Welcome to the News In Brief Section. This page contains all articles from 1st - 31st January. Enjoy.
On Thursday, January 15th 1998 the Michigan Computer User Group, Amiga Special Interest group is proud to be hosting a software demonstration by the notable Amiga software company Gamasoft.
Gamasoft plans to demonstrate two pieces of software, Metal Web, a WYSIWYG html authoring program, and Finale Web Cruiser the newest and most anticipated Amiga web browser.
Demo copies of Metal Web will be available for attendies.
The meeting will take place at South Lake High School, in St. Clair Shores, Michigan.
For contact information, directions to the meeting, or more info look to the MCUG Amiga SIG web page at http://www.rust.net/~mignas h/sigamiga.html, e-mail me at mignash@rust.net or telephone (810)774-4410.
For more on Gamasoft contact their web site at http://www.mich.com/~twalling/ gamasoft/ for the latest on a number of impressive pieces of software for the Amiga platform.
Steve Ocepeck the former operator of Vulcan America in Ohio is transferring the business to Terry Fike in Texas.
Terry the owner of 'Turtle Lightening Software' will now be responsible for supplying all Vulcan's titles to American and Canadian Amiga users. Terry offers top quality 'mail order' services throughout the region and will also be Vulcan's main trade outlet in North America.
Visit the Vulcan website for more information, ordering details and current price lists. (http://www.vulcan.co.uk/)
NEW ADDRESS:
Vulcan Software America, P.O. Box 30499, Midland, TX 79712, U.S.A.
Contact Name: Terry Fike
Telephone: 915-563-4925
Fax: 915-563-4315
Email: TurtleGuy@Apex2000.net
All at Vulcan UK wish Steve the best of luck in his new business ventures!
Live Long & Prosper!
Kind Regards
Paul Carrington BA (Director)
Vulcan Software Limited
http://www.vulcan.co.uk/
January 15, 1998 - Amiga users from around the world tonight gasped in shock as they read a message posted on the Washington University (in St. Louis, MO) FTP site, the primary host of the Aminet archive. The location where the primary Aminet archive is usually stored is now reported as "not found" by the server and this message can be found in the /pub/ directory of wustl:
|
Due to extensive and repeated abuse, the public files section of wuarchive
has been removed. This also means that we are no longer accepting software
submissions. We do, however, mirror several large platform-specific
archives. If you are looking to distribute your software, you might
consider uploading your files to one of these other large archives.
Uploads to the following sites will be mirrored to wuarchive in less than a
day:
garbo.uwasa.fi (DOS files, mirrored in /systems/ibmpc/garbo.uwasa.fi) Please visit our main page at http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ to find other great software. Thank you for visiting wuarchive. |
Most of the people who were disturbed by that posting failed to notice the date stamp of the file: November 16, 1997. It was an old post announcing the deletion of files from wustl's /pub/ FTP directories--not Aminet.
Aminet administrator Urban Mueller reported to CUCUG that the problem is yet another in a long line of hard disk errors suffered at the midwestern US university and that repairs were being made. According to Mueller, the primary Aminet archive will be back online within a few days and there is no need to panic.
January 19, 1998 - According to Urban Mueller, Administrator of Aminet, the complete RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives) at Washington University was lost due to "human error". Mueller confirmed an earlier posting on the Amiga Web Directory which indicated that a complete tape backup was available and was in process. The restore from tape is currently estimated to take another two days to complete. In the meantime files may still be downloaded from the long list of Aminet mirrors located throughout the world. A list of these may be found at http://www.cucug.org/aminet.html .
Mueller also indicated that there are plans to make the main Aminet site independent from Washintong University's "wuarchive" and that a network alias would point to an alternate site in the event that the primary site goes down again.
Aminet is one of the world's largest file collections for any computer and exclusively features Amiga-oriented software and other materials.
Blitzbombers is a game that has been eagerly
awaited by
many people for a long time. Well, now your wait is over, the game is finally
going to be released, for free. Yep thats right, FREE.
The authors have finally decided to just release the game on Aminet instead of trying for a commerical or shareware release. The game is completly finished aside from a few 1-player levels lacking in design slightly.
When will you be able to get this I'm sure your asking, well, the game is being uploaded to Aminet on the 1st of February, make sure your there waiting.
For those of you who do not know much about the game here is a quick taster of what it will feature:-
For more information on Red When Excited check out their webpage at:-
Persistence of Vision, the multi-platform public domain rendering software, has been updated. Persistence of Vision is a public domain raytracing program for several platforms, including the Amiga. Joel Newkirk, one of the Amiga programmers, has released the latest incarnation, version 3.02. What Persistence of Vision lacks is a GUI: you have to stage your 3D scene by hand, although several helpful examples are included and if you're good with graph paper, it's a manageable task.
What POV has in abundance are algorithmic textures to make your objects visually appealing. With so many authors working on the project, they've amassed quite a lot, to rival the included Imagine textures. Newkirk also promises support for the Phase5 PowerUP cards in the near future, allowing much faster rendering times. There are presently versions available for all Amigas, even those without FPU units.
To learn more about POV-Ray, check out http://www.wearefamily.com/newkirk
Titan Computers have released their third Amiga game. It is the jump & run, Sword. I'm sure you have heard of it and may have even played the demo of it that was released so I won't go into detail about the game. It should be available from Epic Marketing, who are the distributers of Titan products in the Uk.
Titans next Amiga release will be Evils Doom, this is a special edition of the game that was released as Shareware last year. It will be released on CD and will give all the people that couldn't get hold of it before, a chance to see what an excellent game it is.
Titan also have a few other games coming out way. The first of these is Claws of the Devil. This game features a Tomb-Raider style engine with an adventure part. It will be released on CD only and will require an 040/PPC, AGA or GFX Card, 8MB Fast RAM, Hard-disk and a CD-ROM drive. The second game is Total Combustion, again this will be a CD only release. It is a Car-Wars game that is similar to Carmagedon. This will also require an 040/PPC, AGA or GFX Card, 8Mb Fast RAM, a hard-disk and a CD-ROM drive.
I hope to bring you more news on these games very soon.
Here is the Genetic Species press release.
Vulcan Softwares Genetic Species CDRom is finally nearing completion!
3 years of pure sweat and creativity is now coming to a close and the
title is all set for a February 98 release, can you honestly wait!
To mark the occasion Vulcan in co-operation with Amiga Advis have
initiated a competition for 10 lucky Amiga users to win a free copy of
Genetic Species CDRom on launch day.
To enter the competition please visit the newly updated and frames
capable `Genetic Species Developers` website at (www.marble-eyes.dk)
where you mcan also find `up to the minute` information and screenshots,
or simply visit the Vulcan website (www.vulcan.co.uk) and follow the links.
Demo Version 3 is now available from both sites and Aminet.
Live Long & Prosper!
- Martin Halberg, Marble Eyes Development
**************************
GENETIC SPECIES UPDATE
**************************
The game will be released in late February, maybe even early March.
The latest on a release date for Foundation is somewhere around February/March 1998.
Macrohard Media Celebrates!
Amiga Inc. has made the anouncement we have all been waiting for! The Amigas future is with Motorola and its PowerPC line of processors! To celebrate the occasion Macrohard Media will be offering the Phase5 CyberstormPPC200 at a temporary sale price. We wish to promote new software developements for the new standard in Amiga power. We hope all professional and amateur coders will take advantage of this offer and start coding the Amigas future.
These prices will be good only for the month of Febuary. In the case of a stock shortage these prices will be honored on prepaid orders to be shipped at a later date.
The CyberstormPPC 200mhz accelerator is for the A3000 and A4000.
CyberstormPPC200 w/ 68k processor - $1065
CyberstormPPC200 w/ out 68k processor - $999
Expect to see Wordworth 7 around Easter, more on this as soon as I get some more information.