Little Bits
By Andrew Roughan
Copyright (c) 1994 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
o Big Red Computer Club will be closing its doors before the end of 1994. BRCC has been around for 12 years with a healthy membership, noteworthy publication "Scarlett", extensive public domain software library, and, recently, commercial software publisher for both discontinued software and new software, such as Out of This World and The Lost Treasures of Infocom. BRCC at one time was a major source of public domain software for the AUG and is currently a major source of commercial software for Jeff at II Series Software.
o Those interested in Home Automation would have heard of X10. X10 is a method of controlling household electricity (lights, alarms, appliances etc) using controllers which interface between the power source and the object. Software to allow programming of X10 controllers exists for most computers. The Apple //gs is no exception. An X10 Survival Kit is available as shareware, US$22, from:
Art Coughlin
230 Clamer Road
Trenton, NJ 08628
USA
The July Apple IIgs main meeting on Monday July 11th will feature a demonstration of X10 technology. See you there!
o AllTech Electronics have taken over the SoundMeister sound card and GS sound software, DigitalSessions, from ECON technologies. Tony Diaz, is considering restarting the SoundMeister Pro project, but there are no definate plans at this time. If you would like to see the SoundMeister Pro finished, email your support to Tony: T.DIAZ@GEnie.geis.com
o A German Apple user group are producing a CD-ROM with 150 disks of Macintosh and 250 disks of Apple IIgs public domain software. The CD will be available around the first week of July. It will cost AUS$65. Shipping charges follow:
w/Case wo/case
Air $14.50 $9.00
Surface $7.25 $4.50
Up to ten CDs with or without cases can be surface shipped for $10.75. Make cheques drawn on an Australian bank payable in Australian dollars to:
Udo Huth
Leipziger Str. 16 a
38329 Wittmar
Germany
u.huth@genie.geis.com
o Jim Maricondo, from DigiSoft Innovations, is working on releasing an Apple // CD-ROM by the end of July. Also due within the next couple of months is an update to his Apple //gs screen saver, Twilight II.
o Sorry folks, it looks as though Wolfenstein 3d for the Apple //gs will not become a reality. Somebody PLEASE prove me wrong! Michael Spector (spector@vax2.concordia.ca)
wrote to ID Software, the company which brought Wolfenstein 3d to the 65c816 Super Nintendo. Here's part of the reply he received:
I've received a fair amount of mail about this in the past couple of weeks. The bottom line is that we have no plans for a IIGS port. There are two major reasons (feel free to pass this around):
1: (The technical) The SNES implementation of wolf is the absolute borderline of acceptable gameplay. The GS is similar, but not quite as capable as the SNES.
The most time consuming parts of the program are the clearing of the screen, the scaling of the walls, and the copying to the video memory. The SNES can do all of these thing faster than the GS.
The SNES can do the clearing and copying with DMA, which is about four times faster than the tightest possible pea/pei stack tricked code.
The SNES rom clocks at 3.5mhz and the ram at 2.5. I am also using one of the SNES dma registers to fake an autoincrement addressing mode. This lets the scaling be about 60% faster than the best possible on the GS.
You couldn't reasonably use more than 16 colors in a scaled GS game, which would require ALL THE ARTWORK TO BE REDRAWN.
Bottom line: While a GS game would be possible at a lower frame rate and resolution (or if it required an accelerator), it would not do justice to the game.
2: (the market) A runaway hit in the GS community might sell a few thousand copies. Possibly. Our time right now is split between jaguar ports, retail DOOM, and preliminary work on QUAKE, all big ticket items. We are a small company, with only six people in the development effort. We just don't have the time for niche products.
I feel for you (a GS was my first real computer), but we are making our mark by looking forward, not back.
Sorry.
John Carmack
o Update Watch: GraphicWriter III, Spectrum, The Manager, and Kangaroo updates are due soon from Seven Hills Software. Appleworks 4.1 from Quality Computers is almost ready too!
o Easter Egg time: Try pressing <Open Apple>-A from the bottom of the main menu help (<Open Apple>-?) in Appleworks 4.0.x.

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