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BRMUG BRMUG November 1998 Newsletter This is the index of the November 1998 BRMUG Newsletter: Features: Review - 9 Big Ones Regular Columns: Front Page News by Isaac Traxler November Meeting October Meeting Apple Information Microsoft Trial Microsoft Plans Coming Soon! BRMUG Christmas Party Christmas Shopping Graphic Utility of the Month (MetaCreation Poser 3.0) by Glenn Matherne Web Page of the Month (Version Tracker)by Isaac Traxler Non-Essentials (Doom) by Glenn Matherne Cartoon by Pete Steinfeld Return to BRMUG Newsletter Index Front Page News November Meeting The November meeting will return to the Bluebonnet Library for the meeting on November 19th, the 3rd Thursday of the month, at 6:30 P.M. This month's meeting will be our Annual GAMES Meeting. Each year we dedicate the November meeting to demonstrating games on the Macintosh platform. This month will be no different. Expect to see some old favorites and some new ones. At about 7:30 P.M. we will do our Qustion and Answer session. Following the meeting we will adjourn to Brewbachers for food, fun and fellowship. Return to Top of Page October Meeting Don's presentation and tour of LPB was great. It's exciting to see Macintoshes in use. Thank you very much Don! I hope you did not miss it, but if you did Don has invited us back for next October. Return to Top of Page Apple Information Apple has had a mixed month. iMac sales have been brisk. Their stock price has been up down (with $35 to $40 being the general range). The Mac OS 8.5 introduction was great. Sherlock is a real innovation. Unfortunately, 8.5 brought reports of disk crashes. Investigation shows that these problems appear to have been around since 8.1 but are showing up more under 8.5. Return to Top of Page Microsoft Trial The Justice Department and Microsoft have squared off in court. Charges made against Microsoft so far include: trying to squeeze Netscape out, trying to kill Quicktime, and blackmailing vendors to emphasize Internet Explorer. For some Microsoft humor visit http://www.cagle.com/microsoft. Return to Top of Page Microsoft Plan The Halloween documents outline a strategy for competing against/eliminating free OSes (Linux). These reports have now been verified as being authentic from Microsoft. Just what they needed with the current court case. :) Return to Top of Page Coming Soon! Mac OS 8.6 is on schedule (expect it after Chrsitmas). This release will bring the beginning of memory protection to the Mac OS. Java should get much faster. New hardware models are expected after Christmas. Also look for new hardware models after Christmas. Big speed increases, bus speed increases, the G4 and video improvements are expected. Return to Top of Page BRMUG Christmas Party Because of the time pressures of December, BRMUG does not have a normal meeting with presentation. Instead we get together on the third Thursday for food, fun and fellowship. The location will be announced on Thursday at our next meeting. Return to Top of Page Christmas Shopping Trying to decide what or where to get a Christmas present? Here are some ideas to look into. To start with, check out deal-mac for the best deals in the Macintosh world. They also have a web site for iMac-specific products called deal-imac. This is a great place to catch up on the latest bargains. Very few special sales or offers escape the attention of deal-mac. They also provide a central place to applaud or complain about vendors. Definitely check this one out. CompUSA is the only nation-wide authorized reseller of Macintosh products. CompUSA corporate has seen a substantial growth in Macintosh sales since the opening of the Apple store-within-a-store. Our local store has really embraced the Macintosh since the introduction of the iMac. They have a complete line from Macintosh systems, printers, software, cables, peripherals, supplies and books. Our local CompUSA is over by the new mall on Bluebonnet just south of I-20. Books can also be found at Books-A-Million, Barnes and Noble and the LSU Bookstore. Happy Shopping. Return to Top of Page Graphic Utility of the Month by Glenn Matherne This month's graphic utility is a really cool 3D program that's sure to impress anyone. It's Metacreation's Poser 3.0. Poser has been around the block for a few years. It started out as a program to pose three-dimensional people. Then it evolved into a serious modeling program in its last version with fully clothed models. Yes, the first version of Poser had nudes. Poser 3.0 bests all of the previous versions with the ability to do real-time animation. It is this animation feature that is most impressive. After one creates the pose of their model person, they create a walking path. The walking path is as it implies, a path for the model to walk on. Then using the walk designer, the user controls the speed and mannerisms of the model as it walks on the path. One can also change the background and sound of the Poser 3.0 model. The sound is synchronized perfectly to the model's movements. Even, the background fits perfectly with the model. Poser supports many popular graphic formats including Photoshop, JPEG, GIF, BMP, PICT and TIFF. It also supports Aiff and WAV audio formats. Once the user completes the animation, it can be rendered into Quicktime or AVI movies. The movies can be output in professional 30 frames per second at full screen size or down to quarter screen at 8 frames per second. Users can choose from a variety of compression rates. Poser 3.0 comes with a variety of people for model and a few animals. I had a blast making movies with dancing animals to my favorite animal theme tunes. Does anyone remember funky tunes like George Clinton's, "Atomic Dog" or Was Not Was', "Walk The Dinosaur." I couldn't resist the temptation to make a Motown dancer after seeing the Temptation's Biography. The best part of the program is that it works in 32 megs of ram on older PowerPC Macintoshes. I was able to render 3 seconds of video at highest resolution and maximum frame rate with the default Animation compression format in 15 minutes or less on a Performa 5300. The Quicktime movie was still only 585K with music. The only down side to Poser 3.0 is that it has a few glitches. Sometimes the program crashed while creating movies (Usually due to running out of memory). It also distorted backgrounds of graphics other than Photoshop format. This was due to the effect of compression in the rendering process. What do you expect for only $199. Metacreations' Poser 3.0 is still a bargain and easier to use than its competitor, Lifeform. I want to include Poser 3.0 in all of my multimedia projects. Now, if I can only resist the urge to turn everything into a cartoon. Return to Top of Page Web Page of the Month by Isaac Traxler Software makes or breaks a computer system. The Macintosh has a great advantage the Macintosh software environment. To produce a complete environment, you must add application and utility software to the Macintosh environment. As you start mixing software, you discover incompatibilities and bugs (mistakes). Thus begins the never-ending software upgrade. How do you know when new versions of software are available? You can spend countless hours calling vendors and visiting web sites. You can register each package you get and hope the vendor will let you know when new versions come out. Or you can visit Version Tracker. This site keeps up with the latest versions of most Macintosh software. Version Tracker maintains tables of the latest versions of software with links to a download location where the latest version or updater can be downloaded. The tables include an indication as to whether the download is an update for a commercial program, a shareware program, a freeware program or a beta release. All entries include a date so that you can tell how old/new the update is. Version Tracker includes a Hot section listing the hottest updates available. A Coming Soon page lists updates that have been announced but that are not yet available. The Systems page provides links to updates by Macintosh or printer really useful for finding out if a bug-fix has been released for your computer/OS/printer. The Top Picks page is a collection of links to some of the best software for the Macintosh be sure to check this one out! And of course, Version Tracker supports a search function to help you quickly find an update for a specific product. This site's primary function is to help you find the latest version of almost any software available for the Macintosh. It accomplishes this in a big way. Between the date ordered lists and the search function, you should be able to find the latest version of whatever package you are interested in. With its other pages, it also becomes a good place to browse looking for software that solves a particular problem/goal. This is definitely a page worth checking out! Return to Top of Page Non-Essentials by Glenn Matherne In keeping with this month's theme, gaming, this month's non-essential is the game of Doom. For those who have not yet experienced true "shootem-up blood and gore", Doom is the grand daddy of the hardcore mindless violence adventure games. Checkout the PMRC warning label on the box. It is a true cult classic among internet and network video gamers. Doom was created by the Id Software team of Mesquite, Texas in 1993. Id company founders John Carmack, Adrian Carmack, John Romero and Tom Hall were former employees of Louisiana's Softdisk Publishing. They've done quite well for four guys from Shreveport. Doom was an enormously popular game for the PC. It was followed by Doom II, Hexen and Quake in 1996. In 1996, Doom II was ported to the Macintosh. Ultimate Doom followed soon afterward for both the Macintosh and PC. The basic plot of Doom is that a secret agent is dropped down onto a planet inhabited by the Devil and guarded by demons and evil guards. Each level is progressively more difficult as the secret agent kills demons and guards and dodges traps such as hazardous waste pits and barrels of explosive wastes. The agent has to hunt for better weapons and ammunition to fight increasingly more challenging opponents. Players can select single or network player at the startup. In the single player mode, the player is the secret agent. In the network versions, players are allowed to become the monsters and guards. The object is to kill anything that moves and collect all the secrets and weapons you can carry. Doom has fairly sophistocated sound tracks to each episode. Ultimate Doom has four basic versions of the game, and thus four sound track themes. There are nine levels to each game. For $29.95 Ultimate Doom is a maximum way to get out your frustrations with gratuitous violence. It's the next best thing to being on an episode of Millenium or a Clive Barker film. I found copies of this package for $9.99 at CompUsa. Return to Top of Page Review - 9 Big Ones by Isaac Traxler Masque Publishing produces several entertainment products for the Macintosh. They were kind enough to send a demo copy of one of their products: 9 Big Ones. In spite of an absurdly long shipping delay (postal service - not masque), the product arrived intact. Packaging is similar to most other games an attractive box with a CD inside. 9 Big Ones is a little different kind of product. Instead of being one game or one family of games, it is 9 different entertaining games. 9 Big Ones includes: Warcraft, Marathon, A-10 Attack!, F/A 18 Hornet Classic, Crystal Caliburn Pinball, Pathways into Darkness, Pegleg, Glider Pro, and Loony Labyrinth Pinball. Before going on, lets group these games together. Crystal Caliburn and Loony Labyrinth are excellent pinball simulations. While they do not quite feel like standing up and pushing and pulling on a real pinball machine, they come as close as you can and still be sitting at your Macintosh. As an old-time pinball player, I was captivated by them. From the insert coin command through the flippers and extra ball it became easy to lose myself enough so that my wife was able to remind me of life more than once. If you ever enjoyed pinball, then these are the games for you (especially if you do not like giving quarters to someone else). A-10 Attack!, F/A 18 Hornet Classic are classic examples of aerial combat arcade games. If you like flying a plane and blowing things up, you will love these two. Unlike many games, these games provide lots of challenge and lend many hours of excitement. They are not something you will tire of in a few minutes, or even a few hours. Pegleg takes the shootem-up arcade game to outer space. Pegleg takes the linear motion of Space Invaders or Galaxian and makes the entire screen a place where your ship can fight. You avoid obstacles, destroy things and collect bonuses. Pure mindless point and shoot arcade game. This game goes beyond the arcade games that were its roots years ago and makes you forget that the Macintosh is not supposed to be a great gaming environment. Glider Pro is a different variation on flight simulator arcade games. This game has no bombs or guns, no breath-taking landscapes, no amazing chase scenes. Glider Pro gives you the chance to fly a paper glider through a home. You hunt for air vents and avoid tables and other obstacles. This is a very low-key, laid-back, addictive game. And it is not easy either! Pathways into Darkness was an early 3-d maze game where you went around shooting things and finding treasures. It still stands as an amazing game. Marathon is another example of this genre. Marathon is a classic example. Marathon brought network play to this game. After hours of Marathon, you sit back, rub your cramped fingers and blink your dry eyes. You might want to limit how long you play these two at one sitting. Warcraft started another genre of game. I find it hard to explain this mixture of simulation and arcade game. It is kind of like the Sim City of fantasy wargaming. You decide how to allocate resources and what tasks your people will perform. Your goal is to build a strong community and fight off the orc attacks. This game can also be played in a network situation where the players work together or compete against each other. 9 Big Ones comes with all necessary documentation on the CD. License numbers, installation instructions and manuals are on the CD. 9 Big Ones retails for $39.99. This is a fair price for a great game it is a superb price for 9 great games. This is a wonderful collection of games that is sure to have something for everyone. 9 Big Ones would be a great CD for new computer owners or long-time gamers. By the way, Masque Publishing has passed on a special offer to the user group, you can get 9 Big Ones for $29.99. Contact Christopher Smith (zagros@masque.com or 303-290-9853x114). This is a great package and the extra discount makes this a wonderful Christmas gift. Watch for demonstrations of some of these games at the meeting this month. Return to Top of Page