Description
As the scroller says, not so much a ‘best of’ as an effort to spread the word about all Fred’s releases up to the end of 1992. Includes demos of Waterworks, The Bulgulators, Dyzonium, Spell Master, E-Tracker, Impatience and Parallax.
Magazine
FREDitorial
If you've never read FRED before, then I'll give you time to
groan about the heading.................All done? Good - we'll
continue then.
Welcome to FRED'92 - the first compilation of FRED magazine for
over a year! It's funny - in the first 14 issues, I get three
companies wanting to sell a "Best Of FRED" disc then as soon as
FRED expanded into publishing, I have to do one myself!!
As I explained in the scroller on the main menu, this is not a
Best Of FRED as such but a chance for people to get an insight
into FRED - the company, the magazine and the software. This
disc contains demos of no less than SEVEN of the titles FRED has
released over the last 18 months.
Some of you may never have seen an issue of FRED before, and
most of you probably have at least seen FRED at some point in
the last 30 months.
Where did it all start?
Before I go any further, I'll just introduce myself as Colin
Macdonald , founder of FRED - and still very actively involved
in all the FRED projects.
Just to let you know the story of FRED, I'll do a brief
rendition of the history :
May 1990 : First issue of FRED released. Neither this or Issue 2
were great successes despite being the first SAM disc magazine.
August 1990 : Issue 3 released - featuring the previously unseen
Tetris by Lord Insanity. The start of FRED's success.
December 1990 : Nick Roberts reviewed FRED in CRASH and as a
result, many copies of the first six issues of FRED were sold.
June 1991 : I am employed at SAM Computers Ltd for 3 months.
FRED now has over 100 readers.
The History Lesson
September 1991 : FRED's first commercial title, "Impatience" is
released.
December 1991 : FRED now has 300 readers and Impatience has been
a success - getting a 90% review in Your Sinclair.
January 1992 : Employed at SAMCo for 3 weeks.
February 1992 : Name changed to FRED PUBLISHING.
March 1992 : Follow-up to Impatience, "Triltex - The Later
Levels" is launched.
April 1992 : Employed at SAMCo for 2 weeks.
June 1992 : Start 2 month employment at SAMCo
July : July 15th, SAM Computers Ltd goes into liquidation. FRED
now has 500 readers.
The History Lesson
August 1992 : FRED Publishing's first utility "Spell Master" is
launched and proves to be very popular.
September 1992 : The shoot-em-up "Parallax" is released. It is
received with mixed opinions.
October 1992 : FRED magazine now became professionally
duplicated and on-body printed. An editor is employed to compile
the magazine. FRED's second shoot-em-up "Dyzonium" is released
and goes down well.
November 1992 : FRED releases the super pacman game,
"Bulgulators".
December 1992 : FRED takes over Noesis Software and releases the
hit platform game, "Boing!". FRED now has 750 readers.
January 1993 : FRED releases WaterWorks and ETracker. Both have
been well previewed.
The History Lesson
And there you have it, the very concise story of the humble FRED
Publishing - missing out many hundreds of the finer details
which were documented in FRED magazine at the time.
I mean - there was the dozens of computer fairs all around
Britain that I attended, complete with stories of getting
arrested, bored and very very cold. There were 6 months of
antics in Swansea - being tied to chairs in busy car-parks,
parcelled up and sent through the post (well...nearly!) and many
other Welsh tricks played on unsuspecting innocent victims.
I could elaborate but that would spoil the stories which I
hope you have the pleasure of reading in the previous issues of
FRED magazine.
The Magazine
FRED magazine was the first disc-based magazine to appear on the
SAM way back in mid 1990, originally priced at £1 a disc it has
since undergone two price increases and hundreds of changes (for
the better!) to bring it up to today. Issue 29 has just been
released (mid-January) and already work is steaming ahead on
Issue 30!
From the very first issue to todays discs, the basic format has
remained the same in that each issue of FRED supplies news,
reviews, previews and screenshots. Any questions posed will
normally be answered whether you can't get past Level 11 of
Prince Of Persia , don't know what the flashing screen when you
switch on your SAM actually is, don't know what to do with the
Torch in "Boing!", or just how to find out which version of the
ROM you have.
FRED is aimed to educate you, as the reader, in being able to
understand your SAM better - so you can get more out of it both
in work and in play.
The Magazine
FRED magazine itself is NOT run as a business. I do it for fun,
to meet thousands of new people, and so that I can keep a finger
on the pulse of computer entertainment. The recent price rise to
£2 may seem like it's impossible not to make money, but this was
only to cover duplicating and on-body printing expenses, the
cost of paying someone else to help with the magazine as there
simply isn't enough hours in the day, and of course to pay for
the contributions to the magazine.
From day one, all FRED orders have been sent out as soon as
possible (90% are despatched within 24 hours!) and always by
first class post - nothing but the best for fellow SAM users.
FRED is not a serious magazine. It is a fun magazine - only
because I have fun producing it and people have fun reading it.
There are serious articles, programs and reviews to give you
the extra insight into your machine that no other computer has
ever, or will ever give you.
The Magazine
To prove my point, the programmer of two commercial titles has
been writing a machine code column ever since issue 6. A small
sample is included on this disc but in recent months this column
has taught how to add commands to BASIC, how to produce your own
WIMP environment and the fastest ways to place sprites on the
screen! As a less regular section, we occasionally have other
talented programmers writing articles which go down very well,
for example in the past articles have been on the sound chip,
128K emulation, paging and many more.
And for all you non-technical people (like me!), there's
articles on book reviews, music reviews, wrestling, a hilarious
take-off of Star Trek - and that's me just looking at the last
two issues!
As I said, FRED is fun. FRED contains more games than ever
before. For those of you that get envious of Amiga owners
boasting of hundreds of amazing demos you'll be pleased to know
that there is an on-going battle between about a dozen FRED
The Magazine
contributors to see who can produce the best demo!! This results
in some fantastic machine code demos - as I hope you'll see for
yourself.
As Software Manager for Revelation Software (and by running FRED
Publishing!) , I know exactly what is going on in the SAM
software scene - thus allowing EXCLUSIVE news to be leaked,
allowing EXCLUSIVE screenshots into FRED and, most popular of
all, allowing EXCLUSIVE demos of all the latest games!!!!
Naturally, being a FRED subscriber can save you vast amounts of
money when buying not only FRED and Revelation products, but
many more included. For example, this Christmas if subscribers
had ordered one of everything on the price list, they would have
saved almost ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY POUNDS compared to the prices
the goods were sold normally!! I will admit, this was a one-off
Christmas sale, but normally whenever a FRED or Revelation
product is released it is offered first to FRED subscribers at a
discounted price!!!
The Magazine
Every issue of FRED contains a wide variety of programs - using
up every last 'K' on the disc! For example, these are just some
of the utilities that have appeared in recent months : A full
machine code monitor for debugging your programs, an STD area
phone code finder, an assembler, a dissassembler, a simple
accounts package, a poolschecker, a fully-fledged word
processor, a spreadsheet, numerous different databases, fractal
and 'life' simulators..........
There is also always a lot of games and demos : on the last
four issues there has been no less than TWELVE games ranging
from Hangman and Snail Racing to Fruit Machines and Puzzle
games!
You want demos? You've come to the right place. For example, you
could follow the exploits of 'Zebedee Green' as seen on this
disc - there have been numerous hilarious adventures involving
him, and many more including music demos, the ever popular "how
many things can you get moving on the screen at once" demos and
The Magazine
many more varients.
In fact, I wish I could fit a few more of them onto this disc
but it's packed full as it is - and that's with almost
everything compressed to the limits!
What more can I say?? Nothing - so here's a few quotes about the
magazine :
"Ridiculous value for money" Bob Brenchley - FORMAT
"A veritable bargain" Your Sinclair
"I recommend you get a sub today" Graham Burtenshaw - Enceladus
That's it folks! All 29 back issues are available for £2 each or
£20 for 12. Similarly, a years subscription (12 issues) costs
just £20. Easily reclaimable through the dozens of discounts and
much better value than ever seen before.
Disc Contents
OK, by now you'll be getting bored and wanting to know what's on
this disc for you to play around with!
Screens : a compilation of some of the screens that have
appeared in FRED recently.
WaterWorks : As I write this, WaterWorks was only released a few
days ago and already it's set to become a hit! The object of
the game is to escape each level by collecting a key and getting
to the door. This is achieved by manipulating water using pipes,
nozzles, taps, pumps and switches. In this demo you only have a
few pieces of pipes and a nozzle. The pipes are self-explanatory
but the nozzle is used for letting the water flow from them. The
other thing you might need to know to help you complete this
demo is that some things can be activated by waterswitches ie a
device that activates something else when water flows into it! I
won't say any more because it would spoil the demo but I'm sure
you'll enjoy it!
Disc Contents
This was a pre-release demo version of WaterWorks and as such,
the music was not included at the time. The final version has
some great music (two of the tunes are in the ETracker section!)
and no less than 20 levels - all of which can be accessed by
passwords!
WaterWorks costs £9.99 (discount available to subscribers) and
has already been released.
"The Bulgulators" is THE pacman for the 90's! Featuring 100
levels of slick action this is proving to be popular. Not only
does it include the usual pac-type puzzles but as you progress
through the levels you come up against locked doors for which
keys must first be found and walls which can be passed through
one way - but not the other! "The Bulgulators is a highly
playable game ... plenty of merriment ... fun" : Your Sinclair
Unfortunately, the demo is not playable so just watch.
Disc Contents
Programmed by Spectrum / SAM programming whizzkids 'ESI', it
provides hours of classic entertainment brought up to date for
just £9.99 (discount to subscribers) and has already been
released.
Ah....my favourite "Dyzonium" ; the first shoot-em-up on the SAM
to be well received!! Again, it's another non-playable demo I'm
afraid but I'm sure that won't put you off it at all. The object
of the game is to collect all the Dyzonium crystals in each of
the ten levels - whilst avoiding the nasties and collecting as
many of the numerous power-ups as possible. There's ten levels
in all but this demo shows a clip from just a few of them.
"hugely destructive ... Original and fantastically playable ..."
82% : Your Sinclair
From the author of MegaGamed "AstroBall", Dyzonium costs £9.99,
is released and there is a discount to subscribers.
Disc Contents
Spell Master is the next demo on the disc - and one that I know
anyone who ever uses a word processor will be impressed with!
The demo is "usable" and will explain a large number of it's
features in the text itself but I'll just run through a few of
them ;
Spell Master will accept text files from Outwrite, The
Secretary, Tasword - and any Spectrum Word Processor which saves
out text as 64 column lines! To spell check, you can set
Autocheck which spell checks AS YOU TYPE!! You can spell check a
single word, or you can spell check from the cursor onwards!
Once it finds a spelling mistake (not very often - it has 80,000
words on a 512K machine and 30,000 on a 256K machine!) you can
either add it to your own dictionary, change it or ignore it! If
you change a word, Spell Master will take care of reformatting
and justifying the paragraph for you!
The built-in word processor doesn't have any frills (hey -
you're getting a spell checker, not a word processor), but
Disc Contents
amongst other things it does : justify, word wrap, full insert
/ delete modes, centre / left/right justify, jump to top/bottom
of text, tabs etc etc
In case we still haven't persuaded you, you'll be pleased to
know that the 80,000 words are not wasted just on the spell
checker : you have two bonus programs also built-in! An anagram
solver and a crossword solver!!
If you so desire, you can browse through all 80,000 words
adding, deleting, changing or just looking at any words! You
have your own USER dictionary so you can choose what extra words
you want to have loaded in - and these are even used in the
anagram/crossword solvers!!!!
SpellMaster was released in August and has already sold several
hundred copies. It is still on sale ONLY from FRED Publishing
at the giveaway price of £14.99 - there are some snippits from
reviews over the page ......
Disc Contents
"simple and logical controls ... it is a good programme, the
crossword / anagram features give value for money, so the word
processor is really a free extra. I recommend this programme to
all SAM users, if you only write the occasional letter or write
screeds this programme will speed things up and make letter
writing much easier" : SAM Supplement, December 1992
"At £14.99 Spell Master is excellant value for money. Whether
you are a serious writer who can't spell, a good speller who
can't type, or a crossword/anagram addict, this program will
make your life easier." : Carol Brooksbank in FORMAT, October
1992
So you see why it's proved so popular so far! There have been
many letters (without spelling mistakes!) from satisfied
customers saying how they wondered how they ever lived without
it - I hope you soon become one of them.
Disc Contents
The next item on the disc is the wonderful machine code column
written by Steve Taylor - author of the bestselling "Impatience"
and it's follow-up, "Triltex - The Later Levels". He has been
doing this column ever since issue six, and has progressed from
the simply rules of assembly language (as seen in the
demonstration) to many, many complex routines that are even used
by today's professional SAM programmers!!!
After this are some samples of music created with the wonderful
ETracker. This is the ultimate music program for SAM, and after
looking at many other music utilities on other formats, it seems
to be THE BEST MUSIC PACKAGE FOR ANY 8-BIT COMPUTER. It
even produces tunes better than some on the Amiga and Atari ST!!
Naturally, we wouldn't expect you to believe our hears - so
believe your own!! We've packed as many tunes as possible onto
this disc - this collection includes these people's first tunes
created on ETracker. These people are not professional
musicians, they just followed the manual - and you can hear for
Disc Contents
yourself what they came up with! If you own Sound Machine, then
ETracker is the perfect upgrade - the manual does not bother
explaining the principles of music to you, it just tells you how
to work the program!! Many people were annoyed with the sound
machine's file lengths (50K), however an ETracker tune on
average takes up 2-4K !!! You can see for yourself simply by
looking at the length of the files on this disc! I would like to
point out that all of the tunes on this disc were created using
a pre-release copy of ETracker. It has since been improved.
ETracker comes with the manual and accompanying demo disc which
let you load up the files provided so you can see how everything
interacts and lets you work through the manual learning how to
use this wonderful package to it's fullest capabilities!
On ETracker you can edit individual channels : so you could have
drums on one channel, steady white noise on another, high
pitched notes on another, low pitched playing on another - and
you'd still have two channels free!
Disc Contents
You can fade the volume from left to right speaker and back
again, copy relative or absolutely as much or as little from any
channel to any place in any other, run the full 6 channel tunes
under interrupts in either Basic or machine code, even have your
music used in commercial games - the music for all the new FRED
and Revelation releases is being written using ETracker eg
WaterWorks, Bulgulators and Wop Gamma.
If you've ever wanted to have complete control over the SAM's
wonderful sound chip but were baffled by the technical manual
and dissapointed by The Sound Machine, then ETracker is your
chance to let your fingers run free!
We hope you like the tunes compiled on this disc - there have
been numerous over the last few months of FRED magazine and
there are hundreds more. ETracker costs £29.99, although it's a
lot compared to other SAM products, ETracker is in line with
Amiga packages - and for that it's dirt cheap!!!
Disc Contents
Next up is the demo of FRED's premier release "Impatience". This
game has sold over 400 copies in the last 18 months and is still
selling well! It received 90% in Your Sinclair and had very
complimentary reviews in Crash, Sinclair User, Enceladus, SAM
Supplement, ZAT, SCPDU.....to name a few! Unfortunately, this
demo was written several weeks before it's release and I can
promise that the graphics and music have been improved (a
huge improvement made to the music I guarantee!). Ideally, it is
suited for the SAMCo mouse and will default to that if you have
one plugged in - although it will work with QAOP & SPACE,
cursors, joystick keys - and of course the joystick (or even the
joymouse!)
The full instructions are included in the demo, but basically
what you have to do is simply click on matching tiles to pair
them off.
The demo on the disc is of "Triltex", just one of the two games
on "Impatience". The other game is essentially a board game for
Disc Contents
two players, but a lot of fun can still be derived from it.
Impatience costs just £9.99
"Triltex - The Later Levels" is another 24 levels for those of
you that found the original levels on Impatience too difficult.
You must own a copy of Impatience for these to work however as
it loads directly into it.
This costs just £4.99 and again, is available only from FRED
Publishing.
While I remember, the screens are just a selection of pictures
from recent months - there will also be some screenshots of
"Boing!" in there, they're the ones with the little green blob
that jumps about, avoids aliens, solves puzzles and is not the
slightest bit similar to Dizzy. Weeellll.......
Disc Contents
Now we have Parallax, the first ever MODE 4, 16 colour
shoot-em-up to appear on SAM. Sadly receiving bad reviews but
still selling reasonably well, the first end-of-level guardian
from Parallax is featured on this disc. Keys are 6789 & 0, or
joystick, and before you play you will be asked a Multiple Type
and whether you want a speed up - experiment!
Featuring hundreds of alien wave forms and 12 huge levels,
Parallax will keep you busy for quite a while.
Programmed by ex-Master Of Magic, Neil Holmes with music by
fellow Stuart Leonardi, Parallax costs £11.99
Unfortunately, this game will not play properly if you have
installed SC_Autoboot.
Disc Contents
Hah - I told you about the fun on FRED, so here it is! If you
like Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams type books - or if you
just have a good sense of humour, then Rachel is for you! On
this disc is the first of a twelve part story of a search for
lost cows! If you have a sense of humour - read it, otherwise
you'll call it "stupid and pointless".
The whole 12 parts of the Rachel saga are available on disc from
FRED for the price of £3.
From the same author of Rachel, comes the four FREDatives discs.
Featuring games, demos and utilities and lots and lots of music,
these are Andrew Hodgkinson's version of FRED. You can buy any
one of them for £2, or all four for £7 - again, only from FRED.
Disc Contents
Now we're getting somewhere! Frog Squad is a game written using
BetaSoft's GamesMaster. It was written by Jeremy Wood who has
no knowledge of machine code - just a good artistic hand! When
it first loads up you will be presented with a scrolling
message, press SPACE to exit from this and load the game proper.
For any of you that have never played Frogger (you sad deprived
people!), the objective is simple - guide your frog across the
road (avoiding cars) and river (don't fall in the water) and
into one of his homes at the top of the screen. Simple innit?
Control is by the cursor keys.
There have been many GamesMaster games on FRED over recent
months, I chose to put on Frog Squad because Jeremy obvious has
a flare for both GamesMaster and graphics. It had nothing to do
with Frogger being one of my favourite games. Honest. Come on,
someone believe me? Well - maybe I lied just a little bit...but
the graphics thing was a good excuse wasn't it ?!
Bits 'n' Bobs
This is the section of the magazine where ANYTHING can appear,
usually programs not big enough to get a main menu slot but you
get some wonderful stuff here :
Morton Quality by AXE : a humerous little demo featuring a new
character
Walking Man by Ben Wyatt : an example of how a few simple frames
can be combined to create a simple animation.
LogoMaker by Colin Anderton : lets you produce a 3D logo and
then save it off as a BLITZ array if desired. The default name
is FRED, but by flicking through the program listing you can
change it to whatever you wish.
Bits 'n' Bobs
And now two more BASIC games from Ben Wyatt :
SpaceWorm 2 is a wonderful little Snake game where you must
guide yourself around each maze collecting points and avoiding
the mines, yourself and the walls. Keys are QAOP.
Bugs2 is a rather original game. Using QAOP, you control your
little bug and you have to jump on the rising columns and press
down to quash them - unfortunately, you've got quite a few of
them to contend with, lucky you've only got to make it until the
timer runs out....!
But there's always another level!
Other Software - BetaSoft
So now we've taken you through all the contents of the disc and
given you a brief resume of FRED. What else did I promise to
have on the disc?? Ah yes - the other things that FRED
distributes. You should have received an order form with this
with a list of everything FRED sells, this is updated every few
weeks so if you don't subscribe to FRED but want the latest
list, just drop us a SSAE at the usual address.
Firstly we have the BetaSoft products. As an official West Coast
endorsed company, all BetaSoft products come highly recommended.
MasterDOS costs £15.99 and is an extension to SAMDOS. Similar in
ways to MSDOS is allows SUBDIRECTORIES, a clock to be set,
RAMDrives to be set-up and dozens of other features.
MasterBASIC is ideal for anyone who ever programs in BASIC, it
adds dozens of new commands allowing simpler and faster programs
to be written - as well as programs that weren't possible to
write before! It costs £15.99
Other Software - BetaSoft
FileManager is a database system coded by FORMAT's Carol
Brooksbank. It requires you to have both MasterDOS and
MasterBASIC and either the 1 MegaByte upgrade or two internal
disc drives. It costs £12.99
GamesMaster is the ideal utility for all you people that always
wanted to program but couldn't get the hang of BASIC or machine
code. GamesMaster lets you simply and quickly design your own
games - once finished the game is automatically compiled into
machine code and can be auto-run (like Frog Squad on this disc).
Your own music, graphics or even BASIC / Machine Code routines
can be incorporated into your games if you wish. GamesMaster
costs £24.99
Although FRED stock the above BetaSoft products, we do not stock
any other of their range, and we do not offer the upgrade
service that BetaSoft usually offer - if you wish to upgrade
from an early version of a program to a later one, you should
contact BetaSoft direct.
Other Software - Steve's Software
Steve's Software was one of the first companies to release a
SAM product and even today, they are one of the most
successfull.
SC_Assembler was their first product. It is a fully integrated
Assembler and Dissassembler - ideal for those of you fairly new
to machine code. Also included in the package is the Spectrum
emulator, SC_Speclone. SC_Assembler costs £12.50
SC_Filer is another incredibly flexible filing system which has
proved exceptionally popular. It costs £12.50
For Machine Coders of all levels, debugging is a nightmare - not
any more! SC_Monitor is a full Assembly language monitor to help
you debug and improve your programs - it also helps you see what
exactly is going on in other people's programs!! SC_Monitor
costs £14.99
Other Software - Enigma Variations Ltd
Enigma were the first software company to support the SAM, and
even today, their games are among the best. Unfortunately, there
is difficulty in obtaining some of their titles so we advise you
to phone Colin Macdonald on 0382 - 534201, to check stock before
ordering any of them. Just to recap though :
Defenders Of The Earth : The first SAM game. Fast and slick
platform game of the hit TV cartoon. £14.99
PipeMania : Fantastic conversion from 16-bits. £14.99
MultiPack 1 : A football and a platform game. £14.99
Famous Five : The first SAM adventure. £14.99
Klax : Puzzle game. £14.99
Sphera : SAM's first shoot-em-up. £14.99
Escape From The Planet Of The Robot Monsters : platform. £14.99
Mind Games 1 : Simple BASIC puzzle games. £14.99
Mind Games 2 : More of the same. £14.99
Other Software - LERM
Again, one of the companies at the forefront of SAM software
they produced the first, and still most popular, Spectrum
emulator for SAM.
SAMTape 4M is the latest version of their popular Spectrum
emulator - it emulates the "vast majority" of Spectrum programs,
lets you enter pokes, change colours, it saves them as
compressed files to save memory and is ideal if you have a
Messenger. Please note that FRED do not stock earlier versions,
and cannot offer an upgrade service - for these you should
contact LERM direct.
SAMDisk 2 is for managing your discs. It lets you format part of
them, verify them, perform track repairs, copy files faster than
before and much more. This disc manager and doctor costs £11.99
.
Other Software - Hilton & BGS
Hilton Computer Services have produced their "Personal Banking
System" on numerous systems ranging from the ZX81 to todays PCs,
SAM included!
If you have a lot of banking to do, why do it all on paper and
make mistakes when you can do it on a program designed
specifically for the job?
Hilton's PBS costs £19.99
BG Services produce "Pro-DOS", the CP/M emulator for the SAM. It
runs hundreds of CP/M programs and there has even been a Pro-DOS
PD Disc library set up, so if you want access to classic games
and useful utilities, ProDOS is for you!
ProDOS costs £30.99
Other Software - Chezron
Chezron have been producing Outlet drive magazine for 6 years
now and they have two word processors to add to the feathers in
their belt.
OutWrite V2 is the follow-up to the hugely successful Outwrite,
and is a complete word processor capable of block commands,
printer/control codes, Search/Replace and hundreds of other
useful word processing features never before seen on the SAM.
Also included is a simple Spell Checker.
OutWrite V2 costs £19.99
"The Style Writer" is for all you lucky people who own printers
- it, again, is a word processor but it allows you to
incorporate graphics into your files to jazz up your letters!
Style Writer costs £9.99
Other Software - Glenco & Noesis
SCADs (SAM Coupe Arcade Development System) is Glenco's premier
release on SAM after their reign over the Amstrad market.
Like GamesMaster, SCADs lets you produce your own games.
Fortunately for everyone, the similarity between the two
packages stops there. SCADs adds commands to BASIC allowing
machine code routines to be directly accessed, therefore all you
have to do is write your program in BASIC using SCADs' dozens of
extra commands to write your hit game. SCADs comes with an
extremely professional 200+ page manual and is mouse compatible.
SCADs costs £24.99
SAMPrint was "Noesis Software"'s first release and received rave
reviews everywhere - only for people with printers, it lets you
create posters, cards or leaflets using the fonts and clip art
in the program - or you can use your own!
SAMPrint costs £14.99
Other Software - Axxent
Run by Revelation's ex-Software Manager and writer of Enigma's
Famous Five Adventure, Colin Jordan, Axxent is a relatively new
company dedicated to adventure products for the SAM.
Their first release was SAS (SAM Adventure System). This fully
comprehensive package allows you to write your own adventures!
Complete with an A4 manual, you'll be able to knock up your own
Dungeons and Dragons story lines - and perhaps get paid to get
them published....already the first SAS adventures have started
to be released.
SAS costs £30.99
Their second release is the graphic adventure "Sheriff Gunn".
Become a Sheriff in an old Western town and solve the towns
problems - or will you be shot first??
Sheriff Gunn costs £11.99
Hardware - printers
We have tested out numerous printers for quality, price and
reliability and have found the following to come up trumps in
all areas, they are all Citizen printers (the company that makes
SAM's drive) and all are recommended by FRED for use on SAM :
Citizen 120D+ : Most popular printer because of it's low price.
It produces 9 pin high quality output. Costing only £149.99.
Citizen Swift 9 : A very nice printer for the price, again
producing 9 pin high quality output but with colour facilities.
Costing only £229.99
Citizen Swift 224 : The budget printer for those that need
superb 24-pin print quality AND colour ability. Cost - £279.99
Citizen Swift 24e : The "creme de la creme" - 24 pin, colour,
LCD menu functions, suitable for all types of printing, comes
with 8K of Memory (upgradeable to 40K). This printer produces
our price lists - take a look! Costing £349.99
Hardware - Other
We also presently stock good quality Mouse Mats at only £3 each
and Anti-Glare 14" Monitor Screens - for those of you that spend
many an hour in front of a monitor, this will reduce the strain
on your eyes - for just £14.99
FRED also normally stock all other SAM hardware, although at
time of writing we only have limited stocks. Please phone to
confirm stock and to reserve before ordering any SAM interfaces
to avoid dissapointment.
FRED Policies
All items on the order form have been released and are in stock.
Almost 90% of orders are despatched within 24 hours by FIRST
CLASS POST - although please allow 14 days in case of a problem
with the supplier.
All items listed above will run on a 256K or 512K SAM with 1 or
2 internal disc drives unless otherwise specified.
Please quote your FRED membership number (if you have one) and
write your address clearly on any correspondance.
Orders are accepted by Cheque, Postal Order, EuroCheque,
International Money Order and cash. Please secure any cash sent
as responsibility cannot be taken for orders not arriving.
Overseas : Software only, sorry. EC add £2 to total. £5 rest.
If you want something that's not on the list - drop us a line!
STOP THE PRESSES!
Only just in!!
FRED has taken over Outlet!!
Outlet has experienced financial problems in recent months, so
FRED has stepped in. Outlet will now be incorporated into FRED -
subscribers to Outlet will have their subscription changed
into a FRED subscription.
In the next few months, we will be working on taking the best of
both FRED and Outlet to make one great big, bestest magazine for
the SAM!
Full details on how to obtain Outlet products (eg back issues)
will appear in FRED in the near future.
We would be interested to hear from anyone considering
contributing to either the FRED or Outlet side of the magazine,
remember - good money is paid!!!!!
????????
"Well, it's time to say our goodbyes I'm afraid. It's been a
pleasure having you , I do hope you come again - you'd be more
than welcome. And if you ever want to know anything, don't
hesitate to write a letter or pick up the phone."
Above extract courtesy of The Nationwide Video Company Inc.
Sorry about that - don't know how that slipped in there, but it
was rather appropriate. I hope you've taken the time to read
this text and that you will be enjoying a subscription to FRED
magazine, if you do want to know something - just ask!
Unfortunately, as it has turned out this is nothing like an
issue of FRED, but if you're reluctant to take out a
subscription, just send £2 for the latest issue - I know you'll
be impressed.
I hope this disc is of use to you, and I look forward to hearing
from you in the future.
Sniff Sniff , Sob Sob
Bye!
This disc and all it's contents are copyright 1992 , 1993 FRED
Publishing unless stated otherwise. Copies of this disc may be
made - provided they are in full. Copies of just part of this
disc are illegal and offenders will be prosecuted.
FRED magazine is a division of FRED Publishing, which is run by
Colin Macdonald. He can be contacted at the address below :
Colin Macdonald
[redacted]
Letters & Reviews
Letter 1
Calvin Allett
Dear Colin,
I am writing for a couple of reasons, the first being
in regards to the anonymous letter you featured in issue 20,
sure the SAM isn't as fast as the 16 and 32 bits of the world
but if programmed correctly it could be almost as fast as an ST
for quite a few things, the SAM is never going to be able to
beat the Amiga at speed even if SAMCO did bring out an 8Mhz
processor, the Amiga is just too well equipped.
With an 8Mhz processor that would match the Amiga's speed but
what about the Amiga's custom chips Denise, Paula and Agnus not
to mention its Blitter, the Amiga can put on some very
impressive graphics and sound demo's without hardly bothering
the main CPU, how can an 8 bit processor compete with this.
The best thing for SAM owners to do is just compare the SAM with
the SAM, for years in the press people have moaned on about "My
ST's better than your Amiga" and vice versa and this kind of
behaviour is just pointless.
Instead of mentioning all the ways the Amiga beats the SAM what
about all the ways the SAM matches or beats the Amiga, the SAM
is now capable of having eight times as many colours as the
Amiga, the SAM has a faster disk drive, More channels for music.
The very first soundtracker (named E Tracker) program is to be
released soon for the SAM, I'm not quite sure what the
specifications are but on the Amiga and other computers some of
their Trackers are able to mimic double the channels, this gives
the Amiga 8 channels, with time we'll probably be seeing 12
channel music packages for the SAM and it's when software like
this is released when people will sit up and take notice.
If you were to measure how far a computer can be pushed in
percentage then I'd reckon the SAM hasn't even been pushed to
25% of it's full capabilities yet and it's all to do with the
programmer's, there just arn't enough good machine code
programmers on the SAM yet, sure we've had some great
programmers moving onto the SAM scene from the Spectrum and
the've produced very pleasing results, and that's with their
first attempts but we need more, much more if the SAM is going
to succeed and if people from 16 bit computers are going to
start and dabble with the SAM.
He also mentioned the SAM becoming like the PC for gadgets and
incompatibilities, I don't agree, the only trouble there has
really been so far is the ROM.
Sure there are lots of bolt ons for the SAM but these don't
really pose any problem apart from having things sticking out
all over (Ohh Err), the PC is much different and the problems
are mainly with clock speed and Display cards, the main card now
for the PC is the SVGA following with VGA right down to
herculees etc, as it's not very likely for SAMCO or anyone else
to start bringing out better graphics boards or processor's for
the SAM I don't thing we really need worry.
Apart form the PC I don't think any other computer could really
be improved that much without making a total mess, Amstrad tried
it with the CPC's and didn't really succeed, they gave it 4096
colours, sprites, DMA but only for cartridge games and so only
really succeeded in killing off a lot of tape software before
it's time, and they didn't really think they could compete with
Sega and Nintendo with a Console/Computer.
So there isn't much chance of the SAM's chips been souped up and
I doubt whether that many users would be willing to get the old
Soldering iron out every time something new came out.
The only real problem with the SAM is the fact that it hasn't
got a built in printer port (in this day and age!).
BRIAN - Thanks for the letter. We at FRED could not agree more
with those sentiments. The fact is, there's no way that 1000
people are going to come up with a spare £50 for the proposed
new ASIC chip. I also agree that there's a long way to go
until the SAM reaches its full potential. The Amiga is still
pushing forward its standards after all these years, so why
should the SAM be any different?
Letter 2
DEAR COLIN
Just to let you know I wasn't that against the 50p
price rise, its just that so many magazines put up their prices
and its just I've been getting peeved off with it all...
Can you send back old issues of FRED and get them replaced?
Not that I hate them, it's because a few have annoying sector
errors, and they always seem to be on the Screen$.
A couple of months back, FRED's software releases contained
such delights as a RPG, a beat-em-up and a soccer game. Where
are they?!?
DARREN "Cheese helmet" HUBBARD
BRIAN - Glad you approve of the price rise... By all means, if
your FRED has developed a sector error just send us back your
ORIGINAL FRED DISK and an SAE and we'll replace it completely
free of charge. More about FRED's software plans later on in the
section though.
Letter 3
Dear Fred,
Here are some comments about some of your games I have bought :
Dyzonium
It's games like this that make you happy that you don't have to
pay £40-£l65 for a game.
FRED Publishing's finest so far.
At £9.99 I would recommend this game to anyone.
90%
Parallax
The most overhyped load of c@#p since Sphera.
The sound and end of level graphics are the only good thing
about this game.
Playability? What playabilty - it's the same all the way through
and the keyboard control is rubbish.
The multi-load system is a nightmare even if this pathetic game
did take up 256K (which I doubt) why not use the 512K?
Well done on cutting the demos down to rolling demos with some
music etc taken out. I think these are more likely to sell the
game.
Well done on putting extra things on the Dyzonium disc like
demos - it gives better value and promotes products well.
WaterWorks looks like it could be a classic with some decent
music and a little polishing.
What happened to :
The beat em up.
Kick Off clone
The Tower
Lord Insanity
Franky Fuka
Lemmings
Yours sincerely, Matt Davies
CM : Glad you liked Dyz Matt. Parallax originally took up 3
discs but we managed to compress it down to just 1 disc!
Beat em up - possibly still on
Kick Off - indefinetely postponed due to technical problems
The Tower - We're discussing the continuation of this one
Lord Insanity - still coding away furiously on SAM
Frantisek - erm, don't know - haven't spoken to him for ages
Lemmings - ??????????????
B Spencer Dyzonium Review
If you've been put off buying this collect/shoot-em-up (as I
very nearly was) by the Newsdisk playable (?) demo, then think
again. The released version has improved graphics and the
difficulty is set at a more reasonable level. In fact, with a
little practice, it shouldn't be too long before you're on level
2 where things get a little more hectic (including a
particularly persistant & indestructable little alien that keeps
following you around and getting in your way).
Hints : Don't rush (there's no time limit)
Use the map (it's there to help you)
Don't waste your power-ups, especially your smart bombs
(these could mean the difference between an easy pick up and the
'Game Over' message appearing)
Verdict : The graphics & speed aren't anything special but this
is more than made up for by the excellant playability and, at
the end of the day, this is the one thing you cannot do without.
Recommended.
D Marsden Another Dyzonium Review
This game is too much like a PD game, and why when the coupe has
128 colours did Balor Knight use white on black? So there is a
bit of colour on the space ship but that's about it. What is the
point in using 3 or 4 colours on a space ship that's so small
when most of the screen's just black? Even the spinning coffin
isn't filled in. Though the game is easier than the demo of
Plasmoid I played it stills seems to be very hard and very
boring to play. The energy bar makes it very easy to get killed
in one go making it impossible to get anywhere. It's nearly
impossible to make the ship move in a straight line and cleanly
turn. Yet all is not lost the music is very funky and well done,
the intro is very detailed and I loved the way the ship
explodes.
I loved Impatience and still play on the later levels. I also
liked Parallax but Dyzonium wouldn't even make a good Spectrum
game. I think FRED at least in this case should never have
bought the license for this game. But as you did I think it
still needed more work done to it - colouring the coffin, bigger
more detailed graphics and making the first levels a lot
smaller. Sorry for being critical but I don't think this game
has done you any good at all and I would really like to see you
do well and this sort of game will only give you a bad name.
CM : It is extremely difficult to program a fast game like
Dyzonium to use more than 16 colours on screen. The main sprite
is 16 x 16 pixels which is the most common size for sprites
across ALL computers. You complained about the lack of colours -
and then said the ship used too many colours??
The spinning coffin is done in line vectors - something never
done on SAM before, it is not supposed to be coloured - that
would be easier. Line vectors are used in the latest games
across all formats.
You didn't like the energy bar? If we'd used lives, you would
have lost one and gone back to the start of the level as soon as
you touched an alien, making it far too difficult or if we'd
given you more energy it would have made the game too easy.
Thanks very much for your comments - I know I didn't agree with
them but from the way everyone is talking about the game it
should get good reviews. It's also proved very popular - it
could well be one of the best selling SAM games in a long time!
Next we've got the review you've all been waiting for: the
review of the PRODUCT you've all been waiting for!! Yes, it's
our E-Tracker review, written by Andy Monk who's responsible for
this month's excellent E-Tunes (so he should know what he's
talking about).
ANDY M E-TRACKER
Well, what can I say about E-Tracker? I could start off by
talking about the technical features of this wonderous music
package. But I won't, just for the beginners out there!
E-tracker is, when it comes down to it, the Sam equivalent to
Soundtracker on the Amiga. That program started off a long line
of similar utilites with 'Tracker' as the suffix to the title.
Could we suddenly be swarmed with tracker programs on the Sam?
Anyway, on with the review:
E-Tracker allows you to use the SAA-1099 sound chip to it's
utmost. All octaves (2048 tones) can be reached. Total control
over both the left & right speakers. All noise frequencies and
mixing combinations. Literally thousands of sounds can be
created using the instrument editor. But it doesn't stop there,
you can overlay any instrument with what's known as an Ornament!
What do we use it for?
Well, E-Tracker is ideally suited to games music, but of course
it can be used for absolutely anything so, as they say, the
choice is entirely up to you.
The instruments that E-Tracker uses are made up of elements. The
maximum number of elements is 256, but for each element you can
have a pitch, noise/tone mix, noise frequency, seperate
left/right volume control. After that you can loop a certain
part of the instrument endlessly if you wish! The only niggle I
have about instruments is that you can only have a maximum of
36.
Luckily there's something to triple the versatility of the
instrument. The Ornament editor is a simplified version of the
instrument editor. It works that when combined with any of the
36 available instruments, it will increase or decrease the value
of the instruments pitches.
ESI are using the tried and tested means of displaying music.
It's represented as something like:
C-3 4221
This would represent one channel playing a flat 'C' at octave 3.
The 4 numbers are Instrument, Ornament, Command, Value. Yes,
E-Tracker uses special commands to increase the versatility of
instruments and ornaments being played. The digit after the
command is the value for the command. For example command 4 with
a value of 10 would allow that the note on that line a volume
reduction of 10. Useful for echoing sounds etc...
After using E-Tracker for about three weeks, I have produced a
few tunes some of which may be floating around on this Fred. See
what you think. (THEY'RE GREAT! - ED)
Now after all that, I'm sorry to have to say that there are a
couple of improvements that can be made to make E-Tracker even
more amazing than it already is...
Mouse/Pointer control would've been nice,
Copying patterns/tracks could be easier,
Erm, nothing else...
Anyway, I was supposed to compare E-Tracker with the 'Sound
Machine', but because 'E-Tracker' is obviously better than the
'Sound Machine' and because there IS NO comparison, I won't. If
you like producing music or are into computer generated music,
or you're even a fan of the old speccy stuff, I strongly urge
you to buy this for christmas, at £29.99 it definitely is a
bargain!
My ratings are:
User-friendlyness: 88 %
Presentation : 65 %
Lastability : 95 %
Versatility : 98 %
Efficiency : 95 %
Total rating : 92 %
Brian : So there you have it. ETracker is brill. But that's from
an expert; if you bought ETracker and had had no previous
experience, please do write and let us know what you thought of
it. Perhaps a review by a complete beginner would help give a
complete picture of the package?
Finally, here are some reviews done by me. They're of Boing,
Bulgulators, and Revelation's new word processor "The
Secretary" (in that order).
BM Boing!
This is a game very much in the Dizzy mould; you, as a small,
oddly shaped (green!) being must wander around a screen-flicking
environment, collecting objects to use later on in specific
locations, solving puzzles and trying to find as many jugs as
possible while you're at it.
One major improvement over the Dizzy series is that it's no
longer a case of touch-one-baddy-and-die because there's an
energy bar in this game. I'll say here that I'm the sort of
person that usually HATES this type of game; I can never be
bothered trying to work out what needs to be done, and usually
get bored after a couple of minutes. Unfortunately, I can't say
"but Boing taught me the error of my ways!" because I still
don't like this sort of game. There's nothing fundamentally
wrong with the game, it's simply that I don't like having to
actually THINK about what I'm doing too much. I have, in the
past, played a fair number of these sort of games, and it must
be said that Boing! compares very well indeed with most others
of the genre.
BM Boing! ctd
The graphics are good, if a little "samey" throughout, but the
music is superb. It's nearly worth buying just to hear that! The
whole program is strung together nicely, though I would have
liked to have been told what the keys were by Colin when he gave
me this to review. I spent my first few games not knowing that I
could drop objects!! This might have something to do with my not
being desperately fond of the game...
If you do like Dizzy-type games, I'm confident that you will
like this. Bearing in mind the fact that I do not like these
games at all, I'm going to give it 5/10. If you think
differently, though, remember that you can send us YOUR
review...!
BM Bulgulators
A strong contender for "most bizarre title" award for 1992
(unless Wop Gamma is released before January!), Bulgulators has
been eagerly awaited to say the least. A variation on the Pacman
theme, there are numerous "twists" to the idea, such as one-way
walls and locked walls (which, logically enough, need to be
unlocked). There are a hundred levels to the game, which should
keep most people going for a good couple of hours, along with
bonus levels every so often, and thankfully, passwords to the
later levels.
This game plays pretty much as you'd expect; it's certainly
competently coded. There are a couple of problems though.
Firstly, when you change direction 180 degrees (ie from straight
up to straight down) there's a slight delay which all too often
results in a lost life. It's not TOO bad, but it can be a pain.
The second major problem is the colour scheme! Aarrgghh!! Some
of the mazes are truly revolting, and add to the difficulty no
end. This might be due to my colour-blindness, but I don't think
having normal colourvision is the problem, because I put my TV
BM Bulgulators ctd
on black and white and it still looked vile! The walls of the
maze are very simple, just white lines 2 pixels thick, and these
do tend to get "lost" against some of the brighter backgrounds.
Same with the dots, which can make for a very confusing level.
Add in the intentional "problems" and things get very difficult
indeed!
These painful-to-look-at levels don't occur often enough to
really spoil the game, though, and it's just a minor niggle.
Something else which annoyed me was the fact that I couldn't
guess the passwords!
You might be thinking that a maze game isn't the sort of thing
that can keep you playing for long, but believe me, it does.
Even with the odd horrible background! The difficulty level is
set about right; you can't just zoom off to level 20 on your
first game, but you should be able to progress easily enough.
Overall, I'm giving this 7/10. Neither graphics nor sound is
outstanding, but both are more than adequate.
BM The Secretary - Revelation
I've been waiting ages to see what this was like, and now I've
had a chance to mess around with it, I really don't know what to
think. As far as options go, this has them in abundance. There
are much much more features than Outwrite has to offer, such as
line-drawing and box-drawing, both of which can be very useful
indeed for reports and things.
I suppose it's inevitable that this and Outwrite are going to be
compared to eacher other; both were intended to become the best
SAM worprocessors, so for this review I'll base things on that.
The main advantage Secretary has over Outwrite is the option to
alter the left/right margins on the page. This allows a great
deal more versatility as you can probably imagine. You can
quickly and easily alter the ruler in terms of width and TAB
positions.
Both this and new version of Outwrite offer menus with the
various selectable options, but I'd say that Secretary has a
BM The Secretary ctd
better user interface than either of the Outwrites for the
simple reason that you can use either the menus or, in many
cases, keypresses.
Both packages feature built-in help screens, which is a good
thing.
From what I've said so far, you might be forgiven for thinking
that Outwrite is now obsolete. Sadly, you'd be wrong. For all
Secretary's advanced features, it suffers horribly in terms of
speed. For example, in Secretary there's a "proper" insert mode
where entering a character causes the whole paragraph to shift
along. This works, but unbearably slowly. Even the normal
word-wrap feature works much more slowly when an altered page
length is being used. This might not seem important, but for
long documents can be a hell of a nuisance.
Something else which could prove too much for the Secretary is
the fact that all the other word processors use the same file
BM The Secretary ctd
format; You can load Tasword II files easily into Outwrite, for
example. Secretary uses a slightly different system which,
while technically superior, tends to make life a bit more
difficult when swapping between programs.
If you haven't already got a word processor, and so won't have
these compatibilty problems, then you would probably be well
served by Secretary, especially if the presentation is something
which is likely to be important. I think that for FRED writing
though, I'll stick to Outwrite.
To the marks then; 7/10. It would have been more, but the loss
of speed really is a nuisance.
Next Munf
Remember, FRED29 will be out around the middle of January. The
deadline for this issue is the 30th December - so get
scribbling!
FRED29 costs £2. Orders can be accepted in advance or once it
appears, but you'd be better off with a FRED subscription - only
£20 for 12 issues, giving you an automatic saving of £4...
Remember, all the special offers detailed last month STILL
STAND, any new offers will be listed on the Newsletter.
FRED Magazine and it's contents are (c) 1992 FRED Publishing