Letters @~Any letters or emails received on an adventuring-related topic @~may be reprinted in here unless marked 'not for publication'. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~First, part of an email from the SynTax Contributor of the Year: Bev Truter, Glen Huntly, Australia Yes! Yes! Yes! The "studious dragon" arrived early Friday morning - I was still in my pyjamas when the post(lady) knocked at the door with this gigantic parcel. He (the dragon) is absolutely gorgeous; sitting on his pile of books on my mantelpiece, one eye on the volume he's reading, and the other peering up at me every time I look at him. At the moment I think he's trying to find a 'shrink' spell and an 'enlarge' spell in the book he's reading - he's flanked by a pottery wombat 3 times his size, and a small pewter castle half his size....and is giving them both an assessing stare. Many thanks for picking him out Sue, and sending him all the way to Oz, he's much appreciated. @~Incidentally, Bev has now decided the dragon is female and she @~is known as Grendel's Mum after a character in Beowulf who @~struck Bev as being a Good Sort and pretty heroic in her own way @~... Sue Before I forget, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to SynTax too; this is the beginning of what I'm sure will be another successful year for the diskmag. Congratulations on having had the inspiration to start up SynTax way back in '89, and for having the enthusiasm to keep it going where many other mags have floundered and folded. And while I'm in this mellow, expansive and congratulatory mode, let me congratulate the other 4 top contributors too - well done Phil, Alex, James and The Grue, as well as all the other SynTax readers who sent stuff in to Sue - we might be what we eat, but SynTax is what we write. @~A bit more from Bev ... Jess is reading "Moving Pictures" (from the Discworld series) at the moment, and she came across this delightful quote, which I thought was particularly appropriate for Mary S-P and anyone else who enjoys mapping games. "Map-making had never been a precise art on the Discworld. People tended to start off with good intentions and then get so carried away with the spouting whales, monsters, waves and other twiddly bits of cartographic furniture that they often forgot to put the boring mountains and rivers in at all." I must get that Gerald Durrell book from the library (My Family and Other Animals) that she mentioned - I remember reading it ages ago while I was still at school, and it was very enjoyable. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Next a letter from this year's runner up: Phil Darke, Camberley, Surrey Thank you for the splendid Myth and Magic figurine which I received this morning. This will take pride of place in my glass cabinet alongside the other one I received. Yes, I did realise in advance that I was probably going to win second place but that did not detract one iota from the pleasure of receiving it. I write for SynTax because I enjoy doing it and I would still continue to contribute if there were no prizes and I hope to carry on contributing for many more years. I also think that the real prize if it were possible should go to you, Sue, for all your hard work and unstinting efforts in producing SynTax. I know that over the last eight years you have had some difficult times and perhaps even considered closing SynTax. I continue to look forward to each new issue and read every article. When I meet a fellow adventurer or find someone who is stuck in a game I always mention SynTax. Well done, Sue, keep up the good work. Ok, you can stop blushing now and if you publish this letter don't you DARE edit it! ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~And now one from 4th prize winner: James Judge, East Peckham Wow! Another year gone, and too quickly for my liking. Anyway, thanks a lot for the figurine this year. Again, the piece is impeccable, picturing a wizard kneeling before a font with his arms raised. In his clasped hands lies a newly born dragon and before him is a font (cunningly shaped as a dragon) with the crystal taking place of the water. And, surreally enough, there's a frog on the crystal. The piece is called The First Born, for anyone interested and was crafted by Squiggle Squiggle Squiggle, according to the signature on the base. My collection is still steadily growing (about 19 pieces now, excluding my small neck pendants) and I heartily recommend anyone to start collecting these pieces as they really are beautiful. Congratulations, of course, must go to Bev Truter who seems to have played and reviewed every text adventure in the past year that dared make its presence known. As well as Phil, Alex and Grue! Again, SynTax has proven to be a varied and interesting read, giving me many hours of pleasure over the past year. Cheers, Sue, and keep up the good work - dunno how you do it! James. @~Well, it was great to hear from ALL the winners that they were @~pleased with their figurines and it was lovely of you to say how @~much you enjoy SynTax. I did accidentally end up with my own @~prize this year as I mistakenly bought 6 figures instead of 5. @~I dithered about keeping one for next year ... 3 seconds later @~The Loremaker was sitting on the top of my processor next @~to my laughing Buddha. They make an interesting pair, the Wizard @~deep in thought as he reads his book and the Buddha clearly @~finding the whole thing hilarious as he chuckles away behind the @~wizard's back. @~It has been a challenge sometimes getting SynTax out on time - @~the worst time was when I went down with a severe case of chicken @~pox about 5 years ago and was told not to do anything for 6 @~weeks. It would take a lot for me to stop the magazine now after @~so many years; I've loved putting it together every other month, @~meeting (sometimes only by phone but somehow that doesn't @~matter) a lot of interesting people and making some close @~friends. @~Right then, back to the letters! ... Sue ----------------------------------------------------------------- @~A quick comment on MtG from Richard Hewison, via email I read Alex's review of M:TG and smiled...very similar experience to me so far. I've now uninstalled it as I just can't get the hang of it. However, your review looks like it might enlighten me a little so I might go back to it soon. @~Richard is also having a bash at a _real_ game with the Star @~Trek collectible cards. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Now a query about Cyrix compatibility, taken from a letter from: Carolyn Brown, Sandysike, Cumbria Having finished Chronicles of the Sword, I took the plunge and bought Daggerfall, having been tempted by Brian Burke's extremely useful series of help notes on this game. I have recently upgraded my machine to a Cyrix P150+ (supposedly a cheaper answer to a Pentium 120), 16 MB of RAM and a bigger HD, so when I read the Readme file included on the Daggerfall CD, I wasn't very pleased to see that Cyrix chips were not supported. You would think they would state that clearly on the box, wouldn't you? Anyway, on reading further down the file, right at the end it stated that various patches had been included in this particular release which would seem to solve all the problems Brian refers to in his articles. Also, it said, much to my relief, that Cyrix chips were now supported. ... I had hoped Daggerfall would be an improvement [over Arena] and so far I haven't been disappointed. Everything Brian says is true. I have played it through Windows 95 and DOS and the only problem I have encountered is a tendency for the game to crash fairly frequently, more so in Win95. I just have to remember to save more often than I would otherwise do. I am still rather concerned that my Cyrix chip might not be compatible with some games. I tried the demo of Diablo from a cover disc recently and it wouldn't run at all, stating that it required a Pentium, so obviously it didn't recognise my chip as being Pentium equivalent. A demo of Magic the Gathering also refused to run. I am hoping this is just a foible of the demos and not a problem to be found in the released games, as I would eventually like to buy Magic the Gathering, having read your review. If anyone else has had problems with Cyrix, I would be very interested to know about it. @~Has anyone? ... Sue ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Next a letter from an old friend! I thought some of you might @~like to help out. From Mike Gerrard, 5 Parsonage Street, Wistow, Huntingdon, Cambs PE17 2QD I'm writing to ask of you'd be kind enough to help me raise some funds for the NSPCC. In September I've decided to join their Trek Tanzania, which last year raised œ30,000 for both the NSPCC and the local Masai people whose lands the trek passes through. This year they are hoping to double that amount, and walkers like myself, in addition to donating directly, are asked to try to twist the arms of their friends to support what they're doing. I'll be writing about the trek whenever I can, and will also be donating all my earnings from writing and photographing it to the fund-raising. Do you think you could possibly spare a small donation to add to the funds? I need hardly remind you of the good work that the NSPCC does, and how these days there is sadly even more work for them to do, and more children in need of help than ever before. If you are able to spare a small amount, could you make the cheque payable to the NSPCC and send it to me? The trek is exciting but a serious challenge. It is 100 miles through the Great Rift Valley, visiting parts of Tanzania never seen by regular tourists, camping out at night. We're accompanied by the Masai, not only as a courtesy, but also to help protect us from the wildlife - we will be walking through lion territory. This is one reason I thought it would be wise to get donations in advance rather than sponsorship in arrears! If you could send something, no matter how small, I'd be very grateful. One friend has already sent œ25 and a box of plasters so that's a good start. @~If you want to send a donation to Mike, who I know a lot of you @~remember from the days of Your Sinclair and Zero, please contact @~him direct at the address given above ... Sue ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~And finally, from: John Gurd, 40 Barrachnie Road, Garrowhill, Glasgow G69 6HD You may remember a couple of years ago I was a subscriber to SynTax. I am a blind computer user with a speech synthesiser. I dropped out of the magazine because the time my job takes up prevented me from getting very far with games and I also found that the magazine was able to devote less and less space to text-based games - quite understandably as graphics and CD-ROM games now totally dominate the market. You may be interested to know that the last adventure game I played was Staff of Power last year which I really enjoyed. I was looking forward to playing The Multi-Dimensional Thief but I could not get my synthesiser to work with it. I am hoping to get some new equipment soon which may work with a larger number of text games. I have been thinking I would like to start gaming again. I have also heard of some other blind users who are interested in these types of games. It occurs to me that these games are going to become harder and harder to get hold of as people throw them out and delete them from collections and libraries. I think that it would be a good idea to start a library of text adventure games that blind people could access and I know that you have a considerable number of shareware and public domain games. I was wondering if you would be prepared to give me copies of anything that you consider might be suitable - especially any of those that you consider to be good text games. You may also have other old text games that you want rid of. I have a lot of blank 720K disks which I could send you or, if you prefer, I could send some 1.44 MB disks. I also wonder if you could let your subscribers know that I am interested in any old text games they may still have and I would be very grateful if they could send any they don't want direct to me. Unfortunately I am not in a position to pay for them but at least this way some very excellent games would get a new lease of life among blind users. @~I assured John that I wasn't going to delete all the text games @~from the library! But I offered to send him some copies of @~suitable library disks once he got his scheme off the ground. If @~anyone else can help out, please contact him direct ... Sue - o -