Tone Byte

Roamings in the Amiga world.



Amiga Myst: For real this time?

You might remember this article that I wrote for the September 1996 issue of The Amiga Monitor: "Myst Preview: Amiga Community Bitten by Fake Preview of Broderbund Hit Title". Well, that was true then but this is now and clickBOOM, of Capital Punishment fame, are bringing it over to the Amiga, slated for an early summer release.

The September article was about a "preview" of Amiga Myst which was written by a Polish programmer. He essentially wrote an Amiga engine to use the PC datafiles and released his preview to Aminet. This unleashed a flurry of calls to Broderbund who denied that any Amiga version was planned. That was all true. The folks at clickBOOM have obtained rights now to port Myst officially to the Amiga.

When I asked Alexander Petrovic about any relationship between the hoax preview and their upcoming release, he stated that this is an original clickBOOM project and has no relationship to the illegal demo.

For those who don't know, Myst is a popular puzzle game from the PC. It incorporates rendered screens with small animations and sound effects. To get through the game, you must solve puzzles to accomplish goals. This game spawned many "Myst clones". Can this be the harbinger of more popular PC games ported to the Amiga by enterprising developers? Maybe.

Contributed by: Anthony Becker

The Darker Side of Operating System Installation

Oh no, there it was. A fatal error and the need to reinstall the operating system. No big deal, but one of the update disks was bad, so I picked up a full install set. "How different can they be?" Well, there I was; starting the installation went alright. After about ten minutes of checking out the hardware and onto the second install disk, it decides to check to see if there was enough space on the disk, which there wasn't. So it's back to the beginning after deleting enough to free up the required 50 Megs of hard drive space, even though it will be overwriting many existing files. Through the ten minutes of hardware tests again to the input of a protection number. Of course I left the manual from this specific copy at home, but I have two others with me so it should be no problem, right? Wrong, it will accept neither of them; they are too new. After a trip home and back and ten minutes of hardware tests, again the number is accepted, but, NO, this machine has an operating system installed; the gall! You need a different disk. After one trip to the computer store for an "update version" and ten minutes of hardware tests, AGAIN I'm finally into the thirty minutes of installation. I can now use the computer again.

A crazy recursive dream where each step seems to bring you back to where you started, seemingly never able to get anywhere? Nope, a true story. If you were unable to guess, I am not talking about my Amigas. I'm talking about my computer in the office. A 100MHz 486 Gates Crate running Windows 95. On Tuesday of this past week it was only able to come up with a message saying it was unable to load Explorer, a major part of OS, and Windows needed to be reinstalled. That started my two-day start and stop installation where each misstep leads you back to the very beginning of the process, complete with hardware examinations and Scandisk scans of every hard drive. The setup process doesn't even make sure you have enough space to install until the second disk and 10 minutes or more of your time. This is a procedure I will remember well. Even some of the worst Amiga installer scripts I've seen don't come close to the poorness of Windows 95's setup.

Just one more piece of evidence to the power of a small, fast operating system. Thought I should share it with you all.

Contributed by: Anthony Becker, Executive Editor

Vulcan Software Announces Amiga Hardware

Vulcan Software have decided to enter the arena of Amiga hardware with two announced games-related products. One is an analog joystick adapter which is just perfect for the game reviewed this month, JET Pilot. The other product is a parallel port adapter to allow you to plug in two extra joysticks for multiplayer games. Just perfect, I would guess, for Vulcan's multiplayer demolition derby in the future, Burnout (to be reviewed next month). These products should be available wherever you find Vulcan's software sold. You can find out more from Vulcan's web site at http://www.vulcan.co.uk/

Contributed by: Anthony Becker, Executive Editor
-Edited by Anthony Becker-
Write to him at e-mail address commodoreuser@juno.com