Editorial

SCENE+

Publisher, programmer, and person responsible for content: L. C. D., Prager Str. 92/11/12, A-1210 Vienna, Austria. Phone: (0043/1) 272 34 63.

Distributed together with SUC-Session: Thomas Eberle & Fred Dürkes, Rainäckerstr. 4, D-70794, Germany. Phone & Fax: (0046/711) 77 50 33.

Spectrum and SAM-related advertisements and classifieds are free of charge and can take any form: text, image, demo.

Hello SCENE+ readers.

The even faster text viewer barely lasted three issues, and what does this madman LCD do now? He builds in an even faster text viewer! Can this madness ever be stopped? What on earth has become of our world?

You've probably already noticed that the new text viewer is considerably faster. Pages now render in under a second. As a result, I had to make several adjustments to the main program again, but it should finally be reasonably close to perfection. Anyone who sends me a letter asking to make the text viewer even faster will receive a videotape capturing the nervous breakdown I suffered while programming it. The tape is, of course, also available on its own for only 19.95 in every well-stocked video shop, and with a runtime of 180 minutes, it even rivals Stephen King's The Shining. Fan merchandise like pulled-out hair is also available in a limited edition! Every single hair is personally hand-signed by me and preserved in Plexiglas.

Joking aside for a moment: I once again set out to crack some games, including several snapshots from PC. These attempts were crowned with success, so not only did I "normalize" a large number of 48K games—including many that had stubbornly resisted me in the past—but also several 128K titles, such as Kraal, which was on a Your Sinclair covertape. I managed to write a program with the fitting name SNAP CLAW 128, which literally tears a 128K +D/Disciple snapshot apart and spits the individual pieces out onto another disk. You can then reassemble them from scratch.

Although CLAW is based on LANCET, the structure of 128K snapshots is so different that basically only the user interface and a few small subroutines of LANCET remain. A new feature is that all register contents are displayed, except for the PC, because it isn't stored in the header; I believe it is the last entry on the SP. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to verify that and had no desire to dig through the +D ROM routines. With this tool, you can even recover that Multiface shit (sorry!).

Many of you will wonder why I bother restoring these programs at all—after all, a snapshot is always a single file, and loading it takes less time than loading multiple files. The answer is simple and logical: nobody should actually be using snapshots except in absolute emergencies. The compression isn't particularly efficient, and furthermore, if my +D ever breaks and Fred can't source spare parts for it anymore, all my snapshots become completely useless. Not to mention that snapshots cannot be transferred to the MB02 or other disk systems—which hardly needs stating. Aside from that, a disk fits only 16 48K or 6 128K snapshots, whereas I sometimes squeeze up to 39 programs on a single disk if some software vandal stripped the title screens beforehand or if they are restored PC snapshots for which I couldn't find loading screens. Normally you get around 26 programs—that's 10 more than with snapshots!

Recently, Thomas sent me a letter mentioning, among other things, that you, the readers, would prefer the articles in printed form—meaning in SUC-Session! Is that true? Should I really send all the articles I write to SUC-Session, or should it be the other way around? The ideal case for me would be for all articles to appear on SCENE+, leaving SUC-Session consisting solely of cover sheets, which would drop the postage to barely 1.45 DM. But neither Thomas nor the other readers are going to agree to that! How do you see the matter? Starting from issue 28, should my articles continue appearing on SCENE+, or only the Editorial, SCENEX, stories, and reviews? We need your feedback. Send me plenty of letters on this topic, because the majority decides!

We are particularly eager to hear the reactions of Wim de Graf, Johan Koning, and the WoMo team, especially since the first two were upset due to a small misunderstanding, for which I sincerely apologize here. When Thomas told me he had reached an agreement with Johan, I assumed it was the exact same arrangement that Fred and I had already agreed upon. I apologize once again.

One small point should be clarified, however: while it is true that Johan contributed a great deal to SCENE+ and played a major role in its evolution into a mega-monstrously awesome magazine, everyone was invited to help shape it. Many of Johan's ideas weren't adopted directly either, but were first reworked by me. I don't want to diminish Johan's contributions, but he certainly didn't do everything. The suggestion to make the initial, sluggish text viewer a bit faster came from him, which eventually led to this current version. He didn't code any of them himself, however.

I also don't quite understand what Wim de Graf is getting at with his remark that we are "destroying the scene." Is it because the magazines are now published every two months instead of monthly? That would have happened anyway: I was already lagging behind on several issues, while Thomas himself stated during the merger proposal that his mag would no longer appear monthly. Or is it because SUC and ASC merged? That only strengthens our position among users; a club with two branches and a mega-magazine should become attractive even to former members who had drifted away.

Wim de Graf and Johan Koning: please look at SUC before Thomas took it over—that was pure scene destruction. With inflated membership fees and a comparatively pathetic magazine, many users were driven away. We don't operate like that: now the magazine is thick, packed full, and complemented by plenty of software on SCENE+, so everyone is happy to wait two months for it.

To the arguments of Johan and Wim de Graf, I'd like to counter with this: thank you very much, now I feel as though I am viewed by everyone as a traitor and a Judas. Johan wasn't the only one who contributed to the mag; without WoMo's help, for instance, it would never have been possible for me to start this magazine in the first place, and Thomas has helped me tremendously as well! Guido Schell also contributed articles to SCENE+, and none of them make these kinds of accusations.

The merger proposal came from Thomas, I readily admit that, but if I had more readers demonstrating active participation, I wouldn't have needed to merge at all. SUC was essentially the only club suitable for a merger, because SPC always tries to stick to 16 pages and keep shipping costs equally low; adding a disk would literally be a heavy burden. Aside from that, SPC hasn't featured demo and game novelties very often. I would also have had to release a SAM version of SCENE+, and that would have been asking too much. No offense meant; I respect their stance and hope we will continue working together in the future. Wolfgang himself told me he didn't want a diskmag. SGG would hardly work either, as reading their magazine takes me a great deal of time, and I cannot write in Dutch, so it would end up being merely a coverdisk with programs and no editorial or articles—plus SGG apparently already has a club disk! With SUC, SCENE+ shares the same interests: games, demos, programming (granted, not everyone's cup of tea), and new hardware.

I don't consider SCENE+ a mere coverdisk, but rather a companion to SUC-Session, so please don't try to guilt-trip me! As far as the merger goes, Thomas has a say in shaping SCENE+, just as I have a say in SUC-Session (at least I think so!). Still, I don't intend to impose suggestions like: "From now on, the letters section stays only on disk!" On the contrary: only if it helps save postage do I chime in, and even then I don't go around saying: "Smaller font, Thomas, we need fewer pages to keep the weight down!" How Thomas produces SUC-Session is his business! What tools he uses, too! As for software and hardware distribution, Thomas has his Sintech business, and I don't interfere there. I've focused on software development and will distribute my work under my own label (cheaper for SUC-SCENE readers, who last time even got SCORPIONS without paying a single penny extra, even though it was planned to retail for 10 DM, or 5 DM for SCENE+ readers).

Having more free time finally allows me to learn assembler, which I will put to use in my software. If Thomas, as club director, had to handle all ASC matters as well (meaning designing SCENE+ too), he definitely would have opted against the merger; that's why the club board kept me on. But if anyone thinks they can do SCENE+ better, by all means—I would have absolutely nothing against it! Though I doubt anyone will step up to the plate, right, Wim de Graf?!?

In my opinion, the advantages of the merger clearly outweigh any drawbacks. If anyone disagrees, feel free to write to me or Thomas; Thomas will gladly forward those letters to me (right, Thomas?).

I did not write this to defend Thomas—as anyone can see, he is perfectly capable of defending himself. I simply wanted to share my perspective and certainly did not intend to insult anyone. If anyone still perceives any comment as an insult, I apologize in advance to prevent pointless flame wars.

Yours,
L. C. D.