ZX-News #50 30 декабря 1999

News ON - of updates: Winnie The Pooh-2, Tower Pod, Operation OiX, Stickman Animation Studio, Screen Traslate Universal v1.0, Code Disabler v1.0, Art Studio v2.3, Zx-Word v2.6, Picture viewer v1.18, Chunk Graphics Editor v1.2.

               Software News



                 ZX-GAMES


   ■ Only the last number I saw ZX-News
light, as Andrei Litvinov / LAV from Softland
(St. Petersburg) reported about the resumption of work on the 
"Winnie the Pooh 2. Well, see who is first released game - the 
authors or hackers. ;-) 


   ■ A new puzzle game - TowerPod (C) 1999 by Stanly (Studio 
Stall, Pervouralsk). The game objective: remove the 50 floors 
of all kinds of plates of different colors (and, accordingly, 
the different properties) - details of the program. Externally, 
the games looks like this: before you sort of labyrinthine 
paths, you play the role of a strange creature, for example, an 
alien, and must move on it, passing examining the track and 
adding a tile in his bottomless pockets (four that

right?) - apparently to explore the fruits of labor
irrational mind. By the way, go to
track in no case be otherwise
You can fall down wherever and Rincewind is not
fall, so you have to think about
every step - in this case, strictly speaking,
is the essence of the game. Well, that's
to be congratulated on a successful debut at the
the playing field!


   ■ For the first time someone has dared to enter the
Copper Feet'a territory! This is a demo game Operation 'OIL' 
(C) 1999 by AleXoft 'Berseker. This real-time strategy - ie, 
something that concerns the legendary "Black Crow"! Although, 
judging by Demos, Opreration 'OIL' is much higher - judge for 
yourself: flying and swimming robots, but only in their game 
somewhere around twelve species, of which you can release as 
much nine species, color graphics ... Especially good 
noveshestvo which would do well to adopt and

Copper Feet'u - are indicators of physical
status of each object. True, the game
screen of approximately one and a half times less than
in the "CV", and the sprites would not hurt to tweak - for 
example, helicopters can not be determined immediately. In 
general, if you guys will bring the project to the finish, at 
the Spectrum, you may receive a real competitor "Black Crow 
II". If in St. Petersburg, some players are already seriously 
"Rubaiyat this demo, then what about the full game? :) We will 
try to contact authors and determine the approximate time the 
game was released. 


   ■ In addition to the well-known Gambit'a on
Spectrum must be new modem
Chess, on which work was begun
even before Gambit'a. To learn how to
moving the case against them, we turned to their respective 
authors, Style Group (St. Petersburg) and learned that the 
well-known up to now then the name was changed to working Ceinot

name StyleChess. The rest said the organizer of the group, 
Vitaly Pimenov: 


   "At the moment the game is implemented in
chess, checkers and corners. Supported by all
modems (for which a driver from the MMD,
naturally, without Haes). Made chess
hours (do not use different CMOS'y and
sit on the interrupt until the player thinks)
and the timer can disable / enable, and
also exhibit different times to different people (the maximum 
time 9 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds:)).



   Very _stilno_ looks the playing field and
figures on it, and the color palette
You can configure and maintain.


   Terminal mode is implemented in standard MMD (can 
communicate with it). There "System of short text messages." :)

Made flexible protocol driver setup
modem to phone line quality.


   There is a function of editing the playing field. Has a 
function of recording / downloading games postponed. Made view 
of the party "forward / backward." 


   Correct than in the famous Gambit'e
chess rules are implemented. All this
pumped cool window interface lets you see the field even when 
applying top box (for example, when choosing a shape,

replacement has come down a pawn).


   In general, a lot more then, just do not remember. Now comes 
the finishing touch trivia / obatka. Want to meet before the 
New Year - StyleChess-2000. :)



   It is freeware.


   Idea: Valker/56 'Vega/56;

   main code: Vega/56;

   support code: Valker/56;

   design: Frunze/56;

   support: members of StyleGroup.

P.S. Play for fun. Tested on humans! "


   So, it seems that every player will be able to
choose a dial-up version of Chess
taste. :)


                ZX-SYSTEMS


   ■ Oh, how much a lot of useful sistemok who did not leave 
the limits of their authors disketnits! .. For example, in the 
past was released converter Spectrum graphics pisishny 
BMP-format and vice versa - ZX <> BMP Converter v2.0 (C) 1998 
by Predator (Fast Group, Barnaul). However, this utility only 
works with BMP-graphics only one parameter (512 * 384, 8x8), 
but the first swallow yet been released. :)



   ■ Finally, for the XTR-modem written
Another program (except for the MMD).
:) It AON v0.3 (C) Ivan Savin, Yuriy Nazarenko / Rezident, 1999 
(Discovery Group, Saint-Petersburg). New utility function

clear from the title - it turns your
Spectrum in the AON. With it you can dial in to the subscriber, 
using the notebook book (255 numbers!), to determine the number 
of calls, keep their records and etc. The only thing that is 
missing this program - the possibility of another podgruzki 
modem driver. Hopefully, this will be done in the lyrics. 
version, as well as the elimination of some glitches. :) 


   ■ Also, a new utility intresnaya - Stickman Animation Studio 
(C) 1999 by Graf (CTL, Novosibirsk). This program

designed to create animations using a "wire" graphics. At 
present, yet there is only a beta, but it is quite possible to 
work productively. 


   ■ Everyone is familiar with the greed of our 
zhurnaloproizvoditeley on shipping papers. :) By Therefore, 
readers will have great difficulty in the case where you want 
to print some text from a magazine, For example, the 
description of the game (after all, it should be at hand!). 
Therefore, to obtain text, it was necessary to tinker with the 
unsealing or pictures, or poking around in the magazine. One 
encoder is apparently tired of the order and he had the great 
idea: create a utility that converted to a character to the 
screen files in text format - Screen Translater Universal v1.0 
(C) 1998-1999 by Free Coder Shaitan (Samara). With this

program, you can get texts from
Spectrofon'a, ZX-Format'a, Adventurer'a and
etc. - at the expense of loadable fonts from these
journals that are included in its package. Detailed 
instructions can be obtained in the author's description. 
Finally, we note that it is desirable to implement in the 
lyrics. versions of the possibility of automatic processing of 
the distinguished group of files, because the fuss with loading 
dozens of pictures & Run on the menu very tiring. 


   ■ For fans of deduction or researchers of the information on 
disks, which is called code-blocks of programs, the light went 
out Code Disassmebler 1.0 (C) 1999 Power Group (Brest). This 
product, according to the authors, represents the himself the 
only one existing today disassembler, which can really fulfill 
their function. So, with his means you can decode the desired

program or procedure in a format TASM'a
v3.xx. With many options can be found in the author's 
description, we also note his brief characteristics: buffer 
text of about 20 kb (average size of the object code 4.3 kb), 
two modes of operation - main, which can be downloaded to 
memory you have the program, and is available all memory (# 
4000 - # C000), and text where object code disassembled. 
Interface similar to STS'ovsky, so the encoder will

themselves in a familiar environment itself - like a fish
in water. :)


   ■ Appeared remix of the legendary Art Studio v2.3 (C) 1999 
by Viator (Rush, Chernigov). It now has "hot keys" (To see a 
list of press "H" in the program), Screen Saver, and most 
importantly - now work with the mixes screens. In memory 
resides two screen on which you can switch from

one to another at any time.
When you press the Enter key on the display is given
specific two-color (4 colors on familiarity) image with an 
extended palette and pseudo-enhanced extension. According to

author's main goal, because he
took up the finalization of the program is
accelerated graphics, for example,
only by adding "hot keys"
the process of creating graphics became 30% faster. We wish the 
author every success in continuing improving the Art Studio, 
for example, it would be nice to add more work and

three-color picture - then the program
would become a truly indispensable for the modern artist's 
Spectrum! 


   ■ Lucky us this year for all sorts of remixes of the 
software programs! Following Art Studio now has a modified 
ZX-Word 2.6 + SetUp Files Manager 1.0 (C) 1999 by ZS

(Samara). Now spektrumist can work with almost any text format, 
which can fall on his CD of computer networks. :) So, the 
modification is an additional menu to through which active work 
with encodings ALT, KOI8 and CP1251. Author remixes are all 
very detailed and fascinating outlined in help'e, so we only say

about one thing: now the editor is used when working on the 
ZX-News (what we want express my personal gratitude to ZS) - 
conclusions do it yourself. :)



   ■ fashion on all sorts of text viewer,
seems to be gone, and now the coders undertook
graphic viewers. :) Deserves some attention Pictrure Viewer 
v1.18 (C) 1999 VolgaSoft (St. Petersburg). He

allows you to view standard Spectrum Pictures (6912 Kb), the 
same, but without attributes - in the negative (6144 Kb) and

3-color'nye images: besides, you can
work with graphics Sprite the Master. Also
a slide show (auto-image through the definition of a second) and
brightness control for 3-color'nyh and black and white 
pictures. Among the other options should be mention the ability 
to view graphs of ZXZIP-archive. However, the program also has 
a "problem of the Screw - work with the disk through 
turbo-loader, with no opportunity to turn it off. As of today, 
as We have already mentioned, this is a serious shortcoming of 
any Spectrum software.



   ■ Surprise for demomeykerov! Appeared
Chunk Graphic Editor v1. 2 (C) Slava Kalinin / NewArt, 1999 
(St. Petersburg). With its can be used to create so-called

chankovye effects that have recently become very fashionable. 
In appearance mind is familiar to all Art Studio, but for

work with chunks. Multiple operations
listed in the author's description, we are
tell about the roles that are expected
in cl. versions of the program. Information provided by the 
author. So, there will be five additional screens in mind, 
RAMDisc'i on 5 screens, new features for processing screens, 
new effects: plasma, blur, etc. Also be accelerated disc

operations (25%) output graphics to the screen.
Window interface will be altered by 90%
More will be analog scrapbook'a Art Studio. Due to the fact 
that the picture can not be view in any viewer will appear

Ship self-running files
and will show themselves. :) New version (2.00) is due out in 
January. 


   ■ Apparently, there is among coders
Professional telepathic connection. ;-)
How else to explain the fact that this year has appeared about 
five text transcoder? :) For example, Text Lux Utility v1.0 (C) 
1999 by Shaitan (Stars Of Keladan, Samara), which works with 
KOI8-RUS, WIN1251, ISOLAT, DK7BIT, ALT PC, with formats 
MicroEditor'a, ZX-WinWord and UNIX-like systems. In addition, 
TLU has also option, similar to that among the system

software was not yet - the creation of viewer loaded text with 
automatic (!) packaging of the latter. That is, you can 
downloaded some text, view it (if

This set the font in the character of 32/42/64
line) and then upload it to disk
special menu - the result is a
packaged candy bar embodying
text and the shell to view it. By
about the viewer a few wishes
Author: make per-pixel scrolling,
introduce the ability to change colors and shipping
text - and then everyone can spektrumist
issue its On-Line. ;-)


   ■ We believe that BestViev now know
all progressive spektrumisty. Also, all
known and high productivity of its author, who produced new 
versions of almost Does not every month. However, since the 
last release was more than six months, and to find out the 
situation, we turned to Ivan Roshchin (Moscow) with the 
question of date for the next version, 2.9:



   "Version 2.9 will not. At the present time
written version 3.0 (completely from scratch,
therefore, work is progressing more slowly,
as we would like). Readiness - 20%. Expect to see version 3.0 
is available in 2000, so it's not too late to tell me your 
comments and suggestions are improvement BestView. "



   We also asked whether it was a lot of reviews about BestViev:


   "Well, as you say ... So far, about
once a week someone writes. Maybe
ZX-News readers will be pleased with their activity? "


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