Amiga Snippets

                  From Bill Hoggett

Now for some snippets of information you and your Amiga
subscribers might be interested in.

If you have an A1200 and the early Level 9 trilogies you will
probably have found these don't work no matter how much you fiddle
with the boot options to disable the A1200 specific features. What
you need is a 1 3 emulator (Relokick will do) AND a copy of the
1.3 Workbench disk! If you then insert your Level 9 disk you'll
find the games (and menus) work perfectly.

Exorcism (PD 656) needs the old or ECS display options set from
the boot options to work properly on the A1200. The boot options
are accessed by resetting the machine and keeping both mouse
buttons pressed while it boots.


Darkstaff (PD 566) uses the KGB Spectrum Emulator and this is not
at all compatible with the A1200 irrespective of boot options or
Kickstart emulator. However, do not despair as the new ZXAM v2
Speccy emulator will load KGB format snapshots and can save them
in Mirage format which the v1.6 and v1.7 emulators can also use.
Copies of both ZXAM v2 and an A1200 compatible Darkstaff disk will
be on their way to SynTax shortly.

There's also a new(ish) C64 emulator for the Amiga called FRODO
(??) now up to version 1.5 or 1.7 (I'm not sure) but this needs
copies of the C64's ROMs and these are not included with the disk
due to copyright issues. An interesting package but one with
limited appeal unless you already have:

     a- A C64, disk drive, utility cartridge (like Action Replay)
        and some means of transferring the resulting files onto
        your Amiga.

     b- The registered version of A64 from Questronix. This has
        the ROM images included.

     c- Some other way of obtaining these images from another
        emulator, like the one on the PC but beware, only the REAL
        ROM images will work.

Still on the emulation front there's also a strange little program
on the Internet: It's a 1541 disk drive emulator called, ahem,
Emu1_1541!! As you might remember the 1541 was the official
Commodore disk drive for the C64 and this program claims to allow
your Amiga to act as a substitute drive for the C64. This involves
building a small interface (the circuit diagram is provided) and
activating the emulation software on the Amiga. Sadly it doesn't
multitask (a sin) and not surprisingly, it can't handle turbo
loaders, something all emulators seem to fall down on. It also
doesn't like utility cartridges like Action Replay or Freeze Frame
either so I can't imagine what use anyone would have for it!!
Still I thought I'd bore you with the information.

Here's a sad thought for the Amiga adventuring fraternity:
Exorcism is (so far) the only game written with C.A.G.; the Zut
Alors! games the only ones done with Hatrack II and there isn't a
single independent game produced with Visionary. I Was A Cannibal
For The F.B.I. was written by John Olsen and included with his
book The Visionary Programmer's Handbook so that doesn't count.
Or rather this WAS the case until now. A new adventure has
appeared in the Public Domain entitled "A Matter Of Time" and it
was written with Visionary. Hooray!!... ...well perhaps that's a
little OTT. This isn't exactly a masterpiece either from a
player's or programmer's point of view. The game was inspired by
the "Fighting Fantasy" genre (you know - the Steve Jackson and Ian
Livingstone multiple-choice adventure books) and has a Sci-Fi
setting.

You are the assistant to a genius professor who has developed a
time machine (where have I heard this storyline before?...). One
day the professor's bitter rival is found murdered and the police
subsequently find that the professor himself has disappeared,
making him the prime suspect. You soon discover that he has used
the time machine to travel back to the beginning of time in order
to meet God or otherwise discover the Truth. The adventure begins
when the time machine returns...  empty! You must decide whether
to take a risk and follow the professor of stick around and see
what happens.

As usual with this kind of game it's very easy to make the wrong
choice which more often than not results in a quick end to your
adventure.  The graphic stills are mostly ray-traced but don't add
anything to the game and definitely fall into the "stuck on as an
afterthought" category. The text however seems to be well thought
out and, although not a literary masterpiece, well written (shame
about that storyline). The author mentions another adventure -
this one parser based - available if you register A Matter Of
Time. He also mentions that A Matter Of Time is a beginner's level
adventure which it most definitely is! Sadly, if this is intended
as an advert for the second, commercial, game, then I'm afraid it
won't bring on any rush Of customers. Sure, it's not as bad as
Escape From A Very Large Cave but what is...


                              - o -