• Alive Mediasoft announces "Frontier First Encounters" and "Elite 3 First Encounters" for Amiga.
• Marko Seppänen told us by e-mail that he was unable to fix the dead link to the offer page due to technical problems of the provider. Here is the correct link: offer.
  
  The Image Engineer PlugIn "Visual Border" now has an option (in the registered version) to create / save the border effect with single or all pictures in a directory. Orders can be placed here.
• Virus Help Denmark announces the new VirusExecutor version 1.83 of author Jan Erik Olausen being available. Download: virusexecutor.lha - 118,140 bytes
• Epic Marketing released two new game compilation CDs. The CD "Adventures Lair" is a CD with ten complete graphics adventures. The CD requires an Amiga with hard drive and 2 MByte RAM. Among the games are "Mad House", "Legends of Lothian", "Federation", "Blood Fest", "Seven Realms" and others.
  
  Ten complete games can also be found on the compilation CD "Mutantology", including the commercial Mutation games "Castle Kingdoms" (action adventure), "Tommy Gun" (shoot-em-up) and "Tin Toy Adventure" (jump&run).
• Stefan Werner told us in the ANF that Be offers BeOS R5 for free download. Download: BeOS download page.
• dEViL told us in the ANF that SecondSpin is now available in version 1.97beta. Download: SecondSpin_Install.lha
• AmiDog released DarcNES (multi-console-emulator) version 9a0115a. Download: dn9a0115a.lha.
• Hans-Werner Schober offers a new beta version 4419.03 of FastIPrefs, adjusted to OS 3.5. Download: FastIPrefs4419_03b.lha - 118 Kb
• You can find new screenshots of "The Last Seal" at Ancor as well as new informations on the game; e.g. a new sound program is being used, which sounds great, and new sounds have also been sampled already. Additionally, new rooms have been created, and the drawing of a new character has been begun.

Reply-To:      "John Porter" johnp@cadlink.co.uk
From:          "John Porter" johnp@cadlink.co.uk
To:            team@amiga-news.de
Subject:       News
Date: Mon,     17 Jan 2000 17:05:13 -0000
Organization:  CADlink UK

Hi Everyone,

Just to let you know we have got a live chat with Tao Group and
hopefully fleecy to discuss the Amiga and what we feel should be done.

Tao dont have that much a roll in the development but they do have
some say and are very intrested to hear the views of the Amiga public
to help them take the correct road.

Francis Charig, Chairman and Chief Exec of Tao Group has confirmed
this with me and seems like a really down to earth guy and very sincere
in what he wants to do with the Amiga, he said he will ask Fleecy to
attend as well.

So got some ideas? questions? or just want to sit and watch? then
come to #AmigaGames on IRC Dalnet.  I will be confirming the live chat
with Francis a hour before we go ahead to make sure things are ok, if we
have to postpone it, there will be a new date given in the topic.

If you have a JAVA client you can come directly to

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Way/9376/irc/chat.html

If you are on a Amiga you will need to download Amirc from Aminet and
log onto a dalnet server.

amiirc.lha

The best server to use is irc.dal.net on port: 7000 group: 01

If you are on a PC you can get Mirc from http://www.mirc.com

The Live Chat will be on 19/01/00 at 16.00 GMT

The Chat will be moderated you need to msg a active op to be able to
ask a question No more than 2 questions per go

Usuall IRC rules apply, swearing, name calling, flooding will end in
a ban.

Hope to see you all there

Best Regards

John Porter
Amiga Oasis Online
http://bounce.to/amigaoasis
#AmigaGames IRC Dalnet

• AHXRipper v4.41
  Christian Rosentreter told us by e-mail:
  Kåre Johansen recently released version 4.21 of his popular AHXRipper (formerly THXRipper). v4.21, v4.41, I really don't know - probably you do... (mb)
  Moreover, other tools of him (several ABBS v2 tools, LazyFiles 1.01, CheckDrive 1.01, ...) are available for download from his homepage.
• Tumult releases the source code of the MUI class Xenbar. The archive can be very useful if you want to create alternative #?.image files. It is the original source code by Stefan Stuntz. Download: Xenbar.LHA
• At Duffs Homepage you can find a new version of his HTMLview version 12.6. Download: MCC_HTMLview_Update.LZX - 64 Kb
• For registered users of Photogenics there is a new update to version 4.4 beta 75. This update contains new modi like RubEmboss and BumpMap as well as an improved Emboss modus. Download: Update75.lha - 950 Kb

• Incremental site buildup. The parsing is done by a seperate process, so the MUI program can still react to user input while a HTML document is parsed.
• Progressive drawing of graphics. Currently GIF, GIFAnim, JPEG, and PNG are supported by modules.
• Text can be marked and copied to Clipboard.
• Full text search.
• Comprehensive HTML support. Tables with background graphics, frames, forms etc.
• Very fast.
• and more...

• Text outside of ... is not displayed.
• Entities (e.g. &) without trailing ; are not recognized.
• The Floyd-Steinberg algorithm for dithering pictures tends to handle pictures differently towards the borders. This can lead to patterned backgrounds looking like there are lines between patterns.
• The datatype wrapper for decoding pictures seems to work only with the P96 picture.datatype.

• 1982 (classic games)
• Babylon 5
• Esotherik
• Fantasy
• FOM (Faces of Mars)
• Games
• History
• Jokes
• Mathematics
• Misc
• Science
• Science Fiction
• Space
• Star Trek
• Star Wars

• They have to be adapted, so they really look like started from a game machine - so no advertising!
• If it requires AGA, it has to run on CyberGfx, too!
• They should be running on AGA, so no graphic errors!

* Forwarded from "Team Amiga" Mailinglist
* Originally from: fleecy moss (fleecy@earthlink.net)
* Original date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 11:19:45 -0500


In my trawling around the community hangouts,
I have come across several misconceptions, rumours,
and a lot of confusion. Whilst I can't hope to answer
everything, here are some things I want to set straight.


0. Amiga will build a digital content universe. Digital
   content means anything composed of 0 and1 -
   applications, video, audio, games, emails, whatever.
   We will focus on 2 markets, the pathfinder market,
   for digital adventurers, power users, gamers,
   content creators, DTPers, artists, video  ppl
   and those who refuse to define a computer as
   a digital appliance. Our second market will
   cocentrate on the Domestic Digital Habitat (DDH).

1. If you are a personal computer person, there will
   be a personal computer second wave Amiga.

2. We will support classic development in so much
   as we want to help users and developers transition
   to a new machine. That will be the total extent of our
   support for the classic machine. If this involves further
   AmigaOS releases, then so be it.

3. We are targetting x86 and PPC for the first consumer
   release of Pathfinder products (if you are a personal
   computer person, this means you).

4. We will do everything in our power (that doesnt bankrupt
   us or interfere with our primary goals) to ensure classic
   Amiga software runs on the new machine in some form or
   another.. The new Amiga product family (formerly called
   AQUA) will run natively and hosted. This is to create a large
   market fast  for Amiga developers to profit from. For the first
   pathfinder release it will run hosted to see this market grow
   fast. We see one of our core duties as serving the developers.

6. We are talking to the Phoenix Consortium about common
   interests.

7. We have been contacted by QNX but currently have no plans
   to work with them.

8. We will develop Amiga products for another market, the
   Domestic Digital Habitat (DDH) market. This markets will
   be kept separate but products will work together if the installer
   so desires it.

9. There will be a new website and it will be public shortly. It has
   been tested on all browsers, Amiga and non Amiga, and given
   the compatibility problems between the implementations of open
   standards, our best effort has been made. The site   will grow
   quickly and more information will be added. We want it to become a
   village where all Amigans can come to voice their opinions, chat,
   and travel off  to different parts of the Amiga universe.

a. A developer support manager has been selected and they are
   working  on implementing   the developer support program. This will
   be in  place before the developer boxes are released.

b. The developer boxes are specced out, we have contacted several
   whitebox manufacturers and we are building the distribution.

c. Amiga will not provide dates until we have a product. We will share
   timelines, but will not attach dates to them. Enough damage has
   already been done.

d. We have had acceptances from 75% of our development team and
   their names and roles will be announced once we get back from
   training (before the end of the month).

This mail can be redistributed without modification within the community.
As further questions and issues come up, we will attempt to answer them.

• At the Surround Page you can find Back Orifice in the new version 1.21.10. Download AddOns: MuiBOv.1.0.LHA and BoAmiga1.21.10.LHA.
• Paul Nolan's Photogenics 4.4 Beta is released for registered users. Aside from improved loader and saver modules, the new version offers an updated JPEG module and basic support for Adobe Photoshop(R). New effects, e.g. FireBlur, and seven new drawing modules make the update complete. Download: Update74.lha.
• Frank Wille offers a Quake version for AmigaOS/68k on his website.
• Christian "SuRgEoN" Michael reports about his Surgeon's Quake1 Goodies at the Czech Amiga News. This is a website offering links and help for Quake.
• ANN reports about a new Dreamcast VMU emulator. Available is a developer tool, the emulator and Tetris as shoot-em-up. The emulator runs on Amiga and needs AmigaOS 2.x or better.
• Trogladite Software plans an update to AmigaGuide in cooperation with OmegaResearch UK. New will be picture support, different font sizes and more.
  
  Moreover, Trogladite Software took over development of "The Legends of Triten". It is a high-quality role playing game by MantaSoft. The game will be distributed either commercially, or as shareware with option for online registering.
• The HiSOFT Systems website has been reworked. The pages for iBrowse2 are now available again, where you can register iBrowse2 online.
• Epic Marketing released the game Tales From Heaven from Darkage Software. The incredible 3D jump&run engine offers four different worlds with four levels each, great audio tracks and stereo sound effects. Seven programmers have worked on the game for two years. An older demo (April 99) is available for download: tfhdemo.lha - 890 Kb

• MUIbase, the database program, is now available in version 1.3. MUIbase is shareware, please don't forget to register yourself. Download: MUIbase-1.3.lha
• Frank Wille is offering the new version 0.7c of his ppc.library emulation for WarpOS for download: ppclibemu.lzx
• New Aminet uploads
• Registered users can download the Alpha2 version of ArtecScan 2.0 from Stefan Robl. Download: ArtecScan2alpha2.lha
• A new beta version 4.4 of Photogenics has been send out to the betatesters. Registered uses can get the new version from the website soon. The first public beta for Linux will also be available soon.
• Andreas Kleinert offers the new version 4.05 of the MPEG-player akMPEG4 (68k+PPC). Download: akMPEG4.lha - 137 Kb
• A new LAME beta version 3.60 of the MP3 encoder is available at the Audio Page. Download: LAMEbeta.lzx - 410 Kb