CompuServe Messages

ML has had really good reviews in the Amiga mags. Here's what my brochure says: Magic Lantern is a program designed to create, edit and display delta compressed animations in realtime. It takes as input IFF picture and sound files created from other sources (such as DPaint, Imagine, LightWave, Real-3D, etc) and creates animations that run on various frame buffers in up to 24 bit color. Magic Lantern plays sound effects through the Amiga sound chip. Once the animation is created, it can be edited; such editing might include adding or removing sound effects and frames, or moving frames around. All of these functions are accessible through a very friendly, Workbench 2.0 compliant GUI, and/or an ARexx port. Lantern also provides a means to create animations that are larger than available memory, and a separate utility to play them back from disk. The ARexx port was designed to allow the user to do anything that he/she could do through the GUI; this allows the user to create powerful, automated scripts for batch processing or other uses which the developers did not forsee. Magic Lantern includes highly optimized assembly language routines for playing back animations on supported display devices, including frame buffers which store pixels in chunky format. The program also provides numerous compression options which allow the user to optimize animations for size, playback speed or both. Due to its modular nature, Magic Lantern can be updated to support new display devices as they become available. Features: – Supports the Retina, Picasso II and OpalVision in 8, 16 and 24 bit modes. – Supports the GDA in 8 bit mode. – Supports the Amiga custom chipset, including all AGA modes, DCTV, HAM-E, etc. – Over 10 different compression algorithms. – Syncronizes sound to the animation. – Can enforce a playback rate. – Hard drive playback of animations. – ARexx port, assembly language animation routines, breaks up animations into IFF components, much more. Requirements: Workbench 2.0 or greater. 1mb of memory. Recommended: Hard disk and more memory. Magic Lantern is available from: Terra Nova Development PO Box 2202 Ventura CA, 93002-2202 … for $95 (US funds, check or money order), postpaid. CA residents add $6.89 state sales tax. -= Vance =- Image Master Flying high on Imagine and Imagemaster R/t!