& LIGHT-YEARS! - TRS-80 Color Computer Archive

m reviews
hyped-up fanfare that opens and closes
every NFL game. I do have one quib
ble: The announcers are silent. Instead
of reading text, I would have liked to
hear John Madden's ravings. Maybe
Cinemaware couldn't fit him on the
disk.
Another gripe I have, at least with
the Amiga version, is that you can't run
it from one disk drive, install it on a
hard disk, or multitask it with other
programs. Cinemaware has bypassed
the Amiga operating system entirely in
its new games, resulting in software that
loads faster from disk but behaves bad
ly by Amiga standards. That won't
bother the typical fan, however.
The onscreen action rivals the real thing in
TV Sports Football.
By making a game that mirrors the
good and bad points of televised sports,
Cinemaware has achieved something
new, something more than the standard
run-of-the mill computer football
game.
If you're turned off by the video
hoopla and blather of professional foot
ball, you'll want to pass up TV Sports
Football. But no gridiron addict should
be without it; it's simply the most real
istic football simulation ever created.
The only problem fans face is whether
to watch the game on TV or play it
themselves.
— Steven Amovin
70
TV Sports Football
For...
Amiga with external disk drive and joy
stick—$49.95
From...
Cinemaware
4165 Thousand Oaks Blvd.
Westlake Village. CA 91362
(805)495-6515
And...
Release of a version for the IBM PC and
compatibles is imminent. AppSe lies, Atari
ST. and Commodore 64/128 versions are
under development.
COMPUTE
Geometry
Almost all students will, from time to
time, need some extra coaching when
confronting their studies. Unfortunate
ly, teachers and parents are sometimes
unavailable or unprepared to offer help.
Enter the electronic tutor.
Geometry, newly released for the
Apple IIgs and long available for the
Macintosh, follows a standard highschool
textbook approach. It offers ten
chapters on a variety of topics: points,
lines, planes, angles, triangles, congru
ence, parallel lines, parallelograms, and
more. Each chapter contains about a
dozen subtopics for further exploration.
For example, some of the subjects
covered in Points, Lines, and Planes in
clude geometric figures, the distance
postulate, the angle-measure postulate,
and theorems about complementary,
supplementary, and vertical angles. A
student interested in similarity can ex
amine ratios, proportions, the proper
ties of proportion, and more.
Geometry retains its book meta
phor throughout; students can "turn"
pages with a mouse or brush up on a
particular concept by looking it up in
the program's online index—an alpha
betized list of terms arranged on tabbed
indexlike cards.
To use the index (located under the
Subject menu), students click on the tab
where the term is likely to be listed. For
example, to find out more about hypot
enuse, the student would select the tab
labeled F-l. Then, he or she could se
lect hypotenuse directly with a double
click. The student can use the scroll bar
to examine all the index listings on a
particular card in searching for a specif
ic subject.
Throughout the program, students
advance at their own pace. They can
work on more than 350 problems, or
they can stick to the tutorials, reviewing
each chapter's concepts. The graphics
capabilities of the IIGS and Macin
tosh—and both computers' intuitive in
terface (icons, dialog boxes, point-andclick
mouse control, and pull-down
menus)—enhance the program's opera
tion. Keyboard commands also assist
with cursor control.
One advantage to selecting subjects
on a chapter-by-chapter basis is the ani
mated graphics that appear at the start
of each lesson, illustrating the concepts
under discussion. For example, the
chapter on congruence opens with two
animated triangles. As the triangles ro
tate, they change shape. At some points
in their movement, the triangles are
congruent, while at others they are not.
providing a clear sense of what congru
ence means.
Among Geometry's several
convenient features is the Save Place
command, which lets you place a
"bookmark" in the program and auto
matically return to that point the next
time you run Geometry. To find your
place, click on the BookMark icon from
the Finder or the Restore Place com
mand in the File menu. If you're run
ning Geometry from a hard disk, the
Save Place and Restore Place com
mands are fully functional, but you
won't be able to take advantage of the
BookMark file directly from the Finder.
Other useful features include the
Help menu options, which provide
background information on the current
page or problem, clues to solve the cur
rent problem, and even the solution to
problems.
The program does suffer from an
initial lack of grace. Because Geometry
comes on three 800K floppy disks, it
demands multiple disk swaps to
launch, even if you have two 3V;-inch
disk drives.
Use Geometry to get the right angle on
your math studies.
A hard disk will reduce the time it
takes to boot and reboot, but not all
users are prepared to make that pur
chase. Likewise, not all users are pre
pared to increase their computer's
memory. While Geometry runs on a
IIgs with 512K. you'll encounter prob
lems if you print pages that include ani
mation, because such printing cats a lot
of memory. Printing such pages with
the Print Page command means reboot
ing when printing is done. Apple IIgs
programs arc notorious for their long
launch time, so the last thing you want
to do is reboot on a regular basis. Ge
ometry doesn't take advantage of
GS/OS. which could have sped up pro
gram loading. And the program sup
ports AppleTalk only if your system is
equipped with at least 768K.
Geometry's user's guide provides a
thorough explanation of program oper
ation, but it's an inadequate reference