Letters @~First, various comments from: Theo Clarke, SFC Press, London COMMENTS ON REVIEWS Virgin have sent me the CD of the music from their Dune game. It is surprisingly enjoyable and I have been playing it repeatedly. I am very eager to see Dune II but there is little to see at present. Hitchhikers Guide was the first text adventure that I played on the PC although I had been playing Scott Adams adventures on a TSR-80 for years. I found it all fascinating and it led me into the remarkable world of Infocom. I was enthusiastic about the HHGTTG genre having heard its first broadcasts on Radio 4, bought the records, seen the play and been a founder member of HitchHikers Anonymous. All of this information helped me with some of the problems but I had huge trouble with the Babel Fish and later I could not grasp the grain of common sense. Lemmings is everything that you say. My only reservation about it is the time that I waste waiting for it to time out because I am too soft to nuke the poor little critters. I cannot bear to watch the shocked expressions on their little faces at the count down to oblivion. COMMENTS ON FEATURES Over the years almost every one of my enthusiasms has been attacked by the righteous. Comics seduce the innocent. Rock and Roll is the Devil's music. Role-Playing games imperil my soul. Wargames glorify violence. Computer games atrophy the intellect. And as for jazz... Although I enjoyed the PBM feature there were a number of misleading generalisations therein. First let me state my interest. SFC Press is a PBM firm. We run several games of which the largest is a swashbuckling role-playing game En Garde! We are not a US company but we have players from all over the world. There are dozens of other UK PBM firms that have no association with the US. Indeed, the most popular PBM journal originated in the UK and whilst Flagship now publishes UK and US editions, there is still enough UK activity to justify this dual approach. I would also suggest that the pricing suggested is long out of date. The game listing in the latest issue of Flagship indicates that start-up fees range from 50p to œ25 with most being about a fiver. Similarly, most games cost about œ1.75 a turn. Our biggest game costs œ8 start-up plus œ1.63 a turn. Our cheapest costs just œ2 start-up plus œ1.63 per turn but there are savings associated with playing in more than one of our games. SFC Press is a partnership that offers PBM Games, mail order board games and a regular general games magazine ... all intended to enhance the gaming pleasure of people like the partners. Our magazine is the most widely read general games magazine in the UK. It covers board games, wargames, card games, role-playing games, play-by-mail and interactive literature with reviews and news of the industry and the hobby. It does not cover single-player computer games or other puzzles. A free sample of the magazine and any game report is available to any prospective customer. Just write to SFC Press, 42 Wynndale Road, London E18 1DX and mention that you saw this ad in SynTax. @~Thanks for all the comments, Theo, and details of SFC Press. See @~the Adverts section for a list of the PBM games that SFC Press @~offer. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Neil Shipman, Bristol I thoroughly enjoyed the last issue (as I always do) and was especially intrigued by the advert for the Gnomo Swatch. This is just what I'm looking for to give as a stocking filler for Christmas. Unfortunately the ad omitted an address or phone number. Where can I get my Gnomo Swatch from? I liked the Grue's idea of a Tips on TADS section as there are a number of us who are playing around with this system at the moment, so I'm including a few ideas and routines which I've made work OK. Finally, since I sent in my list of Top Ten adventures in Issue 9 two years ago I've obviously played a lot more and some of these latest ones would definitely have a place in my current Top Ten. I'm sure other readers must have found the same thing. Can we send in new lists and, if so, how would you show the changes? @~No problems to change your Top Ten. I'd quite like to change @~mine too because in those days we didn't cover the PC and Zork @~Zero would have been well up the top. I still have everyone's @~original points so can easily give someone's old list, their new @~list and then amend the scoring. @~As for the Gnomo Swatch, yes, it does sound a brilliant idea and so @~cheap! I found it hard to believe myself but, there you are. I @~hadn't realised the price and ordering details had fallen off the @~advert. My apologies to the many of you who must be dying to order @~these fascinating fashion accessories. Just send your orders to @~Hmm, where did that address go again? We seem to be fated not to @~get our Gnomo Swatches! @~.... Ah well, on to the next letter from frustrated Amiga @~owner: Terry Brawls, Newton Stewart (extract) Darn and tarnation! The emulator won't run on my A600! You were correct to say that it doesn't work on an A500+; an A600 is just an A500+, minus the numeric keypad and the edge connector. I've tried it out on a +, no deal. Looking through the files, we discovered that it's meant for the old A500, the one with the 1.2 ROM (it's since gone through 1.3, 2.04 and 2.05!). It would seem to me to be a relatively easy task to rewrite some code somewhere and make it run OK on the A600 but my skills aren't up to it yet. Obviously the easy thing to do would be to pick up another PD emulator - there's enough of them. But not for the 500+/600. I looked through all the PD lists in the Amiga magazines and ALL the ST emulators are for the old A500 - not plus. @~A few weeks later, another letter came from Terry ... The main problem in trying to make the emulator work with the A500+/A600 machines seems to be with the new V2.04/V2.05 software rather than the hardware itself. There's a program in the public domain called 'QUICKBENCH'. I got mine from 17-Bit Software who advertise a lot in the Amiga magazines and the disk number is 1385. It's a cut-down version on Workbench which stays resident in memory after a crash or soft reset; very handy. The point is (and here I'm guessing, I'm still a beginner) that it seems to be composed of quite a few bits of the old 1.3 Workbench and so interacts quite happily (after a fashion) with the emulator. Here's what to do. (1) Boot up with Quickbench - not Workbench - in DF0. (2) Remove Quickbench, insert emulator, double click icon. (3) Select 'SHOW ALL FILES' from the menu. (4) It's a mess but the emulator is represented by icon 'V1.2'. Scroll through the window until you find it. Double click it. You then get the resolution selector and everything else is almost by the book. After disk station B is selected, the fun starts. The whole screen pulsates annoyingly, including the pointer, which makes it hellishly difficult to select things. Well, it's a start. There are lots of Workbench alternatives floating around which may interact more successfully with the emulator. And, of course, someone, somewhere, is bound to come up with a plus-compatible one! @~Has anyone got any ideas? Either regarding an alternative to @~Workbench or a different emulator? If so, please get in touch. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Now a letter from: Graham Wheeler, Bath In the last issue of SynTax you said that the points-for-prizes system introduced some time ago as an incentive for members to send in contributions has proved to be very successful. This is obviously extremely good for SynTax but when taken in a different light is very sad. It seems pathetic to me that you have to bribe (yes, I did say BRIBE) members to get them to send in contributions. There are, of course, a lot of members who would send in the same amount of contributions regardless of any rewards, one that comes to mind is Neil Shipman (who won the prize last time). Being the runner-up to Neil I have to admit that I was very pleased with the prize I received, but as you know I would have sent in the same amount of contributions anyway. I believe that your idea of giving prizes is to say 'Thank you' to the members who contribute to SynTax, so when it comes down to the bottom line the members who know they would have sent in anyway will take it as such. PS Please use this letter in SynTax as I need the points!! @~(Grin>. Well, like you, I look on the prizes as a tangible @~form of recognition for support given during the year and the @~on-going system means that everyone stands the chance of winning @~eventually. Whether that's an incentive or a bribe depends, I @~suppose on each individual's point of view ... something like @~whether a glass is half-empty or half-full! But, whatever they @~think it is, I'm not too bothered. All I know is that it's @~increased the number of individual contributions and made the @~magazine much livelier and, as far as I'm concerned, anything @~that does that can't be bad. I'd hate to go back to the 'old @~days' when, some issues, the majority of the reviews were @~written by me. ------------------------------------------------------------------ John Wilson, Zenobi Software (extract) I have been informed that you recently published a 'part-solution' prepared by JOHN R. BARNSLEY to 'BORDER WARFARE' in which John suggests that the correct approach is to KILL the warrior in the arena. This is totally incorrect in the final version of the game, the one that went on general sale, as you need to elicit such help NOT put him to the sword. So before this leads to me being smothered by numerous letters informing me that the game is 'bugged' and beyond completion I thought I would just point out the error of John's ways .... In order to obtain the TWO potions and to be allowed to pass on to Sunhillow and the rest of the game the player should TALK TO THE WARRIOR and then ASK WARRIOR FOR THE POTION or ASK WARRIOR ABOUT POTION and they will be rewarded with a device that will enable them to open the two 'locked' steel doors, thereby gaining access to the potions. Now return to the wizards and give them what they want. Hope this clears up the problem. @~Yes, it does, thanks. I passed the info on to John and he has @~now completed the game. The reason for the confusion was @~that John was working from what now turns out to be the solution @~(provided by Zenobi) to the original game, not the released @~version. When it didn't work, John contacted one of the authors @~and he said, yes, you do kill him, using 'attack warrior' or @~'attack Gallyon with sword'.