Editorial: Scene+ #24

SCENE+ is published by:
L. C. D.
Prager Str. 92/11/12
A-1210 Wien
Austria
Tel: (01) 272 34 63 from Austria, or 0043 1 272 34 63 from abroad.

All classifieds and advertisements are free of charge, as long as they are related to the Spectrum or SAM, and can take any format (text, screen, animation, etc.).

Hello, SCENE+ readers.

Why is this issue coming out so late? Ashes upon my head! Instead of focusing on finishing this issue (only a few things were missing!), I was rummaging through assembler to get an even faster print routine working, and to get better at cracking games. At the moment, I’ve only been successful with task number 2 (has anyone cracked Enduro Racer besides me?). I managed to convert back several nice programs from the Speccy CD-ROM, including Special Delivery, which is featured on this issue. Then I also translated BITWA O WYSPE II (a decent strategy game, coming to SCENE+ soon!).

Of course, as always, there were the so-called idle phases where, due to biorhythms, I was absolutely incapable of doing anything. No sooner had I sat down at the computer than I lost all desire to do anything, so I played a round or two. I think it also has something to do with spring: most people fancy women more than keyboards around this time. I also prepared title screens for several future SCENE+ issues in advance. I'll be doing this from now on; it saves me a lot of work. By the way, the title screen for this issue shows Seven of Nine from the series Voyager. Since it didn't completely fit my concept, I wrote "24 of 30", but then realized it might be misunderstood as me wanting to stop at issue 30, hence that weird lettering; I think one of the Borg in ST:TNG had a similar name. That aside, the SCENE+ logo really does come from the left, doesn't it?

Attention, E+D owners! If you want to crack 128K programs! In one of the next issues, SNAP CLAW 128 will be released. What this mysterious name suggests is true: a 128K snapshot is simply torn apart, dismembered into small pieces. It currently manages to do this task, but I still want to add a register display that reads values from the header; I’m still busily experimenting with it. In any case, the WoMo PD Library will also receive this program based on Lancet.

Regarding the structure of 128K snaps, I must note the following: while 48K snaps are built starting with the screen and go from 16384 to 65535, 128K snapshots are somewhat similar yet different. Beginning with Bank 16 (0) continuously up to Bank 23 (7), each bank is saved, including the one with the screen. The screen is therefore not at the beginning of the snapshot! Additionally, the first byte indicates which bank was paged in at that moment.

With this program it will be possible to restore snapshots, so whether I take Multiface shit (sorry, but Multiface "cracks" are an insult!) or an original game, I can now adapt almost anything for disk if I know the start address (or load the registers with the displayed values and jump with JP to the address pointed to by the stack pointer). Let's see if the scene gets flooded with 128K cracks now!

For this issue, a review of the Bizarre Construction Eurodemo was planned, but that fell through because I’ve since received the Spectrum disk version and had to notice with regret that out of 11 parts, only a mere 2 remained. Whoever wants it anyway can send me a non-empty disk.

Therefore, instead of the review, today we have Part 1 on compressors, specifically: Delta Compressor, probably the only compressor that allows smooth, full-screen animations, and on which I worked for so long. I wanted to use a completely new animation method for Legacy, a first on the Spectrum! Several side products were created along the way, such as Delta-Masking.

I’m slowly getting familiar with assembler, though I won't be writing entire games in assembler anytime soon; it's enough that my games consist of compiled BASIC, supported by machine code routines for time-consuming but comparatively simple tasks. Right now, I'm already writing the first part of an assembler course for blondes.

Well, I really have to stop now to crack some more games and finally get on with Legacy—after all, the game is supposed to come out before the millennium! That's all for today, see you soon.

Yours,
L. C. D.