Letters If you don't mark your letter "not for publication" and you write on a subject relating to adventuring or SynTax, I'll assume it's okay for me to quote from it here. ----------------------------------------------------------------- @~First, a suggestion from Matthew Pegg, Milton Keynes What about a mini adventure writing contest? Say 5 locations maximum. The best could be included on the disk. @~Great idea! If anyone would like to write a mini adventure but @~doesn't want to program it for any reason, I'd happily have a go @~at programming it in AGT for them (I prefer it to STAC). If you @~send in a text file, arranged like the sort of printout you get @~from using the script option on an Infocom game, that'd be fine. @~Would anyone else like to offer some programming help? All the @~games could actually be collected onto disk and given free to @~SynTax readers at a later date. Who'll be first to send one in? From Alan Beer, Bristol I was wondering what PC emulator you use to run your PC adventures as I'm thinking of getting one myself. I would be grateful if you or any of your readers could give me any advice about them. What I'm looking for is a PC emulator that would run such games as Wing Commander and Savage Empire which I read may not be coming out on the ST. A friend told me that the ST may not run fast enough to run such games, is this true? My next question is that I use a colour TV, so am I going to run into problems with the different PC monitor modes with CGA, EGA and VGA? At this moment in time I have a 520STFM but I'm hoping to upgrade to 4 meg some time soon. If it is possible to run such games which would be a good emulator to go for? I hear that Supercharger and PC-Speed are good ones. @~I have only ever used PC Ditto which is a disk-based emulator and @~can only cope with the more basic programs. The hardware emulators @~are much better but even so, I doubt very much that they'd be @~able to cope with the sorts of programs you've listed. The best @~you can expect is a CGA display anyway which will work on a TV @~but looks pretty dire. Can anyone out there give more information @~- or is buying a PC the only way to see these games? I must admit @~that's what I've done now but I could justify part of the cost @~because Alan could use it for work (when I let him on it!) ------------------------------------------------------------------ From G.L.Wheeler, Bath I really enjoyed the main feature "ST Public Domain Adventure Round Up" by Colin "Bronco" Campbell in Issue 14 of Syntax, the mini reviews of 28 adventures combined with a difficulty and percentage rating was an excellent idea. Because of the fact that there seems to be a lack of quality commercial adventures being released for Atari at the moment I have been looking at the Public Domain lists for some games to play, so the feature by Colin gave me the chance to read about some adventures that I have not yet purchased or even heard of. It does of course go without saying that everyone has a different view on what is or isn't a good adventure, so I would like to comment on some of the adventures mentioned in the article as I disagree with the percentages and remarks made about some of the ones I have already played. (1) Death Camp:- I just cannot see how this merited a massive 12%, the only redeeming point about this adventure (this term is used in its loosest form!!) is that you get a blank disk if you re-format it! (2) The Village:- This adventure was sent to me for playtesting and after I gave Dave Blower (who is a very nice person - Hi Dave!) my opinion on it he decided to donate it to Public Domain, I personally think that it's rightful place is in a dustbin along with Death Camp (sorry Dave). (3) Enday 2240:- After spending just over 3 months playtesting this adventure it was passed to someone else to finish. If everything that I pointed out about this adventure during my playtest had been corrected it would have been an excellent game, unfortunately this was not the case but even in its present form I believe that this adventure deserves a rating of 60% and not the 38% that it was given. (4) Wizards Tower:- I can't help wondering if there are two versions of this adventure as the review certainly doesn't seem to be based on the game I played. The statement "there are more bugs than somebody with lots of sticks could wave a stick at" just has to be an extreme case of exaggeration! Even though I played this adventure quite a long time ago I cannot remember any outstanding bugs that ruined my enjoyment of the game. Wizards Tower is in my opinion an excellent adventure which I thoroughly enjoyed and I can only presume that it was more the TYPE of adventure that prompted Colin's utter dislike of it rather than the adventure itself. (5) From Little Acorns:- Seeing that Colin has been very quick to draw attention to the bugs in other adventures, I cannot understand why he hasn't made any mention of the large amount in this adventure, but even taking the bugs into account I must admit that this is a very enjoyable little adventure and well worth a rating of 55%. The difficulty rating given of Hard/Medium has to be wrong though as the game has a built in HELP file which gives the answers to almost all of the puzzles contained in the adventure. (6) Shards of Time:- This is an excellent adventure and I completely agree with Colin's assessment of it. (7) Blackscar Mountain:- Once again an excellent adventure and well worth the rating Colin gave it. (8) Operation Blue Sunrise:- It's alright Colin I haven't played this adventure YET!!, but I will be so keep your eyes open for my review! Well that covers my views on the adventures I have completed that were included in Colin's article. As you will most likely have noticed in most cases my opinions are very similar to his. I now have no doubt as to which adventure I will be purchasing next, yes I am sure that you have already guessed the title, it just has to be "OPERATION BLUE SUNRISE"!! @~I don't think it's finished yet, is it, Colin? If it is, why not @~send in a review copy for Graham to do a review of it? The demo @~(in the SynTax shareware section) is very promising though so @~I'm sure anyone who has tried that is looking forward to the @~full adventure. ------------------------------------------------------------------ From Neil Shipman, Bristol Thanks for another great issue of SynTax. In addition to the usual good mix of interesting reviews and useful hints I especially enjoyed "The Cuplard Look" by Paul Cardin. It was a story I re-read a couple of times in order to appreciate fully the allegorical references and the quality of the writing. Excellent! I know that the author has written a couple of Spectrum adventures which were well received by the 8 bit fraternity. How about converting these for us ST adventurers, Paul, or perhaps writing another short story for SynTax? I was also interested to read Colin Campbell's round-up of some 28 PD adventures. I've played 20 of the titles he mentioned and I found myself broadly in agreement with his ratings. Any of those which scored 50% or more are well worth taking a look at plus, for me, A Dudley Dilemma and Sir Ramic Hobbs - even with the bugs! Finally on the question of colours for SynTax, I wouldn't like to see any change. If you can provide a black and white option, Sue, and enough people want it then that's fine, but don't alter the standard colours which help give each issue of the magazine its own distinctive look. @~I like the different colours too. Unfortunately it doesn't seem @~possible to have the same colours for the PC version, PCs varying @~so much from machine to machine, so that will be in standard white @~on dark blue, nice and easy to read. If anyone wants a black and @~white version of the normal ST/Amiga versions, just send me a @~blank disk and I'll give you copies of the screens to put onto @~your SynTax disks.