Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

I
48
PD and SHAREWARE
UTILITY
of the month
Programmed by: Alien Design
Available from. Pixel Digital PD
(El plus 50p P&P)
First there was MultiCX, the commodity that
replaced your usual screen blanker and workbench
title bar clock while adding numerous features such
as the floppy drive dick stopper, the black workbench
border, a mouse accelerator, activation of
the front screen, and so on Now from Alien Design
comes Master Control Program. which hopefully
will prove rather less hostile to other programs than
the MCP of Disney's Tron which presumably
inspired the name.
All of MultiCX's most useful features are duplicated
here, along with plenty of newies. These
include AssignWedge which allows you to Assign
or Mount whenever those "Please insert ??? in any
drive" type requesters appear, AppChange, which
you can increase your chances by altering
the number of balls in each draw.
Leave things as they are, however, and
you've got a cost-free National Lottery
simulator which, while perhaps not
matching the real thing for excitement,
will certainly be a lot kinder on the wallet.
Play this for hall an hour, take a look at
the money spent and money won displays,
and you'll realise, if you haven't
already, that the Lottery is certainly not a
good bet from a gambling point of view. A
better alternative might be to buy this and
give a few quid a week to charity.
Alien Ela5h 11
Programmed by: Glen Cumming
and Myles Jeffery
Available from, Pixel Digital PD
A shameless copy of Bitmap Bros
classic The Chaos Engine, Alien
Bash II is undoubtedly one of the
best PD shooters I have ever
Ti.. Cha os - e rn:. Al!wiliest' 2 ,
clapped eyes on. Although this is a (op-draw 'hector if ever i
•MIW one
only a one•level demo of what will
eventually be an eight-level epic. and features Such as weapon
upgrades and an equipment shop have not yet been implemented.
there is enough here to see that this is an absolute corker.
The gameplay is beautifully simple, consisting of wandering around
the huge map slaughtering all manner of alien beaslies and rescuing
their prisoners along the way. The well-drawn graphics are very much
in the style of those of The Chaos Engine. but the lad( of originality is,
•I
n l
tTh
a
h.,
es srsion,
but are nevertheless pretty impressive here and add
ie
t nsiderably to the experience.
s ai
At this stage it doesn't look as if there will be a multi-player option in
cthe
rn
final version, which was, in the long term, a very appealing aspect
aof
e g the Elitmaps' hit Still. that's a small omission and there is plenty
shere
t a to_iceep shoot:ern-up fans occupied for a long time.
eo
c
, bt
fe
i
MCP is e a sily configure d from
its own Pre fe re nce s progra m
allows you to change the workbench Applcons
that some programs cause to appear; and the
option to change the workbench title bar message.
Not all the features on offer are useful, and indeed
I thought the animated Movewindow and
Sizewindow were awful. But the beauty of programs
like MCP and MultiCX is that they can be
configured to suit anybody's tastes.
MCP also scores because the authors have
selflessly made it Freeware rather than
Shareware, meaning that once you've got it you
Amiga Computing
OCTOBER 191:1
It's worse than that
he's dead Jim
Trekkies and Trekkers the world over
seem eager to surround themselves In
anything and everything Star Trek related.
A selection of disks from OnLine PD
may therefore be of interest if you have
such an affliction.
The Star Trek Guide (Disks OL7A-F)
is a six-disk extravaganza which requires
a whopping 4_5Mb of hard-drive space
but contains details in AmigaGuide format
of scores of episodes and all
manner of related prattle.
The Magic Trek Pack is a selection of
Star Trek pictures intended for use as
Workbench backdrops. The images
show spacecraft designs and while they
are hardly stunning, they beat a dull grey
backdrop hands down. Finally, the
Slarfleet Ships Library (Disks OL13A-C)
is a three-disk guide to. erm. Startleet
ships. Or at least it would be, if I could
get it to work properly. Anyway, fans of
all things Trekful could do a lot worse
than beaming these up.
Ti.. Sta r Tre k Guide is ba sica lly hundre ds of
scre e nfuls of te a t, but it'll e xcite Tre kkie s
and Tre kke rs e ve rywhe re
Gad
I l i a Sam
• tawataw
halo t
Gam • *moor i @ wawa
MCP I . brimming ove r with options
- thre e scre e nfuls of the m in fa ct
don't have to pay a bean_ And since it was actual
on last month's Amiga Computing CoverDisk,
regular readers will already have MCP.
It's not all roses though — it has to be said that
MCP has caused a couple of crashes during the
time I've been using it, which is something MultICX
is not guilty of. But this is only version 1.04. arid
stability is liable to improve in future releases. If the
authors at the same time implement some of the
features on the To Do list in the ReadMe, MC
could become the ultimate Workbench commodity
Find the answei
within .
17 Bit Software
1st Floor Offices, 2/8 Market Street
Wakefield. West Yorkshire WF1
Tel: 01924 366982
Fax: 01924 200943
Darden Designs
Meadow Lane. Pitstone,
Bucks LU7 9EAZ
Tel: 01296 668184
Fl Licenceware
31 Wellington Road Exeter. Devon
EX2 9DU
Tel: 01392 438802
KEWAI Software
PO Box 672. South Croydon. Surre
CR2 9YS
Tel: 0181-657 1617
°Mine PD
1 The Cloisters. Halsall Lane,
Formby. Liverpool L37 3PX
Tel: 01704 834335
BBS: 01704 834583
Pixel Digital PD
Stanley Dock Market, Regent Road
Liverpool S4
Tel: 0151-259 4017
E-mail: Paul@Pixelu-netcom
Roberta Smith DTP
190 Falloden Way. Hampstead
Garden Suburb. London NW11 6JE
Tel. 0181-455 1626