breed of monster will also fire at you, luckily you have your gun so you can zap any irritants.
On later levels it's not just water that comes out of the pipes, but acid as well. This is dealt with in the same way but you must avoid contact with it. Other features which will appear throughout the game include remote control doors, dissolving blocks, and drip valves to name but a few.
The graphics of Cataclysm, as you can see from the screenshots, are nothing spectacular, but the really do suit the game well, there isn't much variation between levels with the graphics, although each level does have it's own colour scheme, of which there are over forty.
There is a good title tune and some sampled water noises, but after that it's pretty much minimal in-game sounds. When you place a block, or one of the pressure values gives way to the water you get a few other noises and that's about it really.
To conclude this is an excellent game. It is an original idea and it is both addictive and challenging with a good level of increasing difficulty. There isn't much variation really in the levels, but I didn't find that to be a problem. It's definitely recommended, especially to those who like a bit of a thinking game rather just blasting aliens.
Darkwood
This game was originally released by Eclipse, so not really sure why it is included on a 4th Dimension games compilation. But who cares as the inclusion of this game adds more weight to this collection as it is a truly great RISC OS game.
Darkwood was written by Tom Cooper and was one of the last games he wrote, if not the last. for RISC OS machines and he certainly left on a high. The original release of Darkwood came on 8 floppy discs so a hard disc was recommended, although I think it would run from floppy.
Upon loading Darkwood it will install itself on the icon bar, and from here you can select sound options, and what type of monitor you are using. When all is done, click on the icon and the title page will appear, click on start, or continue, to resume a saved game, and away we go!
The game is set in a village which goes by the name of Ecklespit. You are a wizard who lives there and must remove a curse which has been put on the village. The game starts in the wizards house and you then leave his house to venture out into the surrounding landscape.
There is a large playing area to explore, which is bright and colourful. In general the graphics look pretty good and do a good job, but unfortunately they can look a bit blocky at times. This doesn't detract from the game which is great fun to play. As you guide your wizard around the landscape he meets various characters who he can have a conversation with. These conversations can be sensible and help you quest or, if you want, you can be deliberately stupid and annoy the villagers. Although this is not advisable if you intend to complete the game, but you can generate some interesting conversations!
The landscape is made up of various buildings which you can enter and search for items, speak with people and find clues to help you with your quest. Locations in the landscape include the village, island, mineshaft and abbey to name but a few. In addition to the characters that you can talk to around the landscape, there are also a number of enemies who if you come into contact with will drain your energy. There are also a number of weather effects, and stay out of the water as it means instant death!!
The game is controlled with direction keys in rooms inside buildings, but outside the landscape shifts round rather than the character moving around, I find this process a bit annoying, you get used to it after a while but to start with it is a bit irritating.
Darkwood has a great in-game tune with I really like but some might find it a bit annoying after a while. If this is the case then it can be switched off easily enough. The sound effects in the game are quite basic, noises for jumping and a sort of pitter-patter of the wizards feet as you move about, but they do the job and they go well with the in game music.
One of the things I particularly like about Darkwood is the element of humour in the game, particularly evident with you have conversations with people, some of the things that come up in conversation can be quite funny, well it amused me anyway!!
Overall I really liked Darkwood. It is pretty much the usual affair of collecting and using items as are many adventure games, but the interaction with the in-game characters adds a new element to the game and it works really well. A welcome feature is a save game option which is needed as you will never finish it in one go.
One thing worth mentioning is that there have been some clashes running this game on RISC OS 4/StrongARM machines, the game will run, but has been known to freeze at various points in the game, particularly in the mining area, however this is newer tweaked version so it may be all OK now. But I recommend that you save your current position frequently.
I have never managed to complete Darkwood, and would certainly like to one day. Does anyone have a complete solution of how to complete the game? Or know of one online? I have looked before but never had much success, if anyone does please drop me an email at
Darkwood is a great game with good music, colourful graphics, good humour and it is fun to play and easy to get into. You can see plenty of the game before you have to start solving puzzles properly to progress further. Definitely one of the stars of this compilation.
Demon's Lair
This is an isometric 3D graphical adventure, and unfortunately it isn't up to much. I didn't reckon much to it back in 1993, and still don't, although to be fair I've seen worse games than this.
It was originally released as a full price stand alone release. It was, in my view, overpriced and was not worth £25.00, however being on this compilation is probably the best place for it.
The game involves you playing the part of Bob, who must go out and explore the surrounding landscapes and must seek out the Demon who rules the land and then find a way of destroying him for good, before he can return home.
Upon loading the game will display the title page and then return to the desktop, the game has now installed on the icon bar. Clicking the mouse menu button on gives a number of configuration options and also the save game option which you will definitely need if you are going to try and complete it.
Demon's Lair is your usual type of adventure game, explore areas, collect and pick up items then use them to solve puzzles to get further into the game, there are many and varied locations to explore in the game.
One thing I don't particularly like about Demon's Lair is the control system, instead of the usual directional keys, we have a strange way of doing things. There are three rotate keys, and then a run forward key, so you have to rotate Bob to the direction you want to go and then hold down the forward key. Why anyone thought this was a better way of controlling the main character I don't know as it seems a bit of a bizarre way of doing things. In addition to the directional movement keys there are the pick up/drop/use objects, this is done in the normal way, P for pick up item for example.
If you can get used to the unusual control system then you can then get into the game and you can cover a lot of ground before you reach a dead end and have to begin solving puzzles to get any further.
You get two lives to complete the game, each life has an energy bar which goes down with contact with enemies, or falling a long distance, eating food will replenish your energy level.
The graphics of Demon's Lair are another thing which let it down. They are pretty basic and not very spectacular as you can see from the screenshots, the blurb on the box of the game claims that this a game for all the family - which it is, maybe, but it really doesn't excuse the quality of the graphics. Perhaps a graphics artist should have been brought in. The sound effects aren't really much better either, apart from a title page tune, there are the odd in game noises but that is about it.
Overall Demon's Lair is not the worst game ever, but is the weakest one on this compilation. What with the poor graphics, awkward control system and the fact that the game really isn't that exciting to play either, there wasn't really anything about it top inspire me to want to keep playing it.
Enter The Realm
This is another classic 4D game, and it's one that I particularly enjoyed playing a lot when I first bought it. Enter the Realm is a fast sideways scrolling arcade game, and according to the blurb in the manual was the first game for RISCS OS computers featuring true parallax scrolling. Whether this was actually correct I don't know, but it doesn't half look good!.
The object of Enter the Realm is to reach the end of each level, of which there are many, and then leave it through the exit. Along the way you will encounter many enemies both on the ground and in the air, all of which need to be destroyed. There are also a number of land obstacles including bombs, spikes and snowballs. Again these can be disposed of by shooting at them, or you can jump over them instead. You can also avoid enemies by crouching down and let them fly overhead. Some of the snowballs are quite tricky to destroy and it proves to be much easier to simply crouch down and let them fly by overhead.
All creatures and obstacles which are destroyed will leave behind bonuses, some just add to your score, but others can be very useful and add more power to your weapon. Make sure you collect any hearts that appear as these will top up your energy levels, however they don't increase the number of lives you have. I'm not actually sure if you can obtain extra lives. I seem to recall that reaching a certain score will generate extra lives. Whatever you do don't pick up the skull as this will do the opposite to the hearts and drain your energy levels.
You start the game with 2 spare lives, each life has an energy bar which when it runs out means you lose a life. Beware as this energy bar level can drop really quickly sometimes if you run into a large pack of badies. Luckily there are bombs you can pick up which will clear all the enemies on the screen in one go. You can also pick up temporary invulnerability shields and a freeze potion which will temporarily freeze anything on the screen which will give you a chance to dispose of everything a bit more easily.
The sound and graphics in Enter the Realm clearly put it in on another level compared to many other RISC OS games. A lot of time and effort has been taken to make this game look excellent and the graphics really make this game stand out as you can see from the screenshots below :
Both the foreground and backgrounds look excellent and a real attention to detail is evident. There many different landscapes, and each level has a whole new feel to it, through snowy landscapes, woodlands, caves and built up areas. At certain points along the levels you can enter buildings, or doorways and entrances, these lead to other smaller sublevels and also provide clues and help in completing your quest.
Another great feature is the weather effects, with include snowstorms, thunder and lightning and rain. All of these add to the games visual appeal. As for the sound effects, well there is some music in the title sequences and a sort of tune which plays when describing the story behind the level you are about to start. This tune starts quietly and gets louder and louder and sounds good too. The in game sound include sampled speech which tells you to "Get Ready" and then announces "Game Over" when the you die, there are weather noises and other effects which do their job well.
Despite all the positives about this game, there is one criticism and that is the difficultly level. It's not the easiest of games to play, and whilst it is not impossible to get through the first couple of levels in a short space of time, it does seem really easy to get killed and lose energy really quickly, in some games I seemed to be losing lives without even realising it!
So a bit of practice and skill is needed to master the art of staying alive. You should be able to complete the earlier levels without losing lives as you will need them on the later levels.
Enter the Realm is an entertaining and addictive arcade game which should not be missed, even if it is just to see the quality graphics. It's definitely recommended to anyone who enjoys and decent arcade game, just a shame it's a bit too easy to die! .
Haunted House
This was the second desktop graphic adventure from 4th Dimension, following on from The Wimp Game (see below). The objective of the game is to collect up all the antiques and valuables that are in an empty (and supposedly haunted) house and put them in the back of your van, sounds easy but there are many obstacles and puzzles that stand in your way of reaching 100% and completing the game.
Upon loading the game installs itself nicely on the icon bar. Clicking on the door knocker will start the game, and the game window will appear. When you start the game you are outside the gate to the garden of the house. From here you can only go back one screen to your van, so the only way forward is through the gate - but how? A quick look at the papers and rubbish on the pavement reveals the gate combination code, put it in the right order and the gate will now open and you can now begin your adventure.
Haunted House is a fully compliant RISC OS application, from the application icon on the icon bar you can select a number of options. You can save your game position by dragging the ghostly icon to a filer window - it is recommended to save often, as it is all too easy to do something wrong, lose an item, or break an antique. Any of these actions could ruin the game and you would have to start again, so save regularly.
There are about 25 rooms in total, each background is scanned and they are of good quality, they are not just static pictures as you can take and put objects into them. They often have animated parts such as the opening of doors and the removing wooden beams from the front door. All the in game characters and items are all high quality scans as well, so there are no poor quality graphics in this game. As for the sound effects they are very good as well, theres no music but plenty of in game noises, the gramophone, toilet flushing, birds singing and ghosts that tell you to "Go Away" to name but a few.
When you correctly solve a puzzle you will hear a fan-fare noise and the percentage under the game icon on the icon bar will go up. If you smash an antique or drop an item out of the game window, which means you've lost if for good, then you will hear a sample of what sounds like John Major's voice saying "Oh Dear" (which would have been topical at the time of the games release).
The game is very easy to play. You move the mouse pointer around and then use the mouse buttons to carry out a function, the Select button lets you pick up and carry movable objects to your rucksack or around the game window area, it also is used to perform in game actions such as door opening. By clicking on the menu mouse button you can get descriptions of the items on the floor which will appear in the information bar underneath the main game window.
On the left hand side of the game window are four blue arrows, these indicate the ways you can go. If they are grey then theres nothing that way, sometimes by unlocking doors, or opening gates this will turn a grey arrow to blue making a new room available to explore.
Your rucksack can only hold six items at a time, and can get quite full quickly carrying about all these antiques so when you have a load, you go back to your van open the door and stick them in the there, careful not to drop them as they will smash. Any broken antiques mean you cannot reach 100% completion. There are many other items and objects to help you get through the game, some are not so helpful either - is the red herring really useful ?, or is it just a red herring ?
The puzzles in Haunted House range start of easy with things like getting rid of wooden beams with woodworm and putting the door knocker on the front door. Later on they get more difficult, the cellar under the house is a nightmare to figure out and this took me ages, I had to get the helpsheet in the end, but even with that it is still quite tricky.
I played Haunted House a lot when It was first released, and kept at it until I finished it (with a little bit of help later on). I found it a really fun game to play, different from other games, the puzzle level does get a bit hard later on with the problem of getting lost in the cellar, especially in the dark! Apart from that most puzzles are not that difficult, overall an excellent game and well worth playing, and yes it is definitely a haunted house, plenty of ghosts and strange goings on but I leave you with one question is a Holed Out disc really a collectable and valuable antique?
(We have included a full copy of Haunted House with this issue of RISCWorld so you can play it yourself - ED).
Pandora's Box
Here is another classic RISC OS game, which shows that there were plenty of high quality home grown games released, not just 16 bit conversions. Pandora's Box is a 3D arcade adventure, which takes place over 200 screens which means this is no 5 minute game, and it certainly isn't.
The game involves guiding a sorcerer by the name of Merlin around a mythical landscape. His task is to gather the four amulets which will form a seal to close Pandora's Box as some evil beings have removed them and let a number of evil beasts free. So it is down to you to rid this land of all evil goings on.
The control of Merlin is easy enough, you use the directional keys (which can be redefined) and there are keys to pick up and drop items, of which you can hold up to eight at a time. It is these items which will help you on your quest to find the four amulets. Some items are easy to find, they are just there on the ground, but others may only be obtained by solving other puzzles or by trading with other characters to obtain them.
There are many items which can be picked up in the game and they include weaponry such as daggers, keys to open locks, and special buying items. These are items which you collect and then can sell to traders to obtain something useful that you need. Being a sorcerer can also collect items and mix them into spells, but his can be only done at special cauldrons.
Merlin only has one life, which is represented by a large energy bar, when this disappears then you will die and the game will be over. Energy is lost by touching creatures and also objects and parts of landscapes can zap your energy, which can be replenished along the way.
Playing the game is straight forward, you can wander around from screen to screen wherever you fancy going until you reach a blockade or hazard or something else blocking your way. This will more than likely involve a certain item to be found to remove the obstruction and allow you to continue on your quest. The game does indeed involve a lot of wandering around to pick up items, then doubling back on yourself to go and use the new item. Thankfully there is a save game option available so you can save your current position and go back to where you got to last time. This is a very welcome feature and one which is worth using regularly as there is nothing more frustrating that having to go back and do the same thing again after you've just done it, but died in the attempt.
The visuals of Pandora's Box are superb, this is another game where a lot of time and effort has been made to create a game which looks excellent. These graphics are well over 10 years old and still look good now, both landscapes and characters are all well drawn and building interiors are all well detailed, with flickering torches, coupled with the rain effects outside there is real attention to detail here.
There is plenty of variety in the different types of screens throughout the landscape. There are many buildings which you can go inside and explore which include a tavern, church and houses. There are markets to buy things in, woodland areas, rivers in which you will board a boat, all these keep the game varied and interesting.
It is only really the sound that can be criticised , apart from the playing of a tune when the title page is displayed, there is very little audio in the entire game, there are some in-game sound effects but not a great deal. This doesn't spoil the game, just could have been better really.
I always liked Pandora's Box ,and managed to get quite a way into it before I had to give in and use the solution in one of the magazines to help me on the way. Otherwise I would have never have finished it.
Overall this is another superb arcade adventure and as with most of the games on this collection it is well worth playing and highly recommended. If you liked playing Pandora's Box then you might want to check out the follow up game, Carnage Inc, which is the same style, but this time set in the future. It should be still available somewhere, but will hopefully be appearing on a future 4D compilation.
The Time Machine
The Time Machine is a sort of sequel to Haunted House. It is another desktop graphic adventure and it uses the same game interface as before, and behaves in exactly the same way, but it is a totally new adventure.
As with Haunted House the game installs on the icon bar, this time as a small blue portaloo, which is blatantly supposed to be the Tardis, but obviously due to copyright, it's a portaloo. Clicking on the game icon brings up the game window.
This time instead of collecting antiques from a spooky old house, you embark on adventure through time and space in a blue box - and no this isn't a Doctor Who game although it clearly is inspired by it. You start the game out on the road in the countryside which according to the game scenario is just down the road from the auction rooms where you took all those antiques (I wonder how much the Holed Out disc went for?). You then get the urge to visit the toilet! and as luck would have it you just happen to find a portaloo on the roadside - but of course it's not any old normal portaloo !
The first task in this game is to get into the portaloo itself, which if you click on it will result in a voice saying "What Is The Password" this is not actually a question, it is telling you the answer - 'What' is indeed the password! After that enter the numerical equivalent of the roman numeral on the door and a "Well Done" voice will sound, the door is now open and you can go in. Now thee adventure begins. It is worth mentioning that there are a few useful items which you need to collect from the surrounding area of the portaloo before you disappear down various timelines.
The game works in exactly the same way as with Haunted House, it is fully RISC OS compliant, the save game option works the same way, as does your rucksack and the method of clicking on the blue arrows to move around the screens. The backgrounds are scanned pictures again but don't have quite the same impact that the Haunted House backgrounds do. The areas outside the portaloo are proper digitised pictures of photographs instead of drawn backgrounds.
The sound effects consist of digitised voices, music samples and other effects including the Tardis noise, when you solve a puzzle you will hear a "Well Done" voice and the percentage completion meter will rise. I seem to remember there being an entertaining sampled music puzzle very near the end of the game I think the time period was during the 1960s.
On your travels you will visit a number of planets such as Earth and Mars. You must perform tasks here which will affect the game later on, so if you get something wrong in the past then the future won't happen as it should do and it will mess the whole game up !
I bought the Time Machine on the back of being a big fan of Haunted House and up to a point it was a good follow on. The only problem really is that I found a lot of the puzzles were far more difficult to solve than the Haunted House ones. There is another cellar type puzzle again out in a desert, and it took me much longer to get anywhere in the game. It wasn't until I got a solution in Archimedes World that I actually got much further into the game and to be honest probably never would have finished it without help. Overall a good game and worth playing, particularly if you liked Haunted House or enjoy a challenging puzzle solving exercise. However don't be surprised if you get stuck, but if you do you're in luck as a typed up solution is included on the disc.
The Wimp Game
This was one of the early RISC OS games and was the first commercial game (I think) that operated just in the desktop. This game installs itself onto the icon bar, although the menu doesn't offer much in the way of options, there is no save option or anything, just click on the icon to start. The introduction screen will appear accompanied by a reasonable quality Maestro tune (reasonable is about as good as it gets with Maestro - I've never been a fan of it I'm afraid!) anyway click on 'Play' and away we go.
You will now be in a room in the dark, the first task is to switch the lights on (which is to the left of the door if you can't see it) now you have to open the door to get through to the next room. A number of tasks need to be completed in order to do this, without giving too much away the vase of flowers, the phone pad and the box next to flowers have something to do with it.
You can easily lose items, for example, if you try and unlock a door but have the key on the wrong part of the screen it will disappear and you will lose it and have to start again. You can also kill yourself by touching things that would normally harm you in a real household - try clicking on the fan in the first room when it is moving !!! .
The game takes place in what seems to be a sort of house and your objective is to move through each room solving the puzzles within to gain access to the next room. The overall objective of the game is a different but interesting idea, your aim is to become the owner of the best Acorn computer available and at the time that this game was written it was an R200 workstation!
You start off as an Acorn Atom owner and along the way to your R200 workstation, you become the owner of an Electron, BBC Micro, BBC Master and A3000. There are no Risc PC's here, so it gives you an idea of how old the game is! You can click the mouse menu button over the main game screen at anytime during the game and highlight the 'Status' option to show you which Acorn machine you currently own.
Control of the game is by the mouse, which involves pointing and clicking on items and artifacts in the room. Some of these are needed to complete the room, some of them aren't aren't needed at all and are simply red herrings.
The graphics of each room are well drawn, bright and colourful. The objects in the rooms look like what they are supposed to and it all works well. Sound is quite minimal in the game, apart from the introductory music theres not much noise, but various objects in the rooms make noises such as the fan, a musical keyboard and a kettle boiling.
I found the game a bit difficult initially but eventually figured out the first room after a few hints. The second room was quite easy and logical to complete, I did complete a few more rooms, but never have completed it all and only got as far as being a BBC Micro owner.
It's not a bad game and is certainly worth playing. Even with some hints you still have to make sure you position items in the correct place so even if you know exactly what to do it still might not happen. It's definitely a game for someone who likes puzzles and a challenge!
White Magic 1 + 2
This was one of the second games (I think) that 4th Dimension released. This game came first on the BBC and then later was ported to the RISC OS range of computers. White Magic is clearly a game inspired by the arcade classic Gauntlet which never made an appearance on any of the Acorn machines. This game is nowhere near as good although it does try hard to be like Gauntlet.
White Magic is a maze type game which is viewed from above. The objective of the game is to complete all of the 32 levels. The ultimate aim is to do this without using the jump level option. In order to complete a level you must collect all of the treasure and then find the key to the exit before the time runs out.
On your way to the exit you have to collect keys to open other doors. There are also many other items to discover such as potions, time pills, shields, extra ammo and swords to name but a few. Some of these items are useful and will help you in your quest others may not be so useful.
There are also plenty of traps and enemies out there waiting to harm the unsuspecting adventurer! Enemies include ghosts, spectres, guards and trolls, but they are easy enough to dispose of with your weapon. However beware of mass gangs of enemies as they will zap your energy very quickly indeed, so you will need to use some magic to get rid of them all in one go!
There are four characters in the game. They are Kaldor the Leprechaun, Moriana the Warrior, Cheysul the Titan and Mandrake the Enchanter, each of these characters have their own strengths and weaknesses plus special powers. You can switch between characters during the game so that you can use that particular characters special strengths to solve a particular puzzle, such as climbing over a log or cutting down vines. If any of the characters energy level reaches zero then the game is over, so you will need to spread the energy top-ups about.
The graphics of White Magic are reasonably good they still look OK now and don't look too dated, all the characters and objects are well defined and you can tell what is supposed to be what. As for the sounds as with many of the early RISC OS games there isn't much to hear, just various in game noises.
The game is quite easy to get into. I managed to get through quite a few levels without to much hassle as long as you can avoid getting killed you stand a good chance of succeeding!
Also included here is White Magic 2 which is basically more of the same. The gameplay, sounds and graphics stay as they were, but the levels are all new, so if you liked White Magic then you'll certainly like these extra new levels.
Overall this is a reasonable version of Gauntlet for RISC OS machines, and it was good that someone took the time to write a look-a-like version. It's alright but not really that exciting to be honest and as much as I like Gauntlet this never really appealed that much, might just be me, but definitely one to try and see if you like it.
Compatibility
All of the games on this disc should work without any problems on a real RiscPC with Select, and a VirtualRiscPC with Select as well, as I have tried them on both systems and they seem to run fine.
As expected not many of these games run on the Iyonix, although Aemulor Pro brings some of them to life, I can confirm that The Wimp Game, White Magic and Enter The Realm all worked on the Iyonix with Aemulor Pro, unfortunately none of the others would work, despite the Aemulor compatibility website saying Demon's Lair worked I couldn't get it running.
I thought that Haunted House & Time Machine might work as they are desktop games and don't need any outside desktop modes, but it wasn't to be unless anyone knows different, if you do then please let me know.
Overall
This compilation comes highly recommended. Over half the titles are classic RISC OS games, and are still worth playing now, Pandora's Box, Enter The Realm, Cataclysm, Darkwood are all excellent games, as are the desktop graphic adventures Wimp Game, Haunted House and Time Machine. White Magic is OK but nothing spectacular, and Demon's Lair is the weakest game in this compilation.
This is a quality collection of games. If you have missed these the first time round then this compilation is a bargain considering how much they all cost individually. Even if you used to own these games on their original release this compilation is worth getting as they are all new updated versions which will now work without problems on later hardware including RISC OS 4, StrongARM, Select and Adjust. Even the Iyonix can now run some of them under Aemulor Pro. Also the copy protection has been removed and the games are now fully hard disc compliant.
Please Note
There were a few problems with early versions of this CD particularly with Pandora's Box, Enter The Realm and Darkwood. There are patches available from the APDL website to fix these problem, so if any of the games do not work on your machine, then check
It's been a long while sine we last ran a RISCWorld competition so we thought it really was time that we ran another one!
So to celebrate the new year, we've got one copy of Retro Survival, Retro Player and Retro Fusion to be won. Simply email
The joke that makes the editor laugh wins the set of three magazines.
Rules
The editors decision is final and no further correspondence will be entered into. Final closing date for entries is the 20th of February 2006. Employees of APDL are excluded from entry. Copies of the magazines will be mailed directly by Alligata Media to the lucky winner.
Don't forget to include a snail mail postal address with your entry, and good luck!
All rights reserved. This program is licensed for use on a single computer by a single user.
This version is supplied for the use of RISCWorld subscribers only.
You can read a full review of this game, and the others that come on the 4th Dimension Adventure Games CD, elsewhere in this issue. As a special treat we decided to include one of the games with this issue. After some heated debate amongst the RISCWorld contributors we finally decided that our favourite game was Haunted House, so here it is!
We have also supplied an HTML version of the manual in this issue, although to be honest the game is pretty much self explanatory, although it's far from easy. The most important thing to do is examine everything, to do this simply move the mouse pointer over the item you are interested in then press MENU.
The first puzzle you must solve is how to open the gate. If you examine the gate carefully you will find that it has a combination lock. If you carefully look around outside the front of the house you will be able to find the combination. I won't say too much more but don't forget you can pick up objects and move them around, perhaps part of the combination can be found under one of the items sitting outside? If so then perhaps there are several items all on top of one another. If you have a sweet tooth you shouldn't have any trouble finding the whole combination. Once you have the combination you can open the gate and enter the grounds of the house, from then on you are on your own.
If you get stuck outside the boarded up front door then I strongly suggest reading Matthew Thompson's review elsewhere in this issue. I do have one final tip, try not to drop anything unless you are sure where it's going! If you aren't careful you might lose an item and have to start again.
The complete DiscWorld line up
As per usual we have our collections of the latest RISC OS games and applications, as well as support files for this issues articles. So the full DiscWorld line up looks something like this:
Games
All the games from this issues games world column.
Haunted
The full version of Haunted House, from the 4th Dimension Adventure Games CD.
PD
All the latest PD, shareware and freeware releases from the PD column.
RetroPics
Large JPEG versions of the illustrations in Dave Bradforth's Retro Fever article.
ToolBox
This contains two sets of Toolbox Modules. The Castle archive contains the latest 26/32 bit neutral system components, required if you want to run a lot of new software releases on 26bit machines (ie. anything that isn't an Iyonix). The RISCOS Ltd archive contains later and improved versions of a number of modules and is suitable for all versions of RISC OS from 3.1 onwards.
VA
Update file for VirtualRPC-Adjust, needs to be run from Windows.
Well it's the start of 2006 and it's traditional for magazine editors to write a little "here's what I think we can expect in the next 12 months" article. The problem is that it's almost impossible to predict the weather more than 3 days ahead, so how on earth is anyone suppose to make sensible predictions about the next 12 months. Still It doesn't seem to stop anyone trying, so here goes...
Aaron's predictions for the next 12 months.
The A9home will get a full release. My money is on a release at Wakefield as it's Advantage 6's home ground
A single unified version of RISC OS for all machines, including the Iyonix, to be released by RISCOS Ltd
Select4 finally gets a release
A MacOS version of VirtualAcorn gets released
Impression X appears in some form or another
Vantage gets taken over by another developer
So do you agree with me? Or not? Either way why not drop us a line and tell us what you think might be coming up in the next twelve months. After all I am quite sure that I have missed out something obvious.
On a slightly different note here is a classic example of one hand not knowing what the other is doing. Severn Trent Water are about to dig up our road in the next two weeks to replace the water main. I went out to the Post Office this morning. When I came back a group of council workmen were busy relaying part of the road. I stopped and asked if they knew the road was getting dug up again in the next two weeks. "Yeah, we know", came the reply. Why the council can't repair the road after it's all been dug up I don't know.
And for anyone who thinks this is a one off around ten years ago the road we used to live on in Bracknell was resurfaced. Within two weeks NTL dug it all up again to fit a cable TV network...
Editors Rant of the month
The following is about the vehicular faith, not specifically about computing.
Last issue I finished off with a comment about what's happened to the Beetle over the last couple of months. I didn't actually explain what had happened, but if you are ready I will now spill the beans, take a deep breath...
I was on the drive one afternoon when I herd a bang and a crack, I turned round and saw that the Beetle's windscreen was smashed. Leaping to a logical conclusion I rushed outside and found a couple of kids walking up the road. I ran over and asked the first one if they had thrown a stone. "No, he did it" said the little girl pointing to a worried looking eight year old. I then asked him if he threw a stone and he admitted it. I then "invited" him to come and see what damage his stone had done. I also explained that I was not best pleased and wanted a word with his Dad. To cut a long story short Dad offered to pay for the windscreen and we left it for the day.
Over night it rained. Then it rained some more. Then to add variety it rained.
In the morning the inside of the Beetle was soaked with several inches of water in the footwells. I was not pleased and got a bucket. I arranged for the insurance company to send out a fitter to replace the screen. Problem number one then reared its ugly head. The Beetle is a 1303 model with a curved screen, all other Beetles have a flat screen. The approved fitters couldn't get a screen for several days. To prevent any more water from getting in the car I went a bought a "waterproof" car cover. That night it rained. Next morning the car was full of water again. Presumably the use of the word "waterproof" referred to the manufacturer rather than any attempt by the product itself to stop water getting in the car. Luckily the next night it didn't rain.
Next day the windscreen fitter appeared (sounds like a Mr Benn moment doesn't it? - HJ) with the correct screen. That was the good news over with, the bad news was that the new screen was scratched. Yes he could polish the scratch out, but would have to come back. I asked him to fit the screen, which he did. Luckily the Beetle had newish screen rubbers, from when it was restored, so the job wasn't too difficult. He promised to come back with a polishing machine and get rid of the scratch. Much to my surprise he did, OK it was after I had made several phone calls to the company and finally threatened to complain about them to my insurer, but at least he came back.
In the meantime with a new screen in place the Beetle would now be watertight again wouldn't it? No, it wouldn't. The next time it rained there was more water in the footwells. How could this be? After a lot of head scratching I wondered if the screen was correctly fitted. I asked the screen fitter, when he finally arrived with his polishing machine, if he had any idea. He had a poke around and said that in his opinion the door seals were letting water in. Now luckily I had a new pair of Beetle door seals left over from another car a few years ago, all I had to do was spend 3 hours finding them. In the end they surfaced under boxes of VW parts in the front footwell of the camper. It was only a couple of minutes work to remove the old door seals. Mind you then it was an afternoons work to clean up the and derust the lip on the bottom of the doors.
With new door seals fitted I bailed out the car again and waited for rain. I didn't have long to wait and yes the footwells were now dry! Now I needed to sort out the floor that had started to go rusty. Luckily I had removed the carpets some time ago when I welded the front of the car, so all I needed to do was remove the seats. These seats are not original, they are actually from a Scirroco and had been "adapted" to fit. Late model Beetles have a three point fixing for the seats, two bolts at the back and a pin at the front to adjust the seat on the runners. On removing the driver's seat I found that it had no pin at the front. Even worse the seat had been cut with an angle grinder to "adjust" the base to fit the wider runners on he Beetle. This would be fine, if the seat had been welded back together again afterwards. It hadn't. As it was it was lethal. In any kind of accident it would have broken free and sent the driver (me) speeding into the dashboard.
I've never understood why some people spend so long restoring a car, only to cut corners on essential safety items. Anyway, having discovered the problem with the seat there was no way I was going to drive the car until it was fixed. So after a couple of weeks of pondering I took the seat down to our local engineering company to see if they could weld it. They could. They did. Then the seat didn't fit any more because they had welded it slightly out of alignment. I tried carefully bending it to fit, the new weld broke. So much for professionals. I decided to bite the bullet and weld it myself.
Rather than just "bodge" the seat I decided to cut the other end of the support brackets that had been cut before and to re-weld them in a different place, thus restoring the full strength to the seat whilst still allowing it to fit properly. Much to my surprise this actually proved very easy and it only took half an hour or so to properly weld up and adapt the drivers seat so that it was safe. The newly prepared seat was trial fitted and went in first time. Next job was to wire brush and Hammerite the driver's side of the floor. This took some time as there was a lot of surface rust to remove and I wanted the floor to be 100% dry before being painted. Still in the end, and almost a month after the screen got broken the driver's side floor was rust free and the seat was fitted correctly. Now it was time to do the passenger side....
Printing RISC World
The new look of RISC World means that you will no longer get the yellow background when printing articles from RISCWorld. However you will still get the blue border on the left unless you turn off the printing of background images. The example below shows the print dialogue box from Fresco.
As you can see the option "No Background" is ticked. If you want to print out any of the RISCWorld pages and don't want to waste ink on a blue border then make sure you have clicked a similar option in your browser.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME6/ISSUE5/FSTEPS/INDEX.HTM Volume 6, Issue 5, First Steps with RISC OS 4
Contains material taken from !Help by David Eccles. We are grateful to David Eccles for his help.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature, without the prior written permission of Alligata Media.
All information given in this guide was been obtained, and is offered, in good faith. However, Alligata Media cannot accept any liability, consequential or otherwise, for any loss or damage arising from the use of any information in this guide.
All trademarks are acknowledged. We have referred to a variety of products in this guide. The mention of these products does not necessarily imply endorsement by the author or publisher.
This guide was produced using Ovation Pro on a StrongARM Risc PC running RISC OS 4.02; with a little help from Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS on a G4 iMac.
Published by Alligata Media.
Project Editor
David Bradforth
Tel:07946 405555
Email:david.bradforth@alligatagroup.co.uk
Distributed by:
APDL
39 Knighton Park Road,
Sydenham
London SE26 5RN
Email: info@apdl.co.uk
Web: www.apdl.co.uk
10. The Pinboard
Pinboard problems
11. The Display Manager
12. The Apps icon
Alligata Media
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME6/ISSUE5/GAMES/INDEX.HTM Volume 6, Issue 5, Games World
Games World
Paul Brett with the latest gaming news.
Welcome to another GamesWorld column. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all RISCWorld readers a Happy New Year. If, like me, you are a keen RISC OS games player then I have no doubt you will be pleased by the latest games to make an appearance after the Christmas and New Year holiday. It seems that a number of developers have taken the time away from work to polish off some new releases and to resurrect some older ones.
DinoSaw
One of my favourite RISC OS websites, Acorn Arcade, have been busy releasing freeware versions of some classic older RISC OS games. Recently they manage to obtain the rights to the Tom Cooper hit DinoSaw.
DinoSaw is a prehistoric platformer, you can either jump over nasty things or hack them to death with your chainsaw. You can tell when you hurting something because it bleeds rather a lot. There are a few bonus objects to be found around the game.
Food - simply boosts your score
Hearts - Give BOTH players an extra life. On two player mode when a player's game is over, and the other player collects a heart he is allowed to rejoin the game
There are fifteen levels to this full version. You can progress to the next level by walking off the right hand side of the current level. This version of DinoSaw should work fine on everything from an ARM 2 to a Kinetic RiscPC running RISC OS Select. It should also run on an Iyonix if you have Aemulor Pro (There have been some reports of crashing after the title screen, *audio off seems to fix this).
Controls
Space - Start gam
Escape - Quit progra
Print - toggle 1/2 Player
Z - Player1 lef
X - Player 1 righ
C - Player 1 jum
Keypad 1 - Player 2 lef
Keypad 2 - Player 2 righ
Keypad 3 - Player 2 jum
FazeMaze - Neil White
GamesWorld favourite Neil White has also been busy beavering away and has released a beta version of FazeMaze. All you need to do, in this deceptively simple desktop game, is collect all the yellow blobs in the maze and then make your way to the exit. The controls are:
Z - lef
X - righ
O - u
K - dow
Q - qui
In order to get the game to work the current directory needs to be set to inside the game. (I did this but still couldn't make it work -ED). Neil has also produced a two player version which I have also included.
RuneSeeker - Paul Vigay
Paul Vigay has dusted off an old game of his and made it Iyonix compatible as well as releasing it as freeware. RuneSeeker has 12 levels and the aim is to collect all the items on each level and then reach the exit. You will need to collect all the coins as well as find keys to open locked doors. There are a number of items you can pick up to help your search. These include a magic hat that speeds you up and a metal detector to help you locate hidden coins.
You will also have to contend with the badies on each level. Sometimes they can be distracted with a handily placed bone, or perhaps you might decide to try and blow them up with a conveniently placed bomb. You also have to cope with special areas of the maze that only allow you to go one way and then flip over after you have moved through them.
Although the graphics could do with an overhaul RuneSeeker is very enjoyable to play and can certainly keep you busy for several hours. You can get a lot of instructions from the title page. RuneSeeker requires at least version 4.15 of the ABCLib module and I have included this in the games directory.
So that's all from me for this issue, I hope to back again with another feast of gaming delights in the March issue.
Paul Brett
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME6/ISSUE5/HAUNTED/INDEX.HTM Volume 6, Issue 5, Haunted House
All rights reserved. This program is licensed for use on a single computer by a single user.
This version is supplied for the use of RISC World subscribers only.
Haunted House is a desktop graphic adventure game with a twist of the supernatural.
Mouse buttons:
When over a Haunted House window.
SELECT: Lets you pick up and carry a movable object. If it is a fixed object (doors etc) it will perform an action on that object. ie: opening or closing a door.
MENU: Provides a description of the object pointed at if one is available.
ADJUST: Lets you use an object. This button can sometimes be used in conjunction with SELECT.
Windows:
The arrow buttons to the left of the main picture control the direction of your movement throughout the game.
There is also a magnifying glass to assist you in examining the pictures. Use SELECT OR ADJUST to chose a lens shape and to alter the magnification. MENU will remove the lens.
Hints:
Deliberative Lateral Thinking is required to solve the majority of the puzzles in this game, a little trial and error won't go amiss either!
Take into account the direction that you are looking before moving. You may not always be looking in the same direction as when you entered a room.
Some small actions may have wide ranging and not necessarily logical effects. Again try everything before rejecting it.
Take care when dropping objects! Make sure that they will fit where they are to land, otherwise you may lose them. You may also lose an object if it lands on top of something it is not supposed to.
Many of the problems are multiple action problems. ie. To make a cup of tea you need to put the tea in the pot, then add the water, before finally pouring the tea into the cup, which in its own time may have already had the milk poured into it! By the way there is no tea in this house.
When placing an object into or onto another it is the position of the object that is important not that of the mouse pointer.
The vast majority of objects serve some purpose though there are a few scarlet fish to be found.
Some problems will require you to take into consideration the needs and desires of characters that appear (or don't appear!) in the game.
Many parts of the game run in real time so it may be of benefit to 'pause' the game by closing the main window by clicking on the 'CLOSE' icon to the left of the title bar.
Good luck!
RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME6/ISSUE5/HUGHJ/INDEX.HTM Volume 6, Issue 5, The Hugh Jampton Experience
The Hugh Jampton Experience
It's the man who likes to say "I'll have the article ready tomorrow..."...Hugh Jampton
Welcome to the first Hugh Jampton column of 2006 (hopefully the last one - ED). We have lots of exciting changes planned for the year ahead. But since I haven't come up with any of them yet let's just collapse into the usual rigmarole of the caption competition...
The caption competition
Last year I published the following piccy and asked for you to send in your suggested captions. As usual most of you couldn't be bothered, but luckily for me a couple of our most spritely readers were able to finally reach a keyboard, no doubt aided by a well placed dose of Sanatogen, and come up with something.
So lets see what was sent in...
"Tony Hawk's son Tommy says" 'I think I prefer bikes to skateboards'
John Crane
"Tony Hawk's son Tommy says" 'Why does it have to be so competitive ? Can't we just go to the skate park like everyone else?
John Crane
"Eddie the Eagle's son hoping to do for Skateboarding what his Dad did for Ski Jumping!"
John Crane
Unfortunately for John he has disqualified himself from this issue's competition as he never sent us the signed cheque we asked for last issue. Still he will be eligable to play again for this issue's competition. So what other caption(s) did we get?
"A young Evil Knevil starts out as a stunt man."
Kev Wells
"Government launches compulsory skateboarding in place of ASBOs"
Kevin Simpson
"At least I'll get a soft landing."
Steve Morton
But our winner has to be....
"He realised he would be hard pushed to make the ferry"
Ian J. Patterson
So we've been rummaging through the RISCWorld bin and found some wonderful prizes for you, including a 2 litre Pepsi max bottle with nearly a whole swig left in it and a Domino's Pizza box with some cheese stuck to the lid. Oh, and three teabags. We'll arrange to send these out in due course, unless the bin men come for them first.
Thank god that's over, now lets move on to this issue's photo...
Send your entries to hughj@riscworld.co.uk, one lucky reader will probably win nothing, but what the hell, why not enter anyway? And now a funny story...
I heard an amusing little anecdote the other day. I should point out that I have been asked (by me - ED) to stress that I don't know if this story is true or not, but it made me laugh. Some time ago at a RISC OS user group meeting someone bought along an Omega, and for a laugh plugged in a USB powered light. The light worked, which made it the first and as far as I can tell, the only USB device that will work on the Omega. The RISC OS news portal
Finally, let's get this over with, then we can all go home.
Hugh's picture gallery
R-Comp in half price special shock...
New South African branch of Ikea comes clean about their products...
Meanwhile there are fears that Bird flu has spread to the United States...
Here is the new EEC approved speedometer design...
Black and Decker have now released a new range of tools for women...
Since the last issue of RISCWorld there has been some movement in the continuing saga of getting RISC OS Select on the Iyonix. The recent online pledge set up at www.pledgebank.com for getting 100 people to sign up to to Select reached it's target and the current total is 112, but I would imagine it probably won't go much higher than this. I'm still sure that there are other interested people out there who didn't sign up to it for whatever reason. I should point out that this pledge is totally independent of RISCOS Ltd, but it certainly indicates that there is a demand for this product.
The beta version of Select for the Iyonix has been doing the rounds at the various recent shows and according to recent reports there may be something released as early as the second quarter of 2006, we shall see.
As previously mentioned if you are interested in seeing RISC OS Select appear on the Iyonix, and haven't told RISC OS Ltd, then make your interest known by e-mailing
Software updates
There have been a few software updates since the last issue, first up we have another update to Vice - the collection of Commodore emulators, is now at V1.18 and this new version can be found at
Starfighter 3000 has also had another update, now up to V3.07 this new version just fixes a few bugs, but good to see continued development of this great game. To download the new version go to
Aemulor
The update to Aemulor and Aemulor Pro was released as promised, the current version of Aemulor is now V2.32. It's a free upgrade to all existing users, and includes a number of emulation and GUI enhancements, some speed improvements and bug fixes. For further information check
EasiWriter
The ongoing development of EasiWriter continues with the release of V8.50 just before Christmas. This is a payable upgrade and the cost is variable depending on which version you are upgrading from, for me an upgrade from V.8.43 costs £30.00 - there are a number of significant improvements in V8.50 - see
This is not a definite list of new versions of software this month, just new versions of software that I have and use. So if you have a new version of some Iyonix compatible software and want the Iyonix community to know about it, then drop me an email at
Geminus
The Geminus graphics acceleration driver, which was recently beta released, has now been officially released, to join the existing Geminus enhancements, there are five planned feature of which three have been released so far :
Multi Monitor Support - This allows several graphics cards to be installed, and then your desktop can be spilt across several screens.
Screen rotation - This allows the desktop to be rotated in any direction.
Graphics acceleration - This allows hardware acceleration and caching to speed up desktop graphical operations.
For more information and prices for Geminus, see
Making Z80em fully 32bit compatible
!Z80em is a ZX Spectrum emulator for RISC OS, and was recently updated and made to run on the Iyonix without the need for Aemulor. However there is still one problem with it and this is to do with the sound module 'AYSound'. Unfortunately this module is not 32 bit compatible and therefore has caused a few problems, the new Cronosoft games for example run in silence, despite having sounds and music, and also there are a number of 128K games which fail to load.
In short this module needs to be made 32bit compatible, the problem is that the author of it Darren Salt does not have an Iyonix and therefore is unable to make it 32bit compatible. However he has kindly supplied me with the source code for this module and is happy to let anyone make it 32 bit compatible on the condition that any modifications are sent to him and the author of !Z80em Michael Borcherds.
The request is can anybody out there do this? Is it even possible to do? The module is only about 8K in size so there shouldn't be masses of code to go through, although I don't know whether that makes it any easier or not to convert to 32bit though.
If anyone is able to do this it would be excellent and make !Z80em fully 32bit compatible which will be beneficial to both Iyonix users and A9 users as well, please contact me at
RISC OS 5 ROM update 10
The RISC OS 5 ROM is currently in release 10. This is a beta release and is to fix problems with the 'Pyjamas' problem that have been reported. It also incorporates a few other fixes. I'm not sure what 'Pyjamas' actually means but I'm guessing it is the white lines I see when a do a hard reset with CTRL/Break, whilst they don't affect the running of the computer they look a bit odd - release 10 of the ROM is on the Iyonix website
Castle address change
Iyonix Headquarters have recently moved premises and they can now be found at.
3 Signet Court
Cambridge
CB5 8LA.
There are also new phone numbers for sales and support, the email address remains the same as sales@iyonix.com - the full list of contact details are on www.iyonix.com in the contact us section.
A few months ago a patch for Twinworld was released which makes it run natively on an Iyonix. You need to have version V1.60 of Twinworld which is available to download from
Finally if anyone missed it, two commercial games from Psycore - Big Bang and Revolver were recently released as freeware and are available from Acorn Arcade
And so we reach the end of another Iyonix issues column, if you have any Iyonix related comments or software announcements or anything useful to any other Iyonix users, then the Iyonix column can be contacted at
Making a surprise recovery and getting out of bed against doctor's orders, it's the RISCWorld letters page...
Welcome to a packed letters page, and no I don't mean the page has been packed up ready to be disposed of. It seems that our eager readers have responded to the critical condition of the letters page and have put finger to keyboard to contact us. So lets see what's in our first letter...
Hi Aaron
I've just discovered an oddity in the 'complete' RISC World disc for
volume 4, specifically concerning the article by David Holden in part
3 (on text areas in !Draw). I normally use NetSurf to look at HTML
pages under RISC OS, and I update the version every couple of weeks.
RISC World usually works well in this browser. However, the link to
the Holden article give an error 'Parsing the document failed'. That
also happens when I click on the appropriate index/htm file on the
disc, or when I drag it to the NetSurf icon.
On the other hand Oregano2 has no problem with the file. (Its
disadvantage is, of course, that it is much slower.)
So either there is an actual error in the HTML in that file - this
seems unlikely because you would have picked it up before the
compilation disc was produced - or Oregano2 and NetSurf differ about
what they consider to be 'proper' HTML.
This odd behaviour is not highly important, but might be of some
interest.
Philip Draper
I have passed the comment onto Dave Holden who assembles the end of volume compilations. The file is indeed faulty, so it's not Netsurf that's making a mistake. Having said that I would expect a modern browser to have a stab at rendering the file anyway. The fault is that 3 lines have got deleted from the top of the HTML. If you need to read the file then load it into a text editor along with another RISCWorld article. Copy the first three lines of HTML from the working file to the non working textarea article. Now save the textarea article to your hard drive and it should now render in NetSurf.
We can only apologise for the mistake, it does happen sometimes. It will be corrected when the compilations are next duplicated.
Hi Aaron
It was sad to see in the Editor's Corner that maybe only as many as 60
Iyonixs have been sold, but perhaps it's not surprising. They're frankly
tad pricey. I've had my eye on one ever since they came out, but give
that just about any version of iMac is heaps cheaper over here, eve
with VAT stripped out of the Iyonix price, which I can do being outsid
the EU, it's just not on.
Admittedly, I've not bought an iMac either, or even a Mac Mini. Excep
that it can't handle Japanese other than via a wordprocessor on the P
Card (and nor could an Iyonix unless fitted with Linux, Unicod
support notwithstanding), the RPC does pretty much everything I want a
home, especially as it now sports RISC OS Adjust, courtesy of RISCO
Ltd's recent "get everyone on board offer" (recommended). RISC OS ha
the definite advantage in that it's less likely to get the bit between it
teeth than a Mac (nice as OS X otherwise is), and there's no ongoin
struggle to defend it against attack like we have to do with th
Windows boxes at work.
Needless to say, I'm watching the progress of the A9 with interest
Hopefully the final production version of that will be able to succee
where it seems the Iyonix couldn't. From what I've seen so far, I'
prepared to be tempted.
As for why an Iyonix can't handle Japanese, that's simple. Displayin
it is relatively easy (!Kanji does a good job under RISC OS). However
to write it requires an "input method engine" to avoid the need for
5,000 key keyboard, and that's not a trivial piece of software. I'm no
aware of the existence of a RISC OS IME for Japanese or any othe
ideographic language - although I would love to hear that I'm wrong.
Regards
Michael Poole
The number of Iyonixs was reported by a well known developer who licences software to Castle for bundling with the Iyonix. Since some Iyonix machines come without a software bundle there will obviously be more than the bare 600 sold, but I doubt it's that many more. It's certainly not the thousands that some Castle apologists have claimed in the past. However in my view the Iyonix couldn't be seen as especially pricey, given that they start at around £799 for the base version, which is cheap for a very low production run piece of equipment. As you have noted the A9 is going to be even cheaper, as well as much smaller and even quieter and looks like it will give the Iyonix a good run for it's money performance wise. But, you can't add memory to the A9 and you can't change the harddisc, like the Mac Mini it's a sealed box. So it's horses for courses, price vs expandability. Hopefully the lower price of the A9 will tempt some of the more price sensitive users who haven't purchased an Iyonix but time will tell.
Many users seem to have made the same decision as you have, to stick with a RiscPC, but to upgrade it. This plan is fine until the RiscPC fails, which they will do eventually. Some parts are getting harder to find, e.g. batteries, even CJE don't have them in stock! (APDL do - Dave Holden) and sooner or later the machines will become beyond further repair. My advice to anyone is to purchase another RiscPC for spares, just in case!
Anyway moving on to the Ideographic language problem, I know that
Finally it's time for the letters page chief consultant to do his rounds, Dr Vince Hudd...
Hi Aaron,
"help save the RISCWorld letters page from wasting away t
nothing by e-mailing us to the following addres
savetheletterspage@riscworld.co.uk."
I would, but I can't quite work out how to add human beings
as attachments to emails. What sort of encoding should be
used? 8-)
Vince Hudd
Thanks Vince. Since most humans have 2 legs how about binary?
Hi Aaron,
Well, I was thinking that since you were asking readers send yo
by email, it might have been youyouencoding. ;-)
Vince Hudd
Not a bad idea, of course since we were In Search Of letters, perhaps some form of ISO encoding might be in order.
So that's it for this letter(s) page. However lets not get complacent. Just because we have had letters this issue doesn't mean we will have any next issue unless you, the reader, write in to us. So please do contact us using the following e-mail address savetheletterspage@riscworld.co.uk.
New Canon Printers for older machines from Castle Technology
Castle announces today a that they have a small quantity of the Canon IP4000 high speed colour bubble jet printers available for sale. In addition to a modern USB connector, the IP4000 also has a parallel port making them ideal for older Acorn computers as well as IYONIX pcs.
These brand new IP4000 printers come with:
Parallel data cable.
USB data cable.
RISC OS printer driver.
Castle's 'pop-up !Printers' application
Detailed IP4000 features are available on line at www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Printers/Bubble_Jet/PIXMA_iP4000.
The Canon IP4000 is available at £149 including VAT. Orders can be placed online on line or by contacting Castle Technology Ltd on 0870 3834543 (Overseas tel: +44 1223 503464). Or by going to the website at
Archive Publications release more booklets
Another three Archive Compilation Booklets are now available directly from Archive Publications:
Book 8 - VirtualRiscPC in Use (Volume 2)
The whole series of articles from Archive about using VirtualRiscPC written by the prolific T.O.M.S. team are now available in two booklets, this being the second.
Book 9 Ovation Pro
15 articles plus seven years' worth of hints and tips about using Ovation Pro.
Book 10 The Engineer and Friends
21 articles by The Engineer (a.k.a. Ray Maidstone) about hardware matters, plus a range of hardware hints and tips.
Booklets cost £5 each from Archive Publications on 01603-722544. Or via the website at
RiscPC expansion price contraction
As a major developer of hardware upgrades for RISC OS computers, Stuart Tyrrell Developments are aware of the huge number of older machines which are still in everyday use.
Although RISC OS has come a long way since the launch of the RiscPC, with advances like RISC OS Adjust, Iyonix and the new A9home the unique design of the RPC is a classic, and enables them to be upgraded in ways never envisaged via expansion cards such as our Unipod.
Why not treat yourself and your long serving machine to a nice shiny new upgrade from STD, either to increase the performance of your RiscPC, or to add further functionality and usefulness? Especially when, with the STD Winter Sale, you can do just that for less!
We have selected a range of our most popular RiscPC upgrades to include in the sale, these are detailed below. More complete descriptions of all of our products may be found on our website at
Fully Enabled Unipod : Normally 139.00, sale price 125.00
Our popular Unipod offers 32-bit Networking, IDE and USB in a single expansion card.
NET100 : Normally 89.00, sale price 75.00
Provides 100BaseT networking via 16-bit NIC slot, slower than, but otherwise the same technology as the Unipod.
IDE Card: Normally 50.00, sale price 35.00
A compact expansion card giving 2 IDE ports (4 devices).
PS2MouseMini: Normally 20.00, sale offer - add a 3-button PS/2 mouse to your order for free.
Our massively-selling mouse interface enables the use of PC-style mice, trackballs etc.
Keyboard controlled switch: sale offer - add a PS2MouseMini or a 3-button PS/2 mouse to your order for free.
2 way: £89.00, 4 way: £129.00. Acclaimed robust complete keyboard/mouse/monitor switch modified to be safe for the RiscPC.
The Winter Sale also extends to many of our networking packs, where a NET100 may be replaced with a fully unlocked Unipod at no extra cost -
see
Starring BASIC and Dr Wimps Surgery
The RISCOS specific charity-books "Starting Basic" and "Dr Wimp's Surgery" have each sold nearly 300 copies and generated almost £3000-00 for charity... and the good news is that they are still in print and available. Each is A5 ring-bound and over 300 pages.
"Starting Basic" assumes no programming knowledge at all.
"Dr Wimp's Surgery" assumes a reasonable knowledge of Basic and, although primarily focussed on how to use the freeware Dr Wimp package, it is a good introduction and reference book for any Wimp-programming in Basic (indeed, a commercial Wimp-programming package recommended the book for its users).
Current price for each is £17-00 including P&P plus discs and all profit goes to charity (currently about £3-50 per book).
If you have a first edition of "Dr Wimp's Surgery" you may wish to know that it was completely revised and updated in 2003: it is based on a Dr Wimp version much closer to the current version. As a special offer, owners of the first edition can buy the new edition at £15-00 without the discs (the disc material is available for download on my web-site).
Sterling cheques to me at:
Ray Favre
26 West Drayton Park Avenue
West Drayton
Middx
UB7 7QA
U.K.
RISC World
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME6/ISSUE5/PD/INDEX.HTM Volume 6, Issue 5, PD World
PD World
Paul Brett with the latest freeware and PD releases for RISC OS.
Welcome to the first PD World column of the year. We are going to kick off in fine style as there have been a number of interesting developments in the RISC OS software world so lets see what we have for your delectation this issue...
FormFiller - Kevin Wells
This is a very useful little program that no one should be without. If you every need to fill in lots of on-line forms, for example if you are getting quotes for car insurance, then FormFiller can speed things up no end. You can enter your details once into FormFiller. Then whenever you need to type the details into a form simply click to put to cursor in the correct place and then click the button you want and your details will be typed in.
FormFiller
To use FormFiller just double click on the FFiller app it will then load onto the iconbar. Click on the iconbar to open the main window. Click on a button and it will then send the text attached to the button to wherever the cursor currently is. You can use the Edit button to change the text attached to each of the buttons.
The Return button will enter a carriage return and the Space button will enter a space. The Delete button deletes to the left. The Delete Icon button is the equivalent to pressing Control U, ie. it will clear any information on the current line of the form. The Tab and Back Tab buttons do the same as if you pressed the Tab or Shift and Tab keys.
Pressing the menu button anywhere in the main window will bring up a menu where you can have up to 10 forms. Clicking on one of those forms will bring up that form, numbered from 01 to 10.
Don't forget to wait until FormFiller has finished outputting the text before hitting another button!
GedText - Rob Hemmings
GedText converts a Gedcom file to a text file. It has been written specifically to work with files output by the !Family application but may work with other Gedcom files. It was written to enable a full report of all information held in a Gedcom file as the standard report from !Family only shows a subset of the information stored on each person.
GedText
All tags used by !Family should be shown in a readable form as will some tags used by other family history programs. Any tags for an individual that GedText does not recognise are shown as they appear in the raw Gedcom file. (File headers and trailers are ignored.)
GedText reads a Gedcom file dragged to its iconbar icon and outputs to a file of the same name but with /txt appended. The output file is a standard Text file that can be searched or amended with any text editor or printed if required.
As written, the application allows for a maximum of 2,000 individuals and 1,000 families but this can be altered by setting the appropriate variables in the !Run file.
The output can be sorted in ascending order of birth (where present). Individuals without a BIRTH record followed by a DATE record that ends in a valid year are sorted to the end of the file. If the format is one of dd/mm/yyyy or dd.mm.yyyy or dd mmm yyyy then the day and month are also used in the sort. This option is switched on or off using the Choices window, accessed via the iconbar menu. If sorted output is not selected then individuals are output in the order they are found in the Gedcom file.
MiscSetup - Paul Vigay
MiscSetup provides some extra configuration options for RISC OS users. Although primarily designed for use with the Iyonix, MiscSetup can also be used with RISC OS 4. The main features provided are:
Setting the default desktop font size
Setting the default desktop font aspect ratio
Setting the default font cache size
Setting the default NextSlo
Setting LMTransport configuratio
Correcting the default sample rate to 44.1KHz on the Iyonix
Replacing the boring switcher icon with the old Acorn one
MiscSetup
MiscSetup needs to be installed in your !Boot sequence. RISC OS 5 users can simply simply drag the !Boot folder from the archive over the existing !Boot folder. The relevant files will then be merged. Users with RISC OS 4 need to manually open the !Boot folder in the archive (Hold down SHIFT and double click), then open the RO500Hook.Res.Configure directory. !MiscSetup needs to be dragged into the relevant alternative directory in your existing !Boot structure
For RISC OS 4 users this would be the !Boot.RO400Hook.Res.Configure directory.
RDPClient - Andrew Sellors
RDPClient is a RISC OS client for servers running the Remote Desktop Protocol (Typically a PC running Windows XP Professional), also called Terminal Services. Remote Desktop allows a client machine to log onto a server over a network and be presented with a virtual desktop display. Applications run entirely on the server under control of the client's keyboard and mouse with the display graphics being rendered on the client machine. Remote Desktop server software is available for both Linux and Microsoft Windows with many editions of Windows having single user versions built in.
RDPClient
Some uses of !RDPClient include:
Remote control of a Windows XP PC on a home network from a RISC OS machine
Providing access to Windows applications from a network of RISC OS machines using a Window Terminal Server
Remote administration of Windows Servers from a RISC OS machine over the Internet
!RDPClient is based on version 1.4.1 of the open source application 'rdesktop'. More information on 'rdesktop' can be found at
SampleED - Really Small Software Company
SampleEd allows you to create, edit and play back sound samples. The main features of SampleED are
Load and save samples in a variety of different format
Disk based editing not limited by available memor
Apply a variety of affects to samples including fades, echoes and loop
Supports the LADSPA ( Linux Audio developer's Simple Plugin API) plugin protocol for effect
Uses Digital Renderer to play back sample
Samples can have up to 32 channel
SampleED
SampleEd should run on any RISC OS 3+ machine with 4MB of memory. It does require the latest Toolbox modules (These are in the ToolBox directory inside the Software directory - ED) so this might push requirements up somewhat. Any processor should do although obviously an ARM2 will be very slow and a StrongARM or above is best.
Although I have featured SampleED before this new version has a number of improvements and I recommend that anyone using an older version upgrades to this new version. There is also a 60+ page PDF manual supplied with SampleED which is well worth reading.
Sourcery - Really Small Software Company
Sourcery is intended to be an easy to use development tool that replaces "!Make" to enable RISC OS applications, modules and libraries to be built quickly and efficiently. Sourcery removes the tedium of maintaining the source code and resource files that make up a project and allows the developer to concentrate on the actual development of their project.
Sourcery does not try to impose any restrictions on the tools or compilers that are used to build a project, it simply tries to make the use of these tools as pain free as possible.
The Sourcery manual assumes that the reader is familiar with application development on RISC OS and also with the C programming language. This is not to say that C has to be used, simply that some of the examples given use C.
Sourcery has been tested on RISC OS 4.02 and 4.39. It has been built to be 26/32 bit neutral and does not require the 32 bit C library to be installed. It does however require the latest set of Toolbox modules from RISCOS Ltd.
WebGen2 - D E Stratford
WebGen2 is designed to take a directory of images and create a website from them. Three forms of website can be generated :
A site consisting of a single index page containing thumbnails only
A site consisting of a single index page containing thumbnails, each of which links to a separate page containing a larger version of that image
A site containing both the thumbnails and a small piece of Javascript to enable the larger versions to be displayed alongside the thumbnails whenever the mouse pointer moves over the thumbnail. This option will not work well with too many images, nor with images which are not square, or very nearly square
With option 2, it is possible to specify a file containing a single line caption for each image. A blank line will ensure no captions are created, and a line starting with | will be treated as a comment line and ignored. Interactive Help is available throughout, and should be used as it provides lots of useful information.
WebGen2
To use Webgen2 drop a directory containing any of the currently convertible graphics file types onto the !WebGen2 Icon bar icon. This will open the main Details window. At the bottom left of the window is a blue 'i' icon. Clicking this will load Interactive Help. At the top left of the window is a menu button. Clicking select on this will open an options menu.
Signing off
That's all I can fit in this time, see you all again next issue!
David Bradforth takes a look at some of the recent deluge of retro magazines hitting the games market
Over the last twelve months the retro games scene has changed considerably, particularly if your focus on the retro scene is through the magazines available supporting your interests. One of the biggest changes has been the departure of Live Publishing as a company, falling victim to the changing economy and the subsequent relaunch of Retro Gamer through Bournemouth based newcomer Imagine Publishing.
RETRO SURVIVAL - £6
In the time that it took for the magazine to be relaunched, the freelancers of Retro Gamer (as it was) clubbed together to produce Retro Survival magazine. Supplied on CD-ROM, and subtitled 'the Payback issue', Retro Survival brings together the majority of the articles that were destined for Live Publishing's issue 19 of Retro Gamer alongside a mixture of multimedia elements that can best be surfed through a web browser.
The opening page of 'Retro Survival' magazine
The interface reminded me of Foundation RISC User in many ways; although I didn't like the need to click through the pages to navigate your way through an article. Each page is often too big to fit on an A4 page when printed and in instances like that it's much more convenient to simply print pages of text from a site than print multiple pages with the last one ending half way up the page.
The content appealed to me in some ways, but not so much in others. However I think that's the same regardless of the type of magazine you're reading. Not everything will appeal to the entire audience for which it's intended.
The Retro Gamer Story is a fascinating look through the history of the magazine, through the eyes of one of the freelancers. I'm convinced, even today, that a true insider look at the development of Retro Gamer magazine would be a fascinating incite into how a magazine is developed and how it became the success it was. The first issue of Retro Gamer did, for a long time, sell for stupid amounts of money on eBay because it was so heavily in demand - with copies going for over £80.
The Retro Gamer story
Back to the 80s walks you through 1985 taking note of key software and hardware developments. The introduction of the Lenslok with the Spectrum version of Elite made news, because of the plain idiocy of the protection system devised. If you were wearing glasses, as this RISC World writer does, the complications in finding your way through that device certainly made for an interesting gaming experience. If you could ever find your way into the game, that is...
The Desert Island Disks feature was certainly one of the more interesting parts of Retro Gamer as was. Through this popular series, Paul Drury would take the reader through the items key players on the retro scene would themselves take onto a desert island. It certainly made for interesting reading, and given the nature of Retro Survival the tables were turned so that Paul Drury became the interviewee rather than interviewer.
There's a large section dedicated to the Vectrex with a detailed history, some of the best games, the homebrew scene, interviews and an archive of vectrex material. Some of the most interesting material in this article is located within the archive - from box to advert shots, to audio files of former Vectrex employees talking through their time on the scene. There are even video of a games author playing his own game.
Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry series was one of the first to offend many. As an adult adventure game, it was developed by Al Lowe as an evolution of a Sierra text adventure entitled 'Soft Porn'. Essentially it puts you in control of Larry Laffer, quite frankly a complete loser, and has you guiding him around the secrets of his world. The large feature on Leisure Suit Larry has been reproduced in the new issue 19 of Retro Gamer; and the end result is certainly quite pleasing to the eyes. It consists of three components - an interview with Al Lowe; the history of Sierra Entertainment (as it became) and a guide through the various Leisure Suit Larry games. Except for the most recent. Because it's pretty awful.
The articles featured in Retro Survival continue along a similar trend; there's literally something for everybody from spoof adverts to the chance to win some real retro kit; and given that the magazine costs £6 including postage there's a lot of material for very little money. It's a shame that it doesn't print out so well.
RETRO PLAYER
Retro Player was released at the Classic Gaming Expo in August last year. Using content from Retro Gamerand GamesTM magazines. It was supplied to all visitors as a show guide that they can read on the train ride home. It included a superb selection of features covering all aspects of retro gaming, the feedback was mostly positive.
The cover for issue 1 of Retro Player
Articles in the magazine included:
A roundup of what happened at last year's show
An interview with the organisers
The Wisdom of Matthew Smith
A guide to building arcade cabs for use in the home
A Repton Retrospective (by Richard Hallas)
An exploration of the sound chip used within the Commodore
Homage to the VIC20
Using the VICE emulator (on an Iyonix PC)
Skool Daze - a review of the ultimate retro game
Radiant Silvergun - another retro review
A look at the Studio Classics released by Fox
And a selection of Acorn Retro Advertisements - which had to be done
The magazine wasn't without its problems - there were a number of errors introduced by the printer, and the transition from colour into mono didn't work well for a number of the pages - but it's still a nice little magazine. I've got a few available still, and am prepared to supply them at £1 plus postage - email me for details.
RETRO FUSION - £2
Retro Fusion issue 0 - this is the sampler issue, with the hope
being that a commercial launch can be achieved shortly.
Shortly after Retro Player was released, I got an email from one of the fanzines who had been represented at the CGEUK show. They didn't like Retro Player, so I asked them what they'd have done better. The result of which was a meeting at which a plan was set to reformat that title and relaunch it in bigger and better form to incorporate Retro Player as well.
Things, in that respect, fell apart, but one of the main contributors to that project - Chris Wilkins / Boyo - emailed me to ask if we were still in a position to work together; and I could see no reason why not. What I offered was support in making sure that the project would come together - particularly when it came to dealing with the printers.
In literally six weeks Retro Fusion came together. As a full colour, 32 page, magazine printed on high quality gloss paper it immediately felt good from the moment I opened my archive package. The contents are a credit to the team responsible, including:
A history of Street Fighte
Review of the Back in Time event, and accompanying DV
The C64 DTV is reviewe
Remember the Sam Coupe? It's profiled here, and makes for fascinating reading
Jon Hare of Sensible Software provides talk about the games industr
And much more
There's a lot more to it, and in the space of 32 pages we've put together a magazine that seems to have a lot of supporters. But we'd like to know what other people think - particularly what aspects of the Acorn market do you feel need coverage within a Retro magazine; and what aspects of 'Retro' in general interest you the most.
If you're curious, take a look at the Retro Fusion website - you can buy the magazine through the site and let other RISC World readers know what you think!
You could even win a free copy by entering our RISCWorld competition, just take a look at the competition page to find out more.
David Bradforth
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME6/ISSUE5/ROADSHOW/INDEX.HTM Volume 6, Issue 5, The RISC OS Roadshow 2005
The RISC OS Roadshow 2005
Aaron attended two of the three events...
I'm sure everyone reading RISCWorld knows that just before Christmas RISCOS Ltd organised three one day events around the country. On Thursday the 15th of December the roadshow was at the West Bromich Albion Football Club, on Friday at the Brittania Hotel in Stockpot and on Saturday at the Best Western Cumberland Hotel in Harrow.
Due to a previous commitment I wasn't able to attend the event on the Saturday, but I did make it to both the Thursday and Friday events.
Birmingham
This was the most well attended event with 12 companies making an appearance. The venue was quite easy to find and having navigated round the Birmingham motorway system I found myself arriving only 40 minutes after having left home. Unfortunately I arrived at the wrong part of the Football Club. I wandered into the show shop and asked where the "Bassett Suite" was. I wasn't too far wrong, but had come in through the wrong entrance. I drove back out to the main road an went in the correct way. The Bassett Suite is at the top of a clean modern building, but at least it had lifts.
Since I always travel fairly light it only took a couple of trips for Matt from Advantage Six to unload my car (cheers mate!). Each exhibitor was given a table and a couple of chairs. By 3pm almost everyone was set up and Advantage Six, Myself and Chris from CJE decamped over the road to McDonalds in order to have a chat about the A9 and to grab a bite to eat. I was pleased to see Chris as he had damaged his knee the night before when loading the van and it had looked like he might not have been able to attend.
Anyway we returned to the show with a few minutes to go before it opened. This gave me an opportunity to have a wander around and see what new goodies were on offer.
The first port of call had to be Advantage Six. A number of A9 machines were being demonstrated, many of them had small USB powered fans attached. A merry game was to join to fans together and cross the blades to see if they still rotated, amazingly they did! Anyway, the more important developments on show elated to the A9 graphics. You could compare a current developer release A9 with one running the "HeadLight" hardware graphics acceleration. The difference was quite noticeable with window drags being much smoother and slicker. Also on display was the "HeadTurner" software that allowed the use of rotatable landscape/portrait displays. If the monitor was turned from landscape to portrait the RISC OS desktop was correctly resized. I've seen this feature on Geminus for the Iyonix, but it was nice to see it working on an A9 "out of the box".
The most interesting new display feature on show was the "HeadRoom" desktop, running a massive 8160 by 1024 display. As the mouse was moved to the edge of the screen the entire display scrolled in hardware to reveal more of the desktop. It was also possibly to move to a particular part of the desktop simply by holding down MENU over the pinboard. After a couple of seconds a mini preview of the entire screen was shown and you could simply click on the section you wanted and the machine would instantly scroll to it. All in all very nice.
Advantage Six were also talking about further graphics acceleration using the SM501 chipset in the A9 to accelerate the drawing of lines and drawfiles. It's interesting that even with it's 400Mhz processor and incomplete acceleration the diminutive A9 seemed to perform to a similar level as the Iyonix.
Talking of the Iyonix Castle Technology were demonstrating a couple of Iyonix machines in some of the new cases, which looked very attractive. They were also showing off more USB devices, including downloading photos directly from a mobile phone.
RISCOS Ltd had a large stand with a RiscPC, PC, A9, Iyonix and an iMac, all running the same 26/32bit version of RISC OS. It looks like the goal of having one unified OS for all machines is starting to become a reality. A number of customers seemed to be genuinely surprised to see Select features running on the Iyonix, perhaps they had believed some of the daft things said on the newsgroups? There was a lot of interest in the Mac version of VirtualRPC, but at present there is still no confirmed release date. On the subject of Select for the Iyonix though a possible date as early as the second quarter of 2006 was mentioned by Paul Middleton.
Meanwhile elsewhere in the room Icon Technology were showing off the latest versions of TechWriter and EasiWriter, both now being developed by Martin Wuerthner. The new versions include a very useful structure bar feature as well as lots of other new features. A special version for the A9home was also available for eager customers to try on their developer machines. Martin was also on hand to answer questions abut the new version of ArtWorks with PDF export, which really is a very tasty bit of software. He was also demonstrating GimpPrint.
CJE Micros had one again managed to bring everything except the kitchen sink. The other large stand was R-Comp, who were demonstrating their collection PCs running VirtualAcorn. They also had upgrades to UniPrint 2 available for customers.
There were of course lots of other exhibitors but I was kept quite busy and didn't have time to talk to everyone. When the show finished I had to pack up quickly and leg it home for dinner! Although I did stay long enough to get my ugly mug in the group photo!
Stockport
Stockport should be a bit over an hour and a half drive from home. Indeed it probably is, if you aren't following a cement mixer up and down the Peak District. In the end I arrived at the hotel with only 20 or so minutes to spare. Luckily I was able to park right outside as Alan Rawnsley had saved me a space. The exhibitor list was much the same as for Birmingham, expect that RONWUG (RISCOS North West User Group) had a stand and the ARM Club (who had been at Birmingham) didn't. I found the Stockpot event to be much quieter than the Birmingham one. One exhibitor wondered if it was anything to do with being near Lancashire, I said I couldn't possibly comment, although I did wonder if the fact that since "Lancashire" already contains "cash" meant that the inhabitants were determined to keep it there.
What was most interesting was that a couple of odd bugs had turned up on the A9 machines the day before. These related to the HeadRoom scrolling desktop. Despite having to break down the stand at Birmingham and set up again at Stockport, Advantage Six had managed to find the problems and fix them overnight! It's that sort of dedication that the RISC OS market needs.
Anyway, I had a disappointing day at Stockport. To be honest, given the time it took to get there, I could have just as easily have gone to the Harrow event. It's just that now we live in Derbyshire London sounds a long way off and Manchester doesn't, still you live and learn.
After the show had finished I packed up and headed home, which took over an hour less than the trip earlier in the day.
London
I didn't get to the London event, which was a shame as according to a couple of the companies that attended it was the busiest one of the three. Most likely this was due to the event being held at the Weekend, rather than on a weekday.
All I can say is roll on the Roadshow for 2006, and next time I will go down to London!
Aaron
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME6/ISSUE5/SW2006/INDEX.HTM Volume 6, Issue 5, RISC OS SouthWest 2006
RISC OS SouthWest 2006
All the details on the next RISC OS show.
Normally the RISC OS South West show takes place near the end of February. This year it's moved to the middle of the month and will be held on Saturday the 18th of February. Although the date has moved slightly the venue hasn't and the show will still be held at the Webbington Hotel, Loxton, nr Ashbridge in North Somerset.
The Webbington Hotel
The South West show is the main RISC OS show for those that live in Wales and the west country and is a good opportunity for RISC OS users to come along and have a chat with RISC OS developers. Of course most developers would also be delighted if you decided to spend some money as well!
The show is supported by the local RISC OS clubs, The Bristol Acorn Risc User Group and the Wessex Arm User Group.
Finding the Webbington
There is a free shuttle bus service operating every 30 minutes for those coming by train from Weston-Super-Mare station. The first bus will leave the station at 9:30 in the morning, the last bus will leave the hotel at 4:45 in the afternoon. For those coming by road use the following map (and switch off your GPS - ED).
Times and exhibitors
The show opens at 10:00 in the morning and closes at 4:30, the admittance charge is a £3.50 for adults, £2.50 for Arm Club and RISC OS Foundation members, those who are under 16's can get in for free provided they are accompanied by an Adult.
The current list of exhibitors includes:
Advantage Si
APD
Archive Publication
CJE Micro
Castle Technolog
David Snel
Fortran Friend
Genesy
Icon Technolog
John Norri
Mathmagical Softwar
Orpheus Interne
R-Com
Qercu
RISCOS Lt
Serious Statistical Softwar
Spellings Computer Service
StrongArm System
The ARM Clu
VirtualAcor
At the moment only two theatre talks are booked, one from Advantage Six and one from RISCOS Ltd.
We at RISCWorld look forward to seeing you at the show!
RISC World
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME6/ISSUE5/VA/INDEX.HTM Volume 6, Issue 5, VirtualAcorn Tech Support
VirtualAcorn Tech Support
More from Aaron's tech support notebook
It's been a fairly quiet couple of months on the tech support front here at VirtualAcorn. We have had our usual quota of RISC OS related questions, but far fewer questions about VirtualAcorn itself. However one enterprising user has come up with a novel work around for a problem that has affected a couple of users.
Faxing from VirtualAcorn
We have a small number of users who have wanted to send a Fax from inside VirtualAcorn using ArcFax. Since ArcFax wants to drive a modem directly this isn't possible, however Chris Brown has come up with a solution that may well help. In order for this to work you will need a copy of VirtualAcorn (rather obvious that one - HJ) and a copy of UniPrint from
The solution involves setting up a UniPrint printer driver that prints to a Fax printer on the Windows side. In the example that was sent to me Chris has set up a WinFaxPro printer, but the principle should also work with any Fax printer software, including the bundled one, supplied for use with with Windows.
The first step is to install a Fax printer for Windows, note that you will need a Fax Modem fitted in the PC. If you already have a fax printer installed then you can skip the next section.
In Windows XP this is very easy, from the Start menu go to the Control Panel and then go to the Printers and Faxes option. Double click on the "Add Printer" option and make sure that you are adding a "Local Printer", now simply run through the Wizard selecting the Fax Printer option when it is shown to you. Windows XP comes with a bundled Fax printer which will work with almost any modem. Once the Fax printer is installed the best idea is to send a test fax to ensure that it's working OK. Obviously you will need someone's Fax number and you should ask them first if it's OK to send a one page test fax. I seem to recall that BT used to have a special number you could use to test Fax machines but for the life of me I can't remember what it was.
Assuming that you can now Fax OK from Windows it's time to set up UniPrint. Click on the UniPrint icon in the System Tray (bottom right) from the Windows desktop. Now click on the Printers Tab. A list of the installed Windows printers will be shown. The default Microsoft Windows Fax printer will simply be called "Fax", other Fax printers from other manufacturers will probably have different names.
Select the Fax Printer and then click on Apply then OK. Now load VirtualAcorn and print to UniPrint. After printing has finished the Windows Fax control window will open. You can now return to Windows and enter the name and phone number, and any other details required. Now you can send the Fax.
Although this solution isn't as neat as just using ArcFax it does get round the problem.
Why are my icons blank?
For some reason I've had a little spate of these recently. Users have been installing their files and applications into VirtualAcorn and using them fine. Then when VirtualAcorn is re-loaded all their files have blank. Double clicking on the file then results in an error like this:
The error seems fairly self explanatory, RISC OS simply hasn't seen the program that loads this sort of file. As an example if the file was an Impression file then then RISC OS simply didn't know where to find a copy of Impression to open the file. The temporary solution is to go and find the directory that contains the program (in my example Impression), then go back and double click on the file.
The better and permanent solution is to tell RISC OS where the application lives so that it can be found every time. This is very easy to do. Simply open the harddrive you Boot from, normally HardDisc4, and then double click on !Boot. Now single click on the Boot option. A window will now open called "Boot at Startup".
A list of the items that are "seen" on startup will then be shown. In order to add an application to the list, so that RISC OS always knows where it is, simply drag the application from a filer window and drop in in the "Boot at Startup" window. If you make a mistake you can always select an item and click on the "Remove selection" button. Once everything that's needed has been dragged in a click on the "Set" button will save everything so that the problem of blank icons shouldn't happen again.
VRPC-Adjust update
Finally VirtualAcorn have issued a small update for VirtualRPC-Adjust. This fixes some problems with the default disc build that meant that some applications wouldn't work properly. The apps that were affected are:
KinoAm
Genesi
Allocat
ResCreat
ResE
Restes
The upgrade isn't essential and not all users will be affected, but if any of the above apps don't work "out of the box" then hopefully the upgrade will fix the problem. I have placed a copy of the upgrade in the Software directory on this issue.
