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The Final Frontier 2
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Final Frontier 2 (Disk 2 of 3).adf
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REVIEWS
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2022-11-05
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SOFTWARE REVIEWS
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PUBLIC DOMAIN
FLEET MANOEUVRE by Tobias Richter
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Reviewed by Simon Plumbe
------------------------
Yet another animation by Trekkin' Tobi, this time it's Disk 23 in his
animation range. What else can I say! Okay, it's a 1 MEG animation, following
the flight of a small Workbee vessel, as viewed from behind the craft, flying
in and around a group of seven other vessels including the Reliant and the
Enterprise.
This is probably his most famous animation to-date, and you can see why.
There are a large number of very detailed Videoscape objects, and it runs for
about 15 - 20 seconds. It may be short compared to other non-Tobias
animations around, but you always get a feeling of satisfaction when watching
one of his disks and you are always impressed.
Once again, as with all Tobias anims, there is some stunning "camera" work
with great panning effects. Why this guy isn't directing films for a living,
I don't know! In short, this is probably his best work he has ever done with
Videoscape and it acts as a great advert for the package. Rating - 96%
AGATRON SLIDESHOW 10 by Tobias Richter
--------------------------------------
Reviewed by Simon Plumbe
------------------------
Last issue we looked at Slideshow 12 from good old TR, feature stills from
his TNG video, and here is disk 10, crammed with slides from his TREK film.
There are more slides on the disk than usual for Tobias (21 to be exact), and
unlike his previous slideshows, the majority of these are ray-traced overscan
HAM - no interlace mode, so obviously they're not as good as the other disks,
but we get twice as many stills. With saying that, these are better than most
other people's interlaced slides!
For those of you who haven't seen his video yet, it's a classic tale of good
versus evil, Federation versus the Klingons and most of the stills depict
either the Enterprise or a Klingon vessel or three. There are a few combat
shots as well.
These take up the bulk of the disk (18 of the stills) and the remaining three
are of a beach scene with several Amigas relaxing in the sun(!), a shot of
the space station from Aliens (I think) plus a renditioning of the scene from
STAR TREK III where a battle damaged Enterprise encounters the Klingon Bird
of Prey captained by Kruge (this picture was created by a guy called Michael
Clinard using objects created by Tobias).
Again they are accompanied by the obligatory backing tune, but this time it's
not too bad. But I'd still rather have more art - well, that's what a
slideshow is, isn't it?
A great disk for Trekkers, art fans and Tobias Richter fans alike (I think
I've just covered ALL Amiga owners there!). The only reservations I have is
that it might not be worth getting if you already have the video itself.
Rating - 81%
AGATRON ANIMATION DISK 34 by Tobias Richter
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Reviewed by Simon Plumbe
------------------------
I promise that this is the last disk by Tobias that we're going to review
(well, for this issue, anyway!). This disk features three short ray-traced,
HAM animations taken from his first STAR TREK video, produced in 1990. The
three animations are "Leaving Space Office" - the flight of a shuttle leaving
a space station, "Docking" - the same shuttle docking with the Enterprise and
"Attack Mode" - a Klingon Bird of Prey swooping down with it`s wings folding,
ready to attack.
All three were created using Reflections, the German ray-tracing package, and
they use VERY detailed objects. Just imagine art from his his slideshows, and
then imagine it moving!!!! As with all his other disks, the direction is
flawless and the lighting for each scene is perfect. Unusually for Tobias,
all three will run on a half-meg machine.
They are short, but unlike his earlier animations these are ray-traced, so
that's understandable. With saying that, I'd rather have a 5 second Tobias
Richter animation than a 2 minute animation from anyone else!!! What else can
I add, apart from... GET THIS DISK!! Rating - 95%
AGATRON ANIMATION DISK 38 by Tobias Richter
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Reviewed by Simon Plumbe
------------------------
Okay, so I lied! This is the latest disk from Trekkin' Tobi and it is a 2 MEG
animation dedicated to the late, great Gene Roddenberry. The animation starts
off with a shuttle pod flying out of from the centre of the screen, followed
by the Enterprise (film version) and then followed by the Enterprise (TNG).
After that, a large version of the TNG logo spins into the centre of the
screen and some transforming text appears above and below the logo. All this
is accompanied by a reasonable piece of music.
Why 2 MEG? Well, the animation has been crunched with PowerPacker to make it
fit onto one disk and it is one of Tobi's largest animations anyway! The
animation is stunning and Tobi has used some great panning effects to give a
real impression of size and speed of the vessels. This is one of his better
disks although the colours do look a little strange on the two Enterprise's
but it is a great tribute to Gene.
Not his best animation ever, but if you have the memory this disk should be
part of your collection. Rating - 84%
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION TRIVIA CHALLENGE - RELEASE 2
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Reviewed by Simon Plumbe
------------------------
This is the second set of questions for this great trivia game, this time
covering the second season, to accompany the first release reviewed in the
last issue. There are another 500 questions with, again, another 50 or so
audio/visual questions.
The game can be found on Fish Disks 506 and 507, but once again it has been
archived, and if you thought the first release was difficult to install, just
wait and see what you have to do to get version 2 up and running!!
If you are not a very patient person, or if you don't have a large Amiga set
up (min. 2 drives and 2 MEG) then forget this game! Try and get a copy from
someone who has already gone through the trouble of unarchiving it!
Obviously, you need the original game with the questions for season one,
already set up and ready to use. You then have to read the docs, read another
file which tells you to delete certain files from the original game and then
copy an entire directory across onto a new disk as the game has to be
modified to allow it to use additional data disks for the quiz. You also need
three blank disks and you should ideally have a CLI utility such as SID.
Why the large amount of memory? Well, in total there are 8 files that need to
be un-archived, and these take up a total combined disk space of 1.5MB! It is
obviously easier to copy all the files onto a RAM disk, along with Lharc (to
un-arc the files - this is included on Fish Disk 507) and this will speed the
process up immensely. I dread to think how long it will take without using
this method!
All I can say is that it took me over 2 hours to get the game up and running
and that was using 3 drives and 3 Meg of RAM!! If you have a printer, it will
be slightly quicker as you will be able to print the instructions and read
them at your leisure. Otherwise, you'll need a pen and paper as well!
Now, the game itself! Well, my review for the first edition still stands, as
this is basically the same game, however there have been quite a few changes
and most of them aren't just cosmetic!
There have been a selection of new options added to the main menu, allowing
you to choose what seasons the questions will be based on, so if you already
know all the answers to the season one edition, you can just play season two.
Also, the entire game can now be played with the keyboard, which is a far
better way to play.
The best part of the new system has got to be the option to play the game
using a touch-sensitive screen!! I haven't tried this yet, but I'm seriously
considering buying a touch-sensitive monitor just to play this game!!!!! (All
I need to do then is redesign my bedroom to look like the bridge of the
Enterprise...!)
The only real flaw is that version two appears to have been written to use an
overscan NTSC screen so you only get to see two-thirds of the screen in use
at any one time and for some reason, the game doesn't appear to run in
overscan on a PAL system, so there is a slight cut-off on the right hand side
of the screen and the score-line at the bottom is only visible when a picture
is displayed!
Ultimately, despite this minor gripe, it's still a fantastic game, but if
you're not a patient person and aren't very confident with using the CLI,
find someone who has a ready-to-use version and copy it off them! Otherwise,
it's on Fish Disks 506 and 507. Rating - 97%
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WARNING!
--------
You may be aware that there is a game by Tobias Richter, Cubulus, that has
been available as PD for quite a while. Well, I hope most of you will know
already (and incase you don't read this, I've mentioned it it the news as
well!) but it is NOT a PD game. It is a commercial release in GERMANY by a
software house called SOFTWARE 2000. If you are sent this, please blank the
disk and if you know anyone who runs a PD library, get them to remove it from
their range.
NEXT ISSUE
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More PD reviews and several full reviews of Electronic Arts' new game, STAR
TREK: THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY. If you've got this, send us a review or maybe
some reviews of TREK PD we haven't covered yet - remember, there are still
about 50 Tobias Richter disks to go, along with games and slideshows from a
host of other authors.
Send them to:
The Final Frontier - Software Reviews
c/o Simon Plumbe
14 Rousdon Grove
Great Barr
Birmingham
B43 5HN
ENGLAND