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1989-12-31
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--- BY DEANO OF SILLY SOFTWARE ---
Well Christmas is just over and I'm sat here getting some work out of the
way ready for a fresh start in the new year. I have just been doing some
stuff for POWER including the STOS help article which took a fair bit of
doing. Talking of that, since James got Chris to share it with me it makes
more interesting reading. I would just put the answers in and not bother
reading it when it appeared in POWER. Well I know everything in it. Mind
you, now I read it to see Chris's answers. Well now you get two sets of
answers......mine and the right ones. Errm, whilst on this point I would
like to put my hand up and say "please miss, I made a cock up". It was a
question in the STOS help page a few months back about real time calulations
and I got it completely wrong. Tony Greenwood of STOSSER pointed this out
and I felt two feet tall. My answer was complete bollocks. I must admit I
didn't have a clue about real time calculations and just made a guess.
However, my answer was completely wrong and I hope you will forgive me and
my sins. I have failed you and am no longer worthy of the STOS help page.
But I'm sure James with his heart of gold will forgive me and my wrong
doings (Er....Oh alright then! - POWER).
A lot of us will have heard about IDS by now. They are a new software
company just starting up, and at the moment they have one game for sale. The
famous HERO by Tony Greenwood. There was an STE game called TEAM coming out
but it seems the programmers have pulled out, leaving just HERO. If any of
you have read the latest (and final-sob sob) ST REVIEW then you will have
read a story exposing IDS. It seems they have had some problems with various
other companies. According to some, cheques from IDS have been bouncing and
there's been problems with 900 quids worth of stock going missing.IDS seemed
like a new hope for the ST commercial scene but this exposure could kill
them off. Mind you if it is true then its not suprising. I mean after all,
you need to be a good man of business to survive. Anyway we'll see what
happens to IDS and Andy Fern (who runs it) now.
Here is some news that can be revealed now. On the cover disk of ST FORMAT
issue 65 is a demo of a art tutor package called GRAFIX. The programmers of
this package are......Us, Silly Software. This is where we've been hiding.
We last released the Silly Games Pack as licenceware then signed up a deal
with IDS to produce GRAFIX. I can tell you that this will be THE art
tutorial package. There will be seventeen different options which lead to a
series of pictures teaching each option step by step. We have even gone a
step further than any other art tutorial package with an animation option.
This will teach you how to do the hardest animation thing going,and that's
walking. With GRAFIX you can learn to draw sprites like little men and
animate them smoothly with great detail. Each picture has a short
tutorial on it about that picture and there is a professional looking
printed manual with it. If that's not good enough there's an art package
coming with it so you can practise on that. Everything has gone into
one easy-to-use package, in fact there must be over eighty tutorial
pictures in it at the moment. The pictures and manual have been all done
by a professional artist so you can be sure to learn a lot about computer
art from it. It should be ready for release by March 1995 and priced
£24.95. For those of you that like reading my comedy articles each month
will be pleased to know that every chapter of the GRAFIX manual starts with
a comedy story about that option. They are all written by me and there are
seventeen stories, all these have never been and never will be seen in
POWER or anywhere else. Anyway, if you want to know more about the package
or have any questions then write to me. I answer all letters. My address is
in the POWER STOS help corner.
A few people could be asking the question, Why did Silly Software go
shareware? Well we thought we would give it a go and see if we could get
some fame and fortune but it didn't work. The question came up, why do
people refuse to pay the extra pound for licenceware? Well the answer is,
mainly in a lot of libraries licenceware costs more than a pound extra.
POWER P.D. charges 99p for a P.D. disk and three pounds for a licenceware
disk. Well people tend to think licenceware is crap, or over-priced P.D.
I'm sorry to hear that some libraries sell rubbish as licenceware while
there's much better P.D. around. So all the top reviews of Mobsters City
didn't get you lot rushing out to buy it....Why? Because people tend to
think that because it's licenceware or because it's said to be semi-
commercial software at very low prices that it's not worth it, a con to be
honest.
This isn't quite true in some repects, there are some brilliant licenceware
titles around. Anyway, we went shareware so you can get all our stuff for
nothing, and if you like it then register for a better version. Meaning I
get the loads of letters I crave for (slurp slurp), you get a great piece of
software, and with the money we can continue to support the ST because we
know its worth it. So now you know the secret.
Hmm, things are changing round the ST scene. Dave Cobbledick has made all
his stuff into licenceware packages, we've gone shareware, ST REVIEW bought
out by ST FORMAT who say there's going to be something big coming up
that will help the ST scene. They told James advertising will rise but
he'll get more customers. I'm sure we're all curious about the big change to
see what's going on. Mind you, format might be just trying to get more
readers by getting rid of the competition. Might you, they won't be able
to buy the diskzines out and a lot of people that read them don't touch any
glossys. (The big change happening, Deano, is simply that ST FORMAT believe
that now they have bought out ST REVIEW their readership will increase by
roughly 15,000. However, this simply doesn't work in practise as many of
those 15,000 readers from ST REVIEW read ST FORMAT anyway and some of the
other ST REVIEW readers won't want to buy the new STF. Crap eh?! - POWER).
New games are still coming out. That ZERO 5 looks good and OBSESSION is
brilliant. There are still lower software companies that are writing games
so we are not going short. If we support them then they will continue to
write for the ST and STE because they know there's a market. The next Silly
Software game is called Silly Olimpics, and it's going to be playable, great
graphics and sound, large and very amusing. The silliest game ever to be
written for any home computer. At least 15 silly sport events.
Regular readers of POWER will have noticed that I haven't really contributed
anything other than the STOS page over the last two or three months since
the nagging letter aimed at me from the Cynical Bastard. Well it's not him
that stopped me, it's just that lately I've been so busy. I work all week in
a day job and have to fit everything else in at night and weekends. Who
gives a toss about what the idiots like C.B. say? All they can do is
complain, why don't they write something and show us what they want?
I read the second-to-last issue of ST REVIEW, and was disgusted to see they
had given HERO a right slating and 65%. This is a brilliant game and worth
the money but they told a load of lies about it....Basic graphics, bad
collision detection and so on. Yet there is none of that in the game. It was
actually reviewed in ST ACTION but it was by the same reviewer who praised
it in a preview in the same mag. Then I discovered why it was ripped in
its review, a clue was....Written in STOS. Just because of this HERO was
ripped apart. I can't believe how stupid these people are. They call a
brilliant program crap just because it was written in STOS. I think they
should wake up. STOS with all the new extensions is very powerful now,forget
about all those old tracky efforts that were written years ago. HERO shows
off the new STOS and even this can still be beaten. Look at newer STOS
games such as Grandad, Ozone, and Multipacman and compare them to older
STOS games and you'll see a big improvement and difference. In fact you
would never believe these games were written in STOS. Forget about the bad
name people give STOS because it's proved itself well in the ST programming
world.
Well there's a few bits and pieces in here, some of them interesting. And
if you've managed to get this far without nodding off then wow, well done.
Time to go, hope to have a natter with you all again soon. I hope you enjoy
the articles in this months POWER that I've found time to do.