Compendium Deluxe 3/LSD Compendium Deluxe 3 (1995).iso/readme.guide

Text File | 1995-09-05 | 15.8 KB | 355 lines

@NODE main "17Bit Compendium Deluxe #3 Readme"

 @{"  Beginners  " LINK BEGINNERS}  Beginners start here.
 @{"   Welcome   " LINK WELCOME}  Introduction to this CD.                  17 Bit
 @{"  Important  " LINK IMPORTANT}  Important - Please Read This!        1st Floor Offices
 @{"    Files    " LINK FILES}  File types on this CD.               2/8 Market Street
 @{"  AGA Users  " LINK AGAUSERS}  Notes for AGA Users.                  West Yorkshire
 @{"    Notes    " LINK NOTES}  Notes for ALL Users.                     WF1 1DH
 @{" Repetition  " LINK REPETITION}  Notes about File Repetition.
 @{"   Sysops    " LINK SYSOPS}  Notes for BBS Sysops.                Tel: [phone]
 @{" Your Views  " LINK YOURVIEWS}  The SoapBox!                         Fax: [phone]
 @{"Contributions" LINK CONTRIBUTIONS}  How to contribute.
 @{"   Credits   " LINK CREDITSFORTHISCD}  Grin!
 @{" Copyrights  " LINK COPYRIGHT}  Legal Information.
 @{"  Technical  " LINK TECHNICAL}  Technical Information.
 @{" Programmers " LINK Prog}  Programmers please read this!
@ENDNODE
@NODE BEGINNERS "Beginners Start Here"

This menu system is totally mouse operated.  It is very simple to use,
if you see a hilighted button, such as @{"this" LINK This_Because_Its_a_Demo}, it means it is an option
available from that area.  Clicking on that button will perform a
function, such as running a demo, viewing a picture or extracting an
archive.  Remember when you have finished viewing a text file, listening
to a music module etc. to click on the Close gadget to contine.  When you
have finished in a menu area, clicking on the Contents gadget at the top
of the screen will take you back to the Menu.  Basically, try out the
gadgets, you can't do any harm.  Remember not to click on the close gadget
of this AmigaGuide menu, if you do you will have to reload it from Workbench.

Sometines you will need to reboot your system, especially after running
some file demos etc., as some are badly programmed.  As a rule, if the menu
seems to no-longer preform correctly, its time for a re-boot.

@ENDNODE
@NODE WELCOME

                    Welcome to Compendium Deluxe #3.

Thank you for purchasing the third in a series of CD's, brought to you
17 Bit - The Worlds biggest PD library.  On these CD's we intend to bring
you as many Amiga Public Domain files as possible - many of which will not
have appeared in Amiga Public Domain Libraries before, and the majority of
them will not have appeared on an Amiga PD CD collection before -
collected from many sources and archives around the globe.

@ENDNODE
@NODE IMPORTANT

Please note that when purchasing this CD, you paid for the compiling,
duplication, advertising, packaging, administration and distribution
etc. of this disk.  You have NOT paid for the contents.  Public Domain
software is free, we have not charged you even a penny for all the
contents.

If you use this disk you are bound by the following terms;

1) The compiler and distributers of this disk take no responsibility
    whatsoever for damage to hardware, software or media through use or
    misuse of any of the contents of this CD.  You de-archive and/or use
    files at your own risk.

   This CD has been checked for all known viruses, trojans and variants
    with the latest versions of the best virus-checkers available and has
    been found completely free of infection.

   The checkers we used are;

   - Virus Workshop 4.6 for the disks before we archived them (stored on
      here as .dms and .lha files).

   - Virus Checker 6.47 left in the background during compilation.

   - Virus Checker used Bootblock.brainfile 1.06 and Bootblock.library
      3.1.

2) We also make no guarantee whatsoever that files on this CD will do
    what they claim, or what they are intended to do.  Again, we have
    tested practically everything on this CD (which took a while!), but
    there is always a possibility of a rogue file when dealing with this
    amount of data.

Please note that some programs included may not work on all Amiga's,
some will require specific Kickstarts, Memory types (such as Fastmem),
Graphic modes (such as AGA) and/or extra hardware.

We have made our best effort to ensure that all data included on this CD
is freely distributable (Public Domain) and that it comprises to any
limitations laid down by the copyright holders.

Some files are distributed as shareware, you should comply with any
conditions set out in the individual programs wherever necessary.  Under
certain conditions a shareware payment should be sent to the authors.
Please register shareware programs if you use them often.

If you are easily offended, then it is not necessarily a good idea to
look at the demos, diskmags or some ascii collections, although we do
believe most files are free of what may be considered by some as "obscene
language", certain "four letter words" may be present.  It would be
practically impossible, to find and remove these, and as the author(s)
have put them there in the first place, it would be (generally) against
their wishes to do such.

Any political, religious or social views stressed by files on this CD
are not necessarily the opinions of the compiler or distributers.

@ENDNODE
@NODE FILES

Wherever possible, every file on this disk is in "Amiga Format", this
means the files are in a format that is considered standard to the
Amiga.  There are no .gif files, no .jpeg (that take around 1-2 minutes
to display, and need a lot of memory), all pictures are in IFF format
wherever possible, allowing the user to load them into packages such as
Deluxe Paint or Brilliance and examine them, or use their favourite
display package to show them.  All animations are again in IFF format
(version 5), allowing loading into art packages already mentioned.  All
archives are in .dms or .lha format, there's no .zip, .arj or other
formats widely used on other computers.  All music is in protracker mod.
format, allowing you to load the music into a Protracker clone, or
(Octa)med and examine how the musician has created the tune.

The only format that can be considered alien to the Amiga, are the
Screamtracker 3 (.S3M) modules.  These are music modules created on the
PC, however, the player gives you more channels than the Amiga normally
allows, and are of higher quality playblack.

To use a file, click on the filename button.  This will run a demo,
view a picture, anim or text file, or dearchive a file.  All DMS files
are dearchived to df0:, all .lha files to Ram:.


@ENDNODE
@NODE AGAUSERS

In the descriptions for some files you will notice a message stating
"AGA users must degrade their system".  This can be done in various
ways.  If you are using our menu, select the "AGA off" button at
the top of the current file list (this turns AGA off), alternatively you
can use one of the many degraders available.  You can also use the
"Early startup Control".  This is accessed on the A1200 and A4000 by
holding both mousebuttons on reboot, and whan the menu appears, turn off
the CPU cache and set the chipset to normal.

All programs have been tested on an AGA machine, we used an A1200 with 4
meg of true fastmem.  This does not guarantee that they will work on an
A4000 if they worked on our A1200 (although theoretically it should, if
not try degrading it).  If you are a demo fan, you realy will need some
fastmem, (or try using a fakefast tool).

If there is no remark regarding compatability problems, it should work
on your machine.  As said earlier, some demos do need Fastmem, some do
not work with Fastmem.

@ENDNODE
@NODE NOTES

There are a few abbreviations used in the file descriptions, the main
 two are;
 - RMB, which means Right Mouse Button, and
 - LMB, which means Left Mouse Button.

Unless otherwise stated, an executable in the demo directories in the
Ready to run section will (generally) work with Fastmem, and can
(generally) be exited with the Left Mouse Button.

Unlike many other CD's, this has had NO special coding for the menu
system.  It only uses AmigaGuide, undms, lha, lx, vt, hip and ppmore.
We where sure we could do it, and we did!

@ENDNODE
@NODE REPETITION

Who wants to purchase a newly released CD, and find it half full of
files that are on other Amiga CD's in your collection?  The policy for
the Compendium Deluxe series is value for money, we do not see the need
to have the same piece of software in your CD collection more than once.
This is not an update disk with 50% of the material from the last disk!
While compiling this CD, we have tried not to repeat files that are on
other Amiga PDCD collections, we have taken many, many hours of our time
to cross reference this CD with the following CD's;

- 17 Bit Collection, 17 Bit Continuation, 17 Bit Phase 4, CDPD1 through
4, Euroscene 1, Aminet 1 through 7, Hottest 4 and 5, Emerald Mines,
Utilities Professional, Fresh Fish 1 through 6, Frozen Fish 04-94, Gold
Fish 1 and 2, Clip art PCX 1 and 2, Clip art GIF, Assassins Games,
Professional fonts and Clipart, Ultimedia 1 and 2, Speccy Sensations,
Sound and Graphics Workshop, and the following Weird Science disks;
Fonts, Clipart, Network, Multi-Media Toolkit 1 and 2, Animations and
Sounds Terrific.

As you may see, we have added to this list since CD2, and we will keep
adding to it as more CD's are released.  Of course some minor
duplication will still appear, when dealing with this amount of files
it's bound to, especially in the Protracker module and executable demo
area, people keep renaming them, so you can have the same module on 10
differant CD's with 10 differant names, but we even tried to fix the
module name problem.

We have renamed all the modules back to the authors ORIGINAL FILENAME,
also removing and problem ascii characters such as "*", "#" etc.  We
then truncated the filename to eight characters, followed by ".mod".
This has ensured compatability with all Amiga players, plus PC users
who wish to use this CD (after feedback from our first CD).  If we
find a mod that we know is on another Amiga CD, we do not include it.

This CD was compiled similtaneously with 17 Bit's Phase V, please note
the compilers on both projects where unaware of what the other CD
contents where to be, however we forsee little duplication.

This CD was finished on 1st of September 1995, there is about 585 meg
of material new to CD on here, a mixture of both new material from
this Spring/Summer, plus some older material that hasn't appeared on
an Amiga CD before.  There is a further 45 meg of Hard Drive Demo's.
Some of the HD Demo's have appeared on other CD's before, but NEVER in
a ready to run format.


@ENDNODE

@NODE SYSOPS

BBS owners (Sysops) will find this CD especially useful, as it is fully
"BBS Ready" (see your BBS documentation for further info), with
files.bbs support.

@ENDNODE
@NODE YOURVIEWS

We would love to improve and cater for the needs of our users, so we
need to receive feedback from you - what would you like to see on our
future CD's?  What didn't you like about this CD?  What did you like
about this CD?  How could we have improved it?  Do you think CD's
produced by other companies better and if so in what way?

The compilers of this CD can be reached via 17 Bits usual address.




@ENDNODE
@NODE CONTRIBUTIONS

We are interested in receiving your files for future CD's, whether you
have written a program, drawn or traced a picture (objects and pictures
appreciated), written a music module, typed a useful text file, Made a
Demo in Demo Maniac or Video Tracker etc. (data and executable
appreciated), have some useful source-code (in Assembler, Amos, Blitz
Basic etc.), or anything else that may be of interest to others, please
mail them to 17 Bit's address.  Company Product demos are also very
welcome.  The only rule is the file(s) sent must be freely distributable,
but you may still retain copyright if you so wish.  All disks will be
returned, probably containing something similar to what you sent us,
which we hope will be of interest to you.

@ENDNODE
@NODE CREDITSFORTHISCD

Compilation:                    17 Bit.

Cover art:                      Paul Townend.

Last Minute Bugfixing:          Robert Crossley.

Mastering:                      17 Bit, mastering service available,
                                ring for details.

Tools used:                     Viewtek by Thomas Krehbiel.
                                PP More by Nico Francois.
                                UnDMS by Parcon software.
                                Hippo Player by K-P Koljonen.
                                LX by Darkspirit.
                                LHA by Stefan Boberg.
                                Amigaguide (c) EsCom.

Ascii art:                      Taken and adapted from various Ascii
                                collections, various authors.

Thanks go to:                   Telebug of the Assassins for written
                                permission to include his highly
                                respected game and Utility
                                compilations.

                                Rattesnake (Don) and Nightshadow (Ian)
                                for file support.

                                Visage Computing for Hardware Support.

                                Marcus, Rob and the 17 Bit guys for being
                                there!

                                And to EsCom for the best home and
                                business Computer.

Thanks also to:                 Jason, Ric, Beef, Doozer, Graham, Andrew,
                                Mark, Gary, Charlie, Oddie, George and Paul.

P.S. We think the ascii headers will catch on, everyone will be
doing them by 1996!

@ENDNODE
@NODE COPYRIGHT

This compilation is copyright to 17Bit in 1995, all rights reserved.
No claims to the ownership of trademarks or copyright of the individual
contents are made.  Every effort has been made to ensure the contents of
this CD do not infringe any copyright or distribution agreement.  All
files on this CD remain copyright to their individual creators.

The menu used for this CD was created using EsCom's versatile AmigaGuide.

@ENDNODE
@NODE TECHNICAL

Sorry, but we cannot help with technical enquiries involving individual
public domain files, these should be taken up with the relevant authors.
Other technical enquiries about this, or our future CD's are welcome.

@ENDNODE
@node prog

I'm sure lots of you programmers out there are often short of ideas for
useful utilities to program.  Here's some tools the developers of this CD
would find very useful.

- A system font editor that actually works!!!
- An Animation thumbnail maker, that does them to the same standard that
  the ocs-anim thumbnails are done to.
- An Mpeg player/converter that actually works.
- An AVI to iff anim converter that does 16 bit AVI's.
- A font converter that does Truetype and Adobe to Postscript etc.
- A tester that checks protracker modules are complete and work.
- A module describer that produces descriptions similar to those on
  Compendium Deluxes #1 amd 2.
- A simple Ham-8 to 256 colour converter, CLI (not workbench) based.
- A sound sample converter (Wav, Voc, Raw etc.) that uses datatypes to
  convert samples to iff, CLI (not workbench) based.
- A program to truncate all files in a directory to 8.3 characters to
  be PC compatable, eg; thisisademo.anim to thisisad.ani.
- A utility to search .zip and .arj (and maybe more?) archives and
  extract only music mods and graphic files.
- A tool to let .arj and .zip dearchive to directories other than
  DH0: (sys:).
- A Protracker module datatype to print all info about it.
- A PC windows .ico to Amiga .icon converter.  CLI (not workbench) based.
- A hard-drive backup tool that will let the archive be backed-up and
  retrieved on all formats, eg; Amiga, PC, Mac, archimedes etc. (use 720k
  dos disks!).
- A Recipe book program using PC Menu Master datafiles.

Make these useful ideas shareware, make some cash too!

@endnode

;phew!