Can it turn Dave Keel from pavement artist
to Picasso?
Not long after the ST computer was first launched
(was it really almost one and a half years ago?) a marvellous
multi-mode drawing program was released by the very well known and
highly reputable Batteries Included (distributed by Ariolasoft in
the U.K.). This program was Degas. It was certainly better than most
other 8 bit drawing programs that anyone had seen, but we all knew
that the ST was capable of much, much more. A few other such
programs have since seen light of day, that do a little more than
Degas did, but none have had all the features that we'd expect from
a professional drawing and painting program on a 68000 based
micro-computer. It has taken over a year to arrive, but Degas Elite
has now become available and it's got almost every feature that
you'd imagine and even one or two that you probably wouldn't.
For those readers who haven't seen the original
Degas, then I'd suggest that you look at PAGE 6 Issue 20, where a
full review was published. Naturally, Degas Elite has every single
one of the features that Degas has (except for the high-resolution
mode inverting bug, of course!) and many more besides.
The first noticeable difference is that the Degas
Elite disk has to be booted. This loads in the GEM GDOS-VDI routine
which allows more versatility over type font styles (e.g. outline,
italic, half-tone etc. - just like the fonts in First Word and DB
Master!) - you can then create an initial load up instruction file
which tells the Degas Elite program which fonts you want to load
(you can have up to 10 fonts resident at one time!), and from which
drive etc. Talking of fonts, the original font editor is still
there, and there's also a font converter program that enables you to
convert all your existing Degas fonts into the GDOS-VDI format,
thereby creating new variants of your old favourites. After you've
booted the disk, you still have to select and run the actual program
and it's then that you'll immediately notice the most obvious
differences - the familiar boxes of the original Degas control
screen are still there, but they're laid out a little differently,
and in addition you also have a whole host of pull-down menus which
enable you to select most of the new goodies that have been added.
Take a deep breath and here goes. You can have up
to 8 screens (on a one-meg ST, less on a 520 of course!) active at
any time, and you can swap pictures or parts of pictures between any
of these screens. You can load low or medium resolution colour
pictures into high resolution screens (with very acceptable results)
and vice-versa, and you can save your pictures to disk in a
compressed format, usually around one-half to one-third of the usual
32K. You can automatically draw outlines around any area in any
colour, and add shadows to shapes or text. You can load in Amiga
files (whatever turns you on!) or 8-bit Atari Koala pad screens. You
can load in images without their colour files or colour files
without their images.
Extensive 'fill' design routines are incorporated,
enabling you to create your own fills in either colour or
monochrome, even allowing you to 'snatch' a suitably sized area of
any screen and use that as a repeated fill. Animation has been
incorporated (a feature that was sadly lacking in the original
Degas), with many animation features enabling you to produce no end
of amazing effects (although a bit of imagination and some
considerable experimentation after careful study of the manual is
essential). Thirteen printer driver routines are included on the
master disk, so yours should be in there somewhere, and the very
excellent and extensive manual gives you all the information that
you'd need to write your own if it isn't included provided that you
know a bit of machine code.
Just about all the graphics routines available can
be obtained by either clicking on the appropriate selection box or
by pressing the relevant keyboard key - another new idea. The very
useful zoom mode is still there but now you can very quickly zoom in
from 3 to 12 times size, and scroll around whilst in any zoom mode.
The most impressive, versatile and (to my mind)
useful feature, however, is the 'block' mode. Remember in Degas how
you could select any of the available 'brushes' and use them to draw
lines, boxes, circles, ellipses and freehand draw etc.? - well,
imagine that you can select any sized area of any picture, define it
as a 'block' and then use it just like any other brush. Draw a
circle with a carrot (for example!) or a box with the Mona Lisa's
nose!. And once you've defined an area of screen as a 'block' then
the fun really starts, because you can stretch it, shrink it, rotate
it to any angle (in degrees!) that you like, horizontally or
vertically 'lean' it, or even distort it to any abstract shape, and
the blocks can be anything from 4 to 25 sides! The distort mode not
only allows you to produce some weird and wonderful effects, but you
can also use the distort to create true perspective - for example,
you could produce a 3D cube with your design printed on all three
visible sides, 'distorted' to the correct perspective to fit
perfectly! For machine code 'hackers', the 'block' can also be saved
to disk as an 'icon' file and used in your own programs.
'every feature you'd
imagine'
I'm sure you'll have gathered by now that I'm
impressed with Degas Elite. To balance the situation a little I must
report that my copy crashed several times after around one and a
half hours use - although knowing the idiosyncrasies of the ST, and
the non-legitimate mods I've made to mine, it could be the fault of
my machine but somehow I don't think so. It may be that some of the
pointers get mixed up after prolonged use and a lot of saving to
disk. You wouldn't spend a long time on a masterpiece artistic
creation and not save it to disk at least every 15 minutes would
you?.
Other than that single doubt I can wholeheartedly
recommend the program to anyone who takes their drawing seriously
enough to spend around £70 on a program. Allowing for the ST's
graphical limitations, the program is as near a 'professional' tool
as it is possible to produce on an all-round machine. I know
everyone is talking about (and probably waiting for) Mirrorsoft's
'Art Director', but remember that as far as I'm aware that only
works in low-resolution mode, which makes it pretty unsuitable for
any serious graphical work destined for a monochrome printer. That
said, if you don't own a high resolution monochrome monitor, and
aren't particular about medium resolution, then perhaps it would be
an idea to wait for the cheaper 'Art Director' to see if it lives up
to expectations and promises. However, if you're looking for a
state-of-the-art 16 bit ST drawing program that works equally well
in any of the ST's three graphics modes and takes a lot of the hard
work out of any of the graphical ideas that you want to try, then
you've found it!.
By the way, if you are an existing 'original
Degas' owner, and you are wondering if you can 'trade-in' your disk
for an upgrade to Degas Elite, don't bother trying, I've called
Ariolasoft and it's not their policy. Seems a bit unfair to me,
after all, the original Degas disk is totally redundant if you buy
Degas Elite.
Next issue we take a look at Art Director. First glance shows
it to be every bit as good as Degas Elite, but is it any better?
Plus a feature by feature comparison for you to judge for yourself.
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