From: robbiew@txs.uscourts.gov (Robbie Westmoreland)
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
Subject: REVIEW - Centennia Map Software
Date: 8 Feb 1995 09:57:23 -0600

I recently bought the Centennia software from Clockwork.  This program is
a set of maps of Europe from 1000 AD through 1993, showing country
borders, major cities and rivers and including brief discussions of
important events and people.  I think that this software is going to be
very useful for my Ars Magica sagas and conceivably for other gaming
purposes as well.  I also intend to make extensive use of the software
for my upcoming graduate history studies.

The area covered is Europe from England and Spain in the west to the
Volga river in the east, and from northern Scandinavia in the north
to north Africa in the south.  The Holy Land is included, as are some
parts of Persia/Iran and the western shores of the Caspian Sea.  It
boasts over 9000 border changes.

The program has several useful features.  There is a separate map for
each tenth of a year for the entire period, and each map can be viewed
on a large scale or zooming in fairly close up.  Maps can be viewed with
or without cities, city names, country names or extended country
descriptions.  It is possible to view several years running, either
backwards or forwards in time, and the program can provide "headlines"
for major events as they occur.  At any time during viewing, the
program can be stopped and the user can zoom in or out, jump to another
year, change the area of Europe on screen or change the features that
are shown.

Map images can be exported to TIFF or PCX format files, with options
for color, shading or black/white features.  WordPerfect had no problem
pulling these images in and printing them with pretty decent resolution.
Each image is copyrighted by Centennia and says so in very small print
along the bottom.

I bought Centennia for DOS.  The graphics were VGA, and the interface
was mouse-driven, with pull-down menus.  As far as I know, they don't
currently support other platforms, such as Macintosh, Windows or OS/2,
but they are under development - platform switch will be $25 US. The 
program cost $89.00 US including shipping within the U.S.  Data is
upgraded for $10 US at least through 1996.  Contact information is as
follows:
Clockwork Software, Inc.
P.O. Box 148036
Chicago, IL 60614
USA
(312)281-3132
clockwk@delphi.com
-- 
Robbie Westmoreland, Administrative Analyst  U.S. District/Bankruptcy Court
[pcatsc!]pctxsd!robbiew      (CourtNet)          Southern District of Texas
robbiew@txs.uscourts.gov     (Internet)                       (713)250-5436
  The bureaucracy is lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep...