AFCD1 - 614.4Mb - June 96 It's all new! What changes could there possibly be, other than the last minute omission of Nick's toilet fury full-screen video. Commercial Software: Real 3D v2.5, Real 3D v1.5, Blitz Basic v2.1AF, Personal Fonts Maker 2. AFCD2 - 644.5Mb - July 96 Still using the CanDo-generated front end, but it's getting difficult to keep it up-to-date already. Commercial Software: CanDo v2.5, Octamed 5, Wordworth 5. AFCD3 - 475.2Mb (but there are audio tracks) - August 96 First audio tracks (excerpts from speeches given at the Toulouse press conference) on an AFCD! No sign of the front end from AFCD1 & 2. Commercial Software: TypeSmith v2.5. AFCD4 - 526.6Mb - Spetember 96 First CD compiled by Ben. This CD was the start of the current layout, although there were nine drawers and five file icons at the root. Commercial software: none, but AlienBreed - Tower Assault movie. AFCD5 - 551.1Mb - October 96 Loads of problems! Lots of people reported that they couldn't read this disc although we had had no trouble with it. Nick_Speaks! from the previous CD was replaced with Ben_Speaks! and has stayed the same ever since (although the icon has been improved!). First appearance of the In_the_Mag drawer. Commercial Software: None, but large numbers of PhotoCD images of Bath. AFCD6 - 600.4Mb - November 96 First appearance of Look_here_1st! drawer (unwieldly-ly called Have_a_look_here_first! on this CD!).This drawer contained the startup scripts and the colour patchers making the total number of icons in the root: drawers 8, files 1. It's also the first appearance on the AF_on_the_Web drawer, although the only website included was the old AF pages. This CD marks the first appearance of the venerable AFCDSurvey. Commercial Software: none. AFCD7 - 622.9Mb - December 96 Sensibly we renamed the Look_here_1st! drawer this month, and new icon images for the drawers on the CD but other than that there aren't a great number of changes to the CD from the previous one. oh yes, and we had a huge amount of ReaderStuff (more than 200Mb) mainly thanks to Femi Hasani and his excellent video backdrops. Commercial software: DataChrome. AFCD8 - 517Mb - Christmas 96 First appearance of our new AFCD icon, created for us by a reader. A new icon for Ben_Speaks! - me with much shorter hair (it's probably about time for another new one as I write this at the start of the production schedule for AFCD28). Ben_Speaks has my thought for the month for the first time, but will remain in AmigaGuide format for some time to come. Serious turns into Seriously_Amiga. Still not many websites and the Andy Davidson interview didn't get on the disc either. Also, we didn't want your MODs any more because of copyright infringements. Commercial software: Cinema 4D. AFCD9 - 576Mb - January 97 We had interviews in Quicktime format on this CD, that weren't playable using the Quicktime players available to us at the time. They may well be now, so if you want to hear what Wolf Dietrich and Jason Compton had to say a year and a half ago, give them a try now. Commercial software: Octamed 6. AFCD10 - 646.1Mb - February 97 A really packed CD this month and the first appearance of NewIcons for the CD and for Ben_Speaks!, for what it's worth. We now have nine drawers in the root of the CD to make it look neater (the extra drawer is one for Prefs). The main work I did on the CD was to create a massive set of AmigaGuide docs for all the transcsripts of the Lightwave Mailing list, along with huge numbers of objects, scenes and the like for the premier 3D package for the Amiga. We also started lining up the drawers in a now-familiar style and included a Reader Warrant in the Look_here_1st! drawer. Commercial software: FontMachine. AFCD11 - 589.6Mb - March 97 A change in CD compiling took place this CD with the excellent EMComputergraphic taking the helm. As a first step, they got every single datatype that could be found at the time and put them on the CD. This CD also marks the first appearance of the minus signs at the start and end of the important directory names. The reason for this is to make them easier to find in a directory utility like DOpus. We also had the complete (but unannotated) source for Alien Breed 3D2. Commercial Software: Turbocalc 2.1. AFCD12 - 617.1Mb - April 97 And now we start to consolidate with the CD. We've made a lot of changes over the previous eleven discs and now the CD is pretty good, EMC can get on with compiling instead of worrying about how to improve it. Of course, changes will come, but not yet. Commercial software: PPaint 6.4, Cinema 4D 2. AFCD13 - 460.6Mb - May 97 An all-time low for content. We were decidedly hampered by Aminet not working properly and a lack of time generally. A first mention of Quake in Ben_Speaks! Commercial software: Scala 1.13. AFCD14 - 550.5Mb - June 97 Again, not much changed for AFCD14 if I remember rightly. We had a lot of games though this issue including exclusive items from Vulcan previewing their up-and-coming games (some of which still haven't reached us!). Commercial software: none. AFCD15 - 644.2Mb - July 97 The AFCD setup script becomes one file this month instead of two, but other than that there's not much change. However, as you can see, this CD is very full indeed. Commercial software: none. AFCD16 - 654.3Mb - August 97 Our fullest CD yet! This CD accompanied our 100th issue so we included all 100 top shareware titles which, no doubt, helped to fill the disc to the brim. The only obvious change this month is the fact the the AFCD_Setup file gains some plus signs in front of and behind its name and gets moved to the root of the CD to encourage you to use it more. We also tried out a Reader Ads section on the CD, but it didn't work out and was, instead, transplanted into the magazine. Commercial software: none. AFCD17 - 574.5Mb - September 97 This CD sees the introduction of the superb AFCDFind written especially for us by that wiz Oliver Roberts. It made finding what you were looking for on our CD so much better than having to trawl through the listed indices that it was a shock, but even so it's improved immeasurably since then. Nice one Oliver! Commercial software: none. AFCD18 - 616.5Mb - October 97 Look_here_1st! gets plus signs now to make sure it appears at the top of your listers in DOpus, but other than that there aren't many changes. We had 25 different websites on the CD and more than 120Mb of your contributions though. Commercial software: Aquanaut. AFCD19 - 433.4Mb (plus audio tracks) - November 97 Just a bit of a jiggle for the drawers on the CD this month - guaranteed to confuse everyone, but we didn't get too many complaints. It seems that a lot of you liked the audio tracks we had on the CD too. Commercial software: none. AFCD20 - 651.3Mb - December 97 This CD sees the debut of AFCDPrefs, the tool that has made the AFCDs more personalised than ever. The marvellous Oliver Roberts wrote this for us too and like AFCDFind, it has improved and improved over the months we've been using it, thanks to our increased familiarity with it and your helpful suggestions through the AFCDSurvey. We had exclusive demos of Final Odyssey and Uropa 2 on this CD along with a full version of NetBSD. Commercial software: none. AFCD21 - 648.5Mb - Christmas 97 This CD saw the start of yet another new feature to help you, the reader. We started the very popular Reader_Requests drawer on AFCD21 and it has been very successful so far. There was also a new AFCDSurvey to fill in and send to us (we must have had 5,000 of these surveys so far. I read every one of them and try to reply where possible). We also had an exclusive demo of the long-awaited Genetic Species on AFCD21. Commercial software: none. AFCD22 - 649.4 - January 98 Not much has changed since the previous CD, although we do have another exclusive game demo in the shape of Foundation on this CD. Other than that and just about 100Mb of reader contributions, the CD contains the usual up-to-date mix of shareware and the like. Commercial software: none. AFCD23 - 645.6Mb - February 98 Judging by responses we've had via email and in the post to AFCDPrefs, it seemed that many of you weren't sure what to do with it, so I took the time to explain it in Ben_Speaks! that CD. It's all a bit out of date now, but still relevant. The CD kept on keeping on that month, but we did have a novelty in the shape of our first ever MP3 file which was Petro Tyschtschenko's speech from Cologne. It was terrible quality, but then it was never designed to go onto the CD in the first place, it was only many requests from readers that forced our hand. Commercial software: none. AFCD24 - 639.2Mb - March 98 This CD was the first one done in the new year for us, so it was also the first CD we did that had loads of Doom info on it. It was also another CD where we had huge numbers of contributions from you (more than 180Mb). Other than that, there weren't many changes from the previous CD. Commercial software: none. AFCD25 - 643.1Mb - April 98 All change! For the first time really since AFCD6, the CD was laid out afresh. Instead of having nine drawers at the root and two files, we, all of a sudden, dropped to only six drawers and one file - Ben_Speaks!. Speaking of which, Ben_Speaks! changed this month from being a boring old Amigaguide file into HTML, bringing together all the disparate elements of the CD: namely Submissions advice, websites, Ben Speaks and subs, although subs isn't here yet. The restructuring was done to leave CoverDisks, ReaderStuff, Seriously_Amiga, ScreenPlay and In_the_Mag in the root and to add a new drawer called System which contained pretty much what Look_here_1st! had contained, but better. PD_Select was renamed to demos and put into the In_the_Mag drawer. Because we ensured that you wouldn't have to run some horrid startup script to make sure that everything ran from the CD okay, AFCD_Setup was moved to the System drawer as well. We also had a few problems with this CD because some Sanyo 2x SCSI CD-ROM drives wouldn't read it because it stretched the ISO9660 standard too far for them. Commercial software: UFO Enemy Unknown. AFCD26 - 642Mb - May 98 A refinement of AFCD25. The Websites drawer got "-"s to put it up with the content drawers in a lister, the viewers drawer got renamed to Tools and had a lot added to it. Every month now, the AFCD will provide a useful collection of tools, utilities and commodities for you to make use of. A subscriptions page was added to Ben_Speaks! and the layout of it was changed to include frames (not that I think frames are great, they just make navigation easier in this instance). The Demos drawer was renamed to MegaDemos to save any confusion with any other kind of demo. We've also reduced the amount of system files on the CD to ensure that more of our CD is new stuff than the competition. As it stands on this CD, less than 8% of the disc's contents are actually repeated material, whereas CU's disc had more than 12%. Commercial software: PPaint 7. AFCD27 - 642Mb - June 98 Little things really. Added little animated AF logos to the web pages, lost the icon for the Indices drawer in +System+, added new viewers to the Tools drawer, and so on. Commercial software: F1GP AFCD28 - 644.4Mb - July 98 Removed the Prefs drawer from +System+ and moved AFCDPrefs into +System+ itself. Got rid of the Superview library files from libs since we had already got rid of the SVPrefs program and it was out-of-date anyway. Exclusive demo of Golem's ace new XFL animation format which gives you full-screen, full-speed animation with synchronised sound. Added AFCD history to the CD. Got rid of separate Reader Warrant file and updated the Survey and Readme template. We also made a big change in the -Seriously_Amiga- drawer by moving the shareware drawers into their parent directory. This means that we have an extra directory deep to play with which comes in handy mainly for the Programming drawer. Commercial software: none. AFCD29 - 645.2Mb - August 1998 So far, there aren't a lot of changes to be made to this CD, mainly because we're waiting to find out what you think of AFCD28. We're looking at adding better DOpus functionality, because it seems that many of you are running it as a WBR, and we can do a lot more (interactively) with it than we can with Workbench. Updated the survey to keep it up to date. Updated AFCDView so that it works properly with the new layout from AFCD28, and included the demo of Golem that we missed out on last month. Check it out, you'll be amazed, honest! Commercial software: none. AFCD30 - 646Mb - September 1998 Cleared up a glitch in the AFCD_Setup script that meant that font prefs couldn't be found on AFCD28 and AFCD29. Added a new drawer to +System+/Tools/Workbench called Archivers which contains 68k and PPC versions of all the common archiving tools. Also added some diagnostic tools to the Expert drawer, and AHI and RTGMaster to the Sound and Graphics drawers respectively. Hopefully we should have some major changes in AFCDFind this CD, including the long-requested ability to search for a file, click on a link and have the file or drawer open up automatically. Unfortunately, it will only be people using a current version of DOpus that will have access to this function because Workbench isn't powerful enough! Added a Roadmap page to the html so that beginners can find their way around our CD easily. Changed ScreenPlay/Commercial so it has dashes, more consistent with SeriouslyAmiga/Commercial. Changed the layout of the websites drawer to make it more neat. Deleted more obsolete libraries and the like to bring down further the amount of repeated System files you have to deal with. Even so, I doubt that total System usage will go down at all (it's more likely to go up) since we've added some new tools and obviously the index for this CD. Even so, you'll find more new stuff on our CD every month than anywhere else! Design for the CD itself and its packaging changes this month. Our Art Editor Colin has worked hard on a new look for the disc. Commercial software: none. AFCD31 - 555Mb (plus audio track) - October 1998 Added a new newicon to the CD this month. Robert C. Miller is the artist involved and we think he's done a great job on it. The starburst around it really gives it a sense of wonder that we hope you find on our CDs (corny, I know). Archived some of the early AFCD indices (AFCD1-10) so that they take up less room on CD. You can't get these CDs any more anyway. We'll be doing the same every ten CDs from now on. Updated the ARexx script that AFCDFind uses. You should have no problems in DOpus now getting it to bring up the windows or files you need. Updated subs advice. AFCD32 - 647Mb - November 1998 Robert C. Miller has done a whole bunch of icons for our CD this month to please all the newicon fans out there. We'll be using them from now on and putting the MWB:NI question a rest. Again, this is a packed CD this time, especially given that we received a CD from one reader! We've had to redo the AVI file he sent us as an mpeg, but you won't be able to see it in on this CD since there wasn't the time to do it (or the space on the disc!) for this one. We've also included some new utilities in the C: drawer for DOpus users. Dread, Dshow and DPlay can be used in your AFCDPrefs to use DOpus' settings for text file reading, picture showing or sound playing, to make our CD even more integrated with DOpusbench. AFCD33 - 642.7Mb estimated - December 1998 Another plus. We're considering getting rid of most of the files on the CD related to booting. CD³² owners have until AFCD35 to complain, otherwise we'll go ahead and stop the CD booting and ditch more of the system files. We've also ditched a bunch of stuff from the +System+ drawer this month bringing the total for the +System+ drawer down below 50 meg and the total number of System files on the CD down to about 7%. If we can get rid of the booting part of the CD, we can probably get rid of another 1% giving us just 6% repeated stuff every CD. AFCD34 - 644.3Mb - Christmas 1998 Only two changes this month. The first is that websites get no leeway from us if they want to stay on the CD. The only option if you have a website that you want to appear on every AFCD is to send it in to us every four weeks, whether it has changed or not. The second thing to change is the fact that apparently some people have a problem with drawers called Workbench being on our CD, so we've changed the name to just WB throughout. We've also edited the preferences for the browsers on our CD so that will hopefully stop the "Disk is write protected" problem when using a browser from off the CD. We haven't tried this solution before, so it may not work, but it's worth a try, right? :) AFCD35 - 645Mb+ estimated - January 1999 Two additions this CD: The first is the fact that we now have an ARexx drawer in the -Seriously_Amiga-/Programming directory, the second is that we now also have an additional drawer in ReaderStuff. Prompted by requests from users we're going to have A "readers' Workbench" drawer which will contain images of Amiga users' Workbenches along with readmes explaining just what they use to make their Workbench look the way it does. Also, advanced warning for next issue: We'll be taking off the +AFCD_Setup+ file since it has become less and less valuable as time has gone on. We provide SnoopDOS on our CD every month, so if you find that there are libraries or fonts that you are lacking you can always copy them across to your hard drive. We'll also be changing the default tool AFCDView from ":c/afcdview" to simply "afcdview". This may mean that you'll need to copy AFCDView into your C: directory to be able to read files, but since it's only a tiny program this shouldn't be a problem.