Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

either a CDTV, CO32 or an Amiga
equipped with an adapter that allows you to
connect CD-ROM peripherals, such as the
Squirrel and Zappo devices.
There are Iwo ways to access the files
on the CD-ROM For CD
-well
as Amiga devices that allow you to
TV boot from a n the d CD-ROM, resetting your
Cmachine D 3with 2 the , Multimedia Toolkit in the
adnve will s automatically load the Multimedia
Tootle' program.
Once loaded, you are given the choice of
what device to use for the program (mouse
or joystick), Click on either and you will
then find yourself at the Main Menu. From
here you can choose to access the
Multimedia Toolkit Main Program. or fire up
the slideshow to sit back and view the
many pictures on the CD.
The Main Program provides you with an
easy-to-use method of browsing
through the files on the CD-ROM. With it
you can view both images and clip art files,
as well as listen to the thousands of music
and sample files - all at the click of a
button.
Copying
It also provides a simple file manager
utility which supplies tools for copying files
from the CD to your hard disk or floppy
drive.
Using this, you can transfer files such as
the huge collection of fonts to your fonts
directory for immediate use by the
appropriate programs.
To find out what the various buttons on
the interface do. simply click on the blue
Help button. This puts you in (yes, you
guessed it) help mode. Now, clicking on
any button will display a description of what
that button actually does.
With 547Mb of files, I'd call that a wellstuffed
CD. So, what are you waiting for?
Fire up your CD-ROM drive, jam the
Multimedia Tookit CD in it and see how
long it takes you to view and listen to
everything.
Bear in mind that although CDTV
and CD32 owners can view and listen to
the various images and sound modules on
this CD, to transfer the files for use from
the CD the appropriate hardware is
required.
What on earth?
So. just what does this huge 547Mb of files
consist of then? The following, that's what:
• 500 original 24-bit images with HAM8 and
HAM Interlace versions
• Over 1300 coloured clip art
• More than 2100 Mono clip art
• 120 standard Amiga fonts
• 100 plus coloured fonts
• Over 100 Adobe fonts
• 00 PostScript fonts
• 750 music modules
• 2300 samples
• Utilities to view and listen to many of the
files
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When it comes to graphics, there's not much
that can touch the Amiga's powerful capabilities.
That's why you can find the Amiga
generating the graphics for such TV series
as Babylon 5 and Star Trek.
Because of this obvious strength in the
graphics department. it's hardly surprising to
find that there's quite a lot of graphics
software available for the Amiga
Most of these packages, you will find,
tend to be aimed at users of intermediate or
advanced experience, and the demands of
such powerful packages also often require
an Amiga with lots of memory and powerful
add-ons - which are probably beyond the
price range of many users.
Novice to expert
SmartyPaints is different. however. Its an
art package that caters for users ranging
from a young child, right up to intermediate
level, You may ask how such a wide range
can be catered for by one art package. and
the answer lies in the 'smart menu' feature
which allows you to customise Smart/Paints
depending on the needs of the user. It can
also run on Amiga& with a minimum of 1Mb,
although the more memory you have the
more screens you can work with.
SmartyPaints has evolved from early
1990 where it was available for the Nimbus
PC as the Borealis trilogy of schools' art programs,
Borealis Jnr was aimed at infants,
Borealis was for 7-11 year olds and Borealis
Gold was for adults. It is thus a natural progression
from these early concepts and now
serves all three age groups, thanks to its
smart menu facility.
This facility allows the owner to tailor the
drawing tools icon display according to age
groups and abilities. SmartyPaints is not
designed to be immediately used by a small
child without any adult intervention.
It initially loads with all menus, icons and
functions set up for a user with intermediate
knowledge. It therefore needs to be configured
for individual children according to their
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There are lots of tools and
features to aid the Amiga
artist in the creation of an
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abilities before they are given it. Configuring
the menus is very simple. To try it out, load
up SmartyPaints and read the tutorial that
follows. Once loaded, you will see there are
many function icons to choose from. In this
particular mode, all features and tools are
available for the intermediate user.
For a small child, you can choose which
drawing tools should be displayed by altering
the smart menu If you now click the
right mouse button you will be taken to the
drawing screen and as you can see, there
is a selection of tools and palette icons to
choose from.
This is the smart menu and can be
removed while drawing on the screen by
clicking again on the right mouse button.
Another right mouse click will bring it back
again. Depending on the configuration you
have set, there will also be a Main menu
icon button on the far left of the screen.
Clicking on this will take you back to the
main menu.
If you have a small child, so wish to create
a special 'kids version' of the program,
you need to decide which tools are
appropriate for their age,
Indicators
Once you have a fist of appropriate tools,
It may be a good idea to draw a simple layout
design to indicate which tools will be
grouped together etc. This needs to be
done because when you are choosing tools
to be included in your custom menu, they
are added from right to left, top to bottom.
SmartyPaints doesn't allow you to arbitrarily
remove and replace a single icon from
within the middle at a fist.
Once you have a design for your custom
layeut, it's time to configure SmartyPaints,
First of all you will have to clear the default
smart menu, so click on the light blue icon
marked Clear S Menu. After a brief detay,
the current smart menu will be displayed in
blue at the top of the screen.
You may now click on each icon to erase
it from the list (be sure to click on the lower
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