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At the All Formats Show on the 4th November, Dr. Andy Wright was
showing off the finished version of his new DOS . It has many
more commands than the standard DOS, and allows RAM discs of any
size to be set up. This will tie up nicely with Samco's 1meg ram
upgrade, which although was not on show, is rumoured to be very
near completion. The Sam mouse was also said to be nearly ready,
and will hopefully be present at the next show in December. The
Sam was being sold at the remarkable price of 179.00, including
a drive, which makes the Speccy 128+2 seem a little overpriced
at 159.00 with only a tape system.
While on the subject of price, I was talking to GBS at the
Alternative micro fair, who told me that 179.00 was their normal
shop price for the Sam.
Alan Miles and Bruce Gordon have kindly let the "Supplement" put
application forms into the boxes of new Sams being despatched,
and we are also going to put a trial copy of the Supplement in
too, to see if it brings us even more members. By the time you
read this, we should have close to 200 paid up members, which
should make for some really interesting letters, tips, programs
etc. in the future.
Don't forget the next All Formats Show, at the Horticultural
Halls, on the 15th December, Brian Mumford and myself (ED) will
be there, and hope to meet some of you.
I don't usually know what is going to be in the next issue, as
articles etc are coming in thick and fast, but I can say for
definite that in the next issue there will be a screen$ code
compressor written by Steve Nutting plus an update of Samscratch
which was done by Darren Talbot, and has many professional
features added.
On the software front, Enigma will have Trivial Pursuits out at
the begining of December, and have yet again made improvements
to "SPHERA", their mega shoot em up. Mark Greenshield told me
that when it is released early next year, it will be truly
mindblowing.
Enigma have also asked me to remind you of their software club.
For a fee of 10 pounds per year, you will get discount software
plus up-to-the-minute news of forthcoming releases.
For those of you out there who still haven't upgraded to the
newer 3.0 ROM, Enigma will not be writing software for the older
ROM from the new year. This is because it take twice as long to
test out programs on both ROM versions, and also there are
certain things that the older ROM will not cope with.
Although it doesn't affect anyone reading this, they also tell
me that early next year, they will cease publishing tape
versions of their software. As the machine is now being sold
with a drive, the sales of tape based software will fall, and
Enigma don't think it will be a worthwhile venture to supply
tapes.
FIVE ON A TREASURE ISLAND by Enigma
Reviewed by Les Phillips.
Not as yet having become 'hooked' on adventure type programmes,
It was perhaps appropriate that I should try out this game. I
was pleased to read in the instructions that - "No knowledge of
the book is assumed at any point, enabling people who have never
read any of the Famous Five books to get to grips with the game
without difficulty". All this did for me, however, was to deny
me a ccnvenient excuse for the difficulties I confidently
forecast for myself!
The role you start with is that of Julian - one of the Five -
but you can switch to any one of three of the others if you wish
by using the command "BECOME ....". The fifth member of the Five
is the dog, TIMMY, and there is apparently no interpreter yet
available for canine/basic languages. The multiplicity of
characters makes it possible for several players to take part
in rotation, each assuming one (or more) roles, and making an
agreed number of entries.
The instructions provided are quite comprehensive in their
coverage of the operation of the parser which deals with your
commands. For example, attention is drawn to the effects of
prepositions in altering the normal meaning of verbs, e.g. "Turn
the wireless set", compared with "Turn ON the wireless set".
Sequential actions can be linked together using the word 'and',
or the character '&', or by the simple use of a comma between
commands. The words 'ALL' and 'EVERYTHING' are akin to
wildcards, applicable to almost any verb, not, as usually found,
only to 'TAKE' and 'DROP'. Abbreviation of all words to their
first four letters is acceptable.
A neat touch is the definition of the function keys to provide
one-key operation of several frequently used commands, and when
SHIFT is pressed, they become compass direction keys. There are
also several help commands, and facilities for saving the game
at any point - an absolute MUST for such a large game. (But see
footnote!!). There is a facility for checking your score in
terms of % game completed, but I found use of this most
depressing.
A feature of all adventure games is that of becoming familiar
with the language, and I spent some considerable time changing
my personality, trying to persuade other characters to eat the
sandwiches etc, during this process.
A major criticism, which became apparent after some aimless
wandering in and out of a grocer's shop after successfully
getting off the train (by waiting for it to stop!), and coming
to blows with George (several times, she's that sort of girl),
is the lack of a defined objective to the adventure. This is
inconsistent with the statement that no knowledge of the book is
necessary to get to grips with the game. I reached the stage
where I felt that if I was to get much further I really needed
to know what I was supposed to be looking for or trying to
accomplish!
It is not easy to define what are the essentials for a
successful adventure game. Convenience of communication must be
an important feature and TREASURE ISLAND scores very well in
this respect. Complexity must be desirable to the extent that
the adventure will take some time to complete, and TREASURE
ISLAND will have no difficulty in meeting this requirement,
judging by my - admittedly limited - experience.
If you enjoy conversing with your computer, you will enjoy this
game and particularly so if, despite what the instructions say,
you have some foreknowledge of the motivation of the Famous Five
in this particular adventure. A predominantly text adventure of
this sort does not provide the Coupe with opportunity to show
its comprehensive graphics and sound capabilities, but that is
no fault of the game.
________________________________________________________________
A footnote to this review comes from D.Hall, who contacted me to
say, that although he found the game very good, the LOAD/SAVE
option only works with tape. This mars the game slightly for
him. (ED.)
________________________________________________________________
VOICE BOX by Blue Alpha Electronics
Reviewed by D.Tonks
Except for the extra drive and the memory upgrade, the Voicebox
is the first true hardware extra for the Sam.
It comes in a plastic package, complete with a small booklet of
instructions for a cost of 39.99.
The device itself is in the same cream coloured box as the SDI
or the Comms box, and fits to the euro connector in the same
way. This brings me to the first problem, in that there is no
through port, and only one device can be fitted at a time. This
involves keep turning the machine off to swap over. The Sam
could really do with a motherboard, or the peripherals could do
with a through port.
Once fitted, the device is ready to run, requiring no software
to drive it. There is a disc provided, which has a demo on it
which involves you typing in a message for the voicebox to
repeat.
The voicebox use the allophone system, where speech is split
into several parts, and those parts are added together to give
the words required. The voicebox can be diven directly from your
BASIC program, and a small subroutine is printed in the booklet
for this pupose.
For those of you who owned a Currah Speech for the Spectrum, you
will find that the Voicebox is not as easy to use. It requires
that you send the allophone via PORT 65407 as a numbered code. A
complete list of these codes are given at the back of the
booklet for reference.
As to the quality of the speech, the main problem I found was
that there was not enough volume to hear it properly if the TV
or monitor was used. If I turned up the volume on the TV, the
Sam's inherent hum got worse, which didn't help the voicebox. If
however, an amplifier was connected to the sound output at the
back of the Sam, a much improved sound was heard. I think that
part of this problem lies with the rather noisy Sam.
The speech itself was quite understandable, if a little machine
like. With careful selection of the allophones, it would be
possible to get quite good results. The paucity of instructions
make life a little frustrating. There must be a way of adding
inflection and pauses into phrases, but the booklet makes no
mention of this. I also think that there is a mistake in the
BASIC listing given in the booklet as I couldn't get it to work
unless I changed The "24" in line 1020 to "126. Maybe it's a
different number for different ROMs?
The main test will be if any commercial software islwritten to
take advantage of this add on. If not, it will have to rely on
homegrown stuff, which will mean that fewer people will buy it.
I talked to Enigma Variations about this, and they told me that
they would support it, if the quality was improved. Overall, a
nicely put together add on, that is fairly easy to use, and with
slight improvements and a much better instruction book, could be
a worthwhile addition to your Sam.
________________________________________________________________
PIPEMANIA Reviewed by R.Evans
------------------------------
You have probably seen this game on the Spectum ,ST etc.. It's a
nice little game, the Sam version has been well thought out, the
title music is not bad and the options are brilliant, they have
thought of every thing, one/two player, expert, and best of all
A TRAINER MODE!!!!!...
I really wish all games had a trainer mode built in, and
the other software houses should take note of this and follow
suit! Anyway back to the game. The general layout is good, the
use of colour, sprites and spot sounds are also of a very high
quality. The game is easy to get into and is fairly adictive.
Not a bad game, and well worth buying.
A good tip for you when playing, is to ignore the pieces on the
left of the screen, and just concentrate on the place you are
putting the piece. Just keep placing pieces until the one you
want comes along.
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