Editorial

Editorial

SCENE+ is published by:
L.C.D.
Prager Str. 92/11/12
A-1210 Wien
Austria
Tel: (02) 272 34 63 from within Austria, or +43 1 272 34 63 from abroad.

All classified ads and announcements are free of charge as long as they are related to the Spectrum or SAM Coupé, and can be submitted in any format: plain text, loading screens, animations, etc.

Issue 11/96

Well, Christmas is approaching in giant strides, forcing me to do something truly special for the upcoming issue. In other words: another brand-new game! For this reason, I temporarily halted work on Legacy, especially since progress there hasn't been particularly smooth either. So: my latest creation will once again be a patience card game, titled Indian Patience.

Features: Soundtracker music, mouse control (as usual!), autoplay mode, vastly improved graphics compared to Pyramid Patience, and quite a bit more. It will be released exclusively for SCENE+; anyone without a subscription who still wants the game will have to pay DM 5,— (except for registered Advanced Patience users, who get it for free, naturally).

Did you notice how extremely late the previous issue arrived? Well, right when it was supposed to come out, I ended up in the hospital. It wasn't some illness that put me there, but rather a little experiment with a high-voltage converter that I wanted to use to make my car more fuel-efficient. Fortunately, not much happened aside from some singed skin, but I can easily imagine what would have occurred if the capacitor had already been connected. So, lesson learned: never touch high-voltage transformers without rubber gloves! And by the way, the modification wasn't worth it at all!

What happened next? I rehoused my Speccy 128 into a PC desktop case — a full article on this will follow. Then I transcribed further parts of SHADOW NEMESIS, although a few pages were missing and I had to reconstruct them from memory. After that, I built another Spectrum with a DISCiPLE interface into a DK'Tronics keyboard case (there is barely any room left inside, but I still managed to squeeze in a miniature fan). Speaking of the DISCiPLE, its internal voltage regulator gets scorching hot. Because of that, I desoldered it and mounted it externally on a suitable heatsink, which is best cooled with a fan — more details later in the modding report.

While putting this issue together, I spent more time experimenting with assembly language, suffering endless crashes; still, no usable sprite routine came out of it that I could use in Legacy.

On the address envelope of the last issue and this one, there is a number printed before your address indicating when your subscription expires. Please understand that I cannot write a personal letter to each individual subscriber; that would be far too much work. If your subscription is expiring, please send either a postcard stating: “I can no longer afford the SCENE+ subscription,” or a letter / money order for DM 30,— (saver) or DM 40,— (full subscription), depending on what you prefer.

When I last visited Cat's Eye in Graz, I brought along the latest SUC and SPC magazines, and we coded a small demo together (calling it "small" is actually an exaggeration!). You can find it right on this issue's disk.

You have surely noticed that the new text viewer is more than twice as fast as the old one. That's right! I worked my tail off to finally get decent speed. If anyone still thinks it is too slow, feel free to send me an even faster routine. As you know, my machine code skills are quite limited, with a few exceptions. Anyway, I kept my promise and coded a much faster text viewer, so hopefully, that topic is settled.

NEWS

• SPC announces: Due to increased postage rates, the subscription fee is now DM 40,—, exactly the same as the SCENE+ full subscription.
• Fish and Z-A-T are back: the two paper magazines have merged and continue under the name Z2. For SAM Coupé enthusiasts, a separate magazine has branched off, as Z2 will not cover that machine. The only downside of Z2 so far is the complete lack of graphics aside from the front covers. Hopefully, this will change soon.
• Alchemist Research is apparently looking to acquire even more Spectrum software licenses. Their latest deals involved Gremlin Graphics (now operating under a different name) and MICRO-GEN, best known for the Wally Week series (Three Weeks in Paradise was often incorrectly translated as "Drei Wochen im Paradies").
• Zedd Soft has released a new strategy game for the SAM Coupé for just £5. Essentially, it is a sort of "Civilization" spanning two disks, featuring over 640 levels! In CONQUEST, you command one of six races and must subjugate the others (pure joy for strategy purists; I personally love playing Civilization on the Amiga, even if the constant crashes and bugs in the original version are quite infuriating). Other features include: Quazar Sound support, technology research, weapon development, wizards, buildings, and more in that vein. If you no longer own a SAM, you are missing out on a lot of fun.
• Crashed magazine is raising its price. Instead of £1, the 20-page issue will now cost £1.50 per copy.
• More new SAM software, this time from Mungus Soft: IMPostors (£6). The objective is to help various IMPs with distinct abilities (more varied than Lemmings) escape the rooms.
• Since it turned out that the expensive WD1772 controller chip in SAM floppy drives is often not broken at all, West Coast Computers is now selling replacement drives without the chip, saving around £10. The question remains: this chip can drive two floppy drives, so why wasn't it placed directly onto the SAM motherboard?
• Galaxy Software is working on a Space Shuttle Simulator. Let's see if it turns out to be more than just a BASIC program.

A Quick Joke to Wrap Up:

An asylum guard was supposed to settle an argument among the inmates. Usually, he gave them unsolvable riddles to ponder so they would be occupied and stop fighting.

This time, a mentally challenged peasant was identified as the troublemaker. The guard walked up to him and asked:

“— How do you weigh smoke?”

He then turned around, confident the inmate would be occupied for days. But the man replied instantly:

“— That's easy: you weigh the firewood, then you burn it and weigh the ashes. The difference is the weight of the smoke!”

Well, that's all for now!

— Tiger's Claw