Total_Amiga_-_05.pdf

CD-R

Explained

Create your own music and data CDs

on your Amiga with our

simple guide.

Need

More Space?

Reviewed:

fxPaint

BurnIT

MakeCD

MasterISO

AmiTradeCenter

Wildﬁre 7 PPC

WipeOut 2097

Grand TV Amazing

Interviewed:

Bill McEwen

Tutorials:

CD Writing

VGA to PAL Project

Back to Basics: Shell

Cinema 4D

Reviewed:

fxPaint

BurnIT

MakeCD

MasterISO

AmiTradeCenter

Wildﬁre 7 PPC

WipeOut 2097

Grand TV Amazing

Interviewed:

Bill McEwen

Tutorials:

CD Writing

VGA to PAL Project

Back to Basics: Shell

Cinema 4D

We guide

you through

choosing and

preparing a new

hard drive.

CONTENTS

Contents Editor

News

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

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

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

income so knock it off guys! If you want

to purchase such items as hard drives

etc, then just shop around and get a

good deal, but I would recommend that

you join your local Amiga user group so

that they can advise you on compatibility

issues should they arise.

Robert Williams

Only room for a very short editorial this

issue, and now some more good news:

must go to Bob

Tiffen for his ex-

tensive Cinema4D

tutorial.

Update

Suffice to say that the news from the St.

Louis show is very interesting, with Bill

McEwan’s talk to the user group

representatives being particularly

relevant to current Amiga users. If

Amiga do all the things he mentions

there (including supporting user groups

and PPC hardware companies), they will

be a long way to winning the support of

this Amigan and I’m sure many others.

Question 6 are you sure? The software

that comes out on the Amiga I believe is

very well priced considering how many

copies of the application or game that

they are likely to sell, most people that I

know who have Pc’s haven’t paid a

single penny for 95% of the software

that is sitting on their hard drives and

why you ask, well the bottom line is that

piracy is so rife on the PC it is out of

control, no sooner than a game or appli-

cation is released then it is copied and

distributed! But unlike the Amiga even

though the colossal amount of piracy

going on, it will not cause the failure of

the platform single handed due to the

fact that nearly every business out there

has Pc’s with legitimate software on it

and that means large volumes of soft-

ware is still being sold.

Finally, if you’re on

the ‘net and want

to keep up to date with our progress on

Clubbed please join our clubbed-

announce mailing list, information inside

the back cover.

Web Site

The SEAL website has recently been

moved onto a new server. If you use

SEAL’s new address:

http://www.seal-amiga.co.uk/

the change will not effect you. However

if you use one of our older addresses

you may get either a redirection page or

a “Not Found” error so please check

your hotlist is up to date.

The rest of the AGM was spent discuss-

ing the future of SEAL, some of the

activities suggested for the future were:

Features

Interview with Bill McEwen .......... 11

CD-R Explained ........................... 12

• Fund raisers (raffles etc.)

• SEAL Sale

• Tutorial videos (hardware and soft-

ware) Demos and Tutorials

• Amiga celebrity guests

• Inter-usergroup activities

• Beginners Workshops

• Social Activities

Meetings

Since the AGM, we have been making

an effort to have an activity, such as a

tutorial or demonstration at every other

meeting. These have included

demonstrations of fxPaint and

Photogenics 4 and a round-up of three

useful utilities. The utilities round-up was

particularly interesting as several

members had their own suggestions of

programs they couldn’t live without.

Hopefully they will feel inspired to dem-

onstrate their choices in the future.

Another feature that was suggested at

the AGM was beginner’s tutorials, in fact

the committee was already planning to

start these. To help with these tutorials

SEAL has purchased an A1200,

Blizzard 1230 accelerator and 8833MkII

monitor so a basic system will always be

available at meetings.

Enjoy the mag and I look forward to

meeting some subscribers at the

Kickstart Show in May.

Reviews

BurnIT .......................................... 16

MakeCD ....................................... 17

MasterISO.................................... 19

fxPAINT........................................ 20

AmiTradeCenter ........................... 23

Wild Fire 7.................................... 24

WipeOut 2097.............................. 26

Grand TV Amazing ...................... 28

I hope you’ll enjoy the increase in tutor-

ial content for this issue, special thanks

Chairman

Mick Sutton

EMail Addresses

SEAL is now able to provide its

members with a username@seal-

amiga.co.uk EMail address, you can

choose any username you like and

EMail sent to that address will be auto-

matically forwarded to your real EMail

address. Please ask Gary Storm for

more details of this service.

This quarter I would like to talk about

Amiga hardware and software dealers,

as the subject of value for money and

service quality seems to be a point of

interest to our club members, at most of

our meetings. People are always ap-

proaching me and asking why things

cost so much money, when it has any-

thing to do with the Amiga.

the item is not

faulty when I know

it is?

Ok then lets try

and answer them

in order, the first,

second and third

questions all have a pretty similar

answer. Nearly all Amiga hardware

devices are not mass produced generic

items, by that I mean you won’t find

them inside a PC anywhere and there-

fore it has had to be designed, devel-

oped and tested by someone (not for

free) and a machine has to be specifi-

cally tooled up for quite a limited produc-

tion run. Also the individual components

on the device are usually not industry

standard and therefore are higher cost

to purchase in the first place. That com-

bined with the fact that only low

numbers of units will be sold (probably

only thousands at best) the final cost of

any boards will be quite high, it cannot

be avoided (look what happened to

Phase5), I’m afraid we are stuck with it

unless the Amiga has a sudden rise in

popularity.

Support

VGA to PAL Project ..................... 29

Hard Drivin’ .................................. 30

Back to Basics: The Shell............ 32

Cinema 4D Tutorial ...................... 34

Cinema 4D for Beginners ............ 38

Question 6 is an awkward one to answer

as there are two sides to the coin here,

if you buy an item and try it in your

Amiga and it doesn’t work then send it

back with the statement “oh it doesn’t

work I want my money back” one of two

things can happen, 1 the dealer checks

the item finds it faulty and agrees to

refund your money or send another, or 2

the item is checked by the dealer who

discovers that there is nothing wrong

with it!

Several SEAL addresses have already

changed to the new domain, the most

important changes to remember are the

club address (for general club informa-

tion) which is now seal@seal-

amiga.co.uk and the magazine address

which is clubbed@seal-amiga.co.uk.

Well, I am not here to defend the

“Amiga” dealers nor am I here as a

spokesperson for all Amiga users, but I

can see that there are two sides to every

coin, and I shall try and make sense of it

from both perspectives.

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

Next Issue .................................... 39

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

A typical member of SEAL will ask me

the following questions.

AGM

SEAL held its Annual General Meeting

in February, we had an excellent turn

out with about 25 of our 30 plus

members present.

The fact is many items that are returned

to dealers are themselves working fine

but when combined with a certain con-

figuration of say motherboard or other

devices then it will not work correctly

(Apollo accelerators are one thing that

comes to mind). Also quite a few work-

bench “hacks” tend to create problems

by doing things in an OS unfriendly way

(get OS 3.5 to get your system up to a

decent running environment) and can

cause conflicts. What I suggest is that if

you can try the “Faulty” item in another

Amiga with for example a different

revision of motherboard or in the case of

an accelerator a few different memory

SIMMS. If you cant do the above be-

cause you don’t know anyone else with

an Amiga, then the best thing for you to

do is join an Amiga user group, there is

one that springs to mind...!

1. Why do “Amiga dealers” sell ac-

celerator cards for the price they do

when PC dealers sell whole PC systems

for less?

2. Why are graphics cards for the

Amiga so expensive when the latest

turbo nutter bastard super duper 3D

card for the PC cost so little?

Do The

SEAL Sale

We are planning to hold an Amiga event

in the next few months, currently we are

working towards an early September

date. The sale will take place on a

Sunday at SEAL’s meeting venue:

Northlands Park Community Centre,

Basildon. We will be hiring the whole

building for the day, this should give

plenty of room for exhibitors and activi-

ties. Amiga dealers and other user

groups will be invited to exhibit and we

plan to have activities such as games

competitions, software and hardware

demonstrations and much more, so

there will be plenty to see and do. By

the next issue of Clubbed (planned for

early August) we will have full details, in

the mean time announcements will be

posted on the SEAL website.

The meeting started with Mick Sutton

giving a summary of SEAL’s finances

and Robert Williams outlining Clubbed’s

finances and progress. Committee elec-

tions were then held. Mick Sutton,

Robert Williams, Gary Storm and Jeff

Martin were re-elected to their positions

of Chairman and treasurer, Vice

Chairman and magazine editor,

Promotions Officer and Committee

Member respectively. Sadly committee

member Martin Miller has left SEAL,

however we were pleased to welcome

Roy Burton who was elected to fill the

vacant position.

Thing

We’d like to make Clubbed more “in-

teractive” so we need your input!

3. Why do motherboard add-ons (clock

header devices, scan doublers, IDE

buffered interfaces etc..) cost so much?

4. Why are generic devices such as

CD-ROM’s, hard drives, CDRW’s, Zip

drives & digital cameras so expensive

when bought from “Amiga” dealers com-

pared to PC dealers?

5. Why does software on the Amiga

cost so much, all my PC friends hardly

pay any thing?

Question 4 is interesting because I can

see no reason why any of the items

listed should cost any more than at other

dealers, maybe they are trying to bump

up their profits to subsidise the low

profits on other items, or maybe they

think that they have us at there mercy,

as some people think that they are the

only dealers to sell “Amiga compatible”

hardware, but if that is the case it just

isn’t on is it? Most of these dealers sell

stuff for Pc’s as well, so they are not

relying on the Amiga exclusively for their

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.

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.

We also agreed that committee only

meetings would be held several times a

year to allow committee members to

plan ahead.

Got a suggestion or comment on the

magazine? Let us know and we’ll try

and make Clubbed better for you.

6. Why when I have sent something

back, do the dealers argue with me that

CLUBBED - Issue 5

Spring 2000

NEWS

Vaporware News

Miami Deluxe

Released

Clubbed.info

Clubbed is published quarterly by South

Essex Amiga Link. For subscription details

see the back page.

Editor: Robert Williams

Design: Robert Williams

Contributors:

Robert Davis

Gary Storm

Mick Sutton

Robert Tiffen

Proof Reading:

Sharon Sutton

Cover Art: Robert Williams

If you have any queries suggestions or

want to contact us for any reason please

use one of the following:

EMail: clubbed@seal-amiga.co.uk

WWW: http://www.seal-amiga.co.uk/

Post: Clubbed,

26 Wincoat Drive,

BENFLEET,

Essex, SS7 5AH,

ENGLAND.

Telephone: +44 (0) 1268 569937

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

Only Amiga Made it Possible

Clubbed is designed and laid out using:

Hardware:

Amiga 3000

CyberStorm PPC/060

CyberVision PPC

64Mb RAM, about 8Gb HDD space.

Software:

PageStream 3 by Softlogik

ImageFX 4 by Nova Design

Photogenics 4 by Paul Nolan

Final Writer by Softwood

There are also some essential utilities we

couldn’t live without: Directory Opus

Magellan II, MCP, Turbo Print 7, MakeCD.

Our thanks to the creators of this and all

the other great Amiga software out there.

Clubbed is entirely created on the Amiga,

no other machines are used at any stage of

the design or layout process.

Vapor have been busy enhancing their

suite of Internet software yet again, im-

provements include:

file. Although Voyager’s plug-in doesn’t

support the very latest version it does

work extremely well and takes advan-

tage of PPC (PowerUP) if it is present.

Holger Kruse has released the full ver-

sion of Miami Deluxe, the more fully

featured version of his widely acclaimed

Miami TCP/IP stack. The Deluxe version

mainly adds support for more complex

networks, it allows multiple interfaces so

for example, your Amiga can be con-

nected to the Internet and an Ethernet

network at the same time. Built-in NAT

(Network Address Translation) allows all

the machines on a network to seam-

lessly access the Internet through one

connection and a firewall ensures

security.

Voyager 3.2

Voyager is going from strength to

strength with support for FONT FACE,

HTTP file uploads (useful for web-based

EMail services etc.) and FBlit support to

speed up image display on AGA

machines all added since the Christmas

release of Voyager 3. The program has

also had many im-

provements and bug

fixes to existing

features in that time,

including better SSL

support, fixed

TurboPrint printing and

improved PNG support.

However the jewels in

Voyager’s crown are its

plug-ins, so far two

have been released, a

Shockwave Flash ren-

derer and a PDF viewer.

Metal Web 4

After a number of public betas the final

version of Vapor’s visual web design

package has been released. Metal Web

offers full visual page creation including

tables and frames. It also includes the

ability to view and edit the created

HTML source within the

program and to test

pages in an external

browser.

AmigaOS running on PPC in 2000?

A group of well known Amiga program-

mers including Ralph Schmidt (who

wrote the software for Phase 5's

PowerUP boards) and Frank Mariak (the

chief author of CyberGraphX) have

announced they are working on a new

operating system which is designed to

allow the existing AmigaOS to be

gradually ported to PPC while retaining

much backwards compatibility. The new

OS is called MorphOS.

Currently MorphOS runs on the existing

Phase 5 PowerUP 68K/PPC ac-

celerators but the 68k CPU is not used

at all. AmigaOS is run on a 68k emula-

tion developed by Ralph Schmidt and

various modules (programs, libraries,

device drivers) can then be ported to

PPC, as more modules are ported per-

formance should increase and we move

towards a 100% PPC Amiga OS. In a

recent press release the MorphOS team

state that most system friendly 68k pro-

grams should run as will existing

PowerUP PPC software and of course

any new PPC programs.

highspeed (40Mb/s) Ram Disk.

• CD-ROM File System.

Picture, GIF, ILBM, PBM, and PCX

datatypes.

• Plus the many PowerUP that ap-

plications already run, usually with an

increase in speed.

AmIRC 3.4

Widely considered the

best Amiga IRC client

and by some the best

on any Platform AmIRC

is still being regularly

updated. Version 3.4

offers a new tabbed

window mode to keep control of multiple

IRC sessions without too many

windows.

MorphOS has already gained some sup-

port with some developers who plan to

port applications including:

• PPC native Magic User Interface (this

should speed up all MUI programs

running on MorphOS).

• Vaporware are interested in porting

their portfolio of Internet applications

including Genesis which will give

MorphOS a TCP/IP stack.

• Titan will support MorphOS with

BurnIT, Elastic Dreams, Fantastic

Dreams and Candy Factory.

Miami Deluxe continues Miami’s tradi-

tion of being easy to setup and uses the

MiamiInit configuration tool. Version 1.0

comes with extensive Amiga Guide

documentation including tutorials on set-

ting up common configurations. Miami

Deluxe has been in Beta test for over a

year so I think it is safe to say it is pretty

bug free.

The Flash plug-in is particularly impres-

sive as it allows Amiga users to ex-

perience Flash enhanced websites for

the first time. Flash is an interactive

animation format developed by

Macromedia, it allows web designers to

create much more complex interactive

websites. Because it uses a largely

vector format a very complex presenta-

tion can be stored in a reasonably small

Most of Vaporware’s software is in-

cluded in the Netconnect 3 package

which is now distributed by Eyetech at

£49.95, we have a full review of the

latest version lined up for issue 6.

Individual programs can be registered at

http://www.vapor.com/ which has secure

on-line ordering facilities.

MorphOS is designed to be portable and

the authors have already commented

favourably on the possibility of porting it

to Amijoe and other PPC platforms. A

port to other processors is also not out

of the question.

Miami Deluxe costs 60USD (about

38UKP), a secure on-line registration

program is included in the archive, it can

be downloaded from:

http//www.nordicglobal.com/

Already some major parts of the

AmigaOS have been ported to PPC,

here are a few that were mentioned:

KickStart Show 2000

Kickstart, the Surrey based Amiga user

group, are holding their latest Amiga

show on Saturday the 27th of May at

Brook Hall, Brox Road, Ottershaw,

Surrey. This will be their third show and

if the previous ones are anything to go

by it should be a great day out.

Forematt Home Computing, Epic and

Ramjam Consultants will be at the show

selling their Amiga goods. Several

Amiga user groups including ASA from

Portsmouth and of course SEAL will be

there hoping to meet new members. A

wide variety of new and used Amiga

hardware and software will also be on

sale.

According to the press release an alpha

version has been released to selected

developers and a public beta should be

available in the coming months.

MorphOS will be a commercial product

when it is finally released.

MorphOS has a website where you can

read the complete press release at

http://www.morphos.de/

Cloanto

Give-away

Skidmarks. As if that wasn’t enough

prizes including 3.1Gb hard drives and

Clickboom’s new game Nightlong will be

up for grabs.

• Exec, the core of the Amiga’s multi-

tasking OS.

• Native SCSI drivers for the

CyberStorm and Blizzard PPC SCSI

controllers.

• The utility and math .libraries.

• CyberGraphX 5 - a new PPC native

version especially for MorphOS.

• Ramdisk Handler - giving a new

Legalese

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

All other trademarks mentioned are the property

of their respective owners.

A number of demonstrations will be

going on during the show including:

Amiga OS 3.5, Lightwave, Amiga on the

Internet, PowerPC games and software,

and Amiga for Beginners.

Cloanto have released the latest ver-

sions of Personal Paint, their popular

palette based paint package, and

Personal Fonts Maker, a bitmap and

colour font editor, free for personal non-

profit use. Distribution is via Aminet or

on the Meeting Pearls CDs only. The

packages are the full commercial ver-

sions complete with extensive Amiga

guide documentation.

Amiga Users Unite!

Amiga Inc., who along with Analogic are

sponsoring the show, have donated two

A1200 Magic packs as prizes. One of

the A1200s will be given away as a door

prize, so you just have to come along to

the show to have a chance of winning!

SEAL member Richard Lambert has just

launched a brand new Amiga website

with a variety of information to support

on-line Amiga users. He has included

sections on the latest news, Amiga user

groups, recent Aminet uploads (includ-

ing a mirror of the last months in case

the main Aminet site is down), IRC

channels and a gallery. There is also an

extensive links page.

Cloanto’s website is at:

http://www.cloanto.com

The site is called United Amiga Users

and looks like it will develop into a very

useful resource, so why not pay Richard

a visit?

Doors open at 12:00 and entry costs £1,

more information can be found on the

Kickstart website at:

The ever popular games competitions

will be run again, this year contestants

will be able to battle each other head to

head in Quake and race with Super

You can find the free downloads on any

Aminet mirror such as:

http://uk.aminet.net/~aminet

http://www.unitedamigausers.com/

http://www.kickstart-amiga.co.uk

CLUBBED - Issue 5

Spring 2000

NEWS

Elbox Demo

ZIV Card

Phase 5

Insolvency

DCE Pick

Up Pieces

Innovative Release

New Products

PageStream 4

The new version

of Softlogik’s

Amiga DTP

package,

PageStream is

now available.

Version 4 adds even more features to

PageStream’s already impressive ar-

senal, here are some of the major ad-

ditions since version 3.3:

Elbox, the Polish firm who produce the

Power Tower and a wide range of other

Amiga accessories, have demonstrated

a version of their FastATA (IDE) con-

troller for the ZIV slots on Apollo’s new

ZIV A1200 bus board. This is the first

expansion for these special faster slots.

The FastATA controller (which is already

available for A1200s without a bus

board and in a Zorro III version) allows

Amiga users to take better advantage of

the many fast, cheap large capacity IDE

drives which are now available and are

severely restricted by the A1200 and

4000's built-in IDE controller.

Power Computing sells the Elbox

FastATA products in the UK as the

PowerFlyer range, they can be found at:

Amiga hardware mainstay Phase 5

Digital Products went into receivership

in January. No direct reason was given

for the move but we can only assume

that the delays in producing the G4

based PPC accelerators was one of the

problems that caused them to run out of

money. Fortunately Phase 5 had already

signed contracts with DCE to license all

their existing products, including the cur-

rent PowerUP PPC cards and B/CVision

PPC graphics cards. DCE have com-

mitted to continuing their production

(see right). On a less happy note there

has been no news of the fate of those

Phase 5 users who either had a card in

for repair or had paid for a pre-order on

a G4 card. They were told to take up

their case with the official receiver but

so far we haven’t heard of anyone being

successful (although it may just take a

long time of course).

Just as we go to press www.amiga-

news.de has reported that the “Case of

Filing for Insolvency abandoned due to

lack of assets” this means that potential

claims have to go to the former owners:

Wolf Dietrich and Gerald Karda, Phase5

digital products, In der Aue 27, D-61140

Oberursel, Germany.

As we reported in Clubbed issue 3 DCE

had already taken over the majority of

Phase 5's product lines at the time of

their bankruptcy, fortunately as the con-

tracts were already signed they have not

been affected and DCE are continuing

to produce most of Phase 5's 68k

portfolio and are beginning production of

the PPC products. This means we

should see CyberStorm and Blizzard

PPC accelerators and the BVision and

CVision PPC graphics cards available

again soon.

A demo version of VHIStudio is avail-

able from the Innovative website.

VHIStudio is priced at 69DM (about

25UKP) with the digital camera drivers

costing an additional 20DM (about

8UKP) each.

• Indexing.

• Table of Contents generation.

• Figure numbering.

• Signature printing (automatic pagina-

tion for bound document, like this mag-

azine).

• Defined style tags and variables at

chapter level.

• Bookmarks.

• Definable kerning pairs and tracking

tables.

• Automatic before and after paragraph

rules.

• Drag-n-drop text editing.

• Spell check.

• PDF and HTML export.

• Configurable FPO (low resolution

image preview) size.

• Layers.

• Drag-out guides.

Innovative’s other new release has been

fxScan , this package interfaces to a

variety of scanners using ScanQuix. It

provides a straightforward user interface

with image processing options geared

towards correcting the colour balance of

scans. fxScan also supports Wolf

Faust’s ICS automatic colour correction

system. I understand that fxScan is in-

cluded with the new version 5 of

ScanQuix as an alternative to the more

technical standard scanning application.

Innovative, the German developer be-

hind fxPaint (reviewed this issue), has

been busy over the last few months with

a couple of new releases.

Probably the most interesting is

VHIStudio 5 , this is an image capture

program that supports a variety of video

digitisers and digital cameras. VHIStudio

was previously called VLRec (which is

why we haven’t seen versions 1 to 4)

and supported only the VLab range of

Zorro digitisers from Macrosystem.

VHIStudio uses the new VHI driver

system (developed by Innovative) to

support a wider range of digitisers. VHI

drivers for a range of Digital cameras

from Olympus and Kodak have been

released at the same time as VHIStudio

although these do cost extra.

DCE are also producing a new version

of the CyberVision 64/3D Zorro II/III

graphics card which will take advantage

the double speed Zorro II (not the new

ZIV) slots on Apollo’s ZIV bus board.

Another piece of good news is that DCE

are providing a repair service for all the

Phase 5 products they now manufacture

so existing Phase 5 owners aren’t left

completely out in the cold.

http://www.powerc.com/

or phone (01234) 851500.

IBrowse 2.2

Out Now

DCE have a website at:

http://www.deccom.de/

A new version of IBrowse correcting

many of the problems described in our

review last issue has been released.

IBrowse 2.2 is much more stable than

2.1 and has improved (although still far

from perfect) Javascript support. The

improved cache browser, browser tabs,

and sheer speed of version 2 can now

be exploited without fear of crashing, it

really is a joy to use. Unfortunately

some features are still unimplemented

including graphical printing (although

Postscript printing still works well) and

SSL support except via Miami SSL (a

new version of AmiSSL is required).

Some features which have been imple-

mented are configurable pop-up menus

and buttons, drag-n-drop GUI (you can

now move the navigation and fast link

buttons etc. around the window), FONT

FACE support and HTTP and FTP

resume so you can complete failed

downloads. Version 2.2 is a free

upgrade for IBrowse 2.x owners.

Their UK distributor is Power

Computing:

http://www.powerc.com/

(01234) 851500

PageStream 4 is available from

Blittersoft in the UK, the full version is

£169.95. An upgrade from version 3.3 is

available at £59.95.

http://www.blittersoft.com/

(01908) 225454.

A thumbnail system is provided to dis-

play all the images which have been

grabbed or are in the memory of a digital

camera. Once an image has been

selected several basic image processing

effects can be performed along with the

usual rotate and flip operations. The

image can then be saved in a variety of

formats or transferred to a dedicated

image processor for further editing.

fxScan costs 28USD (about £18) to buy

alone and requires ScanQuix.

R.I.P. AF

As you will probably have heard by now

the May 2000 issue was the last Amiga

Format, sadly Future publishing felt the

magazine was no longer profitable and

closed it down.

Finally a demo version of fxPaint is now

available on the Innovative website for

anyone interested in the features of the

program or how well it will perform on

their machine.

Softlogik’s homepage has extensive in-

formation on the new version:

http://www.softlogik.com/

in the ‘states and

in the “Classic”

market with

hardware like

the Amijoe

and Boxer and

Software like MorphOS.

Ben Vost has stated however

that he understands Future’s decision

on a business level and is sure that

Future will bring out a new Amiga maga-

zine if the market does revive.

OS3.5

Mailing List

VHIStudio can grab pictures with a time

delay so you can create time lapse

sequences. There is even the facility to

automatically upload an image to an

FTP site on the Internet so you can use

your video camera (with a frame grab-

ber) or digital camera as a web cam. If

you grab a sequence of frames

VHIStudio can save them as an MPEG

or IFF animation.

Innovative’s website is at

http://www.innovative-web.de/ and has

secure on-line ordering.

This is very sad news especially as AF

has been so long running and was still

pretty widely available, to some people

without Internet access AF is probably

the only clue they have that the Amiga

market is still alive. On a happier note

Ben Vost and Richard Drummond, AF’s

editor and staff writer are both moving

on to new posts within Future as deputy

editor on 3D World and staff writer on

Linux format respectively.

fxPaint is available from Blittersoft

(http://www.blittersoft.com/, (01908)

225454) and a few other dealers in the

UK so I wouldn’t be surprised if they can

get the other products for you too.

ScanQuix is available from Eyetech.

Anyone who has upgraded to the new

AmigaOS 3.5 will be interested to hear

that there is now an Internet mailing list

devoted to discussion of the new OS.

The list now has a regularly posted FAQ

(frequently asked questions) file and a

number of knowledgable contributors

who can help you out with problems,

including some members of the OS3.5

development team. To join the list visit

its home page at:

http://www.onelist.com/community/

amigaos3_5/

AF’s untimely demise means that it is all

the more important that we support

Amiga Active, which is a truly excellent

magazine with great and varied content.

New Birdie

A brand new version of this neat little utility which allows you to put textures in

your window borders has been released. Enhancments with the new version

christened “Birdie2000” include the ability to use colour gradients instead of

bitmap images for the window texture as demonstrated here.

Altogether if we were reviewing IBrowse

2.2 now it would get a “Tasty”, but it’s

still quite a way from the elusive “Caviar”

rating!

It is unfortunate that Amiga Format was

forced to close just at a time when

things seem to be happening again in

the Amiga market both from Amiga Inc.

Our thanks to all AF’s staff for their hard

work and especially for supporting

Amiga user groups.

HiSoft are at http://www.hisoft.co.uk ,

phone (0500) 223660. IBrowse 2.2 costs

£34.95, upgrades from V.1.2 are £12.95.

Birdie is freeware available from: http://www.vgr.com/birdie1/

CLUBBED - Issue 5

Spring 2000

NEWS

Hyperion Prepare

to Amaze

Photogenics 4.4

Sounds

Repulsive?

Image

Engineer

On CD

Paul Nolan has released a new beta

version of Photogenics, his image

processor reviewed in issue 4. Version

4.4, which in our experience is ex-

tremely stable, belying its beta status,

also adds new features and resolves

some of the niggles we had with 4.2 in

our review. A progress bar in each

image window allows you to see the

progress of the current effect eliminating

that “has it hung?” feeling on slow

effects. There is also a small thumbnail

preview of the chosen effect so you

don’t have to wait for the whole image to

render to get an idea of the effect. Many

other minor improvements and some

new effects including Fire Blur, Rub

Emboss and Bump Map are included in

version 4.4 making it a very worthwhile

update, and it’s free to all Photogenics 4

owners.

Alien Design have released the latest

specifications of their Repulse sound

card for Zorro equipped Amigas. The

board features a number of I/O con-

nectors including optical digital input and

output (S/P-DIF), external stereo line in,

mono microphone in, stereo line out and

stereo headphone out. There are also

three internal stereo connections for

input from CD-ROMs and the like. An on

board mixer allows all the inputs (except

S/P-DIF) to be mixed and it’s also possi-

ble to record from them all simul-

taneously, full duplex (recording and

playing at the same time) is also sup-

ported. A 64Kb FIFO buffer minimises

the card’s CPU load while playing and

recording. The Repulse does not include

a hardware MP3 decoder however it

does have a feature connector which

would allow one to be added if there is

sufficient demand.

Hyperion have signed agreements to

port several more popular PC games to

the Amiga in addition to Shogo and

Heretic II which they are currently work-

ing on. The new games are:

Marko Seppänen, the new maintainer of

Image Engineer, a flexible shareware

imageprocessor, is about to release the

first ever CD edition, in fact it should be

available around the time you read this.

Image Engineer has a wide variety of

effects and supports a wide range of

load and save formats thanks to the su-

perview.library. However one of its key

features is a powerful AREXX interface

which Marko has used to good effect to

create a selection of scripts and plug-ins

under the Visual Engineering banner.

There are about 15 scripts and plug-ins

in total and many are really impressive,

for example Visual Logo helps you make

stunning text effects and Visual Puzzle

cuts your image into realistic looking

jigsaw puzzle pieces.

Sin

This 3D action game, set in 2037,

places you as the owner of an elite

private police force who’s task is to foil a

deadly drug trafficker. Sin is set to offer

a stronger story line than many 3D

shoot-em-ups with puzzles to solve and

levels and characters which change

depending on the decisions you make

earlier in the game. Like Heretic II Sin

uses the Quake II engine so this port

has been greatly boosted by Heretic II’s

completion.

Shogo

Note the new preview and progress bar

at the bottom left hand corner of

this screen shot.

parallel using the same core code so in

fact if Photogenics is successful on

Linux it could boost the Amiga version to

new heights.

For further information and to download

the latest beta visit the Photogenics

website at http://www.paulnolan.com/ .

Photogenics 4 is available in the UK

from Hisoft (0500) 223660 and other

dealers priced at about £60.

Paul is also working on a version of

Photogenics 4 for Linux (a free Unix-like

operating system) however he has

stated that both versions will progress in

Worms: Armageddon

The sequel to Team17's hugely popular

Amiga classics.

Freespace - The Great War

Descent: Freespace -

The Great War

A space based combat simulation where

you take part in a variety of missions

including seek-and-destroy, espionage

and epic battles. You fight on the side of

the Terrans and Vasudans to help defeat

the more technically advanced enemy,

the Shivans. This technical mismatch

adds depth to the game play as you

have to steal some of the Shivan’s tech-

nology to effectively fight them.

Hyperion have been posting regular

updates on their progress with the ports.

Sin, Shogo and Heretic II all seem to be

progressing well and the other games

are now entering development. Heretic

II is very near release, you will probably

have seen the reviews in Amiga Format

and Amiga Active. A demo of Heretic II

has just been released and is available

from the Hyperion website

(http://www.hyperion-software.com)

however at 42Mb it might be a bit big for

most people to download. SEAL

members can get a copy on CD-R from

This Surf is Dead

...it is an X-Surf, it has ceased to be:)

The latest Repulse prototype.

The new CD includes the latest version

of Image Engineer and all the Visual

Engineering scripts and plug-ins (some

of which were shareware) for just 50US

Dollars (about £31). You can order the

CD on-line at:

Individual Computers, the prolific manu-

facturers of products like the Buddha,

Catweasel and SilverSurfer have

released a new Ethernet card for

Amigas with Zorro II slots. The X-Surf

(pronounced Cross Surf really) has

10BaseT (UTP) and 10Base2 (BNC)

Ethernet connections allowing it to be

connected to most Ethernet networks

and network devices like cable modems

at a theoretical maximum speed of

10Mbits (about 1Mb) per second. In

addition to its Ethernet functionality the

X-Surf also has a pair of PIO mode 2

IDE ports, two A1200 style clock ports

and an expansion connector. The IDE

ports cannot currently be used until a

new version of IDE-Fix (reportedly called

IDEFix 2000 or IDEMax) is released.

The clock ports can already be used

with Individual’s clock port devices and

their GoldSurfer (2 x Serial and 1 x

Parallel) card can be connected to the

expansion port.

The mixer and independent volume con-

trols for each input and output are

adjusted via a mixer preferences pro-

gram. An AHI driver and a Toccata com-

patible driver will be supplied allowing

the Repulse to be used with all major

Amiga audio software and other pro-

grams such as games and MP3 players

which support audio via AHI.

SiN

Mick Sutton (for the cost of the disc) and

I am sure Amiga Active will have it on

their next CD.

http://www.amigaworld.com/support/

imageengineer/

The X-Surf is available in the UK from

Eyetech (who have renamed it the Surf-

XS for some reason) who supply it with

a CD which helps you setup a mixed PC

and Amiga network with file transfer via

Samba.

FORE-MATT

News

Hyperion have hinted that at least three

more ports are to be announced soon.

Their porting of the commonly used

Quake II (for Heretic II and Sin) and

Lithtech (for Shogo) game engines will

open the way for quicker ports of games

based on these engines in the future.

A prototype is already being tested and

production cards are expected in the

summer. The price is likely to be about

200Euros (roughly £120). For more in-

formation take a look at the Repulse

website:

http://www.aliendesign.net/repulse/

Our good friends at FORE-MATT Home

Computing have been busy expanding

their already wide range of Amiga soft-

ware. They have taken over the Virus

Free PD library in addition to the PD

library they already run. On the Games

front FORE-MATT is now the distributor

for all of Islona’s disk based games and

for Vulcan’s mini-series disk based

games.

To get an idea of the wide range of soft-

ware they stock take a look at the advert

later in this issue or contact FOREMATT

Home Computing on (01793) 853802, or

EMail sales@forematt.idps.co.uk.

Individual computers have a website at

http://www.jschoenfeld.com/ . Eyetech

are at http://www.eyetech.co.uk/ , phone

Heretic II (and I expect all of Hyperion’s

forthcoming releases) require a PPC

accelerator and ideally a graphics card

with 3D acceleration. If it is released in

time we will have a review of Heretic II

in the next issue of Clubbed.

ParaGlide on Final Approach

The long awaited 3D acceleration add

on for Village Tronic’s Picasso IV

graphics card will be available very soon

according to Blittersoft, the UK dis-

tributor. The Paraglide module is based

on a 3DFX Voodoo I chip and has 8Mb

of dedicated RAM on board. Two soft-

ware drivers are promised, one using

3DFX’s own Glide API and the other

supporting Haage and Partner’s Warp3D

which already works with Phase 5's 3D

accelerated graphics cards. The

Warp3D driver should mean that

Picasso IV owners with PPC ac-

celerators can now sample the 3D ac-

celerated games just coming to market.

The Paraglide requires a Picasso IV

fitted to a Zorro III Amiga (NOTE it will

not work in a Zorro II machine like an

A2000). It costs £99.95 from Blittersoft:

Hungry for News? Try these great sites!

Czech Amiga News - http://www.realdreams.cz/amiga

Amiga.org - http://www.amiga.org

Amiga News - http://www.amiganews.de/indexe.html

Amiga Network News - http://www.ann.lu

http://www.blittersoft.com

(01908) 225454.

CLUBBED - Issue 5

Spring 2000

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