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SitComm Magazine ------------------ Issue Number 1 - May 1990 * Eye Witness Report from CeBit '90 * Comments from STeVeN and a Hacker * Reviews of Quartet and Waterloo * Guide to getting Public Domain Software and a start to Comms. * Smiley Faces from Usenet * Interview with The Assembly Line * You want to be a SysOp? * The Disk Version contains a load of programs to complement the above. --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- Editors: Matthew Miles, Lucien Oppler, Steven Green Disk Editor: Laurence McDonald Contributions : Marcion, Frank Dunn --------------------------------- Disk Magazines can be obtained directly from us, by writing to: 10 Oak Farm Gardens Headcorn Ashford Kent TN27 9TU Enclosing a cheque or postal order for £1.50 Made out to Matthew Miles. This pays for postage and the disk. No Profit. Subscriptions will be on offer next issue. --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial This Months Editor is Matthew Miles Hacking, once again, is showing it's face again. Marcion writes that he has some form of political right to be able to Hack, to make sure that he does indeed live in a democracy. New Computer Express writes on the arrest of thirteen people and we hear that BT is coming down hard on phone phreakers, and on a side line F.A.S.T is getting very tough on pirates. All i seem to hear is complaints of this, why? You might argue that you enjoy the challenge of hacking another computer, and that you don't to any harm - anyhow i'm doing everyone a favour by making sure that we live in a democracy and that it's a great big mainframe so what difference does it make ? Has it ever occured to you that you (as the hacker) are actually, as a group, destroying the BB community? About a month ago someone hacked a bulletin board in Scotland, managing to wipe it's message base. The Hacker did not gain anything by doing this, in fact it would of cost him a lot of money. Full details of this this will be available next issue. The very same people who are the hackers are the vandals of the bulletin boards, by giving them a hackers closed user group, you are giving them ways of hacking another bulletin board. I used to run a Hacker area on my board, I closed it because people were trying to hack into my Bulletin Board, and found that the people who were hacking were not always just reading information; they might try to change it or destroy it. The frightening thing is that the method that the hacker used on the board in Scotland can be used on almost every type of bulletin board software. The Bulletin Board world is full of deceipt and fraud. I make it clear on my bulletin board that I must have a users real name and address, but many users refuse to obey this. Why ? One can only assume that they are interested in something for which they would not like to be identified, I now have no areas on my board to hide; so why? Too many people are intersted in breaking the system; rather than flowing along it, and anything that is happening in parliament which could aid the stopping of these people is of great benefit. --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- The ST Abroad -------------Report by Lucien Oppler CeBIT '90 --------- The week beginning the 21st March saw the staging of the second 'CeBIT' exhibition - the largest exhibition of computers, computerised industrial machines and software products in the world. The setting was just outside Hannover, in the Northern part of Germany. Twenty three halls - each the size of Earl's Court, twenty two restaurants, a large hotel and a heliport go to make up the grounds for the event and the fields around it afford parking accommodation for two thousand cars. This was one exhibition Atari could not afford to miss being the most important showcase for products of the year (whilst they have dropped support for specific Atari exhibitions in the UK). Atari and its entourage of supporting firms made their appearance in Hall 7, one of the larger halls. Unfortunately, for all the grandness of the event, Atari had little more to offer in the way of new products than it has in recent shows in the UK - namely more detailed information on its 'soon-to-be-released' machines: the Atari TT and its Abaq Transputer Workstation (the ATW). Of the latter two, numerous were on show displaying their powerful number-crunching abilities and their zippy GEM interfaces. Three TT's were on show. For those who have forgotten Atari's specifications for these, here is a short review:- Processor: Motorola 68030 CPU with clock speed of 16Mhz. Graphical Capabilities: 1024 x 1024 monochrome. 1024 x 748 16 colours. Other combinations with more colours from pallet of 16 million. Standard ST resolutions. Operating System: TOS 040 (extended version of TOS 1.4) UNIX system V OS provided as standard. Optional MS-DOS emulation running at 12Mhz. Hardware: 40 meg hard drive. Optional multi-sync monitor. The price for the above set-up less the monitor is expected to be in the region of £1500. The monitor will add another £600 or so to this figure. Regarding release dates, Atari were obscure. The lady I asked said that release on the continent was 'imminent'. When asked for UK release dates, she made as if she did not understand. However, there could well be some truth in the TT's 'imminent' arrival. Next month sees the first magazine to be published here in Germany dedicated to the TT and the products that are available for it and rumour has it here that this is partly funded by Atari themselves. At present however, it seems that only developers have been lucky enough to lay their hands on TTs. The compatibility of the TT and the ATW with present ST products was being pushed strongly at the show. Calumus, the professional Desktop Publishing package was being displayed on both the machines and showing off their machines' superiority in speed over the ST. The ATW looked extremely impressive if a little on the large size, its box being about one and a half times the size of early IBM XTs. However, this size seems to be necessary if Atari's claim of the ATW being able to address 64 megabytes of RAM is to hold true. Also space for the large number of transputers it can take also seems necessary. I had doubted that the ATW existed at all and was not just the realization of Atari's wish to move into the more serious, powerful and expensive end of the computer market. Once again, release dates were a little sketchy with the answer of 'all over Europe by the end of the year'. Once again, developers have them at present. On the ST front, the main causes for interest certainly didn't come from Atari who were trying to interest the German ST-using public, of which over 85% are monochrome users, that the new 4096 colour palletted STE was a good thing. By far the most of interest came from the German firms which Atari housed under its stand's roof. Alot of extremely interesting software was being displayed by 'Markt & Technik', Germany's largest book and software publisher/distributor. Amongst the translated English products it was showing (Hisoft software mainly), it displayed a number of fresh new German titles - a new DTP package sporting the features of Calamus at a fraction of the cost, vast amounts of new MIDI software and a veritable downpour of new ST- related books (from Data Becker for whom they distribute). GFA Technik were there showing their four new products: a fast assembler, a GFA Basic to C converter, version 3.5 of GFA Basic sporting new Algebraic and Combinatory abilities as well as a better built-in editor, and finally GFA-Strukto described as (translated from German) 'a dialog-orientated structured programming and instruction system'. Numerous forms of networking were also on show, both the MIDI and DMA kind. One firm was showing off one of the latter together with STs which they had somehow upgraded to run at 2.5 times the speed with the aid of a 'power-box'. They were guarded when I asked what was inside this box, however, as they were not intending to release it commercially for a while. The network itself literally flew though. And finally, on the communications front, a more interesting and new concept - a high-speed modem (offering V21/22/22bis/32 with V42/42bis and MNP 5) with a Motorola 68010 CPU, 512k of RAM and 256k of ROM...(!). Hayes compatible of course, it has built-in advanced comms software and comes in a MegaST-sized case. This is the entry-level model, other models having higher amounts of RAM (up to 16 megabytes) and built-in hard disks. All models have a 1.44Mb 3.5" drive and the option to install FAXing abilities in the machine. Could this be the Sysops' machine of the future? No price as yet (but don't expect it to be low!) - Look out for it under the name of the Fury 9600 TI. And that was it really! It must have been one of the few shows where the surroundings were more interesting than the new ST products! Beside this, there were numerous 'PD-pushers' who seemed to be making a VAST amount of money from the notoriously enthusiastic German PD-using populace. The General ST Scene in Germany ------------------------------- To get an idea of what the German ST scene is like, it is necessary to give you an idea of what the Germans like to do with, and to, their computers. The Germans like power and speed in LARGE doses. When the ST came out, its 8Mhz offering at the price it was offered was was extremely attractive to the Germans and a large ST userbase sprang up. Nowadays, however, 8Mhz is about the lower limit that any serious computer user can tolerate and so the market changed to one of 'serious' upgrade. This fits in very nicely with the Germans love of customizing their computers. Many of the products that are for sale here have sprung up from clever individuals attempts at customizing their computers in the way of upgrading speed and performance. Upgrades for every aspect of computing abound here. There are upgrades for the ST's graphics capabilities, upgrades for its sound capabilities and, of course, its raw processing power. There seem to be a large number of processor caches here and some are even sold in department store-type shops (yes! Just like Woolworth's I hear you say!). For those of you not acquainted with processor caches, these are extremely fast RAM chips (about 40 ns or so) which store the last few instructions sent to the processor. Since most programs operate on loops, this means that data is sent to the processor much quicker when repetitive data is needed again (as compared to the 100-120ns RAMs that most computers use). Also very popular are customized keyboards with completely PC-like replacements for both the ST and the Mega ST. However, its when you realize that over 85% of ST users in Germany have monochrome systems and its when you see the speed and size of hard drives for the ST in Germany that you really realise that the ST here means BUSINESS and SERIOUS work... none of this game-playing rubbish for the Germans! There are a huge numbers of firms here making hard drives for the ST. In the UK, it boils down to 4 or 5 competitors (ie. Third Coast, Power Computing, Frontier, Atari with Triangle more or less out of the running these days). Here there must be maybe 15-20 with products ranging from 5ms access time, 800k per second transfer rate type systems to the new 'Gigafile', an optical Write-Once-Read-Many times laser-disk system with a 600 Mb capacity. These, however, might well take time to hit the UK with the exchange rate being so appalling and these type of products being VERY prone to exchange rate fluctuations. The ST is big here but not as big as I had thought. The games market is dominated by the Amiga, the ST games scene being virtually non-existent. This is reflected in all four of the regular ST magazines here which seem to be made up solely of serious-product reviews, serious-product advertising, and programming courses. Only one magazine here comes with a disk, its name 'ST-Plus'. The whole magazine (and the disk which accompanies it and only works in monochrome) is dedicated to programming methods, help and tips. With the ST being put almost totally to serious use, the public domain flourishes. It is well-known that the Public Domain is not noted for its quality games but its quality applications and utilities packages in the ST scene. With so many programmers around to create the demand for such things and, indeed, to write such things, the PD scene here is brimming with exceedingly good quality software for serious applications: MIDI programs, utilities, PD CAD and DTP packages all in good quantity and quality mean that PD libraries here thrive and are vast in number. Once again, where there are maybe 6-8 good public domain libraries in the UK, here there might be over 40 each boasting libraries of over 2000 disks. Whatsmore, people here DO send money to deserving shareware writers and there are many who make a living from such things (!). One would think that with all the incredible PD software here and the interest of programmers to share their work and discuss programming that Atari BBS would flourish. However, this is not the case. The few that do exist seem far behind in complexity and technology, most of them being run on about 10 megs with modems that just make it to V22. Most of these also cater for specialized areas such as MIDI or computer-aided design. Perhaps the Germans think that they should leave the shareware- and pd-pushing aspects to the PD libraries who do such a good job... who knows. Although it may seem that Germany is far advanced to us in the UK in many aspects of the STs' uses, the price of hardware here is extremely high, even after taking into account the present exchange rates. If you want to buy cheap, it is best to look to the UK or the USA ST markets. The lack of ST games players must also be hurting the Atari market. It is the games players who by far make up the gross ST population in the UK and are themselves ensuring the emergence of more software for serious users and well as leisure users. Computer users often start off as games-players and develop a more serious interest in their computers when they learn more about it. Hence I would say that the German market is slowly killing itself and unless something new turns up and things take a radical change, the ST here has a limited future. Prices in the PC market here, in the meantime, are already endeavouring to ensure that the ST is a shortlived phenomenon, sad as it may seem. --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- Waterloo sunset As the French tourist once queried why do you British name your railway stations after defeats? The Iron Duke himself made Waterloo out to be "...the most desperate business I ever was in." Once having played Peter Turcans' second innovative wargame the reviewer can only agree, its a knife contest playing either side in a battle that's much smaller in area and units than Borodino (ST World 37). A quick recap though on why this system is the best thing yet for computer wargames. At the speed of horse? Before the advent of radio the main way to command an army in the field was by rider. Commands and information back from the front went as fast as the rider (about 5 1/2 miles per hour). By the time the order to attack had arrived the corps in question might be in full retreat. The other limitation was that nobody could see further than the next ridge - no all seeing AWACS here. So not only the commander couldn't react to the event in real time they often didn't see it happening either. The vast majority of wargames before Turcan have simply ignored these factors and have presented the gamer with god like powers and senses. Its all in the AI The Turcan system gives you a realistic static perspective view of the battlefield from the point of view of the commander and limited in range by the Eye Ball Mk1 - usually up to 2 miles for a land battle. Combined with this is an excellent parsing module that allows the entry of English commands that are relayed to the corps commander by rider and are thus subject to fortune on the battlefield - they get lost, killed or confused. Driving the whole is the artificial intelligence (AI) at the four levels of command; Commander in Chief, corps, division and regiment - the gamer provides the played sides commanders AI. The actual mechanics and sequence of play are derived from boardgame rules. All of this has been attempted before but never as a whole nor with the historical rigour that Peter Turcan displays. War and Peace Waterloo was the climatic battle of the Napoleonic era, a period of war and some peace that ran from 1799 to 1815, bringing together for the first and last time the two geniuses of the battlefield - Emperor Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington. In the previous four days the French army had fought two battles and thus succeeded in driving the Allied and Prussian armies apart. Now on the 18th June time was the essence for Napoleon to defeat Wellington before an AI Blucher at the head of the Prussian Army intervened from the east. Hougomont or bust The game starts at 11 am as the previous night had seen a deluge of rain that made for a muddy field of battle that made the siting of the critical artillery prolonged. The battle itself takes place in an area about 3 square miles with a shallow valley separating the armies. There are 3 garrisoned outposts in front of the Allied army, Hougomont - superbly detailed in the game, La Haie Saint with its sand-pit and La Haie. They are the key to the Allied defence. The majority of the Allied army lies either on the ridge or behind it out of artillery line of fire. Arrayed against this are Reille's corp to the west and D'Erlon's to the east each being supported by a cavalry corps whilst in the centre rear is Lobau's corp and the Guard. There is no leeway in reserves if you make a fatal error in your orders to the corps as to when and where they attack. As once an attack goes in you learn that it takes hours for a corps to pull back and reform. And without formed reserves your going nowhere fast. You can tell how well formed the corps divisions are as you can see them either in neatly turned out lines and columns or scattered about with some regiments heading rapidly for the rear. Point and panic By using the hand pointer ( changed from the telescope cursor in Borodino ) and clicking on a unit their status appears in the text window. This is effective up to the horizon, the only way to check further is to move the HQ which you can do once ever 15 minute game turn. Just don't do what I did in the first game and move the HQ into the path of a routing unit. All of a sudden Napoleon found that the HQ was disorganized and wasn't able to issue any orders for 2 turns or move the HQ. I sat there like a lemon forced to look south whilst the battle raged on to the north and broken regiments fled past the HQ. By which time the first of Bluchers corps had started to arrive on the eastern flank. La Garde recule! Waterloo is an easier game to get into than Borodino, its size and scope make for a quicker more comprehensible game. I could image actually playing this by mail - one option the game gives. The corps commanders AI is quite believable, indeed you curse Reille as he sends Jerome's division off on its own to attack Hougomont. The victory points now increment thus aiding you in noting how well or not your doing. Yet the graphics are so realistic you can see by looking around locally just how well its going. The manual is an improvement on Borodino's tho' I couldn't find any note on the unit colours - I like to know if my heavy cavalry are about to crash into British guards or Brunswick militia. One final plea would be for an order retrieval module so you can keep track of your sent orders. The game system is excellent as it stands and can only improve as its developed further - it has great potential. Design: Dr. Peter Turcan. Publisher: PSS/Mirrorsoft. Price: £24.99. --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- Product: Quartet Cost: 49.95 (UKP) Publisher: Microdeal Reviewed by STeVeN Quartet allows you to create 4 channel music using sampled instruments on an Atari ST, something previously only attainable either by having an Amiga. For your money, you get a massive box containing 3 single sided disks and a 67 page poor quality ring bound manual and a lot of empty space. Not the best presented program I've ever seen. The Quartet package actually consists of three programs, the music editor, a voice editor and a sample processor. It also comes with a selection of samples for you to use, some demo songs and some modules to let you use the music in your own programs. The sample processor lets you take sound samples that have been produced from any sound sampler and manipulate them into a form readable by Quartet. This includes converting the sample between Time and Frequency domains and shifting the frequency so that it plays the correct note (instruments should be normalised to an A). You may also apply low or high pass filters, loop the sound for a sustained instrument and various other effects such as anharmonic suppression and ramping (to avoid clicks when it loops). My only complaints with this are that the conversion between time and frequency can take quite a time (several seconds) and you can only listen to the whole sample and not the part in the zoom buffer, making it difficult to edit out sections from a larger sample. However the software supplied with most samplers will let you do this so it is not really a problem. I have successfully processed many samples with this program taken from the Amiga. The voice editor simply allows you to make up a voice set by loading in instruments created with the sample processor. You may listen to the samples, set the playback frequency, insert or delete samples. The music editor is the main program that you use most of the time. It has a GEM style user interface with pull down menus and icons. The main part of the screen is taken up with a treble and bass cleff. You simply click on the staves to add or replace notes. Below the staves are icons representing note lengths ranging from semi-quaver to dotted semi-breve. Below this are some more icons for selecting things like tempo and which channel you are editting. From the pull down menus you can select instruments, load and save, and set the time signature. Other functions such as slides and repeats are done using key-presses. You may also input data from the MIDI port. I havn't tried this yet so can not comment on it. There are also facilities to cut and paste a block of data. The editor although adequate for editting small sections of music has many shortcomings. The worst being that you can only see one channel at a time, selecting voice changes is a bit fiddly. Editting is awkward since if you accidently click on top of an existing note it is replaced with one of the current selected length and you bar lines are all out of place. Moving to different sections is also difficult since there is no ability to include section marks and whenever you change channel you are moved back to the start. However there is a menu option to move to a specific bar line. It would have been better to have a track structure similar to programs like Soundtracker, where you could edit small sections and then paste them together to make a complete song. The only way I've found to create long pieces of music is to edit a section at a time and then tediously use the paste buffer to add it to the end of the overall piece. Sound output maybe either through the ST's monitor or through the replay or replay professional cartridges (also available from MicroDeal). You may select the playback frequency between 4 and 16 KHz. You get better quality with the higher frequencies. The disadvantage being that a lot of processor time is used up. To use quartet songs in your own programs there is program module included which you simply load in using the Gemdos Pexec() command and then tell it the addresses of your song and voice set. Examples are provided in C, Basic and assembly language. There are two versions provided, one is a safe version which preserves all of the 68000's registers, whilst the other only lets you use a few registers in your program, but lets you use higher playback frequencies and uses up less processor time. Overall, Quartet is a very good program, but let down a little by its editting. However there are no other progams for sale that will do what Quartet does and I hope the author will continue to support it by adding new features. It should also not be too long before there are some Public Domain utilities for Quartet to allow conversion between other music formats. In fact I have already written a program to convert from IFF SMUS (as used by Sonix on the Amiga) to Quartet. There are several quartet songs available for download on my bulletin board (My Little Phoney, 0865-773277) --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- The Unofficial Smiley Dictionary -------------------------------- :-) Your basic smiley. This smiley is used to inflect a sarcastic or joking statement since we can't hear voice inflection over Unix. ;-) Winky smiley. User just made a flirtatious and/or sarcastic remark. More of a "don't hit me for what I just said" smiley. :-( Frowning smiley. User did not like that last statement or is upset or depressed about something. :-I Indifferent smiley. Better than a Frowning smiley but not quite as good as a happy smiley :-> User just made a really biting sarcastic remark. Worse than a :-). :-> User just made a really devilish remark. ;-> Winky and devil combined. A very lewd remark was just made. Those are the basic ones...Here are some somewhat less common ones: (-: User is left handed %-) User has been staring at a green screen for 15 hours straight :*) User is drunk [:] User is a robot 8-) User is wearing sunglasses B:-) Sunglasses on head ::-) User wears normal glasses B-) User wears horn-rimmed glasses 8:-) User is a little girl :-)-8 User is a Big girl :-{) User has a mustache :-{} User wears lipstick {:-) User wears a toupee }:-( Toupee in an updraft :-[ User is a Vampire :-E Bucktoothed vampire :-F Bucktoothed vampire with one tooth missing :-7 User just made a wry statement :-* User just ate something sour :-)ss User drools :-ss) User has a cold :'-( User is crying :'-) User is so happy, s/he is crying :-@ User is screaming :-# User wears braces :^) User has a broken nose :v) User has a broken nose, but it's the other way :_) User's nose is sliding off of his face :<) User is from an Ivy League School :-& User is tongue tied. =:-) User is a hosehead -:-) User is a punk rocker -:-( (real punk rockers don't smile) :=) User has two noses +-:-) User is the Pope or holds some other religious office `:-) User shaved one of his eyebrows off this morning ,:-) Same thing...other side |-I User is asleep |-O User is yawning/snoring :-Q User is a smoker :-? User smokes a pipe O-) Megaton Man On Patrol! (or else, user is a scuba diver) O :-) User is an angel (at heart, at least) :-P Nyahhhh! :-S User just made an incoherent statement :-D User is laughing (at you!) :-X User's lips are sealed :-C User is really bummed <|-) User is Chinese <|-( User is Chinese and doesn't like these kind of jokes :-/ User is skeptical C=:-) User is a chef @= User is pro-nuclear war *<:-) User is wearing a Santa Claus Hat :-o Uh oh! (8-o It's Mr. Bill! *:o) And Bozo the Clown! 3:] Pet smiley 3:[ Mean Pet smiley d8= Your pet beaver is wearing goggles and a hard hat. E-:-) User is a Ham radio operator :-9 User is licking his/her lips %-6 User is braindead [:-) User is wearing a walkman (:I User is an egghead <:-I User is a dunce K:P User is a little kid with a propeller beenie @:-) User is wearing a turban :-0 No Yelling! (Quiet Lab) :-: Mutant Smiley The invisible smiley .-) User only has one eye ,-) Ditto...but he's winking X-( User just died 8 :-) User is a wizard C=}>;*{)) Mega- Smiley... A drunk, devilish chef with a toupee in an updra with a moustache, and a double chin Note: A lot of these can be typed without noses to make midget smileys. :) Midget smiley :] Gleep...a friendly midget smiley who will gladly be your friend =) Variation on a theme... :} - What should we call these? (what?) :) - Happy :> - what? :@ - what? :D - Laughter :I - Hmmm... :( - Sad :[ - Real Downer :< - what? :{ - what? :O - Yelling :C - what? :Q - what? :,( - Crying [] - Hugs and :* - Kisses |I - Asleep |^o -Snoring :-`.smiley spitting out its chewing tobacco :-1.smiley bland face :-!.." :-@.smiley face screaming :-#|.smiley face with bushy mustache :-$.smiley face with it's mouth wired shut :-%.smiley banker :-6.smiley after eating something sour :^).smiley with pointy nose (righty) :-7.smiley after a wry statement 8-).smiley swimmer :-*.smiley after eating something bitter :-&.smiley which is tongue-tied :-0.smiley orator .smiley invisible man (:-(.unsmiley frowning (:-).smiley big-face ):-).." ):-( unsmiley big-face )8-) scuba smiley big-face =:-).smiley punk-rocker =:-( (real punk rockers don't smile) +:-).smiley priest :-q.smiley trying to touch its tongue to its nose :-e.disappointed smiley :-t.cross smiley :-i.semi-smiley :-o.smiley singing national anthem :-p.smiley sticking its tongue out (at you!) :-[.un-smiley blockhead :-].smiley blockhead :-{.smiley variation on a theme :-}.ditto {:-).smiley with its hair parted in the middle }:-).above in an updraft :-a.lefty smiley touching tongue to nose :-s.smiley after a BIZARRE comment :-d.lefty smiley razzing you g-).smiley with ponce-nez glasses :-j.left smiling smiley :-k.beats me, looks like something, tho. :-l.y. a. s. :-:.mutant smiley :-\.undecided smiley :-|."have an ordinary day" smiley ;-).winking smiley :-<.real sad smiley :->.y.a.s. :-z.y.a.c.s. :-x."my lips are sealed" smiley :-c.bummed out smiley :-v.talking head smiley :v).left-pointing nose smiley :-b.left-pointing tongue smiley :-/.lefty undecided smiley :-?.smiley smoking a pipe .-].one-eyed smiley ,-}.wry and winking 0-).smiley cyclops (scuba diver?) :-=).older smiley with mustache :u).smiley with funny-looking left nose :n).smiley with funny-looking right nose :<.midget unsmiley :>.midget smiley }:^#}) mega-smiley: updrafted bushy- mustached pointy nosed smiley with a double-chin :-).ha ha... ssss:-(.net.flame |-).hee hee... O |-).net.religion |-D.ho ho :->.hey hey... 8 :-I.net.unix-wizards :-(.boo hoo... X-(.net.suicide :-I.hmm... E-:-I.net.ham-radio :-O.uh oh... >:-I.net.startrek :-P.nyah nyah.. 3:o[.net.pets |-P.yuk :-}.beard :-{.mustache :-#.braces :-X.bow tie :-Q.smoker <:I.dunce (:I.egghead @:I.turban 8-).glasses B-).horn-rims 8:-).glasses on forehead :-8(.condescending stare ;-).wink :-<.mad Drama :-(.Comedy :-).Surprise :-o.Suspense 8-| Male.:- Female.>- Birth.|-O Death.8-# Infinity.8 Have fun with these! --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- ... And that's just my opinion STeVeN's comment on the state of the computer games industry. No one can help but notice that despite the proliferation of games available for the Atari ST, there are very few high quality addictive playable games amongst them. Most of them are either poor quality arcade conversions, film licences or some other pointless tie-in or endorsement. Most games are also very expensive being between £20 and £30, with some costing even more. The high cost is generally put down to low sales caused by piracy and the longer development times that 16 bit software needs compared to 8 bit. I'm sure everybody reading this has their own theories and complaints about the so called "money grabbing publishers". As a veteran games creator myself (I'm not keen on the terms programmer or coder, because creating games is a lot more than just coding), I may be a little more aware of the facts than those outside the industry. Licensed games outsell most new original games several times over, despite lacking entirely in gameplay and even getting bad reviews in the magazines. Thus the only people who who can really be blamed for the situation is the consumer who goes out and buys them! Any publisher with a business sense is going to continue creating what sells rather than what is good, so the only way to improve the quality of games is to only buy the good original playable games and leave the awful arcade conversions and film licences on the shelves. Do not be tempted by the misleading adverts and back-of-the-box screenshots (they are probably loading screens or faked up screens). Read and take note of magazine reviews (not previews). Also piracy does account for a loss of revenue and the people who lose out here most are the developers and the consumer. The retailers, distributers and publishers just increase the retail price to cover this. Many people seem to think that because thay can not afford software then they are entitled to copy it for nothing. This is completely wrong and is the same as saying that you should be able to steal anything you think is too expensive. Many people seem to still be under the impression that games are still developed by teenage millionaire wizz kids in their bedrooms at weekends, but the reality is that games are written by a professional team of developers over a period of many months on below average salaries. Many people think that computer game technology has not changed since Space Invaders and that all there is to producing games is to bang in a couple of numbers into your machine and stick it in a pretty box. The reality is that a similar amount of creative effort goes into a computer game in terms of concepts, ideas, graphics, music and algorithms than into other media types such as Books, Films and Music, yet you don't go and photocopy the latest novel! Few developers can afford to spend years on original programs when they will sell far fewer copies than a simple 3 month arcade conversion or film tie-in and publishers are only interested in what they can sell. - STeVeN.... And thats just my opinion! --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- SiTComm Magazine would like to point out that the views of the writer of this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the magazine. Hacking By Marcion "...To cut and clear (a way, path, etc) as through undergrowth". So runs the Collins Dictionary definition for the word 'hack'. Those who are familiar, either to a lesser or greater extent with this ever-increasing activity - made possible by computer, modem and telephone, may well feel this adequately describes the activity or purpose of hacking. Why 'hack' ? Firstly many do it for the challenge of invading unknown territory which is prohibited to them. Despite this violation, they enjoy the protection of simply being able to 'drop carrier' if things go awry. Secondly, it can have financial benefits, ie. using the account of a Multi-National to make calls abroad that would usually be impossible for the average modem- user. Whilst some might deem this as theft, the fact remains the account-holder can firstly afford it, and secondly can only have it in the first place by commercial exploitation; therefore when this occurs, the hacker is simply retrieving what does not belong to the account holder in the first place. This may be seen as a rather imperfect way of achieving this, but no one would suggest we live in a perfect world in the first place. However, the most popular reason for this activity appears to be for perusing information that is otherwise unavailable to the "general public". As time goes on, it is becoming more obvious to even the most 'security conscious' person that the United Kingdom is fast becoming a country of secrets, restricted information and "access denied". An article appeared in the Observer not long ago pointing out that in the last five years Britain had become a country that was more secretive than many Eastern Bloc countries; some therefore see hacking as a means to undo the very suspect, if not dishonest, lengths that various agencies and bodies go to in compiling confidential (and often incorrect) information about people and then carefully ensuring no one can access this unless they have some spurious government power to do so, or more often, have the money to buy it. The newspapers abound with accounts of the misery caused to so many in trying to obtain information held by various authorities about themselves. There have in fact been several incidents where hackers have left warning messages to say they have penetrated the system, but these have been ignored, eg. one person hacked inside a Building Society system, then happily travelled around its databases and then, very charitably, left messages at various points telling the Society he had successfully penetrated the system. A week later he called back only to find the messages had not been read and nothing had been changed. It seems that with the epidemic of secrecy attacking this country at present, complacency comes a close second. Hacking must be seen in the light of current trends and attitudes and behavioural patterns. It is a reaction, and a wholly legitimate, reaction against depersonalisation and the loss of freedom and personal initiative. A refusal to "comply and submit" without protest. There are very few very occasions when hacking has actually effected physical damage. Invariably those who hack simply wish to see if they can beat the system, almost as if in an Adventure game. They may also want to travel though the vaults of information hidden away from prying eyes, which in reality should be available to the very people about whom they relate. The Member of Parliament, Emma Nicholson, has recently made stenuous efforts to curtail and criminalise hacking although the subject has only attracted extraordinary sensationalism and inaccurate reporting by the ever news-hungry news media. It is interesting to note that Ms Nicholson, so dedicated to the prohibition of hacking is also a keen supporter of the Embryo legislation. Yes, the one that will allows our fellow infant humans to be experimented upon and then flushed down the labor- atory sink together with the garbage. Admittedly, some might not see the connection, nor the parallel, but I find it more than interesting that the same person who is so keen to stop one type of freedom also supports the destruction of another. In reality the whole question revolves around the rights of the individual. This is closely allied with the changes at present occurring in this country where more restrictions are continually and consist- -ently laid down to squash people to stereotypical forms. In sum, the weak just go 'under' and the remainder become unthinking in- sensitive 'cardboard' people who cannot see or think further than their bank balance. People who choose not to conform, or even God forbid, challenge the system - and hacking is one example of such "anti-social" behaviour - simply must be criminalised. All such people, whether labelled 'dangerous deviants', revolutionaries. non-conformists, are all fighting a system that is obsessively intent on reducing people to non-thinking unimaginative robots. This is no endeavour to 'politicise' the matter but rather arises from a study of behaviour in 1990. Those who hack must have their wrists slapped as they are not obeying 'the rules'and their very activity shows they have not succumbed to State brain-washing to obey the rules. Returning to the quotation supplied at the very beginning; hackers are part of a group who are "cutting a way" through an undergrowth of distortion, deception, secrecy, restri- -cted power, disproprtionate power and wealth, and greed. To put it crudely, hacking is sticking up 2 fingers at the power barons, and only a fool would say that is a bad thing to do. As this "democratic country" (!!!) of ours sees yet more and more laws restricting various activities of the individual, albeit it causes no harm to anyone, it is up to those who are enlightened enough to see the way things are going, to 'stand up and be counted' and combat this. The State's anti-hacking hysteria is just another means of suppressing individuality, expression and freedom, only and simply to protect excessive profits and those who seek to control our lives. A curse on both their houses. Marcion. --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- Making the most of your modem Part 1 - What type of modem to buy? Since most people who are reading this must have already worked out how to log onto a board, download files and un-archive them, I will assume a basic level of intelligence! Firstly, it is in your best interest to purchase the fastest modem you can afford. Although you may have been brought up in a society where you generally try to find the cheapest model of anything this does not work with modems because your running costs (i.e. phone bills) soon make your initial modem purchase pretty insignificant in comparison. At the moment, most bulletin boards will support up to 2400 baud and there are an increasing number that support HST or V32. Almost everybody will save the cost of a faster modem in the reduced phone bills after only a few quarters. If you call bulletin boards at 300 baud then STOP IT! It is costing you a fortune. There are very few modems that won't at least support V23 (1200/75). Some of the cheaper modems may require you to use a special program to allow the use of the split baud rates. On the ST a program called V23EMU will allow you to use unbuffered V23 modems. Almost every ST based board will have this in its download areas and if you have difficulties setting it up then most sysops will be glad to sort out the problem. There is nothing sadder than watching someone logged on at 300 baud. V23 (1200/75) callers are amongst the most disliked group of callers to your average sysop because they are quite happy to download for hours on end, but because they can only upload at 300 or 75 baud they rarely (if ever) do. Another problem with V23 is that cheap imported modems or the newer faster modems often do not support this speed, so Sysops are left in a dilemma about whether to go put a fast modem on their board at the risk of losing a lot of callers. So by using V23 who are holding back the use of more advanced technology. If you are a V23 caller then do yourself a favour and buy a 2400 baud modem. There are several reasonably priced modems from the likes of Hi-Tech, Frontier and Amstrad, or you could get a 2nd hand one. You'll wonder how you ever managed with 1200 baud once you upgrade. Part 2 - Connecting to a Bulletin Board I don't intend to go into the mechanics of actually logging on since as I said before anybody reading this already knows that! What I will do is to try and point out some "obvious" facts that may have eluded you before. You will need a terminal emulation program to use your modem. On the Atari ST there is a good choice, many of them being Public Domain or Shareware. Some of the most popular ones include Uniterm (my favourite), Vanterm and Flash. Most terminal programs will include facilities to auto-log on to a board, capture text into a file for later perusal and of course to send and receive files. I will go into file transfer in more detail later on, but for now the most used protocols are XModem, YModem and Zmodem. You should find some of these built into the program. Make sure you have set your RS232 settings up correctly. The main settings will include baud rate (This is the speed used between the computer and modem and not necessarily the same as your connect speed, particularly if your modem is speed buffered). Other settings are length, Parity and Stop bits, for most bulletin boards setting this to 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit (8N1) is the best. If you set it to 7 bits, Even Parity (7E1), which for some reason a lot of people seem to do, then you will not be able to download or upload binary files, though you will be able to use the message bases. Other settings could include local echo which should be OFF since most bulletin boards echo back your characters. Feel free to experiment with the other settings. If you call several bulletin boards please try to use a different password on each board. You may think this is silly, but there have been cases where people have somehow got hold of a password file from one board and then used those same passwords on other boards where those users may have higher privileges to cause all sorts of damage. When leaving messages use the normal typing technique of mixed lower and upper case. If you type in upper case then firstly it is more difficult to read and secondly it is a convention to indicate that you are SHOUTING IN A VERY LOUD AND OFFENSIVE MANNER! If you are one of these people then please try to find out where your caps lock key is! Be aware of your phone costs, you should have a little booklet from British Telecom describing how to calculate phone calls. The difference between cheap, standard and peak rate calls is considerable so you should always call in cheap rate times (i.e. 6pm till 8am weekdays and all day Weekends). Also be aware that if calling foreign countries the cheap rate times may be different. Try to keep account of how much you use your modem, then you will not be too surprised when you get the bill at the end of the quarter. For example a normal trunk call (B rate) costs you about 4 pounds per hour, so if you are on-line for half an hour a day then that will cost you 180 pounds per quarter. If there is a big demo that will take you 60 minutes to download, then consider how much it is costing and perhaps wouldn't it have been cheaper to buy it from a PD library instead? Evening time is the most busy period for bulletin boards because due to the society we live in, it is the time when most people have spare time and also telephone bills are cheaper then. Because of this most sysops do not like people downloading large files during this time period. Downloading is better done either early morning or at weekends. If you are calling a bulletin board to leave a message, then try to prepare it off-line with a text editor and then upload it to the board in one chunk. Composing messages while sitting on-line can be very time consuming, not to mention being awkward with the on-line editors. If you do upload a message prepared off-line then make sure your message is saved out in ASCII format. For example if you use 1st Word disable WP mode before saving. Some boards have the facility to upload a message using a transfer protocol like Xmodem or Zmodem. If this is available then use that. If not then you will have to do an Ascii upload straight into the text editor. This is fraught with problems and often you will lose the start of lines. If your terminal program will allow you, then set the end of line delay to about a second. Some boards will have the facility to archive and download messages. If this is available then you should use it because then you can log on, file all the new messages and log off. Then you can read the messages in your own time without paying British telecom loads-a-money. Then if you wish to reply prepare the messages and call back to upload them. This could considerably reduce your on-line time! Phew... This is getting to be a lot longer than I was expecting and I havn't even started on File transferring or File archiving. So I guess this will have to wait till the next issue. --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- There are many sources of Public Domain software, mostly it is spread through the use of Bulletin Boards, specific Public Domain disc libraries and swapping software with friends. There are advantages and disadvantages to choosing one particular method or another. Bulletin Boards The software on Bulletin Boards tends to vary from the excellent to very poor. If you are lucky enough to have access to usenet then you are in a position to obtain some of the latest software before it gets to the public domain libraries as many authors also have access to usenet - such as the excellent comms package Uniterm and the Double Click series of software. Unfortunately it seems that the use of usenet has to be paid for, and if your only reason for subscribing is to get public domain software and totally ignore the varied and interesting messages then you are best to avoid it. However saying this "Tharr" Bulletin Board (0234 261804 - V21 to 22bis - 24Hours) does offer free access to usenet. If you do call this BB, and download software - please enter a few messages as well. There are other BBs that offer good downloads as well, but as a general rule, leave plenty of messages. Most SysOps get annoyed if all their effort in putting a BB up goes to waste in users who just wish to download software. However if the thought of a large phone bill deters you, and believe me large phone bills are very common - especially if all you download much software at slow speeds, then you may need to turn to Disc Libraries. Public Domain Libraries Public Domain Libraries differ greatly in their disc collection, service and prices. I think that, to show my point, it may help if I compare a couple contributors to the Public Domain Library scene. SoftVille: SoftVille take their service very seriously and don't offer a home run service. Their disk collection is large and covers a range of different types of software. The Catalogue is well held together, bound and a nice touch i thought was the pages at the back which showed print outs of clip art - you can see exactly what you will buy. Their prices are quite expensive - roughly 2.50 per disk, Single Sided and 4.00 disk double sided. Members of their club get reductions. However, I think that the price is justified in that you receive a complete service, they offer a lot more than just Public Domain software - Labels, Printer paper, blank disks, commercial software and even hardware. When I asked them why they thought that they were better than other Public Domain Libraries, the reply - we receive more disks than other libraries, 400 orders each and every day. Well, they certainly have a following - but does this mean that they are better? 16/32: 16/32 is a home run public domain library, the owner, Nick Harlow, is well known on several bulletin boards and offers a good service. They make it to every computer show that is possible, always willing to help out with something that you may be having problems with. The catalogue isn't that well presented a few photocopied sheets. Although this is understandable when you look at their price list. The cheapest price is 50p for every disk (this is if you supply the disk and are a member - 1.00 if you don't supply the disk), 1.50 for a disk if you are not a member. Very cheap i think you'll agree. They specialise in Demo's from a look at their list, a very good collection. Which not only covers product demos, but amazing demos from crackers and demo makers, some which are excellent but surprisingly rare. You will also find plenty of utilities and comms stuff. Whilst it may not look as flashy as SoftVille, if you are prepared to have a good scrummage around I think that you will find plenty of interesting disks. Comparing these two libraries I came to the conclusion that in all they differ for different people. SoftVille deals with those who like a complete service - beginners, but are prepared to pay for it. 16/32 on the other hand tends to be for those who know their public domain and like find that rare piece, possibly before other libraries, and are prepared to do quite a bit of the work themselves. I think you'll find that a lot of libraries are similar in this, and you would be well advised to keep up to date with all of them, then I think you'll find one which suits you. Friends Well not everyone is blessed with plenty of mates with ST's. One way to gain them is to use BBs, enter messages and you will find a whole load of people out there who are prepared to swap software with you. Although, it is worth pointing out that in general SysOps and Library owners check for viruses, friends tend not to bother, and the more you swap software the greater chance you have of getting a virus on a disk. Matthew Miles Details: SoftVille - Tel. 0705 266509. Unit 5, Stratfield Park, Elettra Ave, Waterlooville, Hants. PO7 7XN. England. 16/32 - Tel. 0634 710788. 35 Northcote Road, Strood, Kent. ME2 2DH. --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- SysOp ? Article By Matthew Miles Would you like to setup a Bulletin Board ? I think that many people who are involved with comms think that they would like to set a Bulletin Board up. How many actually succeed? The first thing that you need to decide is the Bulletin Board Software that you are going use. The Atari ST has some common pieces of BBs software - FoReM, MichTron BBS Ver.3, QBBS-ST and some people now seem to be taking to STadel. Your choice really depends on what you want your BBs to do. Have a look around some other boards that run these pieces of software and make your mind up. A piece of warning, STadel is not friendly to the first time user, you have to "enter" commands. For instance .r n will Read New messages. Although it is more powerfull perhaps than the others. QBBS-ST is quite a new piece of software, coming from the PC, where it has gained much acclaim. It's most redeaming point is that it allows the SysOp to completetly design the look and lay out of his BBs, in a way that none of the others do. MichTron does have it's own C Style language, but yet all of the boards end up almost exactly the same. Both QBBS and STadel are Shareware, this will allow you to set a board up, and if you don't like it move onto another piece of software without having paid anything. Your choice of software will also be governed by the system that you have. All the software above, especially QBBS and FoReM require a hard disk drive. If you cannot afford a hard disk drive and wish to run the BBs from floppies then it is probably worthwhile having a look around BBs and public domain libraries for small pieces of BB software. StarTerm is quite a nice, small, piece of software. It is "styled" in much the same was as FoReM but on a smaller scale. After you have your board set up, your main problem will be getting a good userbase. There is no point in setting a BBs up if it sits there all day dormant. A few ways to get a large user base: i. High Speeds .. Users will not be interested in someone with low speeds. These days most users seem to have 2400. ii. Good Range of downloadable software. You have to decide if this is a good thing, do you want your users downloading all your software without returning an upload or leaving some messages. iii.Good Range of messages. Don't have one message area just consisting of Atari ST messages, you will get all types of users. NetWorking is a good idea, it will enable you to exchange messages with other BBs, therfore many more messages. Which network you join depend again on your software. FoReM has it's own network as does StarNet (but does anyone use it?), QBBS will enable any network although the common one is FidoNet, this is largely PC orientated. Although the Atari ST is beginning to feature highly now. STadel has it's own network, although it does allow other networks within it. "Tharr" for instance has Usenet access, which accounts largely for it's popularity. I think that your attitude is important, I see far to many "new" SysOps imposing heavy restrictions on their users. Unless the board is in great demand, which if it is new it won't be, then you will find that the users of the board won't want anything to do with it. The spirit of Comms, within the comms community, it seems to have a very bad impression outside of the community, is one of seriousness but yet also with a lot of fun mixed in. I think the secret to a good BBs is this, have areas where people can leave jokes, chat, have a laugh - but yet also make sure that there are areas where people can down/upload serious software and talk about their ideas. I myself started running a BB quite a while back. I started running it on a piece of PD Software called Pandora, on an ST with just over 1Mb of storage. I then moved to StarNet, still on the same system. I only offered v21 and v23. My opening hours were 9pm to 7am. I didn't have many callers and the BBs was quite inactive. I then moved my software over to STadel, same system and hours. More people started calling and I started networking with a few other BBs. This started looking up. Although i realised that before long a hard drive would be required, and although i had quite a few callers many were put off due to the non-standard key strokes. I then had a chance to move my whole system over to a PC running QBBS. I did so. I now run the board at the same hours, and I have a new modem (which allows 22bis). Demand has greating picked up: I have had my phone line engaged (due to callers on my board) from 9:30pm to 2am. A great achievement I feel. Make of this what you will, I've found that the true success of a BBs is the larger the better. A great shame because I have seen so many small, new boards which had shown so much promise close down due to lack of callers. If you do desperately want to set up a BBs then the best advice I can give is stick at it, determination will get you everywhere. I can be contacted on the Invicta Conferencing System, V21 to 22b, 9pm to 7am, 0622 891308, and soon 24 hours on 0622 890888, if you call and a voice answers or nothing answers call the 890888. BBs to have a look at: Tharr (STadel) 0234 261804 >22bis 24 Hours My Little Phoney (FoReM) 0865 773277 >22bis 24 Hours Penthouse (FoReM) 01 9303903 >22bis 24 Hours JuSaVo (MichTron) 0324 32414 >22bis 24 Hours --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- The Assembly Line Interview --------------------------- The Assembly line are a games development team, who have been responsible for many good original games, including Xenon-II (with the Bitmap Brothers published by Imageworks/Mirrorsoft), Pipemania (published by Empire), Interphase (Imageworks/Mirrorsoft), E-Motion (US Gold). Through the use of CIX (Compulink Information eXchange), they agreed to answer a few questions. The interviewer is STeVeN. Q) Thank you for agreeing to find time to answer a few questions for SiTcom. To start with perhaps you can give us a bit of background behind 'The Assembly Line', for example who are you and what did you do before forming TAL? A) First of all, a disclaimer: this information has already appeared in lots of magazines & is probably stupendously boring to anyone who's seen it before. Just so you know.... Martin Day: Coded Impact and Helter Skelter with John Dale for ASL before moving on to Pipemania (also with John) and Xenon II with the Bitmap Brothers. Also the developer of SNASM, the cross development system marketed by Cross Products. John Dale Designer rather than programmer; worked with Martin on Impact, etc. & later with Adrian on E-Motion. Adrian Stephens Has been programming for a long time, starting with Killer Gorilla on the BBC in 1981, moving on to Crazy Painter & Mr Ee for the same machine, Donkey Kong & Ping Pong arcade conversions for the Amstrad. Worked with Andy on the sadly unfinished 3D epic, EPT, and produced Powerplay, then Interphase, then E-Motion on the 16 bit machines. Andy Beveridge Worked on EPT with Adrian, then worked at Real Time Games in Leeds on Carrier Command before returning to Bristol for the start of the Assembly Line. See also our resume on CIX. Q) You must be one of the most prolific development houses of recent times and yet you have still managed to keep your programs original and of high quality. Are you dedicated to producing original programs, or will you perhaps be turning your attention to arcade conversions and film licences if the opportunity arises? A) Unlikely. Too much in a typical current arcade machine to fit into an ST. Consoles maybe, when they're more widespread. Never seen a good film licence yet. Q) Do you play games yourself, and if so what sort of games do you like to play? A) Sometimes. In no particular order, Tetris, Gunhed (PC Engine), Wanderer (PD IBM game, not the red & green glasses one!), Mr Do (arcade cabinet - Adrian has his own), Defender (arcade cabinet), E-Motion, Super Sprint. Q) Several games now have a multi-player option using the RS232 or MIDI ports. Have you or are you going to be doing this in any of your games? A) Haven't done so yet, but we intend to. Particularly likely in respect of 3D stuff where two screens can be used to show two different views of an action sequence. RS232 more likely than MIDI, because it is more straightforward to link any combination of ST, Amiga & PC rather than just two ST's. Q) Will you be continuing to produce playable demos of your games so that people can try before they buy? A) Depends largely on views of publisher. Empire liked them, US Gold didn't. We are happy to do so if there is the demand. Tell USG! And we would welcome feedback on any of our demos (or the subject of playable demos in general) from games players. Mail TAL@CIX or the ST conference which we read regularly. In fact perhaps we can turn the tables and ask some questions ourselves: [if you buy games] why do you buy them? On the strength of a review? or the demo? or the packaging? or the name of the publisher? or the developer? How much difference does price make to you? Q) Many people think the retail price of 16 bit games is too high. This is often blamed on piracy or high development costs. What is your opinion on this? A) Don't know. If everyone stopped paying these prices then they'd come down. Don't think piracy puts the cost up; rather, it drives developers into other, safer, markets, so there is less software around. It's a pity in a way that nearly all software is marketed at the same price - if games players could be sure that a more expensive game would definitely be *better* then maybe pricing would seem more reasonable. Many man years go into the best games; it's a labour intensive business. Q) Do you see much future in the Atari ST as a home computer and will you be continuing to produce ST versions of your games? A) We will produce games for it as long as it is economically feasible. As long as publishers want to support the format we will do so, but when the market shrinks (through piracy or through upgrading) to the point when publishers no longer want to sell for it, then we too will have to move on. This has already happened to the ST in America - most of the big publishers don't care about an ST version, only Amiga & PC. No sign of this happening in Europe yet. Q) What do you think about the future of home computers in general regarding games? Do you think the anticipated console revolution is finally going to hit Britain soon? And in particular what do you think about the Atari Lynx? A) Newer consoles (PC Engine, Megadrive) would be nice to develop for. Depends how many machines are sold. Gameboy is interesting & Lynx is *very* nice, but as always it's in the hands of our publishers. Q) ... and what about Compact Disk technology which seems to be the in-thing at the moment? A) See above. Don't know what the appeal is; what do you do with an extra 500 meg? Stuff it with extra digitised sounds & pictures, sure, & don't worry about data compression any more, but how much will that improve the games? I wouldn't buy one - I wouldn't have any use for it, or at least not to play games with. CD Interactive, maybe, when the machines are widely available, but that may only really help certain types of games - RPG, adventure and so on. Q) I'm sure our readers would be interested to know what they can expect to see from you in the future (especially regarding the ST). Can you tell us anything about what you have in the pipeline, or is it all top secret? A) Many things under development; which ones see the light of day depends on how willing publishers are to take a chance on very different games. We were lucky that Empire recognised the potential of Pipe Mania & ditto USG with E-Motion. We have other projects which are similarly unclassifiable which may simply never be taken up by a publisher. Shame really. Definitely happening, though, are a follow-on to E-Motion (which uses similar ray-traced graphics but in a 3D environment) and some solid (polygonal) 3D material. Both will certainly appear on the ST. SiTcom would like to thank everyone at The Assembly Line for their valuable time and wish them all the luck in the future. - STeVeN. --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- How to Contact Us: Matthew Miles, Bulletin Board : The Invicta Conferencing System 0622 891308 (9pm to 7am) V21-22b Soon 24 Hours on 0622 890888 For the Disk Mag : 10, Oak Farm Gardens, Headcorn Ashford, Kent. TN27 9TU Steven Green, Bulletin Board : My Little Phoney 0865 773277 v21-22b CIX : sgreen Fido Net : 2:252/25 FNET : 1004 Lucien Oppler,Bulletin Board : The Whitehall Penthouse 071 930 3903, v21-22b CIX : luce FNET : 1014 Lau. McDonald,Bulletin Board : Contact BBs 071 646 0746, v21-22, 9pm to 8am --SitComm-May-1990-------------------------------------------------------------- SiTComm Magazine Wants YOU! If you feel that you can write an article for our magazine then please do. We are always on the look out for people to write articles on anything to do with the Atari ST or Comms. Articles should ideally be 65 columns justified to the right, we prefer Quality rather than quantity. They should be straight ASCII files. Articles can be uploaded to any of the Bulletin Boards mentioned in the Contact File, or they can be sent to the address mentioned there as well. --SitComm-May-1990-----------------------------------------------------The End--