Amiga Tools 5/Amiga Tools 5.iso/tools/developer-tools/amos-tools/eaissue3a/text/ea_history.asc

Text File | 1996-07-13 | 13.2 KB | 236 lines

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                               EA Issue History
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        Extreme AMOS has come a long way since the first releases of the
    "Mushroom PD" magazine last year. Many changes have occured, which
    have been for both the better, and for worse unfortunately.

        Up until a couple of month's before the first issue of EA was to
    be released (which had not yet become a twinkle in anyone's eye) I
    received a phone call from a chap named Carl Drinkwater, who responded
    to an AMOS contacts advert I had placed in Loot. I explained to him
    about the library, and about the Mushroom PD magazine which I was
    releasing. Carl wanted to get involved with a disk magazine for AMOS
    also, and we both decided to join up forces in order to create Extreme
    AMOS. After the telephone call, I sent call my latest MPD magazine,
    and in return, he sent me a very simplistic version of what a typical
    version of EA might look like, using the articles I had in my
    magazine. Shortly after this release, we both agreed that we should
    meet up and work on EA together, and so Carl travelled down to my
    house, where we both set up our computers and tried to start work on
    something for EA, but we only ended up creating an IFF screenshot,
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    which was not even used. The rest of the time we just discussed the
    kind's of articles we could include, and we also discussed the
    workbench-style engine we created.

         With a little swapping of extra programming tips and source
    code routines, and countless numbers of phonecalls, the first issue of
    the known Extreme AMOS magazine was patched together, and released as
    PD on 18 July 1995. Carl handled all of the editorial side, and I
    provided all of the PD library information, as well as one or two of
    the articles for the main edition, including 2 of my programming
    tutorials. Extreme AMOS was now running, and posessed a couple of
    extra things which the other disk magazines didn't have. The main
    feature which stood out was the Fantasy Football League which Carl had
    arranged with a friend of his, Quo, which proved to be a total
    disaster along with the handling of the mailing scheme as mentioned
    below. Another good benefactor of EA to the other AMOS disk magazines,
    was the fact that it was cheaper to buy non-shareware versions (at £2)
    where as other leading magazines such as WAC and AMOSZine charged
    slightly higher, with WAC being the best value for money out of the
    two mentioned, and have the most in quality of articles. See Paul, no
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    favouritism there.

        For some reason, Carl put his address as the main address to send
    all bit's and pieces for future editions to, and my adress for the
    library side, and a couple of the articles in the main bit. This
    proved to be a fatal mistake for EA, as explained a little later. I
    don't even know why this was, as both of our addres' were supposed to
    appear.

        Another would-be putter-offer from the future readers, was the
    fact that Carl had put some RIDICULOUS advertising costs for placing
    the most simplistic of adverts in EA, which I know for a fact put a
    lot of people off buying future issues of the magazine. Before I even
    received my spreadable copy of the issue, I received a phonecall from
    Paul Burkey, a good friend of mine, and also the programmer of top
    games such as Sneech and Peg-It, and also writer of the graphic
    compaction routines in issue 3, explaining how he was "Deeply
    Disappointed" in the prices for advertising, as Paul was hoping to
    place lot's of adverts for his programs. After receiving my copy of
    the issue and explaining how it was Carl who thought them up (we had
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    both agreed on prices for advertising, but no way as steep as the ones
    printed) he calmed down a little afterwards. For instance, you could
    not include a text advert, which took more than 1.6K uncrunched, as it
    was too big? An IFF advert between 10 and 25K would cost you 50p, and
    an advert between 25 and 40 would cost a pound! Anything over 40K
    would not be used, so it ruled out HAM images completely! Ridiculous
    or what?

        All was going well, I was happy starting on some of the articles
    for the second issue, and so was Carl (according to him). I happened
    to call up Paul Gumsley (editor of T-O-P AMOS Magazine WAC) and he
    congratulated me on EA getting a review. "A review?" I said, and he
    explained everything to me. Extreme AMOS was reviewed in the November
    1995 issue of Amiga Computing (Issue 92) on Page 54. It was given a
    rather good review, and the caption "..is worth investigating!" which
    helped a little. The first thing I noticed was that my name wasn't
    mentioned, which I wasn't really looking for, as Carl programmed and
    put together the first issue, and secondly, there was no adress for
    any future registered copies, although the adress would appear if you
    got a copy of EA. This is then where all the trouble started with
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    Carl, as he never got in touch at all since the review, probably got a
    bit hot headed about it all. Who knows?

        After telling Carl that the magazine had got a review, he seemed a
    happy chappy, and according to him, began work on improving the
    original engine, and putting together the articles for the next issue.
    Carl also began college a few weeks later, and so all stuff he
    supposedly had done would be sent to me as soon as he arrived in
    college and settled down. A fortnight passed, and I was getting a
    little worried as EA issue 2 was due for release in about a week. I
    called him up and found out that he had already gone to college, and
    he had not left me an address or nothing, which was very kind of him
    to do. I had to get it off his mum (who is a very kind lady. Hi Mrs.
    Drinkwater!) and so send him a package with all my stuff for issue 2.
    Still no reply or phone calls. It was 5 days before the official
    release date of EA when I decided to drop Carl from that issue anyway,
    which I could have understood with him settling in college and all,
    but he still could have found time to say "Look, will you handle issue
    2". In around 5 days, I had to come up with an EA engine, as Carl did
    not want me to have his source code for some reason, and so I came up
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    with Mushroom Bench. It was rather shabbily and rushed, seeing as I
    only had 5 days, and used hi-res screens so that I could incorporate a
    little more detail into the icons. I also had to type ALL of the
    articles for that issue, which took around a week, resulting in the
    issue being a few days late. After all the messing around and trying
    to get all of the stuff together, I finally debugged and smartened up
    the engine and released Issue 2 of EA on October 10, if I remember
    correctly. I didn't put a release date in issue 2 for some reason? I
    also decided to make the issue PD, as it was not really worth the 2
    pounds asking price, due to the lack of time spent on it, and the odd
    bug or two which I did not have time to investigate fully. It also
    didn't posess many good tunes, as I used more CHIP music than proper
    music modules, and the content of some of the articles was a little
    lame. Still, it was released as PD though, and accepted by most
    libraries.

        In issue 2, I made myself clear that if Carl did not start to
    correspond with me on future issues of the magazine, I would drop him
    entirely from the team, as I was able to work more efficiently on my
    own, without having to worry about waiting for articles etc. I then
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    posted the issue to Carl, and awaited his response from it. Still,
    absolutely no reply of any kind whatsoever. By now, Paul Burkey had
    linked up to the internet, and was off on his electronic travels,
    hence the E-Mail number he was very kind to loan me, when Carl
    suddenly popped up on his screen. This is where it gets good, as Carl
    said he was going to get in touch with me with all his stuff for EA,
    and all that boll***s, but still, no reply. Paul decided to start up a
    user group on the internet for AMOS with Carl, but Carl disjoined from
    that shortly after, and has not got in touch with him since either.
    Still, that is another story. Carl is a good AMOS coder, and it would
    be a shame to let his talents go to waste.

        It was christmas when I spoke to him in person. I called his mum a
    couple of weeks beforehand to find out when he came home for his
    holidays. After about 20 phonecalls, and a lot of patience, I called
    him and spoke to him for about an hour, explaining what I had planned
    for the future of EA, and again, he promised to send articles etc. and
    I also explained to him I was going to take EA to colour, and he
    agreed to it. After puting the phone down, it was the last lengthy
    conversation we had. I called up a couple of days before he went back,
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    and he was watching a footy match on the telly, and he said he would
    call back when it had finished. Did he f***. Just goes to show you how
    much he really cares about the magazine. I think he was only in it for
    the profit to tell you the truth.

        So now comes to you issue 3, which has been fully programmed by
    myself, with the graphics compaction routines written by Paul Burkey,
    available from the library under the title "Squidger". This issue has
    had a lot of planning, and has took me a full month to compile, along
    with all the articles. New and improved features include a full-colour
    text review, which not only shows the text in different colours, but
    will allow you to view screenshots whilst you are reading. The whole
    issue has been tidied and re-written from scratch, to give it that
    homely feeling. The prices of advertising have been TOTALLY scrapped,
    and replaced with simply sending in a couple of articles. I also
    decided to release the third issue as shareware, so that lot's of
    different people can see that EA is still up and running, even after
    the bad episodes, and to let the good AMOS coders out there know that
    I still care !

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        The magazine is also a lot more user-friendly, and easier to read
    and understand. There are no more terrible scrolling problems when
    reading normal articles, as all text is stored on pages, which can be
    looked at like a book. Because of the graphics compaction routines,
    the sizes of any IFF files are dramatically reduced when the data
    files produced by Squidger are crunched down, meaning that more
    graphics can be included within the magazine to give it a much more of
    a proffessional look. Lot's of readers letters and suggestions have
    been included in the new engine to make it as user-friendly as
    possible. Features which are included in the next issue, which will
    surely wet your appetite, include multi-colour text on the same line,
    as well as being able to combine graphics with text. Also to be
    included, is a series of IFF fonts, which will be internal with the
    program itself, allowing you to create posters using snazzy colour
    fonts, without having to take up lot's of space using IFF screenshots,
    plus it gives a nice heading to any banner or piece of text. Issue 4
    will be hopefully ready on May 12 at just £2 (£2.50 if you live
    overseas).

        The Fantasy Football league which was supposedly arranged by Carl
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    had also gone belly-up, as I never heard a peep from the guy who was
    supposed to be organizing it, and even up to writing to him about a
    month ago, I have still heard nothing from him. So, I decided to put
    this section up in the magazine to anyone who want's to undergo it. If
    you want to take on the system, then feel free to contact me with all
    your proposed ideas and plans. I would prefer someone who has had some
    experience with this system, but if you are a newcomer and would like
    to have a go at it, then get in touch. See the text adverts for more
    information.

        I am now hoping to get this third issue reviewed in a commercial
    magazine, so that the damage Carl made in the first issue can
    hopefully be repaired, and allow the AMOS coders out there who may
    have discovered that he won't actually reply to any of their mail, can
    at last get the full AMOS coverage that they have wanted for a long
    time. If Carl tries to get back into EA, I shall let him, but there is
    no way he will be in charge of running either the cash or editorial
    side of the magazine, at least not for a long time, as it has took me
    too long to repair the damage what he has already created, and I am
    not prepared to let the magazine go through that again.
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        If you are out there Carl, and are reading this, then why not get
    in touch with me. It isn't all that difficult to pick up the phone and
    dial the number. If that is too hard, then leave an E-Mail for me with
    Paul. Remember folks, never get straight into teaming up with someone
    the day you meet them, as it could be a fatal mistake, as I have
    learned today !

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    [Andrew "Mushroom" Kellett]

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EOF