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The Final Frontier 3
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Final Frontier 3 (Disk 2 of 4).adf
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REVIEWS
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SOFTWARE-REVIEWS.pp
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SOFTWARE-REVIEWS
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1991-09-09
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SOFTWARE REVIEWS
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PUBLIC DOMAIN/SHAREWARE
So what if all of the PD we're reviewing in this time has been written by
Tobias Richter?! Can we help it if he's written more Trek PD than everyone
else put together!
STAR TREK MEGADEMO
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Reviewed by Simon Plumbe
------------------------
Another issue, another review of one of Tobias Richter's disks! In an unusual
move, Tobias decided to release a one-off title featuring not only still art,
but animations as well.
It's not a megademo in the true sense as far as Amiga demos are concerned,
it's more of a collection of slides and animations with a backing tune. It's
a two disk release with a selection of about a dozen stills, mainly from his
Star Trek video, along with four short HAM animations, again from his video.
As with most of his slideshows, there is accompanying music, featuring sound
effects and speech from the German dubbed version of Star Trek!
All the art and animations are up to Tobias' usual high standards (there are
a couple of stills from the animations to go with this review), and the music
is pretty good as well. The animations won't run on a 1 meg machine unless
the music has been disabled, but it's a small compromise to make.
A great release, and I only hope he finds the time to follow it up with
another!
AGATRON SLIDESHOW 5
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Reviewed by Simon Plumbe
------------------------
In all honesty, this is what I prefer to see from one of Tobias' slideshows -
no music! I've got nothing against using music on slideshows if they are in
lo-res, but HAM slides take up so much memory that you only get a few images
on each disk anyway that a piece of music is probably worth an extra piece of
art or two!
There are a total of 10 pictures on this disk, most of which follow a sci-fi
theme. The disk starts off with Tobi's interpretation of a chess game
(although the pieces do look a little strange), followed by a title screen
that he created fir the disk mag, "Newsflash" featuring a ray-traced A2000!
Starting on the sci-fi theme is a very detailed image of a satellite in orbit
around Jupiter (I think!).
The real "meat" of the disk comes first with a couple of Star Wars pictures.
First is a shot of an Imperial Star Destroyer in flight (very impressive),
followed by a still of a couple of TIE fighters. This isn't all that good,
not because of the image quality, which is superb, but because the objects
Tobias had created are all wrong! If you have this disk, you'll see what I
mean.
Finally, there are FIVE Star Trek stills. First is a shot of a Klingon
battlecruiser, two of the office complex from The Motion Picture and two of
the Enterprise in dry dock. All of the Trek images are stunning, although I
would say that the Enterprise stills are of a much higher quality than the
rest of the images on the disk.
Overall, a good selection of stills, and all the better for the lack of
music! Worth getting for the Trek pictures alone.
AGATRON SLIDESHOW 8
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Reviewed by Simon Plumbe
------------------------
This was only the sixth slideshow by Tobias created using Reflections, but he
was already starting to show how proficient he was at using it. There are
only 7 pictures on this disk, and out of them, there are only three that are
actually about Trek!
As with all his slideshows (from disk 6 onwards I think) there is a backing
tune and I must admit that this time it isn't too bad. It's a semi-oriental
style and it fits wit the slides quite well. I'd still rather have a slient
disk and more art though!
Onto the actual stills themselves. One is a generally non-descript space
scene, 2 have ray traced sci-fi images with fractal landscapes as backdrops!
These were created using Tobias' own fractal generator called McFrac which
not only created fractal landscapes, but saved them in a form that could be
loaded into a number of ray-tracing packages as objects!!! Both are
impressive and enjoyable to look at. The final non-Trek image is an excellent
picture of one of the giant worms from Dune coming out of the sand. This is
probably his best non-space piece I have seen to date.
As far as the Trek images are concerned, there is a picture of three Klingon
battlecruisers in orbit around a planet. This is followed by a close-up view
of the bridge section of one of them (with the other two in view in the
distance). Finally, the third sees a Federation vessel (probably the
Enterprise) encountering four Klingon cruisers. All of them are very good
images and the final image has a very original viewpoint which only adds to
the overall quality.
As a disk overall, it's not his best slideshow, but I would say that is
mainly because of the low number of stills, but there are some nice pieces on
the disk and it's worth getting if you're a Tobias fan.
AGATRON ANIMATION DISK 26
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Reviewed by Simon Plumbe
------------------------
This was one of the last few Star Trek animations that Tobias created using
Videoscape before he moved on to using Reflections.
It's a short (6 seconds) looped animation of the Enterprise-A leaving a dry
dock in space. While the Enterprise leaves the dock, the lights inside the
dock are turned off and there are a couple of smaller craft (a workbee vessel
and a shuttle similar to the one Spock used in The Motion Picture) flying
past. While this is all happening, the view changes and the animation is
seen from four different "camera" angles. All this is accompanied by a short
looped sample from the track "Enterprise Clears Moorings" from Star Trek II.
This is one of the smoother, and therefore better looking, Videoscape
animations from Tobias and it shows just how well he had managed to master
the software. Obviously, I can't show you what the animation looks like, but
there are a couple of stills from the disk on this issue.
Not a classic (it's too short for that) but still a great animation. The
animation has been taken from his first Star Trek animation special which
will hopefully be reviewed next time. The anim special is probably his
largest disk-based release to date, spanning about 15 disks!!!
As well as the Trek animation, there is a short animation of a ship bobbing
up and down on the ocean. It was Tobias' first experiment with some of the
shading features of Videoscape to try and add more detail to his animations.
It's a fairly boring animation for Tobias, and I really think it was just
added to fill the disk up! Sorry Tobi, just stick to the sci-fi stuff!
AGATRON ANIMATION DISK 33
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Reviewed by Simon Plumbe
------------------------
One of his more recent disks, this contains three short, looped, ray-traced
HAM animations created using that ever-popular package, Reflections.
The first on the disk, and the only one NOT about Star Trek, features a small
probe flying through space. That's really it and it's quite a dull, lifeless
animation.
The other two were both taken from his 1990 Star Trek video. First is a short
anim of a Klingon bird of prey flying out from behind the planet Aretris
(well, that's what he calls it in the video!). Although it's a fairly simple
flight path for a Tobias anim, it's quite good and it uses some very detailed
objects.
However, the real highlight of the disk has to be the third and final
animation. This is taken from the closing scenes of his video and sees a
Klingon cruiser being hit by phasers (from the Enterprise which you don't
actually see!) and spinning off from the hit. A very smooth impressive piece
and it's probably worth getting this disk for that alone.
As with his slideshows, Tobias has also started to add music to some of his
animation disks, and unfortunately, the tune on this one is really quite poor
and soon starts to grate on the ears. How about a title pic instead of music
next time?
Overall, a pretty good disk - as long as you keep the volume turned down!
COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE
Well, I was hoping to have had a few reviews here of the game by Electronic
Arts, but as you are probably aware, they have decided not to release the
game on the Amiga. Their excuse? It would be too large, taking up at least 20
disks!
I am starting to get very annoyed at the software industry when it comes to
releasing Trek games on the Amiga. This is the third time that we've been
promised a conversion of a title (previously with Firebird's STAR TREK: THE
REBEL UNIVERSE and Mindscape's game of STAR TREK V) and it's getting beyond a
joke. It's as if the major software houses want us to all go out and buy
PC's!
It is extremely frustrating to continually hear of software houses that think
they can promise titles for months and then change their mind at the last
minute. The game is, from what I believe, almost ready to release. They are
just trying to fit it onto as few a number of disks as possible. That's all
very well, but the PC version was designed to run from a hard disk and you
only use the floppies to store the game on and to install from. Why not do
that for the Amiga version? I know there isn't the same kind of numbers of
Amiga owners with hard drives, but I for one would buy a hard drive just to
play that game, as would many others.
It wouldn't be the first either. The recent Roger Rabbit game from
Infogrammes needed 1MB of RAM (with 2MB recommended) and it NEEDED a hard
drive. It's still selling, so why wouldn't a Trek game?
As an alternative to that, they could have at least said that they would
release the game for the CDTV. By the end of this year, there will be AT
LEAST 100,000 CDTV owners or Amiga owners with the A570 CD-ROM and I'm sure
most of them would consider buying a game that, if it's anything like it's PC
counterpart, will be well worth paying for.
To top it all off, I THINK that the game is actually on sale in America for
the Amiga! What makes American Amiga owners different to the rest of us? The
majority of them have hard drives! If you can get it imported, I would advise
you to do so, as it's a stunning game.
What makes it worse is that with Paramount's current attitude of stopping all
PD Star Trek games it means that Amiga owners are being left out with NO Star
Trek games being available.
Joking aside, it's time once again for us Trekkers to start writing! It may
seem ridiculous, writing letters of complaint at every opportunity, but it
DOES work. Write to Electronic Arts and tell them that we WANT a Star Trek
game for the Amiga, no matter how much it costs.
For their address and for a full look at this situation, read the article on
Electronic Arts by Colin Gunn in this issue.