........................................... .* *. . Amiga Review . . WorkBench 2 & 3 only . . . . InfoTaskForce INFOCOM Interpreter V4.01 . . Amiga Release 1.10 . . By David Kinder . . . .* Syntax Disk PD 783 *. ........................................... An article by Terry Brawls This amazing piece of software enables the Amiga owner to play just about every PC INFOCOM adventure ever written - versions 1 to 5, in fact, which is good going. Sound is even supported in "The Lurking Horror", apparently. As the program is constantly being updated, we can expect even more features in the future, such as graphics and proportional font support, etc. I like this sort of thing - being able to run software on my Amiga that's principally intended for other machines. That's MY idea of PC ownership. As a matter of interest, I loaded up my copy of the PC-TASK emulator and ran the PC game mentioned below. Not only did it run too slow (not having a 68020 processor) but the emulator also had problems handling the game's coloured title strip, which holds various game info. The ITF material, however, exhibited none of these problems. In a nutshell, the package makes use of game datafiles that have been transferred from the original MS-DOS disks to AmigaDOS ones. Once aboard, the interpreter converts all the machine-talk into language that the Amiga understands, and, voila, you're playing a PC adventure. Well, you're not, but you know what I mean. Obviously, the first obstacle to overcome is - how do I get my Amiga to read those PC-formatted disks? The program itself offers no facilities in this department, so you have to do-it-yourself. This is no big deal, as there's quite a choice in the old 'reading a PC-disk' field out there, if you really look. WorkBench 2.1 & 3.x owners now have 'CrossDOS' as standard, which should do the job, though I've never actually used it myself (I have a WB 2.0x machine). Presumably this program can be bought commercially, but from whom I have no idea as things are still a bit fluid just now Amiga-wise. I use 'MultiDOS', a public-domain program which has proved almost indispensable to me. You can get this program from Sue - it's featured on 'T-Bench' (disk PD 584). This disk is full of other great stuff, and lends itself particularly well to the task being written about here, as everything is so user-friendly. All is soft & fluffy in the land of T-Bench, and I'm so disarmingly modest. Right. Do whatever it is you're going to do to enable your Amiga to read the PC game-disk of your choice. Sue very kindly sent me the PC version of DEADLINE to try the system out, so I'll use it as an example, right from the start. First, let's take a look at disk PD 783 itself. As the disk is (or should be) full when you buy it, just make a copy and delete the other programs, so you'll have plenty of room for the data-files. The package is contained in the ITF drawer. As recommended in the documentation, I've assigned INFOCOM to where the game files are being stored, in this case > Assign INFOCOM: Sys:ITF/Game_Files (See the Startup-Sequence in S:) You can, of course, change this to whatever suits you. Basically it's just a simple matter now of copying the required file over to the Game_Files drawer. You can drag it over by the icon, use the CLI or even a directory utility (there's one in T-Bench). The game file we're interested in is the big one appended with .DAT - in my case DEADLINE.DAT. There's no need to copy any of the other files from the PC disk; they're not necessary. And that does it as far as CrossDOS & Co. is concerned. The .DAT file is now part of the Amiga, and we don't need the PC disk any more. Turn off whatever PC-reading software you've been using. As to actually playing the game, there's no less than 3 ways you could go about it. 1* Double-click the 'Infocom' icon and the ASL requester should pop up. Click open the Game_Files drawer, click the .DAT file then click the 'OK' box. The game should start. 2* This method bypasses the ASL requester altogether. Open the Game_Files drawer and drag it away till you can see the 'Infocom' icon. SINGLE-click this icon. Hold down the SHIFT key and double-click the .DAT icon in the Game_Files drawer. The game should start. 3* This method not only bypasses ASL, it also negates any need for INFOCOM to be assigned or the use of SHIFT keys. It's the most user-friendly way, and strangely not mentioned in the documentation. Simply attach a project icon to the .DAT file and make the 'Infocom' program it's Default Tool. There's an icon of this type in the ITF drawer called 'Story.Data' you could use (the presence of which isn't otherwise explained). You could create, and fill, a self-booting disk of these iconified .DAT files all runnable with a click. Whilst playing, saving and restoring positions is managed by the ASL requester. Please note that a default name tends to be saved automatically (GAMEFILE.SAVE), so make sure you manually change them or you'll overwrite previous saves. If you press the HELP key during a game, information on author- ship, game-level and screen-type is displayed. Not only does the 'Infocom' program enable the actual playing of PC datafiles, it also provides the user with several command-line options (4 of which can be controlled through icon tooltypes) to peek into, and generally mess about with, the game. Nice. Of course, only the most scurrilous of knaves would ever resort to abusing a game in this manner. Like me. I'll finish off this review by highlighting a feature of INFOCOM games - and too many others - that annoys me; disk access after every input. Here's a tip on playing from RAM, using disk 783 as an example > It's probably easiest to change the startup-sequence in S: to include something like this.... Copy Sys:ITF/Game_Files RAM:Game_Files Assign INFOCOM: RAM:Game_Files Then it's just a simple matter of using the ASL requester (if using method 1 above) to load in the file that's now in RAM. Positions will be saved, by default, to RAM, but the requester can easily be manipulated to place them on disk. There's lots of easy ways to do this. Well, enjoy the software! ****************** Terry B. July '95 Costa del Scotland ****************** - o -