Editorial & News from the World of Spectrum

SCENE+ is published by:
L. C. D.
Prager Str. 92/11/12
A-1210 Wien, Austria
Tel: (0 2 ) 272 34 63 (within Austria), or +43 1 272 34 63 (outside Austria)

All classified ads and announcements are free of charge, as long as they are related to the Spectrum or SAM, and can be submitted in any form (as text, screen, animation, etc.).

Hello SCENE+ readers.

First of all, for everyone who couldn't attend the SPC meeting or didn't hear about it on Sunday: starting next year, SCENE+ and SUC-Session will merge together. From then on, SCENE+ will exist as cover disks accompanying the quarterly magazine.

What does this change for existing subscribers?

SCENE+ subscribers: anyone who has paid their subscription beyond December 1997 and is not a member of SUC, but wishes to join, has two options:

1. Claim a refund for the remaining subscription fee from me, or
2. Subscribe to SUC without cover disks (yes, that is possible too).

Not much will change in terms of price, but the storage media will certainly see changes! Thomas wants to handle the Tape, Opus, and MB02+ versions, while I will continue to take care of +D, Disciple (please specify!), or BetaDisk. However, this depends on how quickly I can fit a tape port onto my Pentagon. By the way: could someone copy the article series about BetaDisk from the Wuppertaler Info for me?

The merger will bring certain pros and cons: SCENE+ on SUC-SESSION will appear every three months (three issues bundled), whereas I usually ship finished issues monthly or bi-monthly to existing subscribers. The content will also be streamlined. The news section will be omitted since SUC-Session has its own, but in return SUC-SESSION will no longer have a demo corner, as all demos will be released on SCENE+ whenever possible. Megademos like F.A. by Omega and others will either have to be split up (like the Ecstasy Megademo back in the day), or the corresponding issue will be slightly smaller; a third option would be an extra disk, but I'll think about that when the time comes.

The cooperation between SUC and ASC has already borne some fruit, and in this issue you will find demos that I received from Thomas. That doesn't mean Wolfgang has stopped bombarding me with software—quite the opposite, I received several items from him for this issue as well. As mentioned, the partnership is yielding its first results, so on the next issue you will find a demo of the Russian game BLACK RAVEN 128 (WARCRAFT), and on the issue after that, an adapted demo version of MORTAL KOMBAT 128, also from Russia.

Yet the benefits of SCENE+ shouldn't end there: with a larger readership, I hope even more readers will take advantage of a disk magazine and send me their programs, listings, advertisements, letters, or whatever else they have.

The first joint issue of SUC-SCENE will be published in January and will feature quite a few surprises. Many thanks to Johan Koning (J. K.) for the pictures he gave me; I will include them in the galleries in the issue after next. I have also scanned several new images myself, such as the Zodiac clip-art collection and much more, but let yourselves be surprised.

Yours,
L. C. D.

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF THE SPECTRUM

The SPC Club meeting was a complete success! One of the most interesting projects was (no joke!) a laptop LCD screen that can be jumper-switched between the ZX81 and the Spectrum. The adapter card contains an EPROM and its own Z80 processor, meaning it operates autonomously. Unfortunately, the card cannot yet read attributes and convert them into grayscale. The price, including the display, is around 200 DM and sparks genuine hope for a portable Spectrum.

Galaxy Software is now working on a Windows-like system for the Spectrum, named K/OS (which would be quite fitting for "Windoof 95").

The +D clone saga continues! A prominent figure in the English scene has promised Jean and Peter assistance with the project. Hopefully, the clone won't turn out larger and more expensive than the MB02+, otherwise there wouldn't be much point to it.

More technical details about MB02 programming have leaked out, such as the SRAM memory layout (8 to 32 memory banks of 16 KB mapped from 0 to 16383). Perhaps I will soon obtain technical documentation regarding the DMA controller, and then I could publish a short series of articles about it.

Leisure Suit Larry existed long before his graphic adventure days, though I only discovered him through Action Adventure Part 2. Now Bernhard Lutz has finally ported the Larry Laffer Textadventure to the Spectrum—that sounds like a great candidate for SCENE+, doesn't it? (Original PC title: Softporn Adventure).

More and more software is arriving from Russia: besides UFO II: Terror from the Deep, Mortal Kombat, and Black Raven, there are plenty of other intriguing titles. For instance, I recently received Dinablasters and several other games that I first need to equip with a UniLoader.

Andy Davis is planning to stir up the SAM scene with his ALCHNEWS. No, he's not (yet) attacking people in the SAM community, but his disk/tape magazine will now be released in SAM format.

"YOUR SPECTRUM" used to exist, right? Then it was renamed Your Sinclair and became the second-best gaming magazine after CRASH. Now 8BC, the manufacturer of the MB02+, wants to re-enter the print magazine market with Your Spectrum, with an initial print run of 100 copies. It is planned as a black-and-white publication.

Another item for the SAM Coupé: a Dutch colleague handed me the schematics for a hard disk interface. That in itself isn't unusual, but what's astonishing is that it's designed for an INTERNAL hard drive! What does that mean? Quite simply: the interface uses the connector intended for the second floppy drive to control the hard disk. Naturally, commands directed at device 'd' won't function. Unfortunately, the existing HD-DOS needs to be rewritten because this interface couldn't utilize line A and uses a different address instead.

Regarding ROCKFALL I: if you designed levels using the level editor from one of the earlier issues, now is the time to send them to Impact Software!

New software continues to emerge from the Czech Republic. Most of it consists of cracks supporting the MB02's DMA, but there is also entirely new material: Multiface 4, a utility for the MB02 that makes a cracker's life much easier, and the previously announced Mega Horror Adventure, featuring full-color 72-color hi-res graphics (an absolute impossibility without DMA, of course).