Letters @~Any letters sent to me that aren't marked 'not for publication' @~and which deal with adventure-related matters will be considered @~for inclusion, maybe being edited in the process. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Comments on machine specs, changes in adventures over the last @~few years, mice, Myth and Magic and DM ... From Ian Taylor, Wallington Kathy and I have just bought "A Final Unity", the Star Trek:The Next Generation game. This looks very promising and would no doubt be brilliant on the sort of machine outlined in the ideal PC spec article (of which more in a while), but on an ageing 486DX/33MHz machine with a piddling 8Mb of RAM, it's only just-about playable. The article on the PC spec was generally spot on and certainly did not overstate the ideal spec. The games that are now being written (eg the ST:TNG game) require high spec machines. Once upon a time, games may have been written for low-spec machines but this is no longer the case: games are written to take advantage of the latest hardware and this will continue to be the case, at least until full-screen full-motion video can be run entirely by the main processor (and we ain't there yet). This means that you need to think at least 3 years ahead when buying a machine. Kathy and I bought our first (& current) PC in December 1992, that's only 2 1/2 years ago. It was almost top-of-the-range at the time and it's already seriously underpowered. My personal feeling is that the article actually understated the spec of a machine to be buying if you still want to be using the machine to play state-of-the-art games in 3 years time! I know it seems incredible, but in 3 years time virtually all PC games will be running under Windows 95 (or Windows NT 97 or whatever) and this will slow things down even more. It's got to be a case of the more money you spend now, the more money you'll save in the medium term (the long term doesn't come into the issue of computer-buying these days unfortunately). This is really unfortunate for those people with a limited budget and I guess that's most of us, but that's what it comes down to. YOU CANNOT BUY A HIGH-ENOUGH SPEC MACHINE! I'd make the following alterations to the proposed spec. A 75MHz machine is too slow! You need to be buying the best processor you can afford. The 90MHz machine is the absolute minimum if you want to be playing CRPGs and adventures in 2 let alone 3 years time. I would seriously recommend waiting for three months (and I don't normally advise waiting) for the Triton motherboard to become widely available and for prices of 120MHz-based computers to drop a little. Anything less than this is a short-term buy (yes, I know it sounds ludicrous, but there you are). The only other suggestion I would make is to buy a VRAMbased graphics card regardless of the type of motherboard RAM, I'm sure it'll be money well spent. Oh and one more thing, when you've spent your 3 1/2 grand, just accept that there will be better along in six months or sooner and for less money, you'll be really p***ed off if you don't Incidentally anyone who gets a 9-letter anagram from RSUKDNAPUW will indeed be a very strange person: there are 10 letters there ! ------------------------------------------------------------------ From Amanda Oliver, Waterlooville I have just received my first issue of SynTax - it took me a couple of hours to get through all that information! I can't believe how much the adventuring scene has improved since I started playing even in 1989. It seems as though the text adventure is dying, unfortunate, but with the highly sophisticated machines that are available nowadays, why not use them to their full capacity? Even if that means graphic, sound and speech. Let's face it, it really makes a difference to the atmosphere of the game. Technology is changing daily and therefore text adventures were not expected to last, as technology improves so does the games and as a result programmers have become highly sophisticated in their programming. The computers available today are so advanced that writing a text adventure would not use it anywhere near its full capacity. Would you pay out over a thousand pounds to play a game that could be easily played on an Amiga for example? In my view, if you have a PC it should be used to its full capacity otherwise you are just cheating on yourself. By all means buy text adventures, but buy the graphic, sound and speech programmes as well, otherwise it would be just a waste of time buying the machine in the first place. (That is unless adventure games are just a sideline and the main use for the computer is word processing or finance, for example.) I have once last query. I haven't been in the adventuring scene for 2 or 3 years now and I now own a PC (which was bought for University work!). I read with interest people's top ten games and I would really like to try some of these games for myself. However, I have no idea where to purchase these games. Can I get them at my local computer shop or have they been deleted and I have to wait until I find then second-hand? What is your suggestion to people new to the adventuring scene who would like to play these games? @~I think the best way (maybe the only way to get hold of them) @~would be to put an advert in a fanzine such as SynTax or Probe @~and ask if anyone has the games for sale. I doubt you'd see them @~in the shops now, unless in a bargain bin or in a secondhand @~section. ------------------------------------------------------------------ From Phil Darke, Camberley Also with regard to Mary Scott Parker and her mouse problems. It may seem obvious but I assume that she has cleaned it. In case not, the best way is to use Isopropyl alcohol and cotton buds and remove all the dirt from the rollers and also give the ball itself a wash, just washing up liquid and water for this and dry thoroughly. If this does not do the trick, then it may well be the mouse itself which is faulty. In which case about all you can do is to buy a new one, but before going to this expense try a different driver. Nearly every supplier has their own mouse driver and I have now got about four different ones. Finally for completely different solution, have you considered a track ball? I recently bought the Logitech Trackman Portable, this clips on to the side of my keyboard and I have found it to be much better than a mouse and also does not take up any desk space. They are a bit more expensive than a mouse but as far as I am concerned well worth the extra. @~I must say that I am very pleased with my Logitech Trackman @~Stationary Mouse, not the portable one but still very neat and @~easy to use. I wouldn't go back to a standard mouse after using @~the trackball. ------------------------------------------------------------------ From James Judge, Chidley Cross To begin with thanks very much for the Myth & Magic figure, the 'Dragon of Pre-History'. It shows a dragon (bit of a surprise there, undoubtedly) sitting on a rock with loads of different fossils scattered around its feet, as well as the obligatory crystal. I probably like it because it was designed by the same person who did the figurine of the year last year (Dragon Of The Underworld), which is now also gracing the mantelpiece. Congratulations must be given to Alex, though, with his mighty total. Where would we all be without his maps? Just past the introduction screen, probably. Well done to Neil, Phil and James too. And now just a little response, non-vindictive, of course ;-), to Brian B's response to my hypocritical views on Dungeon Master. To be honest I really do detest the damn game, and it has become something of a hobby horse with me. That's the trouble with hobby horses, if they get a chance to be exercised they run around the paddock for ages. But, even though (according to Brian) I am paying homage to FTL and DM by giving them both a lot of space, it doesn't mean I actually like the damn thing. I agree that yes, FTL did a good job creating the first person D&D game and ten years ago Dungeon Master was a very good game. But that was ten years ago. We now have a whole deluge of far better games (some just a few months younger than DM itself) and I feel that the game has just grown too long in the tooth. It seems strange to me that a lot of people still rate this game very highly (as does Brian) when they have seen, played and maybe even completed some of the later games. So what if they are copycats - no-one said that the first plane to fly was a brilliant piece of engineering, they were really glad when people started to copy the idea and improve on it. As a base idea DM is brilliant - it has laid the foundations for a whole new genre, but that is all it is and I feel that we should let it die a respectful death now and look to the present and the future. After all, if we did the same thing with text adventures we'd be playing Colossal Cave Part 34 with barely any improvement. Instead we have games that go far beyond this old relic, and VERY few people would rate the original game anywhere near their favourites. Instead they chose good games like the Unnkulian series, Obscure Naturalist, WYSIWYG, The Four Symbols etc. etc. Also I have to give DM adequate space as I am doing an OVERVIEW of the CRPG and if I didn't mention it or relegated it to a little sentence the new RPGers would miss a vital piece of CRPG history. The birth of a game that WAS good but can no longer stand the pace (and couldn't really stand it a couple of years after its release). Anyway, what all this really comes down to is personal opinion, and it's obvious that Brian's and mine disagree. Tell you what, Bri ol' bud, I promise to never slate DM again if you promise never to place it in your top ten and eradicate it from your current one. Deal? Keep up the good work Sue, and I look forward to see WinTax. @~WinTax?? SynWin, p-uh-leeze! - o -