Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Saxonia Issue 04 Part 016
Diskmag reviews
By Rumrunner/VOID
l
Everybody should know me by now. I do exactly what I feel like. So while
others think a diskmagreview is old because it's two months old, I will
give reviews of much older magazines than that. I have lately come
across some interesting mags, and I don't care that they are from 1990- 1991.
So, let's start off.
d Royal Information By Royal Amiga Force
This is a rather strange mag. It doesn't look anything like the mags
we know from today and yesterday. The articleselectorscreen is divided like
this :1
____________________________________
| |
| Logo |
| |
|____________________________________|
| | |
| Menu | |
| | Picture |
| | |
| | |
|_________________|__________________|0
You select article from the menu using either mouse or arrow up and down
on your keyboard. F1 and F2 changes modules. This arrangement looks tidy,
but the small part of the screen which is dedicated to the menu makes it
a little bit untidy, and it's a little hard to get the overview. But anyway,
there's only 20 articles all in all, so you don't get lost.
Upon selecting an article, the page is loaded and the whole screen is
dedicated to the text. This is nice and clean. What however is worse is that
everything is written in uppercase. Without having disassembled the mag, I
guess the graphician got tired of making fonts, and stopped after uppercase-
letters were finished.
The quality of articles are varying. My favourites among them are comparisons
between Noisetracker 1.2 and 2.0, and an article about PowerPacker3.0, the
first PowerPacker which wasn't free/shareware. There are also interviews which
are interesting to read for people interested in scenehistory. The bad thing
about the articles, except for being printed in uppercase only, is the
spelling. There are lots and lots of spellingerrors, but hey, perhaps they
wrote it after some strong drinks, like I'm used to.
The modules in the mag are of decent quality. There are two of them to select
from like already indicated. Dunno who made them since the mag don't give
credits.
The mag features cliparts, and they are big cliparts with lots of colours,
this is perhaps the best about the mag. Ofcourse, since they don't keep
menulines and other statusfields onscreen when viewing articles they have
enough room to use big cliparts. This is perhaps one of the most advanced
features of the mag.
d #42 by Talent
Well, this is a mag like we all know it. Upon startup, a statusline pops
up at the top of the screen, and a menu at the bottom. The mainpart of the
screen, is ofcourse dedicated to showing the articles. First, it's covered
with a logo telling clearly the name of the producers, Talent. It reminds
me alot of the way Raw did it most issues, except they usually had a picture
from Fairfax with other motifs than a logo with the name of the group. (By
the way, does anybody remember the picture with a man on a horse, looking
at the Titanic lying in the mountains, I don't remember which issue it was
featured in, but it's one of the best fullscreen cliparts I have seen in
any mag still today).
Right, pressing the deletekey or clicking on "Menu" in the bottompanel
reveals the articlelist. There's alot to choose from, from the compulsory
creditslist to news and scenerelated articles. What first caught my eye
was the series of articles about Andromeda. There's a complete list of
mainproductions, and interview with Hydra and so on. It's excellent reading
for those who like this group and it's style.
Navigation in the mag is simple. You select articles with clicking leftmouse
over the articlename, you can scroll the article by pulling the mouse to the
extreme left or right on the screen, aswell as using left and rightarrows
on your keyboard. What's a bit strange is that the mouse is restricted to
the mainscreen when viewing the menu, so the sideways scrollbuttons
on the panel are quite unusable. But that doesn't bother me much, I dont
like reaching for the mouse everytime I want to change articles anyway, as
I usually sit with my keyboard in my lap, a beer at the side, and thus only
need to press a key.
This brings me to another question, I dont know why Talent decided to
number their articles. You cannot type in this number in any way to get to
the desired article. Perhaps it's a bug, perhaps it's possible to use
numpad on Amiga 500 (I tested it on Amiga 1200), perhaps it's to show how
many articles the mag features, perhaps for easy reference or whatever.
Anyway, I would appreciate being able to select articles from the keyboard.
One also sees that long articles are divided up like in the first issue of
Saxonia, and also like Raw did it. I guess that the textscreen is filled
up several pages at the time, and thus, using modulo you only need to change
the startingposition in your copperlist when the user scrolls the article.
(And before anyone complain, I didn't use modulo in Saxonia #1 since that
mag scrolled vertical, this it's only a question of changing startadress.)
Look at those pages with big cliparts, they usually have just the firstpage,
then you change to "next" article (which is a continuation of the article
first loaded). This is not a bad concept, and it ensures smooth scrolling,
but perhaps a solution like Oepir Risti had would be fine. You know, when
scrolling past the last page of one part of the article, the next page(s)
are loaded and shown automatically. But this solution had also limitations
in Oepir Risti's case, it was impossible to scroll back again, you had to
change article and then change back again. Anyway, I like the smooth
scrolling and I also like the cliparts and don't mind pressing downarrow
to continue in a long article, so it's nothing more to say about this.
There are two modules in the mag, of which the first fits my taste better.
They are both calm and relaxing modules as diskmagmusic should be.
In general, this mag is of high quality, and, like with the other big mags
of the past, it's a shame that they disappeared. It's also a good proof
that the way of doing a mag like Raw, Zine and several others have done
through the ages is a popular concept. But hey, I like stubborn people
who do what THEY want and really got a little sad when Deadlock moved the
panels from the top and to the bottom of the screen. This is out of scope
for this review though, so let's finish up by saying to those that haven't
read this mag, it's quite a good read, and quite a good experience in
setting a good relaxed mood, so download it today.
d Eurochart #1 by Crusaders
We're dealing with a legend here. This is the first issue of the chart
which perhaps changed the Amigascene. Before this, most charts were based
on the opinions of just a small group of people, usually those who took
part in making the chart. With the introduction of the Eurochart, everybody
could vote for their favourites.
Right, as the executable suggests, this very first issue of a chart which
still is with us today, now in the form of a chartmag, was released in
November 89. We're talking historylesson here, a period of time which was
very important to Amiga. At this time, Red Sector shocked the scene with
their megademo with hardware trackloading Andromeda was founded this very
year, Mahoney and Kaktus hadn't released their musicdisk His Masters Noise
yet, scrollers and equalisers were in style and Amiga was still a young
machine, Commodore 64 was still in stock in shops, and further goes the
story.
Now, loading the mag, ofcourse using noaga on the Amiga 1200, I'm first
presented with a textwriter on screen. It tells that Crusaders are not
responsible for the results in the charts as they merely collects the votes,
and so on. When a whole screen is filled with text, there's a small note
to press the "s" key to continue into the charts.
Fine, I press the s-key, and the mainscreen appears. It's in style for
the late eighties. On top a simple, but readable line tells what production
I'm dealing with. Next comes the different categories. There are alot of
categories which is nowhere to be found in todays charts. Among the common
ones like best group, best demo and so on, I find worst demo and lamest group
for instance. Also categories not dealing with the scene are to be found.
Examples of such are the best and worst movie categories.
Below the categories there's a scroller, it's ofcourse strongly prohibited
releasing something to the scene that doesn't contain a scroller in 1989,
hey I wish it was still like that...
Well, let's see, I need to click on one of the categories to see it, so I
move the mouse around. The mouse is a big cross. It seems like Crusaders
always liked big mousepointers, just look at their musicdisk Bacteria.
The one in the Eurochart is not as big as the one in Bacteria, but you still
have to drink alot of booze, or perhaps even petrol, not to be able to notice
that it's there. Well, I move the cross over the best demo category and is
presented with a new screen. It shows the placements one by one, with a
linevector in the background. Presentation is the same in every category
but still, there are different linevectors in each part.
The music is a typical early Dr Awesome module. In 1989, you would have
easily recognised that it was his work even if you joined the scene a
few weeks before. While I cannot say that it's the tune I most often play
in HippoPlayer today, it's still nice to listen to when looking at the
chart. It feels so at home there, it would even have suited the chart
if nobody had ever heard it there before, I think.
All in all this is a good production, it's simple, it's to the point, and
first and foremost, it brings a feeling that almost no new production can
give, be it a demo, a diskmag or whatever.
