PD Zone

Welcome to the first edition of PD Zone. This issue we're going
to treat you to reviews of the Following:

   Sweet Cheater 4.5 - By Keith Krellwitz
   R3 - By Bruce Webster
   Typeface 1.1 - By David Kinder
   YAGG - Black Blade Design
   Textengine 5.1 - By Nicholas Harvey
   Mini Arcanoid - Piotr Pawlow

If you have a PD proggy which you created that you want reviewed or
if you know of a good PD proggy and you can send us a copy of it
then we will review it (we can't return disks unless you send SAE)



Sweet Cheater - By Keith Krellwitz

Apparently, this cheat collection has over 950 cheats on it. Now I'm
not going to go and count just how many more than 950 it has, but I
think you'll aggree that it's more than enough if you want to find
the odd cheat for a fairly recent (1995 or before) game. The cheats
all seem to work for the games I have tried (most of them have been
reviewed so you know the ones I'm talking about). 

Theres also a lot of detail in each cheat which brings me to wondering
how on earth the authors of these massive Amigaguide docs actually
sit and type these things in! Anyway, it's very good and the cheats
are accurate (it's just a shame that theres no Ultima 6 SOLUTION in
it).

92%



R3 - The Art Of Rocketry By Bruce Webster

R³ is a simple enough gravity type game. It's very easy to control
and has just enough features to get you through. It is essentially
a game where you take control of a 'spaceship' which you then fly
around a level and collect cargo and take it back to your base.

Of course, theres a load of baddies to contend with and various
other things such as fuel (which you'll need for obvious reasons).
For each piece of cargo returned to base, you get some money with
which you can buy another ship next time.

Ships range from bottom of the range 'Farts' to Top of the range
'Schmu's'. Obviously, as the levels progress, you're going to need
better ships which have better firepower and more cargo space. It has a
Brilliant balance between all the features of the game and well worth
a look.

90%



TypeFace - By David Kinder

Typeface, as the name suggests, is a groovy little util which will
lot you edit or create bitmap fonts. It has all the features you'd
expect this sort of program to have plus a few extras.

It's very quick and easy to make a font aswell. All you have to do
it start the program, click on the letter you want to edit and start
drawing! It's not exactly as complex as the Personal Font Maker from
Cloanto, but it's good at it's job and it can create fonts well.

It even comes with a little option to view all the characters in
the current type set which I found very useful when making fonts.

90%



YAGG (Yet Another Gravity Game) By Black Blade Design

Yes, It's another gravity game. Wonderful. Actually, it is pretty
wonderful. The way it's done is amazing because when you start, you
get a zoomed out view of the map your playing in. You fly your ship, 
your opponent flies theirs and as you get closer together, the 
screen zooms in on you!

I think it's brilliant! It gives a completely different atmosphere
to the game that other games like it since the tension mounts as
the camera moves in on you as you try to blast each other out of
the sky! It's just like a movie!

90%



TextEngine By Nicholas Harvey

Textengine 5.1 is a text editor, but with a lot of features. It has
formatting codes which you can insert into the text so it will print
out with the different types of formatting (Bold etc). This means
that the program won't save in ASCII by default which is why I use
Blacks editor.

The fact that it doesn't save in ASCII by default is annoying.
There is a menu option which says 'Save ASCII...' but this means a
requester pops up. Why not have a 'Save As ASCII' and 'Save ASCII'
or just why not do away with the formatting codes?

Another complaint is that it always asks whether you want to do
something because you would lose your file if you did. Why not 
implement a way of checking if the user has saved recently, eh Nick?
Anyway, it's a good program and it even includes a spell checker!

89%



Finally, Mini Arcanoid

It's arcanoid! Yay! Everyone knows what arcanoid is don't they?
You know, Breakout, that sort of thing. Well, this is a variation
of that game. It works in a Workbench Window and it fairly good 
fun to play since there are some worthwhile powerups to collect.
Overall, I wouldn't buy it specially but it's good if you can get
it for free or something.

84%


Hope you enjoyed the reviews and if you have written a PD
review, send it to us here at:

   trogladite@hotmail.com

(see the contributions file for more information)