Amiga & other news brought to you in no special order by: Rustybrain ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  *A\Box project on hold - Pre\Box project launched!* Phase 5 announced on the 10th of march, that the company will release a complete Amiga clone by the end of 1998. While the ABox were considered unrealistic with most Amigans, the Prebox seems to make more sense. It's based on multiprosessing, with up to four PowerPCs running at the same time. With its' socket for the Voodoo 2 chipset, which has just been released for the PC, and supposedly PCI slots as well, it should be a very well preforming system indeed. The only major problem is AmigaOS, which is currently not available in a native PPC-version. It's not yet clear whether the Prebox will run the OS under emulation or have a 040/060 socket on the main board. Whatever solution Phase 5 uses, I'm sure a lot of people will be interested in buying such an computer, provided that some decent software is out and that it comes out some time before the millenium ends...:) *Something that makes the CV3D buying...* Famous PC game Descent, which was only recently ported to our favourite system, has now been released in an version that supports the Virge 3D chip on CV3D boards from Phase 5. This chip has recieved a lot of critizism from Amiga coders, both because it lacks software support and because it's  supposedly "dead slow compared to modern 3D boards for the PC". On the other hand, it's not really something that one should compare to the Voodoo - they work in completely different ways and do quite different stuff. Descent certainly looks a lot more impressive now than the previous version, which is good enough for me, really. The game now sports higher frame rates (not really much to do with the Virge chip, but anyway...), bilinear filtering and might get fogging at a later point. Unfortunately, frame rate drops heavily every now and then, this lag comes from uploading textures to graphics card memory, which takes a bit of CPU time. *Rumours ohoy!* According to several sources I have, Monkey Island 3 will most probably be the next Amiga port from Clickboom. Considering the high rating on their wish list a couple of months ago, this does not seem unlikely. Diversia is supposed to be the next Amiga only release from Clickboom, and it's likely that this game will be the first game we'll have that's comparable to Red Alert for Windows 95. It'll run in resolutions up to 1280x1280, and 640x480 will be quite fast even on a fast 040 with a modern graphics board. The game itself is more strategy and less arcade oriented than Red Alert, which can in my opinion, only be a good thing. It'll support PowerUp boards, and well... kick butt, I guess. :) As far as I know, there have not been an official statement regarding this release, but there should be one soon, and I'm pretty confident my sources serve me right, as usual. Haage & Partner are  said to be working on a Duke Nukem 3D port for the Amiga, something which - on the other hand - does NOT seem likely. Or, what do you think? *Amiga mentioned in the media* The norwegian, well visited and PC oriented site Guru-News (located at http://www.guru.no/) recently published an short article on the Amiga. They wrote a bit about the Pre\Box, and even mentioned future AmigaOS updates. Everything about the Amiga situation seemed very rosy in the article, except for them mentioning the mass emigration of users a few years ago. Now, let's just hope things work out and we'll be back in the top ... Also, a page called MacOSRumours, which is said to be an very well visited site by the Mac folks, wrote an article on the Prebox/Amiga. They appeared to be very, very amazed... ;) *BeOS released for Intel * Windows 95 must be the most hated OS in history, and that might be the main reason why Be Inc. has now ported their OS to the Intel Pentium line of prosessors - and most compatibles. It's, compared to Windows 95, small in size, safe and extremely fast according to most reviews published yet. Over 600 applications are out for the PowerPC-version of the OS, most of which will surely be ported to the Pentium BeOS. Also, some rather big names in the industry, like Netscape, are working on software for this platform.  Excited? Nah... not really, are you? I'd much rather stay on the Amiga and see what happens, but if you really need to run something on your Pentium, this might just be IT. Se http://www.be.com/ for anything that could Be (cliché already, that one, just a couple of days after the OS was released for Intel). *PowerUps sold out* The first A1200 PowerUp boards were sold out at most of the stores that actually got some of them, just as they arrived. More are on their way, though 603/250 MHz boards might take some time to arrive. Prices aren't too bad at current boards, and since even the lowest priced boards are sporting a 040/25 - at roughly two times the speed of a 030/50 you'll not only see speedy PowerUp-optimized apps and games, but also old stuff running very smoothly. If you happen to own an 030/50 or lower at the moment, that is. *604e - now available in 233MHz for the A3000/4000* According to our local dealer (Amiga stuff, not drugs, in case anyone were wondering), 604e boards running at 233 MHz are now in stock. Phase 5 has not announced this properly, actually some people got the 233 MHz version of the board when having paid for the 200 MHz one. Nice! :) The 150 MHz model is no longer available here, and I doubt Phase 5 still produce them. The boards  have also dropped a bit in price. If you happen to live in Scandinavia, have a look at http://www.sezam.no/ (Sezam Software). These people have the lowest prices and probably strongest dedication to the Amiga you'll find, at least in Norway. :) *PowerPC kicks butt!* I found these ratings in a newsgroup. See for yourself why we all should upgrade out 'miggys instead of getting some lame Wintel box:  Processor SpecInt95 SpecFp95 ByteMark Consumes  PowerPC G3 266 12.40 8.40 9.01 6.0W Pentium II 300 11.70 8.15 4.26 43.0W (Note: The ByteMark rating, which run a suite of real world apps to collect bench mark data, here shows that the PPC G3 is almost twice as fast as the P II, even at lower clock speed) *Calling all gamers* The recent Amiga game Shadow of the Third Moon sold quite well, and according to Amiga Nuttas homepage (http://www.nutts.demon.co.uk/), it now seems likely that SOTTM 2 (yes - that's the sequel!) will be shown at the next World of  Amiga show. WOA will be held at the end of April 1998, so hold your breath... *More games on their way worth mentioning* CU Amiga ran, in their March issue, a double page picture special on forthcoming Amiga games. There's lots on their way, some which look rather promising. Really! Here's the complete list, and remember: A game worth trying is a game worth buying... or something along those lines! :) Great Nations - Civilization clone with multiplayer capability. ACSys - Turrican look-a-like with a bit higher system requirements. Fratzengeballer - The third game in the Trapped series, more Doom-ish. Bermuda - I belive this one is a bit Myst-like. Cavemen Species - Realtime strategy with great gfx. Or...? Desolate - Gods look-a-like. Diversia - Already told you about this one. See "rumours ahoy!". Explorer 2660 - Space trading with lots of stuff to do. Looks great! Eat the whisle - As far as I know, the only footie game planned in '98. Fire 3D - I have no clue what this is. Weird picture with no text. Forgotten Forev.- C&C/RA-like game. Good graphics. Golem - Highly animation based game. Requires 6x CDRom drive. H.A.R.D. Corps - More Red Alert like stuff. Hard Target - Light gun game that requires lots of RAM and looks nice. Haunted - Myst like adventure game. Amiga only, looks hot. Hellpigs - Action adventure. Unfortunately 'on hold'. Shadow of Time - Lucasarts like adventure game. Soon out? Lambda - 3D engine that is evolving fast. Extremely nice! Genetic Species - Doom like game with awesome fire and smoke effects. Olofighter - Beat em up running in HAM-8. Hope it supports CGFX, though. Phoenix - Hey!! That's our name! Space adventure/trading game. Gilbert Goodmate- More Monkey Island like stuff. Puzzle Heros - Every played the captivating Bust-a-move 2 on PS/Saturn? Quite Please Te.- Tennis game. Might be good... Starfighter.... - 3D Wing Commander like game.  Of course, the latest issue of CU at the time of writing also has a five page Quake special. Having seen the demo running, I can say that this is the best port we are likely to get - in some aspects it's even better than the original PC version. Just hope Clickboom get the PPC version sorted soon, because the game really need the power. Maybe 1998 will be the 'year of the lamer'? Personally, I'll find it hard to try learning to code with all this stuff coming out...:)