Totalamiga-04.pdf

Interviewed:

Fleecy Moss

Tutorials:

CDROM Explained

DOSDrivers

Layers

Reviewed:

Photogenics 4.2

ImageFX 4.1

IBrowse 2.1

Cam Control

Olympus C1000L

EZTower Mk. IV

BMon

Wasted Dreams

TZer0

Ther Wanderer

Amiga

Sold!

First news

on page 9

Issue 4 - Winter 1999/2000

CONTENTS

Contents

The Chairman

Speaks

Editorial

News

SEAL Update ............................... 3

News Items .................................. 4

Games Update............................. 8

News Flash .................................. 9

Amiga Update .............................. 10

A s you’ve undoubtedly noticed

W ell what a weird three

Photogenics 4

available and

on demonstra-

tion (cool),

ImageFX 4

available (nice), Wipeout on display

(great) and of course many innovative

hardware items.

Strange that a platform that is supposed

to be dead and buried, has so many en-

thusiastic people that are talented doing

everything in their power to keep it all

hanging together, what other type of

computer platform has that kind of

loyalty? Maybe that’s what an Amiga

(the computer not the company) is all

about, a combination of the hardware,

OS and just as important the people with

ideas and enthusiasm that keep the

momentum going (without the aid of

Amiga, the company).

People

In the last month or two several SEALs

have been getting into Mac emulation

(with help from Tony Johnson who’s

been using a pseudo Mac for ages)

which is an excellent way to get industry

standard applications from the likes of

Microsoft and Adobe to run on your

Amiga if you absolutely must have them.

we’re very late with this issue,

to be honest the main reason

for this was the bout of doom and gloom

which hit the Amiga after WoA and

sapped our motivation. We recovered

with the release of OS 3.5 but then we

were being called on by SEAL members

for help installing the new OS and

ROMs. Finally a dose of ‘flu scuppered a

per-Christmas release. Anyway we’re

back now with a great issue (we hope)

and plenty of plans for the future...

months since our last maga-

zine, there have certainly

been some ups and downs. The World

of Amiga was a major high point from

SEAL’s point of view, and on the down

side of the Amiga world, it has to be the

“plug” being pulled on the MCC

promised by Amiga (or should that be

“Amintelsoft”)

Features

Fleecy Moss Interview ................. 11

Amiga: The Future? ..................... 10

CDROM Explained ...................... 14

Raffle

At the SEAL meetings on the 29th of

October and the 12th of November we

sold tickets for SEAL’s first raffle. The

major prizes of ImageFX 4 and an

Amiga Format subscription were

donated by Nova Design and Future

Publishing respectively with several

other smaller prizes being donated by

members. Over 100 tickets were sold

and the prize winners were drawn at the

meeting on the 12th of November. Tony

Johnson, one of SEAL’s founder

members, won ImageFX and Steve Hirst

got the subscription to Amiga Format.

Thanks to everyone who took part!

Let me tell you about WoA, without

doubt one of the greatest I have

attended, mainly because for the first

time we (SEAL) were involved in the or-

ganising, and had our own user group

display table as did many other user

groups this year. It was great to meet so

many people in the flesh, such as Kermit

Woodall, Andrew Korn, Urban Müller,

Paul Nolan, Jim Collas (whoops), Ben

Vost, and the QNX team (whoops again)

to name a few. SEAL were certainly very

busy at the show, from sorting out soft-

ware/hardware problems, people making

enquiries about SEAL or CLUBBED, or

just general chit chat about anything

Amiga related, it was great. We also

sold many issues of CLUBBED, and

Seal printed the posters and signs on

site, which were dotted around the

floors, (luckily Robert brought his HP A3

printer with him). The best part of all was

meeting you Amiga loving loonies,

couldn’t get enough of ya. The show

may have not been the biggest, but it

was certainly interesting with the

proposed MCC mock up on display

(whoops), IBrowse 2 on release (yeah),

Reviews

Photogenics 4.2 ........................... 18

ImageFX 4 ................................... 22

CamControl.................................. 24

Olympus C1000L Digicam ........... 25

IBrowse 2.1 .................................. 26

Eyetech EZTower MkIV ............... 28

BMon............................................ 29

Wasted Dreams ........................... 30

The Wanderer (Music CD) ........... 31

Tzer0............................................ 32

Mini Review: VisionFX ............... 36

Incredibly it’s over a year since the first

issue of Clubbed rolled off the presses

(well my printer to be more accurate!) so

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank

everyone who’s helped to make

Clubbed a success. That includes

people who’ve contributed their time and

work, SEAL members and also of

course all our subscribers.

of activity in the software and hardware

markets as you can see from the an-

nouncements in our news pages. It’s

also great to be able to review not one

but two recently upgraded Image

processors. ImageFX 4.0 builds on the

success of version 3 (reviewed in

Clubbed issue 1) with powerful anima-

tion features and new effects (review on

page 22) while Photogenics 4 (page 18)

starts with a clean canvas to produce a

brand new package with only a few con-

cepts related to earlier versions.

But we cannot survive forever on en-

thusiasm alone, we need new hardware

and software to take us into the

noughty`s (geddit 80`s, 90`s, 00`s), be-

cause although we have tried to keep up

with technology with the many add-ons

we all have attached to our machines, at

the end of the day it is a 80`s design

machine and long overdue to be

upgraded, so it`s a real shame that

Amiga (Gateway) pulled the plug. But

there may be some light at the end of

the tunnel in the form of the Phoenix

project that is being considered by the

real Amigans, lets hope so.

This fourth issue also means that if

you’re one of our initial subscribers who

started with issue 1 you’ll find a sub-

scription renewal letter with your maga-

zine. We hope everyone of you enjoys

Clubbed and will want to re-subscribe. If

for any reason you don’t please let us

know why... we can’t make the maga-

zine better for you without your input.

Since issue 3 some pretty big changes

have happened at Amiga which you’ll

find reported in our news section and

our Amiga: the future? feature. It seems

like we won’t be seeing a new computer

bearing the Amiga name from Amiga.

However despite the antics of the parent

company the Amiga world keeps turn-

ing. Haage and Partner have released

OS3.5 (by all accounts early sales have

been good too) and Phase 5 should be

releasing their accelerator cards based

on Motorola’s latest PowerPC 7400 (G4)

processor with the QNX Neutrino OS

soon. Met@box have also shown their

Amijoe G3 card for the A1200 at the

Cologne show. There are also several

plans afoot to bring a successor to the

Classic Amiga to market from groups of

current Amiga users and developers...

of course only time will tell if these come

to fruition.

Support

Back to Basics (DOSDrivers) ...... 37

Layers Tutorial ............................. 33

Next Issue, Helpline etc............... 39

Back Issues ................................. 39

Gallery.......................................... 40

WoA

Several SEAL members were involved

with the organisation of this year’s World

of Amiga show held at the Kensington

Town Hall Conference Centre on the

24th and 25th of July. Mick, Gary and

Robert headed down to the venue on

the Friday to help setup. For the first

time usergroups were able to have their

own table at the show, of course we

jumped at the opportunity to advertise

SEAL as well as add to the show. We

took various banners, posters and

plenty of copies of Clubbed with us

along with Rob’s A3000 and printer, I

think I can safely say that ours was the

best looking user group table.

At WoA we spoke to several dealers and

they all told the same story... Amiga

hardware is still selling reasonably well

but the same cannot be said for soft-

ware. There are some great packages

out there now at relatively low cost and

a new wave of fantastic games appear-

ing starting with Wipeout 2097. What’s

the point of a kick-ass powerful system if

you don’t have the software to run on it?

So please people buy the software you

will use and keep Amiga companies in

business developing new versions.

Do The

Thing

Blurb

Clubbed is published quarterly by South Essex Amiga

Link. For subscription details see the back page.

Editor: Robert Williams

Design: Robert Williams

Contributors:

Jeff Martin

Martin Miller

Gary Storm

Mick Sutton

Proof Reading:

Sharon Sutton

Gary Storm

Cover Art: Robert Williams using ImageFX 4.1 and

Photogenics 4.2

If you have any queries suggestions or want to contact us

for any reason please use one of the following:

EMail:

SS7 5AH,

ENGLAND.

Telephone: +44 (0) 1268 569937

(19:00 - 22:00 GMT only please).

The views expressed in this magazine are those of the

author of each piece, they do not necessarily reflect the

views of the editor, other contributors or SEAL.

Please Note: Clubbed is produced by SEAL members in

their spare time, while we will always strive to produce the

magazine on time and include all the advertised contents

this is not always possible due to other commitments. The

price you pay for Clubbed covers our costs and nothing

more, we don’t make a profit from it.

If you wish to contact a contributor please send your

message to one of the addresses above and we will pass

it on.

Amiga is a registered trademark and the Amiga logo,

AmigaDOS, Amiga Kickstart, Amiga Workbench,

Autoconfig, Bridgeboard, and Powered by Amiga are

trademarks of AMIGA International, Inc. / Gateway, Inc.

All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their

respective owners.

We’d like to make Clubbed more “in-

teractive” so we need your input!

Got a question you’d like answered

or an opinion you’d like to share?

Write to us and we’ll include it in a

letters page.

To finish on a brighter note you’ll hope-

fully notice we’ve done a slight re-design

this issue which we think makes

Clubbed look fresher and more profes-

sional. Any comments or suggestions on

the design and content of the mag are

very welcome.

Our table in the usergroup area and got

an excellent flow of people keeping us

very busy especially on the Saturday.

We sold about 100 copies of Clubbed

and took 20 new sub- scriptions which

was excellent. We were able to help out

many Amigans who visited the SEAL

table and Mick had a long chat with

Urban Muller of Aminet fame about digi-

tal cameras. Several SEALs were able

Got a tip for other readers or even an

article up your sleeve? Send it in and

you could very well see your name in

print.

clubbed@williams.demon.co.uk

WWW:

http://seal.amiga.tm/

Robert Williams

Editor

Got a suggestion or comment on the

magazine? Let us know and we’ll try

and make Clubbed better for you.

Post:

Clubbed,

26 Wincoat Drive,

BENFLEET,

Essex,

Even in these rather uncertain times for

Amiga there’s still a reasonable amount

CLUBBED - Issue 4

Winter 1999

NEWS

Amiga

Activated

Amiga OS 3.5 & Boing Bag 1

SEAL Update Continued...

generated a huge

amount of discussion.

Regardless of the high jinx at Amiga OS

3.5 was released as planned on the 18th

of October. Several SEAL members

have the new OS installed and in most

cases the installation went smoothly and

the OS works very well. Compatibility

with existing applications and utilities is

very good and the new features are

welcome, in particular the new

Workbench is much more usable even

though the changes made to it are fairly

minor. The upgrade is pretty good value

for money especially for those with basic

systems. Even people who have

upgraded their Amigas with software like

TurboPrint and already have Internet

software will find many things to help

them, some examples are:

to be a new system, not based on

Turbo Print or Studio.

• Internet support including the Miami

TCP/IP stack, Webbrowser (AWeb)

and a new EMail client. The EMailer is

based on a new EMail library allowing

integration of EMail into applications.

• Increased reliability and bug-fixes

In the future we’ll be

trying some other ideas

for keeping members

(especially those not on

the ‘net) up to date with

Amiga happenings. Ideas in-

clude the SEALWeb Offline disk

mentioned in the Web Pages section

and a news sheet at each meeting.

One nice touch is the large selection of

backdrops which compliment the glow

icons and make the system look great

straight out of the box.

The first issue of

AmigActive hit the

news stands on

the 30th of

September, the

new magazine

covers all

aspects of the

Amiga with news, reviews

and how-tos on hardware, applications

and games. There is a strong leaning

towards the creative side of Amiga use

with plenty of tutorials, including mini-

tutorials with some reviews. The

AmigActive cover CD is tied closely to

the magazine with extra resources for

most of the features, demos and the

usual collection of useful freely dis-

tributable software all accesed from a

HTML based interface. AWeb is used as

the default browser because it can run

programs from HTML links, combined

with either Directory Opus Magellan or

Workbench 3.5 this allows directories

and programs on the disc to be

accessed directly from the HTML pages.

Understandably as the first Amiga OS

upgrade for 5 years, compiled by a team

who had not worked on the Amiga OS

before there are a number of minor

problems with the initial release. To help

fix these problems the first free “Boing

Bag” update to OS 3.5 was released on

the 24th of December, this updates most

of the major system libraries improving

stability and the ROM update which

failed on some systems.

Smaller, less obvious additions to the

OS include:

to meet Jim Collas, Alan Havermose

and Petro face to face and question

them about the future of the platform.

Highlights of the show included

demonstrations of AmigaOS 3.5,

ImageFX 4 and Wildfire not forgetting of

course Paul Nolan giving his brilliant

demo of Photogenics 4. While current

events (see our Amiga: the future? item

for full details) have put much of what

happened at the show in serious doubt it

was still a very enjoyable experience,

enhanced by being a part of the or-

ganisation.

Web Pages

Gary’s been doing a great job keeping

the website up-to-date with all the most

important news in the Amiga world in

addition he has interviewed several

luminaries connected to these events.

The news and in particular the inter-

views have attracted lots of visitors to

the website and have been mentioned

on all the major Amiga news services.

By the time you read this we expect to

have received our 10000th hit!

With so much useful and interesting in-

formation on the website Martin Miller

pointed out that many SEAL members

who are not on the Internet are missing

out. So the SEALWeb - Offline disk was

born. This disk contains most of the

SEAL website on one double density

disk that can be viewed on any Amiga

with a web browser installed. SEALWeb

- Offline disks were given out to

members not on the Internet at the

SEAL meeting on Friday the 15th of

October and will be refreshed with the

latest information at each meeting.

• Improved icon system (backward com-

patible with original Amiga and

NewIcons icons)

• Workbench with more short cuts and

progress requesters (not threaded yet

though)

• Fully AREXX scriptable Workbench

• Streamlined preferences programs

using new Reaction GUI

• Integrated PPC support (WarpOS)

• New Reaction GUI system for future

applications

• Rewritten asl.library for faster file lis-

tings and more requester options

• Improved Installer

• Improved datatypes

• Support for disks greater than 4.3Gb

including new scsi.device and fast file

system. Complimented by new ver-

sions of HDToolbox and the Format

command.

• Full 24bit printing support with drivers

for popular modern printers. Contrary

to what we first understood this seems

So what are you waiting for? Get out

there and buy OS 3.5 for your own

benefit now and to prove there is a mar-

ket for future more radically improved

upgrades.

For more information and to download

the Boing Bag Visit www.amiga.com .

Meetings

At the meeting immediately after the

WoA show SEAL members were treated

to a video of the show and the Saturday

evening conference taken by Gary

Storm. This allowed members who

weren’t able to attend and those who

didn’t stay for the conference to get a

feel for what went on and the announ-

cements. The other two meetings in

August were fairly quiet with many

people away on their holidays or out

enjoying the warm evenings but even so

those that did attend were kept busy

solving many problems and showing off

their WoA purchases.

G4 On The Horizon

Amiga Active is available monthly at

£4.99 complete with cover CD. Most

WHSmiths have the magazine as do

some smaller newsagents, if you can’t

find it your local newsagent should be

able to get it for you. Subscriptions are

available at £55 a year.

Phase 5 announced their PowerPC G3

based accelerator cards for the A1200

and A3/4000 earlier in the year, over the

last few months the cards have had

several changes of specification, specifi-

cally dropping the built-in SCSI interface

and adding USB and Firewire support.

SCSI, DMA IDE and a CyberVision NG

graphics card will be offered as options.

Just when the specification seemed

settled Phase 5 announced that they

were dropping the G3 in favour of

Motorola’s brand new PowerPC G4

processor used in the latest Power

Macs.

As the G4 350 but with a 400Mhz

Processor.

run AmigaOS and most programs.

Phase 5's soloution to this problem is to

supply the boards with QNX’s Nutrino

operating system and run AmigaOS in

emulation on top of this. It remains to be

seen how well integrated and transpar-

ent this system will be as well as what

performance it will deliver. The G4 cards

will be shipped with a 512KB boot flash

ROM and software to enable the user to

select between up to three operating

systems at boot time. This would mean

that if Haage and Partner port their

680x0 emulator you could boot into this,

a possible Linux implementation or

Neutrino.

CyberStorm G4 400 - 799E (£665)

For the A3/4000 FastSlot. Spec. as the

Blizzard G4 400 plus 2 12Mb USB ports.

http://www.amigactive.com/

Subscription Hotline:

(01202) 296293

The Clubbed website has had a major

overhaul since the last issue. The layout

has been much improved with most sec-

tions now split onto different pages for

quicker loading and new graphics.

We’ve also added some submission

guidelines for anyone who would like to

write something for the magazine (a

printed copy is available on request).

Several mini PCI cards have been

announced and are scheduled for

release along with the accelerators.

Fusion PPC

September saw the departure of Jim

Collas from Amiga and the subsequent

executive updates all of which we com-

municated to members at SEAL

meetings. As you can imagine this

• CyberVisionNG 3D gaphics card with

32MB of video RAM - 180E (£145)

• Ultra2 Wide SCSI - 150E (£120)

• Ultra SCSI - 80E (£65)

• Ultra-DMA 66 IDE/ATA - 80E (£65)

• IEEE-1394 (Firewire) Controller with 2

ports at 400Mbps - 100E (£85)

Microcode Soloutions have set a date

for the release of FusionPPC, their

PowerMac emulator for PPC Amiga

systems. Delivery was promised 60

days after pre-payments were collected

which sets a date of the 20th of

November.

Time to Eat Humble Pie...

There are now 3 boards in their G4

range:

Phase 5 are at: http://www.phase5.de/

WebVision can be registered more

cheaply than we stated in our product

information box. Neil Bothwick handles

registrations in the UK and it costs just

£12 to get your keyfile which unlocks the

full version. Full details are included in

the WebVision archive.

Over the last three issues we haven’t

mentioned Sharon Sutton (Mick’s wife)

who’s done sterling service proof read-

ing articles and actually getting the mag-

azines labelled, stamped and posted

since the first issue. Everyone at

Clubbed and I’m sure all our readers

really appreciate her hard work espe-

cially as she has two young children to

look after!

Blizzard G4 350 - 649E (£565)

The CyberVisionNG and Wide SCSI

controller are confirmed, the other three

modules will only be produced if Phase

5 receive 250 orders for them.

Phase 5 products are available in the

UK from:

Assuming everything goes to plan

FusionPPC will open a library of up to

date Mac software to PPC Amiga users.

Once released FusionPPC will cost

£149.95 and requires a PCI PowerMac

ROM and a copy of MacOS.

• Motorola PowerPC 7400 processor

(G4) at 350Mhz

• 1Mb Backside Cache 2 100Mhz SO-

DIMM Slots for up to 1GB of RAM

• 2 MiniPCI slots for future expansion

• 1 Full size PCI slot for a standard PCI

card or a PCI bus board

Blizzard G4 400 - 799E (£665)

White Knight Technology

http://welcome.to/white-knight

(01920) 822321

Blittersoft:

http://www.blittersoft.com/

(01908) 610170

As you will no doubt notice from the

specifications these accelerators do not

have a 680x0 series processor as the

current PowerUP cards do, therefore

they have to use a software emulator to

Fusion is distributed by Blittersoft:

http://www.blittersoft.com/

(01908) 610170

I forgot to credit Gary Storm for writing

the introductory paragraphs of my “Get

Netted” feature... thanks Gary.

CLUBBED - Issue 4

Winter 1999

NEWS

Browser Bonanza

Photogenics

4.3

BoXeR Update

Candy Pro Update

The popular instant graphics program

Candy Factory Pro has been updated to

version 1.03, the new version con-

centrates on improving stability and the

user interface. One SEAL member got

an error after installing the update that

the tabs.gadget was missing. Copying

the file from the MetaView distribution

on the original program CD into your

classes/gadgets/ directory solves this.

Download the 1.03 update from

http://www.titancomputer.de/

As we anticipated in issue 3

there’s been plenty of activity on

the web browser front in the last

couple of months, here’s the cur-

rent status of the “big three”.

currently available cards being written.

However even if only a couple of

reasonably priced graphics cards were

supported the BoXeR will look pretty

attractive compared to expanding an

A1200, particularly when you consider it

already has fast serial and parallel ports

and uses cheaper RAM than an ac-

celerated A1200.

Since the last issue Paul Nolan has

released two updates to Photogenics 4.

Versions 4.1 and 4.2 have made the

package much more reliable and added

some extra effects and features. A beta

of version 4.3 has been released for

public testing and should be available

soon. A full review of version 4.2 can be

found on page of this issue.

IBrowse 2.0 was released at

the WoA show but purchasers

were disappointed to find that

the version on sale was in

fact a pre-release with its fair

share of bugs. However

about a month later HiSoft

were able to release an im-

proved 2.1 version. 2.1 is

now usable but far from

perfect, a further 2.2

update has been promised al-

though currently there is no release

date. We have a review of the upgrade

on page 26.

Voyager 3 is now available after 5

public beta test versions. The current

release version is 3.0a which fixed a bug

in the Javascript implementation. V3

adds many features that were lacking in

previous version and seems to have the

most active development at the moment.

Visit v3.vapor.com for further details.

Blittersoft have released updated

specifications for their Amiga compatible

BoXeR motherboard including prices for

systems based on the board:

In an IRC conference at the Cologne

show Mick Tinker (the BoXeR’s desig-

ner) stated that the final prototype

motherboards will be finished before the

end of November. With time for testing

this could mean production BoXeRs will

be ready early in the new year.

• 100% Amiga compatible.

• Motorola 68040 or 68060 at 25-75MHz

in a single processor socket.

• Integrated chip-set, AGA compatible

but with performance enhancements.

• Most peripherals support high speed

DMA transfers.

• No CHIP RAM limits.

• 2 x 64-bit DIMM sockets (low cost) for

combined use as FAST/CHIP.

• Dual IDE Hard disk interface, supports

fast IDE modes, including UDMA.

• Flash ROM 2Mb. Provides Kickstart,

resident modules and future enhan-

cements.

• High Density floppy drive interface.

• Real Time Clock.

• 4 x Active PCI slots

• Amiga Video slot

• Expansion connector to support 2 x

Zorro 3 slots

• Connector for full 64-bit PowerPC ex-

pansion card

• PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse ports.

• Amiga Joystick and Mouse ports.

Z4 Bus

Download the upgrade and public beta

versions from:

http://www.paulnolan.com

Prices

Blittersoft are offering two complete

BoXeR systems the BoXeR 4 with a

68040 40Mhz or the BoXeR 6 which has

a 68060 50Mhz processor, both share

the following common features:

ICS Is Scantastic!

Wolf Faust, the author of the Studio print

enhancement system, has recently

released a new product on Aminet. ICS

is a scanner calibration system which

automatically colour corrects your scans

without manual adjustments. ICS works

by analysing a scan of an accurately

produced target image, and uses this

information to correct future scans.

Apollo have released a new bus board

which gives numerous expansion

options to A1200 owners. The new Z4

board includes 5 Zorro II slots, 2 custom

slots named Zorro 4, and no less than 4

clock ports. A graphics card and fast

IDE interface are promised for the Zorro

4 slots which should give performance

similar to existing Zorro III cards, al-

though they have little in common ex-

cept the name. Two of the Zorro II slots

can run at twice the normal speed

(about 2.5Mb/s) with specially adapted

cards but still share the normal ZII

limitations (8Mb address space and

16bit wide data path).

The Zorro 4 bus board costs about £130

and is available from Eyetech, Blittersoft

and Power Computing.

Active Abandon

Retail

conversion and postage to the UK). I’ve

recently received a target from Wolf and

the improvement in my scans is really

fantastic and I don’t have to spend time

tweaking each scan. ICS is easy to use

(although “under the bonnet” it is very

advanced, Wolf has spent 2 years in

development) and works with any scan-

ner software and scanner, it is directly

supported by ScanQuix 4 and ScanTrax

2.2. If you’ve got a scanner, get ICS

now!

• Choice of colour Tower

• 64Mb RAM

• 6.4Gb UDMA Hard drive

• 40 Speed CD-ROM

• Keyboard and Mouse (PS/2)

• Upgradable to PPC

• KickStart 3.1

• OS 3.5

• Multimedia Speakers

Amitrix have released a minor upgrade

to AWe b bringing it up to version 3.3, a

cut down version is also included with

OS3.5 so this browser will be getting

more exposure in the coming months.

Until recently calibration targets were

only available from professional photo-

graphic and DTP suppliers at a high cost

(£30 - £50). Now Wolf has produced his

own calibration targets which he sells for

DM25 (about £10 including currency

ICS is available for free on Aminet in the

hard/misc directory. The archive in-

cludes details of how to purchase a

BoXeR 4:

£799.95 incl. VAT

Hopefully we’ll have reviews of the latest

Voyager and AWeb in the next issue.

BoXeR 6: £899.95 incl. VAT

For more information you can contact

Blittersoft at:

http://www.blittersoft.com/

The addition of PCI slots to the BoXeR

could be a master stroke as a myriad of

cards are available at a fraction of the

cost of similar Amiga cards. How useful

the slots will be depends on drivers for

fxPAINT Debuts at Cologne

A brand new paint and image process-

ing package was released on the 1st of

November just in time for the Cologne

show. fxPaint comes from a

German company Innovative and

is programmed by Felix Schwarz

who is the talent behind programs

like BlackIRC and UltraConv.

or phone them on: (01908) 610170

• Comprehensive set of image process-

ing operators.

• Wide range of loaders and savers.

• Includes an image catalouger and

batch conversion utility.

Active Technologies are no longer sell-

ing direct to the public and are now con-

centrating their energies on developing

their Amiga products such as

NetConnect and STFax. Eyetech will

now distribute Active’s products.

Amiga Web

Directory Closed

The interface looks attractive and uses

standard windows and gadgets, full sup-

port for graphics cards and PPC ac-

celerators (PowerUP and WarpUP) is

included.The feature list is certainly very

impressive and at a price of only 70Euro

(about £45) we can imagine it catching

on fast.

I’m sad to have to report that the

Champaign-Urbana Computer Users

Group decided to close its Amiga Web

Directory on the 1st of January 2000.

AWD has been the premier Amiga links

website for many years and has always

provided a sterling service with over

2000 indexed links with full descriptions

for all types of Amiga organisations and

the useful Agnes search engine to help

find them. CUCUG point to the decline

in the Amiga marketplace and

Gateway’s inaction as reason for the

closure, ironically the last news item

they reported was the sale of the Amiga

name to Amino.

On a brighter note the NetConnect 3

package is now available, highlights of

the new version include Voyager 3 with

Javascript and Shockwave Flash sup-

port, a brand new FTP client, mFTP and

the WebVision web cam viewer. We’ll

have a review next issue.

fxPaint is loaded with features and

seems to draw quite heavily from

other Amiga packages:

What makes this news doubly sad is

that CUCUG will not be passing their

database of links and descriptions or the

code for Agnes to another maintainer so

it will be down to other sites like the

recently re-vamped www.amiga.org to

pick up where AWD left off.

Read the full announcement at

http://www.cucug.org/aminew.html

• Bumpmapping for 3D effects.

• Glows and Shadows.

• Photo retouching functions.

• Scan optimising functions.

• Standard painting tools plus pan-

tograpgh (cloner), gradients, smear,

blur and pyrotechnic effects.

Active Technologies:

http://www.active-net.co.uk/

For a complete list of features (there are

loads more) and some example pictures

and screenshots visit Innovative’s

website at http://www.innovative-web.de/

Eyetech:

http://www.eyetech.co.uk/

CLUBBED - Issue 4

Winter 1999

FEATURES

NEWS

Amino Buys Amiga!

Games Update

Although things aren’t going the way we’d like at Amiga, there are a plethora of great

games to use on your favourite machine...

Quick

BLASTS

I n a shock announcement on the eve

T-Zer0

Clickboom have just released a demo

for this fine shoot-em-up (reviewed else-

where in this issue) for download, at

( http://clickboom.com/t0/demo.shtml ),

but it weighs in at a hefty 26MB, luckily

it’s also on the cover disc of Amiga

Format and AmigActive.

7. The Amiga operation as it exists

today.

There are good reasons to release the

‘Classic’ Amiga OS source, as it would

allow anyone to develop and improve

the OS, and therefore the development

cycle would be much quicker. To prevent

it becoming a behemoth though (exactly

what Amiga stands against),

Amino/Amiga must take a central role in

directing ‘official’ development and

releases. Failure to do this would result

in the OS losing cohesion and splinter-

ing into many unwieldy versions. For a

deeper perspective, visit The Campaign

For Open Source Amiga

(http://www.savetheamiga.org.uk/)

website.

of the new millennium Amino

acquired the rights to the Amiga

from Gateway. Details are still

sketchy but here’s what we

know so far.

Wipeout 2097 hit the Amiga in December and is the first game to make full use of the

PPC and 3D acceleration offered by Phase 5’s PPC and graphics cards. Developed

by Digital Images (www.di-games.com) the Amiga version of Psygnosis’ classic looks

fantastic and plays just as well (if you can wait we’ll have a review in issue 5).

Specific details of the developer

system, the OS partners and

how one can begin developing

will be released in the next

couple of weeks.

What a way to start 2000!

Amino (formed by Fleecy Moss

and Bill McEwan) have finalised

a deal which brings the Amiga name

back home to people who care about it,

and can see the potential of having a

modern computer with an Amiga badge.

We’ve reprinted the first official state-

ment from Amino here, this comes

directly from the http://www.amiga.com/

website.

To run Wipeout you must have a PPC card and 3D

graphics card and at least 32Mb of FastRAM. Wipeout

is available from most Amiga retailers or directly from

the publisher, Blittersoft (www.blittersoft.co.uk).

We will be making an announce-

ment on January 8th, 2000 with one

of our partners at CES in Las Vegas,

and more details will follow that release.

Napalm Add-on

Following on from the excellent (if

slightly hard) Napalm, Clickboom are

about to unleash something “more than

a missions disk” in ‘Napalm - Euro

Burn’. Hmmm. We didn’t piss them off or

anything, did we?

Heretic II is another PC port. The original is based on

the Quake II engine, and is the sequel to (funnily

enough) - Heretic. It’s a third-person shooter (a-la

Tomb Raider). Hyperion software ( www.hyperion-

software.de) are the people responsible for bringing

us this magical blood-fest. Not only do you get that,

but they’ve wangled it so that the add-on “Heretic

Fortress” (by Wankeroo, I kid you not) will be ported

with the package too. Heretic II is also blessed with an

active on-line battle. Hyperion recommend a minimum

of an ‘060 and 3D accelerated graphics card. PPC is

preferred, and you’d also be advised to have 64mb of

RAM. But just look at these Amiga screenshots :)

Fleecy, Myself, Petro, and the rest of the

team are not going to make promises

and create presentations and demos.

We are going to deliver products, ser-

vices, and the rest of the world will know

what you have already known.

We know that Amino have been working

with an OS partner (as yet unnamed, not

QNX), Rebol (Carl Sassenrath - big

respeck), and others to provide the foun-

dation, direction and development of a

successor to the Amiga experience,

while still keeping true to its values and

karma... yet expanding on it to compete

in the modern and future computing en-

vironments. This new ‘Son of Amiga OS’

would most likely be small and efficient

in the Amiga tradition (especially impor-

tant in the future to be a leader in digital

convergence which needs the smal-

lest/fastest system for communication

between the various elements of a wire-

less and Internet network), and com-

prise of a modern OS with features such

as multi-threaded multi-tasking, memory

protection, virtual memory, POSIX com-

pliancy etc. etc. It may even be a Dr.

Doolittle of the computer age, with a

near-effortless ability to interact and

control alien computer systems (i.e.

communicate with the Microsoft

animals)... possibly via TPFKNAO (The

Project Formerly Known As Amiga

Objects) from Gateway.

Virtual GP

If grandprix racing is your thang, then

you’ll be pleased to know that Virtual

Grand Prix has been released (much to

Mick’s delight). We’ll have a review /

update from Mick, on the website

shortly.

Official Announcement

January 3, 2000

We will be officially changing the name

of Amino Development Corporation to

the Amiga Corporation this week, and

we will let everyone know of this change

shortly once it is officially completed.

YeeHaw and welcome to the year 2000;

I want to make something very clear

from the beginning we have been told,

that Amiga was purchased by Gateway

because of the Patents, and that there

were not even aware of the Amiga in-

stalled base, or the people.

Apart from Heretic II, Hyperion are also going to be porting the lovely ‘Shogo’ for us

as well... more details on that when we can.

I want to thank all of you for your con-

tinued support we will make Amiga what

it should have been, and more impor-

tantly what it will be.

Foundation DC

Paul Burkey’s ‘Foundation’ has had a

new lease of life in ‘Foundation, the

Director’s Cut’. It features all the good

stuff of the original, plus all the patches

and updates that make it (somehow) an

even better game than it was. So, if you

have any interest in Populous/strategy

type games at all, then Foundation DC

should be top of your list... go get it.

A new real-time strategy game from Polish developers is available in demo form. It’s

called Exodus - The Last War and, according to Robert Elson on the Amiga-Flame

website ( www.amigaflame.co.uk - where you can get all the latest Amiga games

news), it already looks better and faster than Napalm. WoW! Download the 6MB

demo from Aminet (game/demo/ExodusTLW_Demo.lha).

Gateway purchased Amiga because of

Patents, we purchased Amiga because

of the People.

Keeping the faith,

Bill McEwen

President/CEO Amino Dev. Corp.

Without the people standing behind,

developing, creating, purchasing and

continuing to believe in the Amiga there

never would have been anything for

Gateway to purchase. We recognize

this, and it is because of you, and what

you have continued to accomplish with

Amiga that we have purchased the com-

pany.

Payback is a gangster warfare game from the virginal “Apex Designs” (www.apex-

designs.net). From what I’ve seen and heard about it seems like a Grand Theft Auto

...but with attitude. Running on even vanilla

flavoured Amiga 1200's (an ‘040 is recommended

though), it features:

Initial Reactions

Gary Storm and Robert Williams air their

initial thoughts on the Amino buy-out

and raise some questions not answered

by the short press release.

Super Frog

Also on the re-release trail is

‘Superfrog’. Surely you’ve heard of it? If

not, then where the hell have you been?

Superfrog is probably the finest platfor-

mer the Amiga has ever known. It was

released by Team 17 way, way back, but

is so good it has stood the test of time.

Get your vanilla miggy a X’mas present

and have some great fun.

• Perspective correct texture mapping.

• Environment mapped cars.

• Realistic physics model.

• 100 square kilometres of land and 4 different cities

to explore.

• Dozens of vehicles to drive, each with their own

unique handling characteristics.

• Realistic real-time shadows.

• Non-linear mission structure.

Very good news and a late Christmas

present. At least something’s happening,

and the Amiga name isn’t stagnating in

the putrid pools of Gateway’s infighting,

political remonstrations and lies. It’s

back home at long last with people who

actually care and understand what it’s all

about. Fleecy, Bill and friends know

we’re not crazy... well, maybe just a little

crazy.

I want to make sure that everyone

knows and understands what this all

means to you the true Amigans.

Whatever their final product, we’re

hoping (as we have many times before)

that this piddly little world may finally

have a decent computer system coming,

which has learnt from the mistakes and

triumphs of all those that came before it:

Apple/ IBM/ Acorn/ Commodore/

Microsoft/ 3DO/ Sony/ WebTV/ Xerox/

HAL ( :) ) etc. etc., in the design, im-

plementation, marketing and support of

the Multi-media Millennium Amiga.

Here is what was acquired from

Gateway:

1. All trademarks logo’s etc.

2. All existing inventory of Amiga

International

3. All existing licenses.

4. License to All Amiga patents

(Gateway still owns the patents, but

we are able to use them).

5. All web sites, and registered domain

names.

6. The Amiga OS and all that is associ-

ated with the OS.

Payback will even have graphic card support (via CyberGraphX), an advanced 3D

audio system, and there’s also a possibility of PPC support. Expected to be released

at X’mas, this gorgeous baby will set you back £30. Well worth it if it lives up to what

is seen in these screenshots.

For all the games currently available,

and to find out more (and maybe even

pre-order) about the ones that aren’t

quite with us yet, give John at ForeMatt

Home Computing or your preferred sup-

plier a ring.

As Amino now own the OS, will they be

releasing it as open source to proliferate

(possibly even migrate to other plat-

forms) while they continue to develop

and release a ‘new beginning’ OS?

Since Fleecy Moss has previously

declared his support for COSA we

believe Amino are likely to open-source

the Amiga OS.

Finally, you’ll also read about the brilliant ‘Wasted Dreams’ elsewhere in Clubbed.

The even better news is that Digital Dreams will also be producing a game called

Hell Squad. This arcade-adventure will even work on OS1.3 Amiga’s (with a CD-

ROM). WoW! Why? Whichever, it’s expected to be with us in November, but if you

can’t wait for a taste, download the 2.15mb demo from their website (www.dd-

ent.com)

Happy gaming, and I’ll see your ass on-

line where I can frag it in Quake :)

Gary Storm

CLUBBED - Issue 4

Winter 1999

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