News in brief

News in brief

Amiga news

• Shortly after the deadline of the games section we got this message from Peter Elzner: »My first, large Amiga game Diamond Caves is now available as freeware, 4 years after its release. The game as well as the MUI level editior can be used without restrictions, many new level groups are available e.g. in the Aminet or dircetly at http://www.diamond-pro.com My thanks goes to the more than 250 registered users for their support, who wants to register anyway may want to order Diamond Caves II :-) Else each user who likes the game is asked to send me a nice post card.« (Peter Elzner) <peter.elzner@diamond-pro.com>)
• Some time ago among others Vesalia Computer announced a ZorroIV(!) bus extension for the A1200. According to our informations this is an overclocked ZorroII extension, which eventually may be faster than ZorroIII.

  It has nothing to do with ZorroIV standard, Commodore planned years ago. In addition to that this extension is not compatible with the 32bit wide ZorroIII.

• In these days Haage & Partner (http://www.haage-partner.com) is expected to make the version 2 of the 3D hardware driver software Warp3D available. The most important innovation is the support of the Permedia2 graphic processor, which is used on graphic boards as the CyberVisionPPC and BVisionPPC.
• Toysoft announced a new eMail software called StarGate. Further informations are said to be on www.toysoft-dev.com/stargate.html. from February 1 on.
• The source code of the BASIC dialect AMOS has been put into the public domain. It can be found on auf www.clickteam.com/web/amos/amos.htm.
• The Amiga-Arena (online-club.de/~ARENA/) offers shareware for special prices again: The IRC software BlackIRC (tested in this edition of Amiga aktuell international) bundled with the telephone charge manager AGM is sold for 25 DEM (approx. 12.76 Euro) instead of 35 DEM (approx. 17.86 Euro) up to February 11,1999. There are also other programs by Felix Schwarz, which can be bought cheaper in a bundle.

  Also new in the Amiga arena is the competition, where you can win one of five keyfiles for the game Imperium Terranum 2. Further it has been announced, that the German version of the freeware strategy game Task Force is expected to be available exclusive at Amiga-Arena, before it is available in the Aminet.

• Klaus Burkert of Village Tronic wrote in a newsgroup posting, that he personally expets the 3DFX extension for the PicassoIV to be available at the end of the 2nd or 3rd quarter.
• VaporWare, who also make well-known Internet products redesigned their homepage. (http://www.vapor.com) umgestaltet.

  By the way, recently revision 1.1 of the mail and news software Microdot 2 was released.

• Andreas Etzrodt sent us this mail: »A friend of mine got an idea he told Amiga International: He could make a card game with motives of the Amiga (all the Amiga models) as a promotional article under licence. But before he invests his money he would like to know, if such a card game would be of interest for the Amigia community. The idea of the game is like "Schwarzer Peter" (remark of the translator: a game, where you have to get four of the same cards to put them down, but one remains - who holds this when there are no cards left, loses the game). Ask you friends, if someone is interested in this game, as set would cost about 10 DEM to 12 DEM ( approx. 5.10 Euro to 6.12 Euro), that depends on the numbers sold.« If you're interested in this game send an eMail to Andreas Etzrodt <the_shark@gmx.de>.
• The north american print magazines Amiga informa and Amazing Computing/Amiga merged. The new magazine will be published with the last one of the names by PiM Publications.

About DOSsers and apples (and other non-AMIGA-news)

• Andreas Schaumloeffel sent us this information from Heiner de Wendt:

  »Money back for not wanted Windows 98

  Who buys his new computer in a complete package with pre-installed Windows and doesn't want to use the Microsoft operating system may get the money back for the not wanted software. As the information service Register reported, the Australian Geoffrey Bennet was the first one who got 110 Australian dollars (appros. 119 DEM/ 60.71 Euro).

  Bennet founded his request on the Windows lincence contract, which states: "If you do not agree with the rules of this licence contract, please return the unused product without delay for refund of the purchase price" A speaker of Microsoft confirmed, that this phrase could be part of the licence contract. But Microsoft didn't want to make a comment about the possible consequences. The big computer manufacturers Compaq, Dell and Vobis didn't want to give a statement to this problem.«