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1997-04-16
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STE SECTION - PAUL SEALY
========================
LIGHT PENS FOR THE ATARI
TROJAN, a peripheral manufacturer are set to manufacture a light pen for
the ST. Presumably, you will need an STE with the Light Pen socket,
although the reviews say that it works with a standard mouse driver. Which
ever is the case, maybe at last someone is taking notice of the excellent
hardware inside the STE. Apart from our incompatibility problems, the STE
is a far superior machine compared to the STFM. Let us hope that this is
the start of software and hardware manufacturers taking notice of the
future in Atari hardware.
* * *
THE STE SINCE THE LAST ISSUE
Since the last issue of STEN, there have been no major advancements in
software that I have become aware of. One thing I have noticed is that a
lot of you are using an STE instead of an STFM for DTP. I have been asking
customers of my Public Domain library why they chose an STE? The answers
have been more or less the same 'smoother scrolling and speed'.
Of course if music is your thing, then you must have invested in an STE. I
have had some excellent sound from my STE, mainly because it is linked up
to my Pioneer stereo via the video input. Even game music sounds
impressive, although not in stereo. So for those of you who are thinking
of investing in an STE for music, go for it.
I have had no tips or hints, or come to think of it questions from anyone
of you many STE owners out there. Come on, play the game! If you know of
something that will help other STE owners, whether it be word processing,
music, games...anthing, drop me a line and let me know.
~~~OOOO~~~
E-PAINTER - A review by Paul Sealy
==================================
In compiling Issue 1 of my public domain catalogue back in January of this
year, I came across a program called 'E Painter' in the public domain. The
catalogue I had seen it in, described it as 'the first Art Program to take
full advantage of the increased colour palette of the STE'. "Great" I
thought. I sent off for it and duly included it in the catalogue, after
making sure that it loaded OK. Although owning an STE, I didn't really do
much else with it, as I was busy compiling the catalogue.
While writing my column for STEN Issue 3, I decided to Review it properly
for this issue. To be honest I shouldn't have bothered. Because, as Gerald
Ratner said this week "It's total CRAP!" Maybe that statement is slightly
unfair, because a lot of programming effort has obviously gone into it,
but unfortunately the results are rather amateurish. Yes, I know it's
public domain, but most public domain art packages I have seen have been
brilliant, much better than a lot of the commercially sold ones.
Anyway - E-PAINTER loads automatically on boot-up on an STE, although it
works on and ST as well, so the author says and plays you a little tune,
which gets on your wick after a while. (In fact it seems as if he was
experimenting with his newly found talent for programming, trying all the
bits and pieces he had just learnt). Using the mouse you can choose one of
four options.
SCREEN DRAW, INSTRUCTIONS, SCROLL OR EXIT (the latter being by far the
best).
Screen Draw takes you to another screen with a drawing area, which is
black, which then allows you to make a few selections of different types
of drawing effects, i.e. thin line, medium line, thick line, small
starburst, big starburst, ellipse, circle and square. All of these do have
the desired effect. In the bottom left hand corner is a big white square,
yes, the 4096 colour chooser. Clicking the mouse button on this a few
times, I thought to myself, look at all these lovely colours, all 4096 of
them. 'Hang on a minute', I thought, 'some of these colours look
familiar'. You can't go back through the colours, only forward, so I re-
booted and started again. You start off on the colour white, clicking one
at a time on the colours, shows me that there are not 4096 colours, but
15, yes 15, not 1500 or 150, but 15. Now maybe I'm missing something here,
but I can't quite see how that constitutes 'taking full advantage of the
increased colour palette of the STE'.
Going back to the main menu, Instructions don't tell you much at all
really, just the very basics. Although to the right of the options are two
colour bands, which are constantly scrolling what looks like a lot of
colours, very pretty but you can't draw with them.
Scroll, takes you onto a pretty bordered screen, and yes it's quite
colourful, which then takes you on a boring horizontal scroll of credits
and waffling, just like a lot of demos.
You can load files off of disk, but you don't get a file select box, so
you have to memorize the name of the file you want to load.
A very useful feature, (joke, honest) is a clock, yes a clock. What the
hell, do you want a clock for on an art program, apart from telling you
what time Neighbours is on?
Now for the best bit - EXIT, back to my lovely puke green desktop, I
thought. No, afraid not, another curious looking psychodelic monstrosity,
covers the screen and then scrolls down and up and down and up, then more
credits, and a countdown, which seems to last for ever, until the program
quits and returns you to a black desktop, yes that's right a black
desktop, which is totally useless. So cheerfully putting your boot disk in
and resetting, you return to normality, thankfully.
As you may have guessed, I love the program. No seriously, it is very
clever, programming wise, but pretty useless as an art program. It comes
with a stand alone program to convert DEGAS pics to E-PAINTER format, but
I can't think why anyone would want to.
I apologise to the author of the program for slagging off his work, but if
he reads this and would like to reply, we will include his reply in a
future issue of STEN. He can contact me direct (see the team list for
address).
So, until next issue, good STE'ing and get writing to me NOW!!!!
Paul Sealy