@3 F1 MAGAZINE REVIEWS ******************* @5 Just in case you want an unbiased opinion on F1`s products here are all the magazine reviews that have been printed to date, word for word. If there is no program rating given at the end of a review it's because that particular mag doesn't give Pd ratings, not because it was low rated. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" @4 Typed by Steve. --------------- @2 FORTRESS Disk, F1007 Price £3.99 *AGA ONLY* AMIGA ACTION, May 94 ----------- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ @1 Apparently based on the the classic Gods games of yesteryear, Fortress is a sort of arcade/strategy affair which hails back to the glory days of Mega-lo-mania. The whole world is laid out before you on the screen, with places of interest indicated so that you don`t get too confused. The aim of the game is to build your armies and enter battle to take control of enemy castles and eventually, if you are good enough, the whole world. Battle sequences form a major part of the gameplay, and the 64 colour graphics and 170k of run-time sound effects make Fortress a game which is a marvel to behold. As long as you have the 2 meg machine necessary to play it. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" @2 Karate Master Disk F1010 Price £3.99 AMIGA ACTION, MAY 94 ----------- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ @1The majority of beat`em-ups are pretty far fetched to say the least, what with unbelievably deformed characters performing acrobatic feats which their bulky frames would never allow them to do in reality. So. it makes a change to see a beat` em-up which is described by it`s publishers as a serious karate sim with all the speed and variety of moves and excitment of the real sport. A two player option allows you and a friend to take charge of a pyjama clad warrior each, and then it`s battle time. Fifteen moves are accesible altogether, including somersaults, roundhouse kicks and jumping spin kicks. And when you learn that this is coupled with increasing enemy intelligence over 99 levels, ten fighting speeds and a sub game every two levels, you should be impressed. Personally I feel that Karate Master is a long way from recreating the "Excitement of the real sport", but it`s fairly good stuff nontheless and I quite like it. @4 *Cock-up, they didn't state the price of the programs and published the wrong phone number, some poor old dear got loads of calls, so don't use it. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" @2 KARATE MASTER Disk F110 THE ONE, MAY 94 PRICE £3.99 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ -------------- @1 Regular readers may be aware that I'm a real saddy who goes on about his favourite Spectrum games of yesteryear, and for that I am sorry (I still think there were some corkers, though!) Anyway, the only reason for metioning the Speccy is that this little PD lad got me all frothy when it first loaded up because it looked as though someone had finally done a decent conversion of one of my all-time favourites of all time, "You ain't seen nothin yet',er ...! mean Way Of The Exploding Fist. Unfortunately, like many things in life, I was not only wrong, but quite wrong Actually that's a bit of a harsh comment because on it's own it's not too bad it's just that it could of been better. Theres no plot to get in our way here it's a simple matter ofeither beating your mate up, or taking on the computer opponent in a good old punch up. One thing I do like about this game is the fact that there are no unrealistic sonic booms or sudden "turn into a large meringue and fly across the screen" special moves to get in the way of the violence-it's good old fashioned flesh and bone. Some of the moves are quite nicely performed, and generally you're treated to a half decent collapse animation when you get a good hit in-but that's not as easy as it sounds.... The game falls down when it comes to the actualfighting, due to the rather demanding distance judgement. A couple of pixels either way and you miss, leaving you-having quite obviously hit him-having not hit him'. Apparently. This isn't too bad when playing against another human, as you're both likely to make much the same mistakes, but against the computer (who rarely misjudges) it becomes frustrating. There are also no block moves which is a bit of a pain as you can't really do anything but be offensive whenever the computer steams in for the kill. The animations are quite nice, backed up by some decent sampled hits,cruches and crowd cheers, while an overall martial arts master looks on and awards points to each player for their performance. One worthwile feature that I am going to mention is the between level challange that comes in the form of a copy the Kata game. What happens here is that a computer character performs three or four moves in sequence and asks you to try and copy it a few seconds later. Quite nice, I thought- and why not? @1 OVERALL 80% @4 *Only cock up was they said DISK CAT NOW AVAILABLE FOR A DISK AND A 75P STAMP It should have read a disk and a stamp OR 75p. @2 Through The Red Door Disk F1013 Price £3.99 C.U AMIGA, MAY 94 ----------- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ @1 Europress` Amos may not have proved to be the answer to every would-be programmer`s dream but it certainly proved it`s worth as a tool for generating educational software. Even Europress` own range of "Fun School" products were written entirely in Amos. Not surprisingly, Amos is responsible for this collection of four very simple educational programs aimed at children between three and five years of age. Featuring bright and colourful graphics and cheerful sound effects, Through the Red Door is another great PD eduactional pack. The disk contains five educational "mini programs" which are accessed by "ringing" the appropriate door bell when the program`s main screen appears. The first program is "Colours" in which you have to help Simon and Sarah to choose the colours of objects in the playroom, the countryside and the seaside. Next up is "numbers" which sees you helping Sarah to find the missing animals in the shop, garden and bedroom (Sheep in your bedroom? I`m starting to worry about this...). Finally we have the Clothes and Letters, two equally jolly educational games along the same lines as the first two but concentrating on different skills. Through the Red Door certainly isn`t up to the same standards as professional educational software such as Europress` Fun School series bit it`s an enjoyable and well designed disk nonetheless. If you need a disk that will keep the kids quiet for a few hours then this may be the answer. @1 Rated 78% @4 *Not bad, no cock-ups. The price stated was £2.99, it's now £3.99. @2""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" CRICKET CRAZY Disk F1002 AMIGA POWER APRIL 94 £3.99 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ------------ @1 Cricket is dull. Excruciattingly dull. Even the crowds at the matches take along newspapers,knitting or portable T.Vs (so they can watch real sports like football) to relieve the tedium. It makes Chess tournaments look like terminator 2. So I have to admit, I wasn`t exactly relishing the thought of reviewing this game. The promise of a choice of fast, meduim or spin bowlers the ability to bat six different ways, the chance to choose which team to play out of seven international sides and the opportunity to organise my fielders somehow failed to set my pulse racing. But perhaps I`m being unfair And a first glance at the graphics didn`t do much to change my opinion. "3D action" it said in the blurb. Well, it ain`t no VR experience youll be unsurprised to hear. You get a perspective shot of the batter at the fold and the ball flying towards him, but that`s about it. Apart from that the graphics are functional at best. But it ain`t all bad if you can excuse the dire graphics, there are lot`s that`s impressive about the game. It`s certainly comprehensive, with just about every aspect of the game covered in some way. You can bat in different ways, control all your fielders, alter teams, change batting orders, decide on which bowler to put on and do other crickety-type things. The controls are awkward at first, but logical-like with most one-on-one beat-`em-ups you just need to get the hang of the system. It`s certainly not a great game, but despite the dissapointing visuals, in terms of gameplay it`s nearly as good as the commercial cricket sims you`ll find. Verdict: I`ll resist the temptation to say, :It`s just not Cricket, old boy" because, er, it is. @1 RATING * * * (3 out of 5) @4 *The price given in the review was £2.99, CC now costs £3.99, sorry. """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" @2 Blackboard V2.0 Disk F1006 AMIGA SHOPPER MAY 94 £4.99 (2 disks) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ --------------- @1 The Amiga`s graphical power has been well harnessed by packages such as ADpro and ImageFX. However, these tools are quite expensive if you are only going to be using them on a casual basis. Blackboard attempts to fill that gap in the Amiga graphics market. It tries to provide some of the functions of Adpro ans so on for £4.99. So what do you get for your fiver? The program has a surprising number of features. For example, it has MORPHING,WARPING,BULGING,PIXELATE,EMBOSS, COLOUR TO GREYSCALE,EDGE ENHANCE,INVERSE AND QUANTISE. If you are a programmer, you can even add your own modules. From the view point of an AGA machine owner you also get access to near 24-bit quality graphic manipulation -Hurrah! The interface is quite intuitive as well. All of the programs functions are accessible from the buttons on the main screen. You can adjust the image`s contrast, brightness and alter it`s RGB values by moving the appropriate sliders. This is useful for correcting the colour balance and increasing the quality of scanned images. Several display modes are also supported. To change modes you can click on the number of colours you want between 2 colours and Ham-8, you can also specify whether or not the screen will be Hires and/or interlaced and whether the rendered image will be dithered or not. The operators are contained in a scrollable window. You can scroll up and down the list, then simply press run to execute them. As mentioned before, there is a large range of operations. They range from simple effects such as PIXELLATION and GREYSCALE CONVERSION right through to more complicated manipulations like WARPING and MORPHING. The more complicated functions such as MORPHING and WARPING pictures bring up editing windows with preview images You can then manipulate the nodes in a similar way to CINEMORPH or MORPH PLUS without many of the options available, such as group selection and manipulate nodes, but there are enough functions to produce good effects. Another good feature is the addition of a limited editor. You can use it to make adjustments to pictures in a similar manner to a paint package. You need to select an area of an image to edit and then, presented with an enlarged view of the area, you can choose from eight brush sizes and scroll around the screen. There are also different paint modes, such as blend and smooth. Blackboard V2.0 also sports a feature that has only just been added to Adpro 2.5, a composite load. You can use this function to load an image behind or in front of, an existing image. You can input a value for transparency, and thereby alter how much one picture shows through the other. You can also scale, crop and squeeze your image. Squeeze operates in a similar way to sheer in most paint packages. Overall Blackboard V2.0 is a great improvement over the first version, which was heavily bugged and extremely slow. This version also has a couple of minor bugs and it is still not as fast as currently available commercial packages, but what do you expect for less than £5? This program should definitely be on your software shelf if you are into graphics, but don`t feel like shelling out vast sums of money. @1 Program Rating 90% @4 * Only the usual cock-up in this review, no address given on where to buy it. """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" @2 ART SCHOOL F1016 AMIGA SHOPPER, JUNE 94 PRICE £3.99 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ---------- @1 If there was an Oscar for the most funky and original art package, I am sure Art School would receive a nomination. It has a selection of some of the most bizarre and fun tools I've ever seen. The Wacky Worm effect is particularly.. ...Wacky. Although you are unlikely to create any masterpieces, you will be surprised at how easy it is to create decent images. You would be forgiven for thinking that Art School is for children because of it's name. In fact it claims to be equally useful for adults. With it's large icons and simple interface, it is certainly easy enough for a child to use effectively. Whether or not it could be used to produce top-quality artwork is doubtful. The program has many of the features you would expect from a paint package, such as a pen tool, line tool, squares and circles, brushes, fills and a straight line tool. Although it lacks some basic tool, such as bezier curves it does have a large selection of more eccentric tools. Growing circle is an interesting effect; it draws a series of growing circles at your mouse's current position. So, if you keep your mouse still, you'll have several circles radiating from the same centre. If on the other hand you move your mouse around the screen, you can create a tunnel effect. Growing squares does exactly the same, but with squares instead of circles. Wacky Worm is a strange one. Several small circles follow your pointer around the screen at different speeds, a bit like some sad 70's pop video. Tri-spinner rotates a triangle around a central point until you let go of your mouse-button. This produces a spira-graph type effect. There is also a fractal tree that appears to grow in size for the period of time you hold your mouse-button. 3D Floor creates a grid which you can rotate horizontally. Both random circles and squares create squares and circles of varying colours and sizes. Weather map draws a map of britain-just like a weather map (without Mr Fish, thank goodness) There is also a useful Child--lock feature. This stops the program from repeating the last pasting of a brush or effect you used when holding your mouse-button down. There are loads of other features available, although many of them involve pre-saved brushes or backdrops to acheive their effects. All of this may sound too good to be true In fact it is- while it's effects are impressive the program has quite a few bugs, usually involving the Amiga seizing up for indefinite periods of time. The program is not really suited for creating serious artwork, and will never challenge commercial packages. Having said that, it only costs £3.99. Compared with an art package like brilliance, which can be found selling for nearly £200, it does beat it in terms of value for money. Program Rating 82% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- @2 IFF VECTOR BALL DESIGNER DISK F1011 AMIGA SHOPPER JUNE 94 PRICE £3.99 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ----------------------- @1 If you viewed any number of demos, you've probably sat through enough vector ball sequences to last a lifetime. if you haven't, you may find the Vector ball Designer of interest. You can use this program to produce sequences of your very own. The program's interface follows the tri-view approach, taken by most 3D packages such as Imagine. The first thing you need to do is select your ball from six preset sizes and three user-definable colours. You need to define the ball's shading colour, as well as the base colour, but the highlight colour can only be white. To alter the colours you can simply move RGB sliders until you get the colours you want. Once you are happy with the balls appearance, you can select the size of the ball you want and it will appear in all three windows. You can add up to a maximum of 99 balls. Once you have added a ball to the screen, you can plot it's future position. It's a shame you can't re-select the balls; if you find you've made a mistake earlier on, after adding 50 or so balls, you can't re-adjust a ball's position. Once you've chosen the colours and described their movement, you can then animate the balls. All you need to do is specify the number of frames (up to 32), the light direction, choose either a straight view (head on), or an isometric view (at a slight angle) and then render your masterpiece. When you've finished, the sequence can be saved as an * IFF animation file, ready for inclusion in your latest Megademo or Animation extravaganz. The program is rather limited in it's effects. For example , the balls don't cast shadows and there is very little control over their movements. However, it is easy to use and the results are okay, if a little simple in appearance. @1 Rating 63% @4 * VBD does NOT save out ANIM files, it saves out a normal IFF pic file containing the frames of the anim so you can cut them out and into your programming language. Other cock-ups in this review were: They said it was a CLR title- WRONG- They didn't specify the price, £3.99. They didn't give our address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- @2 TOTS TIME Disk F1014 AMIGA FORMAT MAY 94 Price £3.99 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ----------- @1 Another educational program from the fast growing F1 disk collection, you could argue that it is not structly pd. And you would be right, but I've included it because it only costs *£2.99. In fact *Tiny Tots is a simple educational package written by Gina Mears which is designed to help younger children learn about numbers and letters. It is divided into three sections: Sounds,Letters and Numbers. The sounds section is composed of a screen with a number of icons,each of which kicks off a relevant sample when you click on it. For example if you clivk on thetrain icon, a train whistle sounds. The numbers screen works on the same principle-clicking on one of the numbers brings up the number of small pictures of birds, snails and blocks. The letters section is the best. Clicking on a letter brings up a drawing of something which begins with that letter, so you get ladder for L, dog for D and bus for B. It's like a colouring book, but with the bonus of pressing buttons and moving the mouse. which kids love doing. @4 * Price now £3.99 * They got the title wrong. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- @2 FORTRESS Disk F1007 Amiga User International June 94 Price £3.99 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ----------- @1 This strategy game was created in Amos and is a cross between Powermonger, Populous and Defender Of The Crown. The graphical style and the movement of the little people are very similar to Powermonger, and the medieval time frame, with the use of catapaults, reminds you of DOTC. The general idea is kill the enemy but isn't it in most games? You do this by sending out a battle party to attack either other battle parties or the enemies' forts. When everyone is dead you have won. Life like isn't it? Fortress is quite a good game considering it was written in Amos but is sometimes awkward to play.. And you will need some patience if you want to master it. @4 Program Rating: 70% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- @2 BLACKBOARD V2 Disk F1006 (2 Disks) AMIGA PRO JUNE 94 Price £4.99 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ----------- @1 Blackboard is an Image Processor in the PD, now there's a rarity. This one is aimed at AGA machines. It is rather messy as far as the install routine goes and the author would be welll advised to create a script or better still use the commodore installer. Second point, it asks you if you have an AGA machine to click on 24-bit to set up the program However, an AGA amiga is not 24 bit. (* see below) Hmmmmmm, it uses it's own rather cumbersome requesters and although it has bags of features, it was quite a handful to get going. It needs work, anyone else who says otherwise is kidding themselves. Look at the screen shots! Not for the beginner. *What is this reviewer on! Yes AGA Amigas are 32 bit, but the program is referring to 24-bit GRAPHICS. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------