THE THIRD DIMENSION LETTERS SECTION --------------- To all Third Dimension Members! We may be starting up a new idea in the New Year that may be of interest to you.The best 3D kit games from the past and new ones produced in the future will be appearing (with the authors permission) on a new series of disks entitled 'Third Dimension Gold'.These will probably be advertised at 2.99 each and will be full games.The author will receive half this amount for each disk sold and all the disks will appear in any adverts that we take out with computer mags. If you like this idea then let me know. Tony. ---------------------- To Nigel Alefounder. Dear Nigel, Through Tony I received your Lindum Roman Town demo. I found it very interesting to walk through the different areas. The buildings are beautiful and very well drawn. As far as I am concerned, I would like to see a few more direction pointers such as going straight to the left or to the right. I know that in real life you very seldom walk that way but I always am very interested in finding out how objects are drawn. It would also be very nice to be able to "fly" in the area to really look at the buildings on top (just like in the video-sequence). But these are just a few remarks which are so personally that someone else could think quit differently about this. As far as smoother transitions to other areas are concerned, I would like to give you a tip to look in the User Group Magazine nr. 13 of June/July 1993 (it's a long time back, I know). But in that particular magazine is an article by J. Hayes about Landscape technique and the way the player (or user) can be transported to another area by reaching a certain X,(Y),Z point when walking through an area. The whole article is very interesting and there is also a datafile accompanying it, i.e. Land.kit . You can find that one on our 3RDDIM Mag, issue 8, December 94, PC version, in the 3DKit1 directory. The Border, Land.iff, is in the Borders directory and has a great compass on it. I hope to see more of your town in the future and wish you a lot of success in creating it. All the best, Mieke ------------------------- If you are reading this,Merry Christmas from Tony. ------------------------ Dear Mieke, Thank you for your letter Tony published in number seventeen of the diskmag.Glad you liked my "FunOne" program. The character dipicted was very popular in this country during the last war, appearing everywhere with divers sayings. I did see your second page of text files eventually after mention by Tony. My fault, really, for not being on the ball. Most of us, no doubt, assume that others will understand what we say and write, and, of course, lots do not. So we always have to bear that in mind and make things as 'clear?', hopefully! Kit 2, to me anyway, seems one of the 'others' that has problems in under- standing what one tells it to do, especially with animation code. One time it will and another time it will not carry out the same instruction. Thank you for your kind offer of help. I am not really into gaming, which you will perhaps undestand when my 'profile' gets done. But I have recently taken prints of all your texts for your "Mission impossible tutorial" and have found them interesting, together with some help. I am disappointed at not having after all this time finished my 'FunTwo~ program, Tony knows why. But if you ever get to see it I trust you may find it even more pleasurable than 'FunOne'. Kind regards. John Wright (the A from M) ------------------------- To: All Amiga-owning 3D kit programmers: What a coincidence that Terry Brawls should mention cross- formating games in his Amiga-DOS article (issue 19), in order to reach as many 3Dkitters as possible, since I have just approached Tony on this very matter. Hopefully, you will soon see ZONE RUNNER on the Amiga PD list with more titles to follow, but there are far more Amiga than ST titles in the PD list, so how about a few Amiga to ST conversions? (Come on Tony, you know us ST users are dying to play DEVIL'S ABODE, after those tantalising glimpses on the tutorial video!) Isn't this co-operation between users of various formats (Particularly as demonstrated by OURTOWN) much better than the old ST vs Amiga arguments which used to occur at the height of both machines' popularity in those letters pages run/written by 'spotty-faced Anoraks?' Peter D. Ward Dear Peter Devils Abode started out being created on the 16 bit Atari ST but ended up being completed on the 32 bit Amiga.This was because I wanted to see a speed increase etc in the game.As such it never got past a few areas on the Atari and ended up being an Amiga only game.I agree that it is better to reach as wide an audience as you can and quite a few members have wanted to see an Atari version,so the good news is that it is now available for the Atari too! They always say that it never hurts to ask! You will also be happy to know that Mieke has very kindly converted Zonerunner from the Atari onto the Amiga.I will also be producing an AGA intro version too for Amiga A1200 users.I will also try to convert some other Amiga games over to the Atari etc.So if anyone has an Amiga game that you would like to see out on the Atari or vice versa then let me know and time permitting,I will convert it for you.I will only be able to do this with the permission of the game authors and also providing that they supply the datafiles etc.Now where's my anorak gone? ......Tony ------------------- To: Peter D.Ward Dear Peter, I read your letters on our November Diskmag and I would like to reply to you about converting your games to Amiga and PC. Quite some time ago I ordered some games you wrote on the Atari from Mandy. These were: - Kakrivs because you sent it in as a datafile. Moreover there are a lot of objects on the disk as well. Everything could be easily converted to the Amiga and all the colours remained the same. - Hysula. As this was the standalone version I couldn't convert it to the Amiga, hence I couldn't play it, but there were also a lot of very good objects supplied on this disk. These could all be converted to the Amiga. To be honest I didn't play Kakrivs as yet because I remember that I had a lot of difficulty using your movement system, so at that time I was more interested in the objects on disk. In the accompanying readme file of Kakrivs, you mentioned something about the Sambrook bug. Because of that you couldn't make the game standalone and when loading the datafile into Kit1, you first had to load the border and after that the datafile. I already tried to convert the game to the PC and that works fine. But here also I have to load the border first before the datafile, because otherwise I get total rubbish on screen. So at the moment I'm not sure whether I can make a standalone datafile of it. Moreover, I have to recolour 24 areas and that takes up quite a lot of time. But as I also have an Amiga datafile with the correct colours, it can be done. I can't promise you when it will be ready though. To be honest, recolouring areas is a very dull job. I did it once with my Amiga Kit1 game Mountain Adventure when I converted that to the PC. But as I have this datafile of yours already in my possession, I will give it a try and will let you know the results of it in due time. I like your objects both from Kakrivs and from Hysula, so with your permission, I would like to use some of them for the Design Course. There are a few restrictions when converting an Atari or Amiga datafile to the PC: First of all there are ABSOLUTELY no more than 60 objects allowed in one area. The ones above 60 are always invisible. The Kakrivs datafile is OK because there are indeed 60 or less per area. But on Atari and Amiga Kit1 it is possible to use more objects. That's the reason why Planet of the Daleks (Amiga) couldn't be correctly converted to the PC. Secondly, the Buffer size may not be increased because the PC doesn't know a buffer size and is restricted to the default size of approx. 64000 bytes. That's the reason why my game Atlantis couldn't be converted to the PC. The sounds will always differ because on Amiga and Atari you are allowed to make your own samplebank, whereas on the PC Kit1 there is only one standard (default) soundbank incorporated in the program. When converting Kit1 datafiles to Kit2, this is sometimes not possible because the area size differs in both programs. When you make a datafile in Kit1 which you want to use in Kit2, you better stay well within the limit size of the area. Make sure that all coordinates are less than 8192. See Kit2 Manual, page 171. Anyway, I will do my best on Kakrivs and look forward to playing your full Zone Runner game. All the best. Mieke -------------------------------------- Hello Tony, Congratulations to you and your small special band of helpers on the continued success and media recognition of the diskmag, and we all know it is your driving spirit that carries it forward from strength to extra strength. So I am sure you are all very elated. I am a bit disappointed at still not being able to let you have my FunTwo program, the continuing discomfort is not conducive to the concentration I need to do the coding - there will come a time, hopefully when it will ease up long enough. However, I have managed to finish the 'profile' I promised you some time ago, together with a letter for Mieke. Best wishes. John Wright (the A from M) Dear John Thanks for the compliments and for your profile,most interesting! Members will find this elsewhere on the disk to read.If anyone else would like to send in their profile for inclusion into the diskmag then send it in to the usual address. I hope that things start looking up for you quite soon John and i will look forward to your FunTwo file when it is ready.In the meantime don't rush things and take it steady. All the best .....Tony ---------------------------------------- Dear Tuny, Christmus his came a lottle early in our house because my husband Johhn bought my present and then realized that it was too big to hid in his sock drawer so i have it alridy. it is a PC called Fred and i thought i wuld rite and toll you about som of the priblems i am hiving with the vastly differunt kaybord. i seemto be hiving a lit of trible funding the shoft key and keep prossind return instead with the resilt that most of mi copitol letters turn out to be small ones at the startof a new lone. I (that`s bitter), also keep missing the spice bar which is strange whit it isso big and also in tge same ploce as the one onthe usual cimputer - about the onli thing that is. perhaps it isn`t used tomy gentle touch and licks toge hit rather that pressed, bu cmputers are mi friends and iwould niver hit one unless it hitme first! I am verry pleased to till you all thet my best komputer friend knownas Amiga (who I thought mite be a bat jealous) has taken to Fred and as Amiga is a lady kimputer there is no tilling what may hippen nixt. I will kope you infromed of any frther devolopmints so keep reeding this poge in case i get any baby PC`s for sole. i kno that you will all be kind amd frogive the few mistooks i have maid, in return I promice that i willtry and get sum moor prictace bifor i rite any more litters to you. at the moment my printeris connectef to tge amiga sonow i have totry amd werk out how to safe this on a flippy desk so that itcan be looded on your computter and pronted on your deskmug. keep op tge good work Tomy and hippy krosmus to you al. luv from Mindy. Dear Mindy Thanks for the kind words,Merry Christmas to you too!.I am now in a position to say "Good luck in the new year" because previously my computer used to print the letter 'F' when I pressed on the 'L' key.Ha! All the beast ...Tiny. --------------------------------------------------- Dear Tony I know we keep seeing the 3D kit video mentioned in the letters section with praise etc being mentioned about it from various members. So,I thought that I may as well see what all the fuss is about.Having watched it three times and bored my wife to bits,I must congratulate you on this wondorously informative video.It is superb and greatly puts to shame the original twenty minute effort supplied with the kits.Well done old chap! Jonathon Harold Junior Esquire. Once again Thankyou for the compliments Jonathon......Tony -------------------