»CL9:»SML:-------------------------------------- »CL8:»BIG: 'Devotion 2' & DISC 11 Reviews »CL9:»SML:-------------------------------------- »CL4: by Darkhawk »CL0: Tadaa, the diskmag review continues. Actually, just 2 issues ago, it was quite hard having any mags to review, as there weren't that many, but 2 times now, we have had 2 diskmags to review. Ehrr ok, the EC for the PC and Devotion 2 are maybe not that interesting to read a review about, but hey, it looks better that way. Bigger anyway.. So, this time, I will start with reviewing what is the sad remains of the mag Devotion #2 should have been. And after that, I will cast aside all journalistic rules about impartiality, and review DISC#11, which is in part my own mag, with the rest of the mainteam in it, of course. Hehe, subjective? Ohh yes! »CL2: Again a Diskmag Died -------------------------------------- »CL0:Hrmm, can't say it was surprising getting this message in my email box, the 27th January, it was from Magic, and it contained a lha file with the title dvn2dead.. Hrmm hrmm, it turned out that Magic had spread some of Devotion #2, namely the Magical Moments corner, and the Party Corner, which he was especially proud of, as he said. »CL1:Stupid move»CL0: I remember thinking. It is ofcourse ok, that he spread his own articles, but what about the articles of the other writers? They had given their articles to Devotion, for inclusion into that mag, and some would object to their work being spread in a boring lha package as .txt, I guessed. Well, that was one thing, but I got a bit more angry when I saw that Magic had included Wade's review of the TP10 graphics in that archive. Yes, it is the same article you can read in this issue of the EC. How come? Well, Wade had decided to withdraw all of his support from Devotion some days before, and I told this to Magic, who promised not to use it, unless he would get the permission from Wade.. »CL1:Yeah right»CL0:... Forgetting that ultra-lame move, and looking at the archive, what do we get? We get the titlepicture from Critikill (formerly Fame), which features two hands in praying pose. It looks good, but argh, I do hate photoshop.. Couldn't scene artists 1) Use Amiga 2) Pixeldraw again instead? Well, the picture is ok in any case. Let's just forget about the music and code, and move on to the articles instead. Apart from the 2 corners, Magic included his Last Words for Devotion 2, aswell as an article about its dead, where he sounds pretty frustrated and quotes a little note from Darkus. Looking at the Magical Moments Corner, there's only 5 articles, 2 of those introduction and end. Most interesting and pleasing is the RokDaZone interview. And most funny thing about that, is my former maineds opinion of my writing skills. I had to visit my psychiatrist for some days afterwards, but I get a smile on my face when thinking about that interview really. Too bad RokDaZone quit, he was my favourite writer in recent years. Anyway, apart from that, the corner is boring and short. On top of that, Magic's wish to be popular, and his quest for self-promotion, shines too blatantly through in the start, the ending and the news section. I find that amusing, and of course, all editors desperately crave fame and popularity, but this is none too subtle. Maybe you will get some fun out of reading the articles with that perspective. Last thing about Devotion is the Party corner. It is here we find an ok amount of articles, from various writers. 17 articles here. The reviews of productions are generally very fine, but the section includes results and reviews of old parties like the MS and the ASM parties, both of which had already been held when Devotion #1 was out. Also, the MS review is ripped from the internet, atleast I read it half a year ago on the net. The partyreports are ok too, although there're some factual errors in Magic's TP report. All in all, there might be a few things in this archive to keep your interest for a few minutes, nothing more. In addition, atleast Magic's articles do not seem to have been properly spellchecked, which might also detract a bit from them. And that's it, now over to something a bit more interesting than a small archive. Now we will have a look at what might be the biggest diskmag in the history of the scene, bytewise. »CL1:1035590 bytes of articles»CL0:. It might be that some Grapewine issues had more, so since I am not sure, I will not call it the biggest, but it's close in any case. That the team managed to bring out a diskmag with that much content is quite amazing, looking at the size of the scene today (yes, I just gave myself a solid clap on the shoulder here too.. Expect much more of this later). »CL2:DISC#11, The Return! -------------------------------------- »CL0:Before going to the mag, I must point your attention towards the nice intro for this issue, code and music by TrickTrax and the logo by Unreal. I especially like the TV box effect, and the 'poem'. A fine intro all in all. As for the mag itself, the first thing you notice, is the title picture, that is, unless you didn't install the fonts, or made an assign to them, if you didn't, you won't notice anything but the mag quitting, hehe. But if everything works, you will see the titlepicture by Made/Bomb, which is.. Stunning really, one of the best in any diskmag. Probably it is a partial copy from an oilpainting, it looks a bit Botticelli to me, but in any case, it is a »CL1:stunning, pixelled picture»CL0:. As for cliparts, there are a lot, both from graphicians and from cliparts taken from various places on the web, group logos, demopictures, photo's, etc. Always nice with cliparts to spice up a mag! The mag fills 1.9mb archived,and this is mostly a result of the amount of text and graphics. The panels in the mag were done by Wade, and frankly I'm not too ecstatic about them, they look a bit too »CL1:unnuanced and boring»CL0:. There's another picture on the first page of the indexpages too, done by Beast, also an ok one, although it is likely not pixelled (tsk, tsk). Ok, but what hits you when scrolling through the indexpages of the mag, is.. '»CL1:shit, this mag is huge!»CL0:'. 120 articles, sorting away news, adverts, party results and such, we get a total of 95 articles! That's a lot really. Around 2.5 times more than the last EC, and hrmm, 1.5 times more than in this issue. Thus DISC#11 features around twice as many articles than other diskmags have done in the last years. The articles are not small fillers either. Two articles are 64kb and 98kb respectively! It took me 7 hours of quite fast reading to get through it all. Regardless of the actual contents, that's a big plus in my book. More about the quality of the contents later though. As for the code, it is »CL1:systemfriendly»CL0:, multitasks, all the stuff you expect from a system mag. Some people have reported that their mousepointer disappeared when running the mag. That is likely due to some other things in the system, like patches, e.g. One reported that the entire mag went black after he changed page in articles, but now it apparently works without problems, so as for real bugs, there doesn't seem to be any. As for functionality however, the picture looks a bit different. When you press the 'menu' button, you return to the first page of the index, which is Beasts picture. This is »CL1:damn annoying»CL0:, you should return to the place where you left the index. Also, you can't go to the menu with the right mousebutton, infact RMB has no function at all. Last annoying thing is that there's a "search" button, but no search routine. Guess that button should better have been removed then. The code has one nifty and original feature though, and that is links as we know them from the browsers. You can press specific names and words (like Zerox, Darkhawk, Gods, demonames, etc.) and get transported to another article or a relevant picture. Nice seeing »CL1:new»CL0: features in a diskmag. The mag can also handle a lot of different fonts, in different sizes, and it can »CLA:flash words» too, to name some other features. Apart from that menu thing, the mag handles nicely and does what you would expect. Cupid of IRIS made the code. Music wise, DISC features 3 tunes. Number one is Sleep Well by Chromag. This is »CL1:a very, very good tune»CL0: in my opinion, but the other two tunes, made by Curt Cool and Marc, are good too. You can easily listen to all the 3 mods for hours while reading, and still think they are pleasant and that they fit into the mag perfectly. 3 tunes is an ok number for DISC #11 too, because of the massive content. Normally musicians are a bit afraid of having their module listed as 2nd or 3rd in a mag, because many people won't listen to them, but with DISC, you can listen to each of the 3 modules for hours, without finishing reading, so 3 modules are not too many really. And lastly.. The articles.. Many people have contributed with articles. I myself, but »CL1:especially Zerox»CL0:, did most of them though. Ahemm, I think it would step beyond the lines of modesty to review my own articles, so let's look a bit at Zerox, the main contributor's articles. The 2 articles that attracted the most attention in the entire mag, were Zerox's articles about Andromeda's new demo. During the night of the release, two people asked me where to get the demo, so it did fool some, hehe. A lot of people commented on them and thought them funny, while one thought it was rather lame. In any case, those articles got the most initial attention, which was well-deserved too, they are written very convincingly, and the review is thorough. Read Zerox's article about '»CL1:pure Journalism»CL0:' elsewhere in this EC for a follow up to those articles. The Coder about Coders article was quite appreciated too, atleast many coders liked it. Also his articles about the history of the scene are incredibly detailed in regards to releases and people, and amazingly huge too. It is a bit hard pointing at a few articles though, as he wrote so many articles for this issue, and most are in some way interesting, some funny ones too. All in all, Zerox has never written this many good articles in one place before. Definately he's »CL1:one of the very best editors around»CL0: today. As for the other people in the mainteam, there's Lord Helmet and Ghandy. Lord Helmet is a great writer with cool ideas, but he has not participated very much in this issue, sadly. I think there's 1 article by him, and 2 or so articles written by Zerox and him. I would of course have liked to see his full return to writing again, but one can't have it all. As for Ghandy, his articles are nice as always, but I don't think there are many (any?) of his articles, which haven't been used before, mostly as articles on Scenet. This is a real shame I think. Hope to see more articles from you for the next issue! Worth special mention from the ranks of the guestwriters, is Punisher. He wrote some interesting articles about swappers (well, if you're into that stuff, ofcourse), and gave a nice interview. I hope to see more articles from him in the future! »PIC:Malmis.64x39x5.iff» Ok, all in all, this is »CL1:the best diskmag»CL0: that has been released for years! (yes, this mag is a chartmag, so I'm not belittling the EC, would never dream of doing that, hehe). It has got massive content, with a lot of diverse topics, not just the usual mag about mag stuff, it really gives you an insight into the scene and the happenings. It might be a good mag for an Amiga scene newcomer to read and get up to speed with. The intro trailer is a fine piece of work, the music is well above average for sure, the intro pics are very good, the panels are adequate and the code is ok too, except for those mentioned things, but what really counts are the articles, and they are very impressive in their length, diversity and number. Definately NOT a mag to miss. Go get it at once if you don't have it already! »CL2:Again a Diskmag Died? -------------------------------------- »CL0:Uhmm, this is an update to this review of DISC. You should read the Zerox article about the topic, you can also find that one in this mag. I must say, the last week has not been quiet diskmag-wise. Devotion dies, ST is delayed, DISC gets released, DISC dies.. Well, »CL1:maybe DISC dies»CL0:, hopefully not though. But in any case, I want to make you aware that DISC was infact spread as 2 archives. First it was released and spread as GDS-DC11.lha, the version most of you have, this is the version Cupid fixed. »PIC:Darklight.+ec_11.iff» DISC11_F.lha is the version Zerox wanted spread instead. I think both versions are online in most places. I think it is very sad that we did not see the thing with the cliparts and the empty lines before releasing it, »CL1:BUT»CL0: I also think that gds-dc11.lha is the best-looking version of DISC#11. However, please check out for yourself, and give the version Zerox wanted spread a chance too.