JEDisc Fashion§ìÀ  Æ£À DISC FASHION ¢Ç É by BliTTeR of DAMIAN  Å¢ÀI can`t stand damaged stuff...and so many of you also. You have received a great amount of demos and the one you would have liked most is damaged. Everyone knows that this isn`t very much satisfiying... ¨  ÁIf it`s a packdisk with about 5 or 6 files on it you can try it with some repair-utilities or try to copy the stuff to your harddrive. Probably you could get them running fine as they should, but thats not very often. Normally you can repair the disk but the demo/intro has a fucking guru. You have some chances to get the demo/intro running but what do you do with a trackloading disc? No repairing possible. Shit. You can`t send the stuff to your contacts and the spreading has stopped by this point. Bad for the programmers and bad for the other freaks. The worst thing that could happen is that the error occures very early and nobody notices something. The stuff is being spreaded with the same error again and again. If you notice it, it`s often too late to release the stuff once more, because it`s too old or unsuitable at the moment. When i receive disks from my contacts, i alyways have a look at the disc first through whose fingers the disc has passed before. Sticker over sticker (you just have problems by inserting the disc into your drive!) and signs & fonts all over the disc. Such a disc has often cruised more than a whole year in the scene before someone hides it in a box. More and more  ÉFASHIONDISCS  Áhave some harderrors and therefore every stuff you copy on it will be crypted. Too bad if your stuff sucks on this way. A trader can`t upload the stuff on boards or it will be deleted, because a error occured during depacking. Don`t you think it is time to exchange the old and bad discs against newer ones? Sure, a good idea, but who will exchange discs just for fun when there is no profit? But if nobody will do this in the near future we`ll see only damaged stuff, if we see it. ¡Í¤Áend JEThoughts About The Traders Chaos’§ìÀ  É£À THOUGHTS ABOUT THE TRADER`S CHAOS¢À  Å ¢Êby BliTTeR of DaMiaN  Á¦ ¨ ¢ÆI`m really happy NOT to be a swapper with more than hundret contacts! I`m a graphican without any interest in illegal swapping, but now i have 26 contacts. But only for fun and reliable swapping of demos. I can`t imagine that a swapper with more than hundret contacts is able to write often or much...Every long letter about two hours of penrapping...in this case he will still be writing in the year 1994! Just copying the new stuff and sending it to SOME contacts without writing fun-letters or junk mail can`t be too funny. You have no chance to get known better or to have some fun together (just think of the looong phonecalls!). OK, you probably swap with the fastest and best crews around, but where is the sense of swapping when there is no fun? Just faking stamps and copying the latest stuff can`t be the aim. There are some guys out there who just look out for more and more contacts... The number of contacts raises like hell, it`s no problem to get hundrets of contacts, but if you send these guys just every half year a sending - many swappers don`t do even this - you can`t get into a real chat. What about those "ghost swapping partners"? You send them a contact letter with some discs and probably get after waiting for a long time a lousy answer from them. Is this all? Some "swappers" seem to like this way of gaining contacts all over the world, just to have the most contacts. Boah. The worst thing i can dream of is to sit in front of your favourite copy-programm and copy all day long. Sit there and let the picture burn into your head... Wow, very interesting and creative. If i receive stuff i try to make the package ready as soon as possible in order to avoid nerving copy-sessions...You have always to look from whom you got the disc, on which disc you should copy it now, avoid duplicates & errors,... Overall i think that a real swapping with long fun-letters and chatting around the clock isn`t possible with too many contacts. Excessive swapping murders the fun and fails the aim of the scene - FRIENDSHIP! ¡Î¤Áend JECracking Scene Games5§ìÀ £À  É CRACKING SCENE - GAMES ¢Ä  Æ by BliTTeR / DAMIAN ¨  ÁWhen you hear about so called "scene games" you surly think first of games like Alien Breed, Jaguar XJ220 or THE "scene game": Pinball Dreams I & II. Yes, some dudes from The Silents were responsible for this superb game, they worked for it for a long time and managed to fill a hole in the game market. Some of you have surely bought this game not only because it`s the best of its generation, just because the game was made by some scene dudes many of you know well and you want to support them. This game will always be handled by some dudes as a special game - a "scene game". But what`s up with games like Leander or Lemmings? Are these games no scene games? For these and many other games worked also some well known scene dudes and earned money with it. They are just like every game which will be cracked after it`s out and spread all over the globe. But have the so called "scene games" a little advantage in this point? I think no. Before the final version of Pinball Dreams was out The Silents released under their scene label a preview of this wonderfull game with the note to let all cracker groups suck who will crack the final version. A good atempt to beware a game of being cracked, but logically it didn`t work. Fairlight cracked it first - with no difference to any other game, but this time with a little note to the freaks: "Support the scene and buy this game...bla...bla...bla... and that they are so proud that some swedes have released such a cool game...". I think that such messages are just pure shit because if they really want support such a game they shouldn`t crack it. But this does of course not work...the group who receives the original first will crack it anyway. Such guys have surely NEVER worked before on a game or can`t even imagine how much it takes you to create such a game - in this case over 3 years. If the guy who has to decide whether to crack the game or to let the hands off it would come from the demo scene and has coded some demos before he would surely NOT crack the game. These kind of scene freaks knows how bad it`s for you to notice that "your" game has just been cracked and he can now expect that he won`t earn the money he needs. To all crackers out there: Coding, designing and developing on a game for 2 years and then you earn not more than an unemployee gets in a half year...Would you continue coding on amiga? All of you who think now "NO" are surely right. They will discontinue their work on amiga...Like Thalion did with their final action game on amiga: Lionheart. One of the best action games ever made on amiga - just have a look at the wonderfull grafics! It had no protection against copying the disks... but instead of this it had a little but effectfull message to all who copy the disks illegal. In the past i heard from many friends that they want to produce a professional game in order to earn some money on their own. I think this is the only way producing stuff in the future for "our" Amiga. More and more software companies are going to stop their work on the Amiga and join PC or the consoles. Just have a look at the dream machine of the 90`s...the C64. The only guys producing some stuff are the scene freaks who love their computer and don`t want to let it suck. If there are no software companies on a computer who release great games then it`s too late and there`s NO chance to get them back this machine. This could also happen to the Amiga...maybe there is a big chance to make the race with the new AGA-Amigas. We have it in our hands. It`s our turn to continue cracking games for some crackers profit or to let this computer rise to the top. If you agree with me, just an important idea: First have a quiter look at youself and then talk about others. ¡Î¤Áend. JESEMI'93 PARTY REPORTZ§ìÀ  Ç£À S ÈE ÉM ÄI Å `93 - PARTYREPORT  Ë¢É by BliTTeR / DAMIAN ¨¦ ¢Á ÆTHE TIME. Á The SEMI`93 was held from Friday, 9.4 to Sunday 11.4 (Easter). I think it was a good date, but on Friday not too much freaks were able to come, because of the job. After more and more showed up until Saturday, more than the half left around midnight Saturday/Sunday. I think because of the Easter-Sunday and the not too good competitions.  ÇTHE PLACE. Á Well, it was held in a school-building, which was located in a residential area of Innsbruck/Austria. It was really hard to get there by your own, a taxi or car was of big advantage. The party was held in one of the two gym halls, the second used to be the sleeping place. The hall had place for about 30 computers and up to 200 freaks. The sound equipment was rather good, but the video-screen was very lousy. It wasn`t matched well and therefore only 3/4 of the amiga-screen could be displayed and the colours were bad, too. The power supply wasn`t that good as promised because all computers leeched from one line! And now take a hand full of guys unplugging all the time... Well, it wasn`t that terrible, but the line was really out of power. My harddrive even didn`t get enough electrizity to run correclty, it fucked up every minute...  ÈTHE PEOPLE. Á Many well known persons were expected to come, but not all showed up. Anyway, cool freaks showed up, and it was real fun to talk to them. A short list of the visitors: Guys from TRSI, Scoopex, Sanity, Abyss, Arise, IBB, Zenith, Paradise, Damian, Manitou, Energy, Leprosy, Fairlight, Darkstar, Nightfall, Saxion, Razor 1911,S!P, Scandal, Nuance, Interactive, TFA, Massive Attack, Half Brains, Abnormalia, Anthrox, Submission, Silicon Dreams,...  ÉTHE ACTION. Á It was really funny, but on the first day there weren`t any movies or demos showed. On the second day there were some lame films not worth to be watched, and so on the third day. Due to the fact that not too new demos were shown, the crew of Abyss (especially Skindiver) and Interactive wanted to rule the party by showing THEIR productions and stuff THEY wanted. They left one day before the party ended. On the second day Irata/TRSI was boozed so much that he lost control and jumped around, fell from one place the other, shouted at the others, climbed up a ladder and fell down. Futher he damaged some chairs & a door - and after that trouble he has nearly been lead to the police. At Saturday a guy named Silent/Darkstar showed up and lamed around claiming to be an "elite-guy", having a board in Munich, being an "elite-muzak- wizard" and "top-swapper". He ripped musik and fucked around. Then he stole a USR HST from Mosquito/Manitou - the main organiser of the party - and some external diskdrives, disks,...from various other freaks. He left for the train station without returning the hardware. FUCKINGS TO HIM! BLAME HIM! TERRORISE HIM! PISS OFF LAMER! DIE, SUCKER! THESE COMPLEMENTS BELONG TO NIKE/DARKSTAR!!!!!! Now he claims to be Silent / EOC 1999...Concerning this matter we refer to the article "CALL ME SUCKER!".  ÊTHE COMPETITIONS. Á In the evening the GFX- and Intro-competions were held. The intro-compo was held really unfair, because the things with the video equipment and Scoopex faked a lot of votesheets, although voting for the own group was forbidden. 10 intros were shown, the SCX-intro won the competition - nevertheless, it was the most awesome intro to have a look at. In the GFX-compo 9 pictures were in competition. One was ripped and one a fool. I also contributed but i don`t know which position i was, because only a few votesheets were collected. Maybe i won, but who cares... The sound- and demo-competition should have been held at 12 o`clock on Sunday (the third day), but then the organisers thought that it is better to hold them also on Saturday evening. The motivation was very low and the freaks didn`t pay much atention to the contributes. The democompetition wasn`t held, because only 2 (!) demos wanted to take part of the compo! Finally, some votesheets were collected, but many of them were suspicious. First it was planned that the first place of every compo will get around 1500$, the second $1000 and the third $700. But then...i think there were NO prices at all..it was a total chaos at the end - nobody was informed, everybody was about to leave.  ËTHE END. Á The end came fast, as fast as it has begun. In the early morning the SANITY-crew showed up, had a very high quality demo to release (would have been the best release on the Semi!), but they didn`t release it, because at 6 o`clock in the morning just around 20 people were there - the organisers and some italian freaks.  ÅALL IN ALL. Á It was a good party in the beginning, but then it got totally out of control, just one problem after the other. I think the organiser is not to blame, he did everything that the party is good, but the others... Scoopex have just given away their good name to make more people come. Hope that this wasn`t the last party in Austria. Maybe there will be a DAMIAN party at easter 1994 or a SEMI `94. Let`s look... ¡Î¤Áend. JEDesign-mania a la Melon Dezignð £Á ÊDESIGN A LA MELON DEZIGN ¢Æ Éby BliTTeR / DAMIAN ¢Ç ÁYou can look at every demo - nearly in all you can find elements of the revolutionary new design from Melon! The design of this crew has really started a wave of design. Before Melon released intros and demos styled in this way, the word "design" wasn`t that important, but now it seems that some groups have a better look at the design than coding. At a demo with much design but no coding effects you`ll only have a look for one time but then forget it. But if you look at any charts, you can see that nearly only the hardcores survive and will long be remembered. As some dudes saw that Melon was very successfull with their new style many did nothing else than copying the style. For examle the little black-white-logo somewhere on the screen or the two color-fields. But I think just copying and copying is not the way to get to the top as Melon is. Sure, inventing something new is has got really hard nowadays, but we should try it. If everybody copies from the other, we will only come to the point that every demo or intro will look the same and none of them is top. The success of Melon roots in very easy but good looking effects and the harmony is the most important thing. If the effects don`t go hand in hand with the backgrounds, logos and sounds, it will fast look bad and the impression is negative, no matter whether some other good ideas were in. We should even try harder to delvelope new styles and effects in order to bring a fresh breeze into demos. Copying is always a sign for the quality of the source and you can be proud, if somebody copies your ideas. But we should always keep in mind, that copying something - no matter whether it is a program or an idea - is somehow a way of stealing. The old and often used sentence "Quantity meens not quality" prooves again, how true it is. We tried also to design  ÊTHE JUNGLE Á a little bit different from all the other diskmags and we succeeded. Many people like our index and some other ideas and that prooves again, that we should always try to invent new things. In this way I want to congratulate Seen/Melon for his awesome design... It`s harder than copying, but funnier and more interesting. ¤Á¡Îend. JEDifferent scenes - This time: ITALYÀ £Á  Ê ¤Ê¡ÎITALIAN SCENE¤À ¤Ê¡ÎREPORT¤À ¢Æ  Éby Filippetto/Zenith  ÁI've been asked to make this report for this magazine; I`ll try to make a report, which is a bit different from the usual ones. In Italy, the Amiga-freaks can be divided into 4 groups:  Å* Á Guys who just want to play with their Amigas (and they can't do anything else) - Guys who want to make money by selling games and by making abos (they aren't able to do anything else)  Ê* Á Guys who buy a lot of hardware just to have some fun (they are the richest Amiga owners, they are experts in using some programs but nothing more)  Ä* Á Guys who want to have fun by coding, painting, composing and so on. Sometimes they will sure get involved in the scene, or in a commercial project for a software house, or in both things Of course there are also freaks who belong partly to one and partly to another category. For example, a coder who can also afford to buy a lot of hardware (HDs and so on...), a musician who likes to play games... As maybe you have noticed, there is not a category of people who use Amiga for business or to work. These guys are too few to be mentioned, because PC and Macintosh cover 99% of the computer's professional use in Italy. Now, the 4th category, as we have seen, is the one which includes all scene-freaks. Let's say it includes also swappers and traders; but only the REAL traders, this means traders who belong to a group and who are involved in the scene, and not suckers who call boards only to upload fakes and to suck the latest warez; of coz it includes also Sysops, trainer-makers and all the rest who is involved in the scene. Let's talk now about the groups. Recently, some of the groups of the "old" generation died: Zero Defects are almost dead, Ghostly Spreaders are going to die too, Vega is dead, Heresy is dead. So, actually I managed to count overall 9 groups. The other ones are just too inactive or crappy to be mentioned.  ÊABNORMALIA: Á This is not exactly a group, but a crew of people who collaborate for the "abnormal" mag. It includes MACNO, the main editor; and PHOENIX, a girl who is really active and smart. With these people, the magazine is going to be always better.  ÉCENTURION: Á I don't know much about this group. I just know that they have a good coder called PHASOR. The latest demo I have seen was good. I think they are a good group, even if with few foreign contacts.  ÆDIVINA: Á They are pretty inactive at the moment, but they keep alive in the mo- demscene. They can afford to be inactive because all italian freaks know the quality of their releases. They can release 1 demo in 1 year, but it will surely be a good or innovative production (if we exclude birthday's intros)!  ÊHALF BRAINS TEAM: Á They produced the best trackmo made in Italy ever, their coders DDT and Mr. Madness are two of the best. They are inactive but the previous production left a wave of coolness which today surrounds the whole group.  ÉICECOLD: Á This group is pretty new but rather active in the modemscene. They are also planning to release a diskmag. We will see.  ÆITALIAN BAD BOYS: Á Many members, few productions. But IBB are the oldest italian group, and they still have a lot of young resources. Recently, they catched two rising stars: the coder Teo (ex-Vega, ex-Grace) and t he musician N-Joy. I see a good future for IBB and for their leader E$G.  ÅNIGHTFALL: Á This crew is formed mainly by some friends who live in Trieste. They are very active either in the modemscene and in the mailscene. Their releases are of a medium quality, but sometimes they are amazing. I think they are the most friendly group of the italian scene.  ÇRAM JAM: Á This group has some good members, like the coder Executor, but other guys who are not really good in doing their job, and can't accept any critic; so they go on producing low-quality stuff, congratulating one with eachother. That's really funny. Anyway, their latest trackmo "Imuzination" was really good. Now, they are trying with "The Charts", they improved some things after the first issue and overall it's not a bad production but it surely can't compete with Eurocharts and European Top 20. They also released 1 issue of the diskmag called "Total Panic", which has been a complete failure. If we don't consider some members, this group could be one of the best.  ÉSKANDAL: Á Actually, in my opinion, they are the number 1. They have 2 great coders, they are friendly and they do not celebrate their productions like some other groups (see above) do. The weak points are the graphic- and music- sections, but I'm sure that when there's the code...gfx and music come without problems. We must add to these 9 groups the italian section of Ì TALENT Á (the cool musician ANDROID) and other italian sections of foreign groups, but I do not know too much about them because they mainly belong to the modemscene (and I don't have a modem). OK, hope that you all enjoyed this quick overview. ¤Á¡Îend. JENo diskmags - No scene?! Ì £Á Ê ¤È¡ÎNO DISKMAGS¤À - ¡Î¤ÈNO SCENE?¤À ¢É Éby BliTTeR / Damian ¦  Á£Á ÊT¢Ç Áhe scene, a thing we all enjoy and don`t want to miss, depends very much on the diskmags, which are released often 1-2 monthly. A diskmag shouldn`t just be a production liked any other, it`s a the forum of the scene. Due to the fact that a scene is only possible because of the great internationality it`s very important to write in a language, which is understandable even in the furthest village. It should contain messages and texts to inform other dudes what`s going on in the different groups, what parties will be held, what problems are to be solved and so on. £Á ÊE¢Ç Ántertainment is also a very important thing which we also don`t want to miss and therefor a diskmag is fun. If you read a diskmag, you can (or should) really feel the spirit of the scene and it`s unique. Reading, enjoying, contributing - simply for fun and the scene. Diskmags are also really important for dudes, who have to tell something important to a big range of freaks. What would you do if there wouldn`t be any Diskmags? Send 500.000 letters to the readers? But here`s the next important thing for a mag - the contacting. If you want to gain new contacts you first will look in various mags to fetch some addresses of cool guys and then write to them. If there were no diskmags, you would have to look in hundret of demos and intros to gain some addresses. I think we can`t miss the diskmags as a piece in the chain between the freaks and the scene. £Á ÊD¢Ç Áiskmags are like a forum in the romanum imperium. People meet, get to know each other and have fun - and that fun is the one, why we all like the scene for. Therefor I can`t understand people shouting at the producers of mags that there are too much mags in the scene...But competition forces only the producing team to try harder! Which on is appreciated by the freaks will peel out in the future. ¤Á¡Îend. JEThe Air On The Top 8 £Á ÄTHE AIR ON THE TOP¤À ¢É Éby BliTTeR / Damian £Á ÊI¢Ç Áf you have a quiter look at the charts of 1992 and 1993 you can notice that all in all you the names on the top are not changing. Just have a look at the coder charts. The Spy receives votes and votes, you can`t stop people voting for him. Hardwired was his project, but what about the other productions? Also good, but not that stunning. Sure, Hardwired was really cool but don`t you think that there are many other productions out there that deserve a position in the charts? I want to draw your attention to thinking about HOW he gets all these votes? around 300 vote for him and the second place has to ge satisfied with around 100. This is in no way representative for all the coders, this makes only the others feel bad, if they are so far behind. It`s a fool that a guy like The Spy receives so much votes and Chaos only a quarter. But we have to accept it, whether we like it or not, that`s the democratic system. £Á ÊT¢Ç Áhe other point to bear in mind is that it`s very hard to enter the charts and if you are in there, you can be sure to stay in there for a long time. Probably not because you keep on working for new productions that good, but very much dudes just vote for guys represented in the last chart because it`s cool. Lately on a party a guy wanted to vote for a chart, but wasn`t able to fill in the sheet without having a look at the previous charts. He just entered names from the best five in random order and it was done. Another vote from a guy who will be counted for your next chart. Sure, this was a extreme example but we have to face the things. £Á ÊP¢Ç Árobaly this fact upsets especially the mags like the Eurochart or the European Top 20, but I think at least about 30 percent of the total voting dudes could be seen as such voters. This phenomen seems to be very popular nowadays, just have a look at the groups. Little groups are either friendship ones or they die soon and join the big ones. The biggest groups like Silents get bigger and bigger until they split up because of no contact to each other.  Ê£ÁI¢Ç Át sounds as some dudes are afraid of voting for a up to now not known group or guy because they don`t want to blame them for their opinion. Many voters just swim with the current tide and forget the others. If you see a production of a no-name-crew, which is very good and one from The Silents you will of course vote for the demo from TSL, just because of their name. I think this is a really serious problem for the charts and make them really suspicious. ¤Á¡Îend.¤À JEA Cry From Slovenia £Á À¡Ä¤ÄA¤À ¤ÄCRY¤À ¤ÄFROM¤À ¤ÄSLOVENIA¤É ¤À ¢É Æby Codeine & Noise Data/Polaris ¢Ç ÁIn the past I`ve seen many of these really informative BBS-reports and would like to introduce you this time into the Slovenian BBS scene, if you can call it this way. Slovenia, the country on the sunny side of the Alps, isn`t a big on and we have only two milions of people living here, so in my opinion the number of BBS's is pretty cool, but who cares for quantitity, the quality of these BBS is very low! We have about 30 BBS online but nearly all are legal and only support PC's!  ÊMany people here got the totally wrong idea about BBS. They mostly chat and don`t think to upload or to download!  É[Really? Is this wrong? -ed] Á But sometimes there are some cool debates going on, but you know when you want to leech short packet within just 250 KB and when there are no cool debates going on it's pretty lame and shity! Well, all these legal BBS are in FidoNet and also in City2City and some other nets. Some big ones are also located here, like the RISP - operating on 10 nodes with 2GB+ - or the ABM, which flies with 7 lines around (only VAX`s!). Sounds not too bad, you may think, but I guess you miss the undergound BBS?! Yep, there is still one pirate board online (Yo! Mum look at me, I'm famous!). The name of the game is  ÉDIGITAL CITY (+38-638-516-61) Á at the moment it's the  ÉPOLARIS Á Slovenian HQ. And beside another Amiga BBS called YABBS, which is legal only these two are Amiga-only supporting BBS! Poor times for Amiga-freaks, but true.. My rating: If you live in Slovenia the only BBS which is worth to call, for trading or leeching stuff is Digital City all other have almost mo new uploads, but as I said before, even  ÊYABBS Á could be better! So, plese give it a pling.... Now, enough about the practically non-existing BBS-scene... I think you should give us a support to build up a new and better scene here in a land without war! We will honor it - be sure! ¤Á¡Îend. JEA computer for you - You for your computer? ¿§ìÀ £Á Ê¡Î¤ÉA COMPUTER FOR YOU¤À - ¤ÉYOU FOR YOUR COMPUTER?¤À ¢É Åby BliTTeR ¨ ¢Ç ÁThe scene is a really good place to get known with guys from different countries and to get friends. Groups, which work together on producitions, are formed and you (should) have a lot of fun! A new production should at least have some stunning effects and a lot of high quality GFX and music. Behind good Trackmos often stands a work of about half a year from 2-5 people. They have to work very hard and additionally the have a lot to sit in front of their computers in order to finish their creations. Time, which a guy without computer can use more usefully, is going and going. The main question is, whether the productions of a computer guy are so usefull for him or his friends. Someone that mainly visits pubs, hangs around with friends, etc. will probably jugde the work of a computer freak to shit, because he can`t see the sense of sitting in front of a painting program or a text editor. The computer- and scenefreak will answer that the scene is a great thing and that it`s the best thing a computer is for! I think that`s quite right, but what does this mean for your further life? Sure, you have some contacts in different countries for some time, but you aren`t able to check out other things in your surrounding. Just have a look at some computer freaks, who are about 25 years old an have a look back at  Éthe "glory" days of their youth Á. The only thing they can remember is that they spent most the time in front of their computer working on productions, playing (stupid) games. But going to discos, meeting with friends or stuff like that are words of a foreign language. Some extremes have never had a girl-friend - not because they are that ugly, no, they just wasted their youth in front of their computer. If they could change it, they sure wouldn`t do the same thing again! They would just do things guys without a computer also would do...In my opinion a computer should be a thing with which you can have fun and due to this you enter the scene and have more fun. Time is going by and not too many dudes care about their probably "best" time of their lifes...Always remember that there are also lots of ways to have very much fun with and that the computer isn`t the main thing in your life! It`s just a machine with some electric elements and nothing more! All in all I would say that having fun with your Amiga is good, but if you see in this machine a substitute for a friend you are just too stupid! Try to tell your problems to your Amiga! The best answer it could give you:  ÊGuru Meditation - Software Failure Á. ¤Á¡Îend. JEA Perfect Voting System? ÿ £À  ÈA PERFECT VOTING SYSTEM?¤À ¢É Çby BliTTeR ¢Ç ÁYou spend a lot of time in front of your computer in order to make your product - no matter whether it`s a picture, a sound or a code - just perfect enough to compete in the competition and to win a prize at the competition. You have given it to the organisers before the deadline and you are looking forward to  Åseeing your production in the competiton Á. But you don`t see it! Your GFX wasn`t choosen by the crew, who selected the GFX for the final showdown. Ahhh!!! You have a quiter look at the pictures, which take place in the compo and don`t think that these are much better than yours. You feel disappointed. Nice eh? Another one: Your picture competes in the final competiton, but you don`t receive much votes for it, although it`s not worse than the others. You also  Çfeel disappointed Á. Some of you certainly know such a impression and don`t feel like being happy. The sick voters are the bad boys. They didn`t vote for it and you didn`t get the honorous place you should get...I hate these shit voters...Why didn`t they vote for me? I have spent weeks in front of my computer just to finish this GFX and now I see a work of some hours on the first place of the competition...That`s foolish! If I hear such things I feel like taking care of a question, which isn`t too simple to answer.  ÅHas a musician the knowledge to judge the work of a grafican or does he just vote for the picture, because he knows the grafican quite well? Á As I see this problem, there are two big opinions. The one is that only graficans should be able to vote for the grafic competition and the other that the productions must come up to the expectations of everybody, no matter whether it`s a swapper, musician or trader. Sure, the first thing is a good meant solution for this problem, but in fact a really bad one. You have to bear in mind:  ÇWhen can you call somebody a grafican? Á If he creates a ugly logo within 1 minute or when he is sitting 25 hours a week in front of his Dpaint? Another problem is to elect the jury for the competitions! The jury mustn`t consist of well-known graficans, who compete in the compo, because they would certainly vote for themselves or the votes would depend on the strategy. But if you only have not-well known persons in the jury it`s the same hitch again. The second opinion fits the current voting system, in which everybody is allowed to vote. Some coders or musicans will probably add that it`s really disappointing to see people don`t worrying about the difficulty you faced during the creation of your production. But I think that this isn`t the fact a production is judged by a "normal" freak. If the thing looks nice and comes up to his wantings he surely doesn`t worry whether it was very difficult to make or just a simple trick. The  Çoverall impression Á should be the thing on which you base your votes. I have to admit that even this method isn`t the "real" thing. What do you think? ¤Á¡Îend. JE Where Is The Good Old C64? ¼§ìÀ £À È¡ÁGOOD OLD C64?¤À ¢É ÇThis is a orginal letter from a C64-freak, which was sent to Dire / The Dark Demon.  Å¢ÇHello (Ex)-C-64-Freaks! ¨  ÁExactly 10 years ago I didn`t know what it should mean for me to buy my first computer, a C64. First of all I was ruined financially, because I had to ask my father for some money and take all money from my bank. I never will forget when I opened the box, connected the cable of the computer with the TV like described in the manual and nothing happened... with shaking hands I checked all connections after reading this part of the manual again. Ah! The reason for the noisy screen was that I had to change the channel a little bit. And in fact the "snow" disappeared and  ÇI saw the screen - Wow! Á I tested the keycombination Ctrl and a number to change the colour of the cursor, but that didn`t look very nice on this blackwhitescreen. My first program was this one:  Ê10 PRINT "HALLO MARK" 20 GOTO 10  ÁI was very happy and showed this result to my parents but they weren`t fascinated. Their only reaction was: "... and therefore you paid 1000 DM?". But I got along and read the whole manual... cheers, when I made the soundchip say "Michael roar the board ashore". But the happiness was over quickly because the programs I have written got lost when switching of the computer. As a combined present for birthday and x-mas I got a datasette nine months later. Whole the day I stayed in front of my computer then and pinned up programs from papermagazines. Sometimes even programs which weren`t made for my C64, but I recognized that too late. A few months later I bought "Summer Games". Together with my friend, who owned an Atari-joystick, we spent more time on the 100 meter race at Summer Games than on the school. Here is our personal formula:  ÅThe better the racingtime is, the worser are the marks at school... Á Some years later I could buy me the masterpiece of precision, quickness and confidence: a used floppy drive! We hated us, we loved us. I had to ajust the Read-write head of the floppy manually! Then I exchanged my electric railway with a Seikosha 7pin-printer and my computer system was completed (I thought so). Today, ten years later, I want to go back to these times. Unfortunately all my friends have turned to Amiga or PC. So I want to get to know some new C64 freaks. It would be nice, if you would tell me about your experiences with the C64. There would be enough information and stories for sure to write a new C64-book. I would really like to hear from you soon.  ÊWrite to:  ÉMark Nagell Wiesenweg 28b 2105 Seevetal 3 Germany.  Á ¡Î¤Áend. JE!Are PD-Boards Really Shit? ’§ìÀ £À Ê¤Ç¡Î Are PD-Boards Shit? ¤À ¢É Åby Ace of Damian ¨ ¢Ç ÁWhen I started modemtrading one or two months ago, I realized that there are two different Board Systems. One System is called Elite and runs on  ÉAmiExpress Á, the other ones are so called PD-Boards which run on  ÊFastcall Á. I asked sysops of different about their opinion of the other system. Like coders defense their assembler-programs, every sysop seems to love the program, his BBS runs on. I bet most of the modemtraders reading this are only logged in Boards running on AmiExpress, so most of them don`t know much about Fastcall. Why does only running on AmiExpress mean  É"Elite" Á for the boards? I realized that the stuff normally can be found on a  Ê"Lame" Á PD-BBS the same day or one day later. The advantages for AmiEx are for example, that the traders put all stuff in one conference, they don`t have to put it in different ones. The owners of Boards running on Fastcall make a disadvatage out of this point. They use  Ådifferent conferences Á for demos, textfiles, games, tools,... I think that this is of course more comfortable, especially when you`re only interested in one feature and don`t want to read the whole bunch of new files since your last login. But some Fastcall-Board-Sysops know how to ruin this comfort. The use of one conference for every damned sort of program. A conference for copies, one for HD-Tools, one for normal Tools, one for copyrighted Tools, one for musicprograms and so on... I think that`s a good way to ruin your BBS, especially when a user searches something special or wants to upload something. I had the problem when I wanted to upload the latest X-Copy-Version. Where to put, that was the question... To the copy programs, or maybe the copyrighted stuff? I threw it in a conference (I bet in the wrong one!) and leeched the program I wanted to have, after a few minutes of searching... Another point is the sysop of the different ones. The Boards running on Fastcall seem to have more friendly sysops than the ones running on AmiEx.  Æ[no. -ed] Á They are chatable and like to talk about this and that.The AmiEx-guys are not at home most of the time and if they are, they don`t want to chat (except the sysop of Crying Fields-he`s nice!) The others might also be Ok, but who knows when they don`t like to chat!? With this article  ÉI don`t want to talk bad about anybody Á, here are just some facts I realized. All in all I can`t tell you really what sort of BBS is better, I think every type has advantages and disadvantages. The only thing I don`t understand is why also good boards running on Fastcall are also named "PD-Boards". Only because when you are logged in the first time you can`t see any conference with piracy-warez? With AmiEx you can mostly see the Piracy-Land, but you don`t have access to enter there. At a Fastcall-BBS you can`t even see the Piracy-Conferences. And Fastcall seems to be more comfortable, AmiEx is more for the fast ones that don`t have enough time it seems... Some say that AE is to fit the elite-traders brain - just radical or true? Judge for yourself...  Á¡Î¤Áend. JE"Facet Draws Crap! List5§ìÀ £À ÄFacet - Quality Or Quantity? ¢Ç¤Ç¡Ï  ÊF a c e t d r a w s c r a p ! ¤À ¢É Éby Friendly/Damian ¨ ¢Ç ÁI hope you did not take the disk out of your drive and destroy it, when you read the really aggressive name of it - Of course  ÊI DO NOT Á think that Facet does draw crap. No way, he is really really good and I love many of his releases. But... Since the reborn of the Eurocharts by Static Bytes, Facet is on top of the graphician chart. First he won with 2 points in front of  ÅUno Á, now he leads with 200 ((!!!)I think so)! That's ridiculous, because he is certainly not the best graphician in this way. He is, as everyone knows, the guy with the most releases and I think that should not be the reason for you to vote him on No.1! Take a look on Cougar, in 1991/92 he released just two pictures, but they were so genius, that he reached the second place in the charts. This two pictures (Especially the Dog!) were much better than any Facet production. And his new GFX in Sanity's Interferrence show us that almost every picture from him is better than Facet's.  ÄOr Peachy: Á His  ÅSheryl Lee Á was voted as  Åbest picture in 1992 Á (RAW) and he won the first place at the Party II. Facet reached place four! But... in the Charts we ONLY find Peachy at No.2! I also think that many guys see that Facet is No.1, so they do vote for him, too, because he is so popular. Well, the headline of the Charts shows us that he is the 'most popular grphician', but that should be changed. I'm not interested in the most popular guy, but in the BEST guy. Many freaks should agree with me. It is unfair that people with more talent but less time than other people be ranked worse. So my advice:  ÊVote quality not quantity! Á ¤Á¡Îend.