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REVIEWSArtec AM12SChoosing a free callPhone bill out of control? GaryStorm might have the answer!REVIEWSISPAfter seeing and using thescanners at my college forvarious assignments andprojects, I thought I wouldn’t mindhaving one at home for my trusty miggy.So I had a look around at various computeroutlets, but found my choice wassomewhat restricted because mostscanners now are USB. At the sametime I had a look at the software availableon the Amiga, and what scannersProduct InformationDeveloper: ArtecDistributor: AnalogicTel: +44 (0) 20 85469575WWW: www.artecusa.comwww.analogic.co.ukPrice: £139.95 incl. Driver£159.95 withSquirrel Interface.Pay by credit card andget a free CD-ROM.(call for details)State Amiga modelwhen ordering.CDROM GAMESAdventurers Lair......................... £20Amiga Classix............................. £15Amiga Classix 2 ......................... £20Aminet Games............................ £15Aqua ........................................... £15Arcade Classix + ........................ £10Arcade Classix Mk 2 .................. £15Blade........................................... £10Bubba n Stix CD32..................... £10Bubble Heroes............................ £15CDS Collection........................... £15Cedric ......................................... £15Chess 2k..................................... £15Civilization AGA/ECS................. £10D-1000 doom data ..................... £10Eat The Whistle.......................... £10European Superleague.............. £10Exodus.......................................... 35Fears CD32 ................................ £10Fields of Glory ............................ £15Final Odyssey............................. £10Fightin Spirit ............................... £15Flyin High ................................... £15Foundation Gold......................... £25Foundation Und.Land ................ £15CDROM GAMESGenetic Species..........................£10Giana Sisters Trilogy...................£10Goal! 2000 ..................................£10Gremlin Classix...........................£20Imperator CD ..............................£15Islona Collection .........................£20Labyrinth Of Time .......................£10Lure of the Temptress.................£15Mad About Mahjong ...................£10Megaball Deluxe.........................£15Moonbases .................................£10Naughty Ones CD32 ..................£10Nightlong/Quake.........................£45Pacman Attack............................£10Payback ......................................£35Phoenix Fighters.........................£10Pinball Illusions CD32 ................£10Pure Doom..................................£10Red Mars.....................................£15Retro Gold...................................£10Seaside .......................................£20Shadow of 3rd Moon .................£20Simon the Sorcerer.....................£10Sixth Sense Invest’ns .................£15Skeleton Krew CD32 ..................£10they supported. And so I didn’t havemuch luck in the outside, so instead Ihad a look at what the Amiga retailershad to offer, obviously the choice wasrestricted, but I knew the scannerswould be better supported. I sawAnalogic doing Umax scanners, bundledwith PhotoScope for £139.95, or£159.95 with a Squirrel interface. Mymind was made up. After three weeksof waiting, the scanner finally arrived,only to find that it was an Artec, not aUmax scanner. I found it to be virtuallythe same spec scanner as the Umaxone I hoped for, so I wasn’t thatbothered.Plug it in!The first thing I noticed when I went toswitch the scanner on, was that therewas no on/off switch, and the secondthing which is most important before youCDROM GAMESSpherical Worlds ........................ £10Sports Mad ................................. £20Star Fighter................................. £15Street Racer CD......................... £10Superfrog.................................... £10Super Methane Bros. ................. £10Tales From Heaven .................... £20Testament CD............................. £10Theme Park CD ...................... £10The Games Room...................... £15The Prophet................................ £15Trivial Pursuit ................................ 15Turbo Racer 3D .......................... £10T-Zero ......................................... £25Ultimate Gloom........................... £10Ult. Super Skidmarks ................. £10Uropa 2 ................................ £10Virtual Ball Fighters.................... £15Virtual Karting 2.......................... £10Vital Light.................................... £10Wasted Dreams.......................... £20Whales Voyage 2 ....................... £15Wipeout 2097 PPC..................... £30Word Games............................... £10Zombie Massacre{18} ................ £15UTILITIES17 Bit Level 6.............................. £10100%AMIGA CD Magazine.......... £5100%AMIGA Annual UK Sub..... £48A-Z of Amiga Games.................. £20Amiga Desktop Video2............... £10Amiga Developer 2.1.................. £20Amiga Repair Kit ........................ £35Amiga Tools 8 ............................. £15Amiga Web Offline........................ £5Aminet Set 4 - 11 ea................... £30Aminet Set Subscribe................. £20Aminet Singles............................ £13Aminet Subscription ................... £10Amos PDCD2 ............................. £20Animations CD............................ £15Animatic ........................................ £5Art Studio Pro ............................. £35Asim CDFS v3.x ......................... £30Aweb II v3.3 ................................ £40Aweb II v3.3 OS3.5upg .............. £30Beauty of Chaos........................... £5Best of Airsoft ............................. £10Best of Mecomp v1....................... £5Blitz Basic 2.1 (ult.) .................... £10Candy Factory Pro ..................... £35use the scanner is to switch the carriagelock into unlock position, as I rememberfrom a recent scanner demo at SEAL.But I’ve found that it doesn’t workanyway, snd it needs extra care whenbeing transported around.Unfortunately I wasn’t too sure what Iwas doing, as the scanner came with nomanual, but came with PC software(Adobe Photo Deluxe), and obviouslycame with Photoscope, which did thankfullyhave a manual.Another problem I ran into was trying toget the scanner to be recognised on myAmiga (via my GVP SCSI card). I triedupdating the drivers for the SCSI cardwhich made no difference whatsoever.Robert tried the scanner on his A3000,which has built in SCSI, to make sure itwas the GVP card at fault and not thescanner, and found that to be the case.FORE-MATT Home Computing(08700) 112234 • Dept. C, PO Box 835, Wootton Bassett, Swindon, SN4 8RXHeretic 2 £40 Shogo £35Napalm £28 Myst £25Simon Sorcerer 2 £30UTILITIESCybergraphX...............................£25Cross Dos 7 Gold .......................£40Darkage Developer.....................£10Diavolo 2000 ...............................£50Digibooster Pro ...........................£20Digital Almanac 2........................£25Digital Makeup ............................£15Dopus 5 Magellon 2....................£50EASys! Enhancer........................£20Emulators Unlimited ...................£10Euro CD v2 .................................£10Extreme CD ................................£10Extreme Visual FX2....................£10Faces of Mars 2001....................£15fxPaint v1.5 .................................£60fxScan v3.0 .................................£25Gateway v1 (netBSD).................£10Giga Graphics.............................£10Giga PD v3 (3Cdset) ....................£5GlowIcons .....................................15Graphic Sensations ....................£10Guinness Records v2 .................£10HD Patchez.................................£10Hidden Truth................................£10Ibrowse 2.x..................................£35Send 3x first classstamps for cataloguepacked with details onour vast range of titlesand PD from only 70p.MooVid Pro 2 £20 CyberGraphX £25Hell Squad £30 Amiga Classix 3 £20 Earth 2140 £30 NcodeR £25PFS 3 £35UTILITIESIn To The Net (2CD) ..................... £3Learning Curve........................... £20Lightrom 8 or 9 ea...................... £30LSD 1 or 2 ea. ............................ £15Make CD DAO............................ £50Midi Files .................................... £10Multimedia Backdrop.................. £15Net News Offline v1 ..................... £5Network CD ................................ £10Network CD 2 ............................. £15Octamed Soundstudio................ £10OS 3.9......................................... £30Photo CD Manager .................... £15Photofolio v2............................... £25Photogenics 5............................. £70Red Hat Linux............................. £20Screen Savers 2......................... £10Sounds Terrific 2......................... £10System Booster .......................... £10Texture Heaven 1&2................... £10Turbo Calc 5 ............................... £60Turbo Print 7.x ............................ £40VHI Studio 5.2 ............................ £30Workbench 3.0 Set..................... £10Workbench Addon CD................ £10100% Amiga - Experience the new magazine on CDROM.www.forematt.free-online.co.uksales@forematt.idps.co.ukThe AM12S has a minimalist design,even lacking an on/off switch!So my only option was to either get aCyberSCSI add on to my accelerator, orget an Oktagon card, which was the optionI took.And so when the Oktagon card arrivedand was fitted into my A4000, I had tochange a couple of jumpers, set theright device in the PhotoScope preferences,and I was away!Scan it in!In operation, the scanner is pretty quiet,but it’s slightly slower than the otherscanners I have used. One thing you dohave to remember is to allow the scannerabout two minutes to warm up, orwait for the green light to come on,which is a bit annoying if you just wantto get on with your scanning.The scanner is capable of 36 bit truecolour, it has an optical resolution of 600x 1200 dpi, and has a maximum resolutionof 19200 x 19200 dpi! The scanningarea is 8.26 x 11.7 inches (A4 size).The light source is a long lasting coldcathode fluorescent lamp.Overall I am quite pleased with thescanner bundle, and has so far servedme quite well. I’ve found it to come inhandy for quite a number of things, includingmy college work, and even formy parents! I can’t imagine being withoutit now. I must say, the bundle isgood value, considering this is quite ahigh spec scanner, but if it’s speed youneed, then I’d look at some of the latestHP or Epson models.By Elliott BirdResultsAfter receiving a huge phonebill from BT, which said thatour madasafish account (freeISP... you only pay for the time on-line)had cost us over £40, it was time to sortout some unmetered Internet access.With schemes like this you pay a set feeper month, and enjoy internet accesswhenever you want it... no more hugeinternet bills. The only catch is thatyou`ll be cut off after 2 hours or soonerwith most of them (but can re-connectstraightaway), which is fair enough sopeople don`t hog the access.So, armed with a copy of Web User(issue 8), the internet,www.net4nowt.com, and a burningdesire to stop paying for BT booze-ups Iwent in search of the unmetered ISP tosuit me and my Amiga.Firstly, after ringing a few places up, Ifound that some of the information in theWeb User article wasn`t very wellresearched (i.e. it was wrong). Here`sthe ISP`s which an Amigan can`t use, asthey rely on pc software to enable theirconnections from your computer towork:It’s Good To Give Unlimited.NTL World.The Free Internet Unmetered.Tiny Online.V21 Any Time.That leaves us with the (apparently)Amiga-friendly ISP`s:If you`re in a Telewest cabled area,then they`re not too bad at £10 a monthas long as you use a certain amount oftelephone calls through them as well.Help line is at local call rate.www.blueyonder.co.uk .If you have money to burn, Demonoffer excellent service, but is very priceyat £40 per month (as £20 goes to BT).www.demon.co.uk .A number of ISP`s had minimum contracttimes of more than a month, whichis a bit risky for the user if you canhardly ever get connected or they gobust soon after you join, therefore I putthese ISPs on the back-burner for themoment: www.0800dial.com (£12.99, 3months minimum); www.4thenet.co.uk(£12.99, 12 months minimum);www.supanet.co.uk (£12.99; 12 monthsminimum); www.surfanytime.net(£12.99, 6 months minimum);www.worldonline.co.uk (£14.99, 3months minimum).I discounted AOL because I don`t likethe idea of a nanny ISP, where your surfingcan be dictated by them. The goodside to AOL is you don`t get cut off, andit`s a big company. £14.99 pm,www.aol.co.uk [AOL also needs theirPC/Mac only software, Ed].I also discounted BT Internet. Hey, Iwanna get away from these guys.£14.99 pm, www.btinternet.com .An invaluable resource is actuallywww.net4nowt.com, which has a hugelist of ISP`s in different categories anduser reviews and feedback for all ofthem. Looking through the feedback isone of the best indicators, although ofcourse no ISP is perfect and they allhave their share of good and bad feedback.You be the judge.In the end I decided onwww.keme.co.uk, £14.99 a month (1month minimum contract), some goodreviews and they also sponsorwww.net4nowt.com (which is brave).When I called up the sales line no-onesniggered when I mentioned Amiga...they just checked to make sure Iwouldn`t have any problems. Theyentered my details on the phone insteadof the website as normal (as you can`thandle the encryption on an Amiga unlessyou have Miami SSL to pay thefee). They also give you 50mb websitespace, 999 e-mail addresses, and thequite useful online e-mail access so youcan check your e-mail from any computeranywhere. You can even add othermail servers to your account, for instanceI can still get my mail frommadasafish through keme. The onlydown-side to keme are that it`s notalways easy to access during the busytimes (which even happened when I waswith Telewest).And there we go, I now enjoy 24/7 internetaccess, for £15 a month. You couldbe too.26CLUBBED - Issue 8Summer 200127
REVIEWSREVIEWSEarthSelect your side,“it’s an East West kinda thing”.Which country shall we flatten today?The built-in database has details of themany different units and buildings.Product InformationDeveloper: Topware InteractiveAmiga Port: Pagan GamesDistributor: Epic InteractiveAvailable: From most Amigagames dealers.WWW:www.pagan-games.comwww.epic-interactive.comPrice: around £302140Hostilities BeginEarth2140 is a war strategy type gamein the mould of the likes of Napalm andCommand & Conquer, where you havecontrol over your forces destiny viamouse control (wish that worked athome), you can think long and hardabout strategy and form the perfectscenario for your forces to take over theworld, or if you are more like me go inguns blazing and get snookered from arearward counter attack (ouch). Butthat’s what its all about in this game, nomatter what your skill level you will nodoubt enjoy it. Strategy games are notnormally my cup of tea but after playingthe demo I knew that Earth2140 was aquality game, and boy was I right! Afterloading it up for the first time I couldn’tresist playing it, and in fact when Ifinally stopped playing (to go to bed) Iwas totally shocked to realise it was 2AM! This game is just so easy to pick upand get into, even for strategy gameamateurs like me as you can set the skilllevel to suit the type of player you are (Iset skill level to easy......wimp).Peace Talks Break DownThe game comes on 1 CD packaged ina DVD case (which I think is the smartestpackaging solution) along with a 20page manual which although not verydetailed has plenty enough informationto get you going and to be quite faironce you get into the game you will notprobably need it as the controls arepretty well thought out and easy to master.Installation is via the standard installerwhere you make a few choicessuch as where to install to. Earth 2140supports 640x480 and 800x600 16bitscreenmodes, a graphics card isrequired. 68k (the documentation states‘060 only) and PPC via WarpUp versionsare supplied, you select thescreenmode and processor you want touse by double clicking on one of fourprogram icons.It’s WarOn running the game it goes straightinto the intro animation which is quitelong but gives you a “feel” for the game.Once the intro is finished you arepresented with the menu screen whichis navigated around by moving themouse and the screen scrolls (in mycase very fast and smoothly) to whereyou move the mouse to....neat! Here iswhere you choose what side to do battlefor (either UCS or Ed...it’s an East Westkinda thing) with each side having it’sown array of weapons, or you can lookat the database where you can view thevarious buildings, soldiers or vehicles,there are also options for Net and Serialbut when I clicked on them I got amessage stating these will be availablewith the mission pack Cd’s (can’t wait forthem). Ok so once you have selectedyour side you are next presented with ascreen to choose your difficulty level (Ichose easy....yeah I know I’m a wimp),where upon you are shown yet anotherscreen where you choose the areawhere this war is gonna take off, havingsaid that I could only choose one forwhatever side I fought for but therelooks like many areas, mainland Europe,England, Netherlands, Africa and goodold USA can be selected if you have therelevant mission packs!On selection of the battlefield location ashort anim loads followed by an objectivesscreen that informs you what to dowhich can range from searching for andkilling all the enemy units, to more complexmissions such as capturing enemybuildings or defending particular buildingsor units. Then at last the maingame screen opens with the battlefieldtaking up most of the available area butdown the left hand side there is a strip(about one fifth of the screen) that con-You start with a few soldiers... ...and before long... ...the action really hots up!tains game information and controls. Atthe top of the strip you will find athumbnail map showing the entire battlefield,coloured dots show your units,enemy units, buildings and wherebattles are taking place. Below thethumbnail the game controls are shownon a series of tabs so they don’t take upa lot of room and get in the way. Thesetabs contain all the information such ashow much cash you have, the state ofyour forces, a summary of your objectives,and game controls such as loadand save. One tab allows you to changethe behaviour of your units for exampleyou can set them to guard a position,attack or escort another unit. Anotherfeature is the ability to assign a group ofunits to one of three virtual Generals(yes sir!) who will then automaticallycontrol these units, you can set eachGeneral to be either defensive of offensive(they will defend the area or go outand attack enemy units respectively).The Carnage BeginsI must say the graphics of this game aresuperb, the main battlefield screen (tothe right of the control GUI) is rather welldrawn with raised plateau’s, trees,grassland and desert sand areas, andwhen tracked vehicles cross these areasthe leave track marks in their wake. Letsgo into battle, you can select a singleunit by clicking on it with the mousepointer and sending it into battle or areconnaissance mission by then clickinganywhere you desire on the map (Idon’t recommend single units, bound toget outnumbered), or you can drag yourmouse over multiple units (soldiers andvehicles) which will select them all andsend them of to battle (much bettersafety in numbers), of course not forgettingto leave a few behind to look afterhome base in case of surprise attacks.One thing you will notice is that most ofthe map area is black which means it isunchartered, but once your troops go onthe march the areas light up showing thefull detail of the area, this representsyour troops visual range and once theymove away the area is shown slightlydarkened which means although youhave chartered the area you can nolonger see it! This is best demonstratedwhen you have moved into an area,moved on, then on your return when youenter the area you may find the enemysuddenly appearing out of nowhere andattacking you (sneaky but cool).This is where things get really interesting,the battles that take place are justso good to watch with both sides firing ateach other, rockets are launched thathave amazing smoke trails behind them,the explosions are particularly nice andleave scorched buildings and land behind.There are a whole host of units tochoose from with four basic types,robots, armoured vehicles, bikes andwalkers. Each type of unit has it’s owncharacteristic speed and strength, theycan also have different weapons suchas missiles or grenades. Later in thegame more advanced weapons becomeavailable such as aeroplanes, ships,lazer cannons and plasma weapons. Toaccompany the carnage is a bizarreselection of CD music which rangesfrom light metal (almost suitable)through blues saxophone to a real surrealhappy tweety tune (has to be heardto be believed), maybe it is designed tomake you feel guilty about all the killinggoing on (almost anti war)... strange!Wars are expensive and Earth2140doesn’t let you forget it, to build newunits you must mine minerals which arethen refined and increase your funds. Toextract these minerals you need to builda mine which must be located where theminerals are available on the map, thereare usually only a couple of places oneach level. So now you have your mineyou need a refinery to process theminerals and a Bantha vehicle totransport them, finally the money startsrolling in. The other essential building isa power station, without one none of theother buildings will function. You canbuild all manner of buildings to enhanceyour war effort, including a robot factoryto build troops, heavy tech to buildvehicles, research centre for betterunits, there are also air and water basesto add variety.Enemy DefeatedEarth2140 strikes a good balancebetween Strategy and playability, evennewcomers to the genre will be able topick it up easily (unlike Napalm which Ifound very difficult to master), then thelearning curve is progressive so youdon’t get frustrated. The graphics andeffects are not only awesome but runvery smoothly indeed, even if you arenot a Strategy fan this is one title not tobe missed.ResultsProsSmooth game play and scrolling.Variety of units and missions.Difficulty curve “just right”.ConsThat music!Backgrounds get a bit repetitive.28 CLUBBED - Issue 8Summer 200129
Page 1: Networking:Your doorway to sharing:
Page 5 and 6: NEWSFEATURESDynAMIteEver fancied bl
Page 8 and 9: 14FEATURESNetworkingGetting compute
Page 10 and 11: FEATURESFEATURESApplication Softwar
Page 12 and 13: 22REVIEWSBitmapsIn addition to usin
Page 16 and 17: REVIEWSREVIEWSMovie PlayerMick Sutt
Page 18 and 19: SUPPORTSUPPORTTop TipsRobert Willia
Page 20 and 21: TUTORIALTUTORIALWell I lied a littl
Page 22 and 23: TUTORIALStart by drawing a line acr

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