This demo is intended to give you a quick understanding of how easy it is to create animations in ScreenStudio and how good the quality of those animations can be.
About ScreenStudio
ScreenStudio is an easy-to-use animation authoring tool that lets users create stand-alone animations and After Dark compatible screen savers, it can even be used to animate text presentations.
The idea behind ScreenStudio is to allow people who want to be creative with their computers, but are frustrated by lack of programming skills, to create animations without having to do any programming.
ScreenStudio is deceptively simple: the full power and flexibility of the program will only become apparent by playing with it: you can create simple screen savers in minutes, but if you are aiming at something more ambitious you can spend hours creating intricate and complex animations.
ScreenStudio was developed in Japan by Infinisys Ltd and originally published there towards the end of last year. In Europe it is published by Feral Entertainment Limited and will be released at the end of May 1997.
What we’ve given you
This demo contains a save-disabled version of ScreenStudio will lets you create animation files and run them in test mode only.
It also contains a tutorial that lets you create a moderately complex animation from scratch in about thirty minutes using PICT and sound files we have provided.
It also includes examples of some animations that we “prepared earlier”. These examples are provided not only as animation files, but also as stand-alone application files and After Dark modules. If you have After Dark and want to run the After Dark modules, you need to drag and drop them onto the After Dark files folder - which you will find in your Control panels.
What we didn’t give you
This demo does not contain the hundreds of original PICT and sound files ready for you to animate, which are on the full program. Nor does it let you save your own creations as After Dark Modules or stand-alone applications.
A shortcut
We recommend you do the tutorial - it’s fun and quite quick, however if like many of us you are allergic to tutorials, you can still get a feel for the program by playing with the examples we have provided. Once you have had a look at how they run - open the animation file from your favourite example. The Sprite List window containing the animation’s sprites will open on the right-hand side of your screen. Double-click on any of the sprites in this window and that sprite’s Sprite Edit window will open - by looking at the menu commands attached to different conditions of the condition menu, which are all in this window - you should get a good idea of how the animation was created.
Installing the Demo
The simplest way is simply to copy the entire ScreenStudio Demo folder onto your hard drive - it’s not very big. If you are really pressed for space just restrict yourself to the program folder and access everything else from the MacFormat CD-ROM.
System Requirements
To run ScreenStudio , you need:
A Macintosh or Macintosh compatible computer with a minimum of 68030 (20 Mhz) or a PowerPC processor.
4MB of free RAM
A monitor with 256 colours or more
Apple system 7.1 or higher
A CD-ROM drive
2 MB minimum of free hard disk space
When creating After Dark modules Screen Studio requires After Dark 2.0 or higher
What else?
Here it comes.....BUY THE SOFTWARE! We hope that after playing with the examples and creating a few animations of your own, you will want to own the full version of ScreenStudio.
ScreenStudio will be available at the end of May 1997. Suggested Retail price around £40.
