Information Guide To The City Of York Version 1.0 ------------------------------------------------- David Thompson 36 Moorcroft Road Woodthorpe York YO24 2RQ 01904 703378 This is my second submission to Amiga Format, the first being a collection of Imagine objects and renders in Amiga Format No30. The idea behind this project was to expand my programming skills and to provide an interactive information guide for people like myself without internet access. As one of the older readers of Amiga Format I thought it would be nice to show that the Amiga can still have a serious use as well as just being used for playing games, and it was also an opportunity to use my new digital camera for more then just family snapshots. The guide can be run straight from the CDrom or can be installed to hard disk by dragging the entire contents of the drawer to any location of your hard drive and double clicking on the executable. No assigns are required and no extra files are required to be installed to your drive. This is a first version of the guide and has been designed to run on a stock A1200 without extra memory. I would like to make a further version if you think it would be worthwhile taking advantage of higher spec machines. Future versions would include :- * Higher screen resolutions including 640 x 512 interlace * Zoom facility on the street map * Animations in 256 colours * Spoken commentary spooled from disk * Internal pictures from most of the attractions * More in-depth information The interface was programmed in Blitz Basic and is fully OS compliant. It includes error checking with automatic exit to DOS should problems occur. It has been tested on my setup of A1200 68030 with 8mb fast ram, and with the fast ram disabled. Due to the requirements of 256 colour graphics, the guide is AGA compatible only. The following hardware and software has been used :- * Pictures were taken using a FUJI DX5 at a resolution of 640 x 480 and saved as JPEGs. * ImageFX was used to scale the pictures and save them out as 24 bit IFFs. * Personal Paint V 6.4 was used for it's image mapping and colour reduction, and also for the additional graphics. * Blitz Basic V 2.1 was used for the interface. * GoldEd was used for the text files. Information Guide For The City Of York -------------------------------------- The Main menu is split into five different sections 1) Text only information Sections include :- Tours of the city Cinemas and theatres Pubs offering live music and nightclubs Sports facilities Local attractions Information services For each of the pages selected from the menu, a further page is opened. Clicking on any gadget will show details of the selected item. By clicking on MAP, the site will be shown either on the large scale street map or on the area map. 2) Area map Selecting this will bring up the area map showing the locations of the main out of town shopping areas and routes into the city. Selecting Park and Ride on this page will show the running times of the three Park and Ride schemes operated by the city. Visitors to York should consider using these if possible due to the horrendous parking charges of the city centre car parks. 3) Street map Selecting this will bring up the scrolling street map of the city centre. 4) Sights Selecting this will bring up a section showing the main attractions with a small scale picture and a text description box giving further details for each attraction in slideshow format. 5) Slideshow Selecting this will bring up a picture window displaying large scale pictures ( 512 x 240) with a set of gadgets to move through the slideshow. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there is any way I can be of help in matters Amiga, or you can think of any refinements I could make to the code or content, please drop me a line at the address shown at the top. David Thompson