@database Readme @author "John Bankier" @node "Main" "Readme" Hello, my people! This is my second contribution to the AFCD. It contains some pictures in AGA IFF format, mostly 64- 128-colours. Created on an A1200 with two floppy drives, an IDE hard drive, an SCSI CD-ROM drive, colour printer and some horribly powerful speakers hooked up to the CD, playing loud music as I worked. * As before, these pictures are FOR FREE! * You may use them in whatever way you want. FOR FREE! * In fact, send me a disk and a readme telling you what you want, and I'll even knock up a few title screens and the like for games/programs/slideshows/ etc. FOR FREE! And so far, only one person has taken me up on this; Mark Sweeney of SimpleSoft. So, if you like my pictures and would like me to make you some custom artwork (or you'd like some of my own and somewhat unique Worms background), write to, with disk/s enclosed; John Bankier 17 Reedfield Clayton Brook Preston Lancs PR5 8HT It's FOR FREE!, you know... (But don't let that stop you sending me money. I don't mind.) @{ "John" link "John" 0} @endnode @node "John" "More rantings..." Inspired by Ben's little soapbox section, I thought I'd just slip this in at the end of the readme... @{ "Magic Workbench -why it's crap" link "MWB" 0} @{ "The new Pentium advert -why it's also crap" link "Pentup" 0} @{ "Shareware -why it's, yes, also crap" link "Sware" 0} @{ "Back to the readme, which isn't crap" link "main" 0} @endnode @node "MWB" Magic Workbench has always annoyed me. Ever since I first encountered it, as I linked up my trusty A600 to my CD32 in order to enter the heady scents of the CD market, I found MWB on the Network CD disc. I thought; these icons look crap. I hate the gradient backgrounds and the incomprehensible little pictures. The whole point of an icon is to pictorialy represent a tool, project, drawer or read/write device. Does MWB do this? Hah! I think not! What you get are a whole load of icons that look drab and illegible. The palette is probably in part responsible for this; 8 colours, all equally bland. THREE shades of grey! Why do we NEED grey? It's a horrible non-colour. My WB has no grey in it at all, let along THREE SHADES. And then we have, ooh, how exciting, blue, white, black and BROWN? BROWN? That shade of brown is what happens the morning after a bad curry! I don't want it on my workbench! And then there's pink. Pink. Pink is useful for skin colour. Ooh. How nice. And what about black people? What colour do they get? Blue? So, there you have it. Not only is MWB dull, illegible and boring, it's racist, too. And then we have the Amiga Format cover CD. Amiga Format; if the Gods used Amigas, AF is the magazine they would read. But what do they choose for their CD? MAGIC FUCKING WORKBENCH! Great, so we can have a piccy of Ben Vost in glourious pink. So what? My palette turns him green, and I can tell you, it's a damn sight more interesting! But what are the contenders? NewIcons. This is Workbench, not Windows. Here, we don't waste all our RAM with pretty, if pointless icons. The choices are; MWB, dull as hell is hot; or NewIcons, load up WB then find you can't run anything because your icons are too nice. Why can't we have a compromise? And, hopefully, something WITHOUT ANY GREY IN THE PALETTE @{b}AT ALL.@{ub} So far, all the MWB haters seem to make icons sets that look just like MWB. They use the same dull standard palette of black, white, grey and blue, plus a few more equally unappealing colours, and start MWB all over again. It doesn't take much. Just change the palette to cream white, very dark brown, russet (a sort of reddish brown) and a greenish blue, with medium brown, dark green, pink and a medium green, and we lead the way to a much more relaxing workbench. @{ "Go back..." link "John" 0} @endnode @node "Pentup" If you've been watching TV recently, you've probably seen the latest Pentium advert, for the Pentium II processor. The advert focuses on the exploits of a small gaggle of badly dressed PC technicians in a rather pathetic little van. Wearing sparking radition suits, they dazzle the lobotomised natives with just how good a Pentium II PC is, giving them details of technical specifications, hardware speeds, a look at the OS... Except they don't. They drive up in the van, tower cases shoot out, and the announcer tells you a Pentium II process is good. He doesn't actually say WHY, or what, if anything, it can do for your PC. This is what separates the Amiga from the PC. People who buy PCs today DO NOT UNDERSTAND COMPUTERS. It's a simple fact. They see the advertising telling them the computer is good; so they buy it. Three months later. They see an advert telling them another computer is good, and that the computer they spent the price of a good second-hand car on is now out of date. That's why the Amiga is better, and also why games like Foundation, which will no doubt require a graphics card and the like, hail what the Amiga could become; a marginally cheaper PC. But without the advertising. Games and software have to improve themselves with technology, but not at the cost of the 95% of Amigans who simply cannot afford to upgrade. I've already spent a hell of a lot of money on my Amiga; now it's being suggested that even a basic A1200 won't be enough the run games like Myst. I know Myst would suffer from downgrading it, but shouldn't an A1200 owner with perhaps 6mb Ram and a CD-ROM be able to run it? I'll be surprised if they will. @{ "Go back..." link "John" 0} @endnode @node "Sware" Shareware. I just don't believe in it. It's not that I don't want to register my programs, but it's just too difficult. Many good shareware products are written by foreign authors who request either a Eurocheque, DM or US$. Worse still are games like Breed96 which is written by an Australian author. The game was superb, the fee reasonable. But it would take so long to send and recieve that game from across the globe that there would be no point. Worse even are the authors who offer their products as Emailware; they require you to Email them, whereupon they will send you a registration code. But they don't give a home address. I'm not on the net, and I don't intend to be. Or there's giftware. How are you to know what to send a half-mad Swedish programer who cites his hobby as being 'Basket', whatever that might be. A new waste paper bin? And postcardware. My home town doesn't HAVE any postcards of it. Am I suppose to draw a picture? @{ "Go back..." link "John" 0} @endnode