IS THE FOREST POINTING THE WAY TOWARDS BETTER ADVENTURES?

Producer: Phipps Associates
Memory Required: 48K
Recommended Retail Price: £9.95
Language: main in BASIC, movement and data in m/c
Author: Graham T Relf

Dense fir branches suddenly gave way to an easy ground of mature trees, through which I could easily maintain a brisk pace. I checked my progress, scanning the woods for any telltale signs. Yes, there it was at barely 10 metres distance, a few white rocks hidden under vegetation. I stood in front of the ruins I had set my bearings on for the last 100 metres. Producing the map, compass and protractor I set course for northwest, maintaining the same altitude. This would lead me to the clearing, well clear of the open moor, then down the valley to the edge of the lake, after which it would be child's play following the waterfront to the large boulder. Then across the woods due east to the edge of the town and the finishing point.

If this reads like a typical orienteering course then it is because Graham Relf has made an astonishingly realistic simulation of the sport on the Spectrum. There's no need to be in top physical shape - leave that to Olivia Newton John, but it would be wise to know something about the art of map reading and navigating. It is here that you can learn something and yet fully enjoy the game.

There is an enormous area of geography enclosed in the game, approximately 37 square kilometres, of which only a small portion has been charted so far. Included on this map is a 12 point course ready for you to tackle in the shortest possible time. All you have to do is visit each control point in the right sequence. The proof of your visit will be printed on your control card, which you carry with you. Each check point has a special code, so cheating's out.

Each step taken is approximately one metre, as in real life, with a random variation of plus or minus 10 degrees. This means taking ten steps for every millimetre of the supplied 200 x 210mm map! As your bearing drifts while moving, don't go running for miles without checking it.

The display shows you the terrain six metres in front of you and it varies from thick fir trees, to running wood (mature trees), moors (hard going), open grass, town area or even lake. Special point features such as buildings, boulders, rock outcrops, mine shafts, knolls, depressions etc. will be displayed as a message (with code if it is a checkpoint).

An eye level marker in front tells you whether the ground is rising or falling, so you can easily follow contours on the map this way. As real time is used you can check on elapsed time. It can be taken at a very brisk pace as the graphics are updated in a short instant, and speed, as in real life, is dependent on the terrain. If you are ascending in thick wood, you will be puffing and panting - not too strenuous from your armchair!

The orienteering feature of the game is excellent in itself; but further to that you may use the program to chart the vast areas which surround the printed map on the cover. Calling up the menu at any time you can get exact co-ordinates of your position (but using it in orienteering will affect your final results). Provision is made for drawing out contour and terrain maps of any area you specify, and a routine is provided to detect any point features in a given sector.

With these many features you will be able to construct maps similar to the cover map, but be warned - it's a major task! If all this is not satisfying enough, there is a facility for displaying cross sections of the landscape and, better still, constructing a 3D view with these cross sections of any given area!

The Forest certainly makes a change from the usual arcade or even adventure games. It also points the way to better adventure games. Based on the graphical display of the terrain and the actual technique of movement (in paces in any direction) the games player could be living in a fictitious and weird fantasy world of a 10 square kilometres or so. A vast area to explore.

Given the added thrill of self-propelled adventure characters, living their own lives in this vast area, similar to the Hobbit characters, and visually better point features such as caves, castles, dungeons, forest huts and so on, you could be moving in a total fantasy world. Now if someone were to combine these features with a brilliant plot and with cartoon-like moving characters such as in Valhalla, you could be in Adventure Land...

FRANCO FREY

Producer: Phipps Associates, 48K
£9.95 (1)
Author: Graham T. Ralph

An amazing program which simulates the sport of orienteering - yet manages to be much more than a sport simulation. An enormous area of geography is enclosed in the program, only a tiny bit of it already mapped for you. Included is a 12 point orienteering course for you to complete in the shortest possible time, checking each point in the correct sequence. The display shows you the terrain six metres in front and uses symbols for the different terrain, trees, shrubs, lakes, towns etc. Special point features are displayed as messages and an eye level indicator tells you whether the ground is falling or rising, so you can easily follow the contours. In addition you can go off and chart the unmapped areas. The program will draw contour and terrain maps for you or make up 3D views. A massive program, excellent value, recommended. Overall CRASH rating 88% M/C and BASIC.

Producer: Phipps Associates, 48K
£9.95 (1)
Author: Graham T. Ralph

An amazing program which simulates the sport of orienteering - yet manages to be much more than a sport simulation. An enormous area of geography is enclosed in the program, only a tiny bit of it already mapped for you. Included is a 12 point orienteering course for you to complete in the shortest possible time, checking each point in the correct sequence. The display shows you the terrain six metres in front and uses symbols for the different terrain, trees, shrubs, lakes, towns etc. Special point features are displayed as messages and an eye level indicator tells you whether the ground is falling or rising, so you can easily follow the contours. In addition you can go off and chart the unmapped areas. The program will draw contour and terrain maps for you or make up 3D views. A massive program, excellent value, recommended. Overall CRASH rating 88% M/C and BASIC.

MAPPING A COURSE THROUGH THE FOREST

Phipps Associates has produced a simulation program for the 48K Spectrum to teach the art of orienteering. The Forest is presented very professionally, with a map and a detailed booklet to accompany it. The program offers a pre-set route but you can also map your own course and use that instead.

The program is definitely not for novices. The booklet warns that you need a ruler graduated in millimetres and a protractor for measuring angles to participate; the graphics change to show your position as you move, taking into account the contours of the terrain and variations in bearing and length of step.

You use the cursor keys to move. The left and right arrows move you 11.25 degrees each time, the up arrow moves you forward for as long as you keep it depressed, the down arrow turns you 180 degrees to face the way you have come. Other commands allow you to check your bearings, see your control card, enter your code and check your time.

Unless you are an experienced orienteer, it is very easy to get lost and the booklet recommends you to keep track of all your moves as you make them.

Even experienced orienteers will probably be relieved to know that it is necessary only to arrive within five metres of the finish point marked on the map.

The graphics are simple but effective and the booklet provides very thorough explanations. The Forest is available from Phipps Associates, 172 Kingston Road, Ewell, Surrey KT10 0SD. The complete package costs £9.95.

EVERGREEN FOREST

MICRO: Spectrum 48K and TRS80
PRICE: £9.95
FORMAT: Cassette
SUPPLIER: Phipps Associates, 172 Kingston Road, Surrey

The Forest is described as "a computer simulation of the sport of orienteering". The program is intended as a training aid as well as a game.

The cassette nestles in a large video-style box, with a 32-page manual. A 1:10,000 scale map is included in the package. The manual is particularly well-produced, with the aid of Phipps's Diablo printer, which has given sterling service in the past.

Orienteering pits the lone participant against nature, other orienteers and the clock. At the start each competitor is given a map with the course marked as a series of numbered circles joined by straight lines. At the centre of each circle is a natural feature, such as a boulder, a road junction, or bush. The corresponding feature on the ground is marked with a red and white control flag. A card is carried by each competitor, and as each control is reached the card is punched, with a coded punch found at each point.

On loading the title screen shows you many of the graphic symbols used in the program. Here you will see large and small trees, a house (clusters of these represent towns), along with lakes and so on. You are then invited to "press any key to start". As soon as you do so, the scene at the beginning of the course is shown, and the clock immediately starts running. Pressing T at any time will show elapsed time.

Commands are single-key. The up arrow will start you moving forward, and you will continue until another, non-direction key is pressed. At each pace, the scene ahead is re-displayed. The left and right arrows will cause you to move in those directions, while the 6, or down key will stop you, if you are moving forward, or turn you through 180 degrees if you are standing still.

As you move forward through the terrain of the forest, your progress is as it would be in real life. Thus, the small fir trees, with branches often interlocking, will impede you somewhat, while larger, mature trees will allow easier passage.

The trees give an indication of the slope of the ground ahead. A flashing cursor marks the base of the tree immediately ahead, and this will give you an idea of whether you are above or below the tree base. This, too, will affect your speed, and the length of each stride, thus giving a rough indication of your progress.

As you move through the Forest, the picture will give you an indication of the speed of your progress, as the screen "wipes" slower or faster, depending on your pace.

A one-word description of the terrain - is displayed onscreen. Come within 5 metres of a control point, and you will be informed of the type of feature (though not the number of the flag).

Having finally found the control point, what do you do? Well, you have to prove that you have actually visited the point, but, unlike the real thing, you can't start punching holes in the computer - they don't like it very much. So stop moving, select D (for Description List), and you will see a run-down of the various control points, together with a brief description and the code of each one.

You should by now, have a vague idea of where you are on the map, and pressing P (for Punch), will place the code for that particular control point on the Control Card - which you may then examine via the C (for Control Card) option.

Now, to use the program properly it is necessary to have a ruler and protractor on hand to check your progress against the map supplied. This would be difficult enough, of course, but, in real life, the orienteer would tend to wander slightly with each pace, and the program has a built-in random factor, which will move you slightly away from the computed course.

Pressing B (for Bearing) will show you your in-Program compass, giving you information on your present bearing, and also asks for a new bearing. You have the option of staying on-course if you have managed to follow your progress sufficiently well.

You will find an awful lot to think about, and keep your mind occupied in The Forest, with just one landscape, but Graham Relf, the author, provides you with yet another forest to contend with. Although this one is not mapped, it does, he says, bear more resemblance to the terrain of the home of orienteering, Scandinavia. I've only spent a few moments in this forest (I find quite enough to do in the first - easier, I imagine - map), although I found that I was dumped, unceremoniously, into a lake through which I had to wade.

Not only can you choose to tackle a harder terrain, but you may also design your own course. From one to 20 control points may be placed around the landscape. From the course planner's menu, individual features for each point may be set up.

Using the map-drawing options in the main menu, the program would also be of use to geography teachers in school. The student will find in The Forest facilities for drawing three-dimensional diagrams of the terrain, contour maps, and feature maps. And the terrain that the program knows extends for 37 kilometres around the printed map, in the first forest.

All in all, then, an extremely impressive package and highly recommended for geography students, budding and experienced orienteerers (I quite fancy having a go myself now, but only after a good week or so spent in Phipps's Forest), cartographers - and yer average game enthusiast.

NO OTHER MICRO HAS THE SOFTWARE BACK-UP OF SINCLAIR'S SPECTRUM. PETE CONNORS PLOUGHS HIS WAY THROUGH SOME OF IT FROM GRAPPLING WITH EVIL MAZIACS TO HELPING CHARLIE THE CHEF.

48K
Phipps Associates, 172 Kingston Road, Ewell, Surrey KT19 0SD
£9.95

Every software house, from the giants to the leprechauns, seems to have programmers chained to terminals, frantically churning out products for the massive Spectrum market. For Spectrum owners the pot of gold under the rainbow is the now huge variety of software available: their only problem is distinguishing the genuine article from the fake.

One game you certainly will not need to bite into is Zzoom from Imagine. This is the Real McCoy, a quality arcade-style game of skill and destruction in the comfort of your own armchair. The game starts with the Dambusters theme tune, enough on its own to make you start twirling imaginary handlebar moustaches and warn Ginger about the bandits at 4 o'clock. You find yourself in command of an aeroplane whose gunsights appear on the screen; also displayed are a dibar to show your relation to the ground and a long-range scanner.

Before you have time to think, hostile aircraft are approaching from the east; they speed in and suddenly, unexpectedly, wheel 90° towards you, presenting the slightest of targets for your cannon. Those earthbound refuges you are trying to protect do not have much of a chance. Poor blighters, I wish I could have done more to help. After the waves of planes, the landscape changes. Now its the desert, complete with palm trees. Over the horizon come battalions of tanks. More skill is now required, as you have to dive low enough to shoot your earthbound adversaries without crashing to your doom.

After the desert - the sea, with enemy destroyers trying to blast the refugees' lifeboats. The standard of graphic display and excitement combine to make Zzoom a most exciting game, one that has deservedly become a micro-classic.

DK'tronics, though, has produced a game which could rival Zzoom's popularity. Maziacs may seem, initially, to be just another maze-game. In fact, it has subtle qualities which make it one of the best available in this genre. The scenario is familiar: you must get through the maze, collect the treasure and get out. You can ask the way from prisoners, and pick up swords to combat the maziacs.

What lifts Maniacs above the common land is its graphic sophistication. The monsters are the most grotesque I have ever seen on a micro; nightmarish squatting creatures, all legs and jaws who enjoy nothing more than gobbling you up. The prisoners are sad creatures, writhing in their shackles inside blue circles. One feels great pity for them but, sadly, one can do nothing to help. And you, the brave treasure-hunter, are a perky little fellow with a jaunty rhythmic step. You are never downhearted and your jubilation when you have destroyed a marine is quite heart- warming. These qualities give Maniacs that something extra, and make it a very compulsive game.

Best of the other offerings from DK is Hard Cheese, in which you have to eat your way round the board, creating your own maze, in order to get at the cheese in the middle. Naturally, you are pursued by monsters. Naturally you can shoot these monsters, but this is not so easy as they move very quickly and you must replenish your energy. Again the graphics are of a high standard, and Hard Cheese is almost, but not quite, as compulsive as Maziacs.

In comparison, DK's Road Toad and Jawz are rather dull.

The first needs no introduction and is as expected; though the graphics are, perhaps, a little clearer than usual, and the tankers are truly fearsome. Jawz is a disappointment; here you are underwater, firing at Sharks and Jellyfish. It is quite tricky to hit them as you have two cannons converging from either side of your control. Otherwise the game is low on interest.

Ultimate Play the Game has a reputation for quality software, and it does not besmirch it with Cookie and Tranzam. Cookie has one of the wackiest situations for a long time; Charlie Chef's ingredients have escaped from the pantry-yard and he must recapture them by dazing them with flour bombs and knocking them into his mixing bowl. As well as the runaways Crafty Cheese and Colonel Custard there are nasties such as Wally Washer and Terry Tack. Crazy, but true. The graphics are very good and Charlie is a sympathetic little figure in his white chef's hat.

It is very difficult to avoid the nasties; if they get you, you end up in a dustbin. Cookie is a witty and enjoyable game, but one which you might do well to use a joystick for. Tranzam is set in the year 3474; it is your Red Racer versus the Deadly Black Turbos in the search for the Eight Great Cups of Ultimate. The screen displays a barren landscape where the only land-marks are cacti and petrol stations. You guide your car around looking for the cups, while trying to avoid your enemies and the obstacles. This is a tricky business if you are doing 400 mph and steering on the keyboard; again, a joystick would be useful. Tranzam is an exciting game which gives a taste of the Mad Max experience.

GAME OR BLURB?

And so to Quicksilva. Do people buy their programs for the game or the blurb? Aquaplane's scenario begins "The contrasting blues of sea and sky provide a perfect backdrop as I relax with a Pernod and lemonade..." and goes on in the same vein for two sides of packaging. Indeed, Aquaplane's sea and sky are very blue, suggestive of hot Mediterranean summers. And, the game is very good. There you are, out for a bit of water-skiing, when the speedboat goes bananas. You are being pulled away to almost certain death.

Rocks, driftwood, tacking yachts, cruisers piloted by drunken play-boys, snapping sharks; get through all those and you have mastered the game. Aquaplane is made more intriguing because, as the boat accelerates, you are pulled to one side or another, thus increasing the risk of meeting a sticky end on a piece of driftwood. The graphics, too, are very colourful and realistic. Aquaplane is a highly entertaining game - almost as good as the blurb.

On the subject of watery graves, Bug-Byte has Aquarius "an underwater espionage game". As commander of a frogman team you must destroy the bombs planted by an enemy nation. Problems you will encounter are sharks and electrifying jellyfish. Your oxygen will run out and must be replenished by collecting fresh tanks from the sea-floor. While the undersea world is fairly convincing and the sound effects are genuinely squelchy, Aquarius is not a very exciting game, lacking the speed and variety top-class programmes.

ENCOUNTER WITH THE DARK ONE

In Styx, also from Bug-Byte, you are supposed to be battling your way across the mythological river to Hades "towards an encounter with the Dark One himself". In fact, it is a rather boring maze game, where the "deadly spiders" look like bits of dried grass and the Piranhas - did you know there were Piranhas in the Styx? - are most unconvincing. If they have micros in Hades as well they may well be playing Pool, another Bug-Byte game. The graphics are much better than Styx; a bright green for the baize and red for the bolls. Curiously, the object balls are all the same colour. Control is straightforward, using the cursor keys.

But perhaps these denizens of Hades might prefer CDS Micro Systems' Pool. I know I do, if only because the object balls are divided into blue and red. Otherwise, it is much the same as Bug-Byte's version, easy to control and pleasant to look at. Both programs are for one or two players.

Purer pleasures of the mind are entered for by Artic's Chess Tutor. The novelty of this program is that it not only plays chess - at three levels - but takes the beginner through three different opening variations; King's Indian, Ruy Lopez and Sicilian Dragon. There is also a section which demonstrates the moves of each piece.

This is indeed very useful and would be suitable for the absolute beginner. Unfortunately the board is none too clear, as the white pieces do not show up well on the light squares.

As a game chess is not in much danger of being overtaken by any of three new programs consisting of logical board games: Hanoi King from Contrast Software, Lojix from Virgin and 3-D Strategy from Quicksilva.

In the first of them you have three pillars on which are a series of rings. You have to transfer them to the third so that they are in the same order, moving only one ring at a time ind without placing a larger on top of a smaller ring. It sounds easy, and with only three or four rings, it is. More than that and it can become fiendishly difficult.

Lojix is a game in which you have to fit 18 irregularly shaped pieces onto a board. A sort if fiendish jigsaw puzzle, it is difficult and interesting. Virgin is offering a cash prize for the first correct solution.

3-D Strategy is billed as "a multi-dimensional mind game". It is 3-D noughts and crosses on a 4 by 4 by 4 cube. After 3-D chess Mr Spock might not have much trouble with his, but ordinary earthlings will find it very hard to beat. Despite being essentially simple ideas, all three of these games are well produced and will provide hours of entertainment for the puzzle happy.

Perhaps the most interesting new program for the Spectrum is The Forest, from Phipps Associates. This is a complex simulation of orienteering, the sport in which you have to follow a course over difficult terrain using only map and compass. The program comes with a beautifully printed orienteering map ind a long, but clear, explanatory booklet. The screen displays various topographical features and, using the map, you have to negotiate the nurse.

Thus, The Forest is not merely a game, but an help introduce people to map-making and the relation between maps and the physical features they represent. As the program notes say, this program will be of particular interest to students and teachers of geography as well as armchair orienteerers.

Plunder is a strategy game from Cases Computer Simulations. Set in 1587, the year before the Spanish Armada set sail, the game gives you the opportunity to be an English privateer whose task is to prevent gold from the New World getting back to Spain. You must also be more successful than your deadly rival Sir Francis Drake. There is more to this than mere yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum; you must weigh up the chances of success in taking on merchant, troop and warships. Too much damage or too many lost crew and the game is up; it's Davy Jones' locker for you.

Camelot, an adventure-game from the same company, is not quite so good. As Arthur Pendragon you have been banished from Camelot by the Black Knight. Understandably you want to get back; who knows what Lancelot and Guinevere are up to round the Round Table? You have some warriors and money to help you find the necessary seven items. There are graphic displays of landscapes and obstacles, unfortunately rather crude. The "evil magician" looks rather like a conjurer at a children's party.

Those Spectrum owners keen to develop the machine's graphics potential should look at Melbourne House's 48K Melbourne Draw. This program will take you on a tour of the Spectrum's graphics, allowing you to choose colours, draw, and store graphic displays.

Once you have drawn your picture, you might want to make it say something, in which case you are referred to Abbex's Supertalk which, with no extra hardware, will enable your Spectrum to speak. The demo facility lets you hear Supertalk's Dalek-style voice exercising its small vocabulary. To enter your own vocabulary you record the words on tape and then feed them in, afterwards adjusting them to make sentences. First "Jolson Sings!" now "Spectrum Talks".