StereoWorld
Matt Thompson
After the first 4th Dimension relaunch title, comes the second one, this time it is the turn of Stereoworld, which is a collection of programs which produce a variety of weird and wonderful graphics and includes an editor to create your own. I didn't own the original release, so don't know if there is anything new in this release, apart from the manual now being in HTML format, and that most of the program now runs on the Iyonix natively.
Installation of the program is straight forward, with the CD in the drive, double click and the filer window appears, click on the installer program and you should then see the following panel.
Then drag the icon to the relevant place on the hardisc, the program is quite big and needs 9MB of hard disc space, if you have enough space then click OK and the program will install, then double click and it will then load onto the iconbar.
IMAGES
Behind most of the images or stereograms as they are known, there is a hidden image to try and find, by clicking the menu button on the mouse over the image you will get a menu of available pictures, select the one you want, and begin the process of staring at the picture and see if you can see the hidden picture in the image, I tried many times with quite a few pictures and couldn't see any of them even when I knew what they were, you can play this game in the desktop, in a full screen mode, print the image if you so wish and by clicking on help brings up some interactive help about how to play this game.
Can you see the hidden image in this picture ?
No... well this is there one and it's this.
That's the first part of Stereoworld, if you are able to see the hidden images then its probably quite entertaining, but couldn't see any of them, onto the next part which is ..
ANIMATIONS & MORPHS
Nothing to do with Morph off of the television, this section involves selecting an animation or morph from the menu and then clicking on play to see some sort of animation within the image,either in the desktop or in full screen mode, I'm not really sure what this section is all about or what the purpose of it is really, but I'm sure it will appeal to somebody somewhere.
GAMES
A bit of a more interesting section this one, there are three games in this section.
Escape - this is essentially a breakout clone, although its heavily disguised behind a stereogram, rather difficult to play, if you really want to play breakout then there are better ones out there, this game doesn't work on the Iyonix, it is OK on the 26 bit RISC OS machines though.
Lander - this is a game based on the Lunar Lander game, land your craft on a planet surface, you can choose from a menu which planet to land on, this game doesn't work on the Iyonix either,but its fine on the 26 bit RISC OS machines, I found this game rather difficult, as you play the game with a stereogram in the background and it makes it hard to see what is going on, maybe thats the point.
Stereosaw - this is a sliding blocks puzzle, pick the difficulty rating and the computer will show the image then jumble it up and then you have to put it back together, this was quite a nice little game to play and this game works perfectly on the Iyonix.
Turn this:
...Into this:
CREATE YOUR OWN STEREOSAW
If you have the urge, you can create your own stereograms, with the built in editor which runs nicely in the desktop.
There are a wide range of supplied pictures and objects to use with your own designs.
Stereoworld requires 16MB of RAM to run, with 9MB of hard disc space, and RISC OS 3.5 or later, I am pleased to say that with the exception of two of the games (Escape, and Lander) the program works perfectly on the Iyonix without any problems.
In conclusion, I personally didn't find this a particularly thrilling venture, the sliding blocks puzzle part was quite good fun and if you can find the hidden images in the stereograms then its probably worth a go, graphically its bright and colourful, there is very little sound, just a few noises here and there, I'm sure this will appeal to many people out there but I didn't find it that exciting at all, on the positive side it runs on the Iyonix and it is now available at a bargain price, it cost about £30 on its original release, so if you didn't buy it the first time round now maybe the time to give it a go.
Product details
| Product: | StereoWorld |
| Supplier: | APDL |
| Price: | £6.90 inclusive of UK carriage |
| Address: | 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London, SE26 5RN |
| Tel: | 0208 7782659 |
| WWW: | www.apdl.co.uk |
| E-mail: | sales@apdl.co.uk |
Matt Thompson