Letters Any letters or e-mails received on an adventuring-related topic may be reprinted in here unless marked 'not for publication'. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~First some useful info from: Vic Horsley, by email I'm now three levels into 'The Elder Scrolls - BATTLESPIRE' walkthrough, so you are going to get it, or at least some of it, it's a real pain. It requires that all temp programs and stuff not being used be cleared from the computer. It really doesn't like Windows (being a DOS program really). I've worked out that changing the sound setup as explained before, and cleaning out the temp files with a strip down of the startup before playing the game, will allow about 2 to 3 hours play, before you need to repeat the procedure. I'm sure many people will just give up and did, pity really because it's a more than half decent game. Well! must press on with it. @~Well done persevering long enough to work out how to get it @~running and keep it running. Maybe like me you look on it as a @~challenge, not being beaten by the computer?! ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~I always like to hear what readers are playing. And here's @~what's on the computer of ... Dave Booth, by email I'm now juggling three games... DAOC, Deus Ex and Thief II. I bought the latter on the same impulse buy as Deus but have yet to install it. In fact I have Thief I sitting gathering dust too! That was also a purchase resulting from a favourable SynTax review, and it is a game that appeals to my sneak-around-stealthily side of gaming. Now if only I could get one of those Round Tuit things, I'll install Thief I and start enjoying. DAOC, like Asherons Call and Ultima Online before it, takes up an inordinate amount of my free time. The thing is, you take an absolute age to develop your character to a level where they are powerful enough to participate in PvP ('Realm vs Realm' in Camelot parlance), and after a bit of that there is literally nothing more to do with that character. Level 50 is the limit, and level progression is on an exponential curve, so to get to 20 is easy, 30 ok, 40 a bit of a struggle, 42 difficult, 45 herculean, and to make 50 is a full time job. I prefer plan B, which is to level a character to about 40 and then start a new one. This means playing a new character type, and that is more fun than doing actions ABCD with your main character for another 5000 iterations. So far there are three of my characters running around on the Albion realm, levels 26, 34 and 42. Recently I defected to the Hibernian realm and started a character who is a ... sneaky stealthy Assassin type. Hm. A consistency is emerging here. Also, I was briefly in the Asherons Call II Beta test. Very briefly. I managed to log in twice in all, after that each time the servers were full so my experience is limited. Apparently more servers are being added in the near future so I should be able to get on for longer, which of course will be food for another review. It's the first time I've been involved in a Beta and so far, it's been interesting if brief! @~I mentioned to Dave that years ago I had been online when a new @~version of MUD was being established. It wasn't so much a beta @~test, more that they wanted a lot of people on-line to try it @~out. Great fun though, as with AC2beta, it crashed a lot, @~usually just as you got to a good piece of treasure. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Now some ACE news from: Peter Clark, by email I have been working on a rewrite of The Hobbit using ACE, the utility that my son Andrew wrote. It is almost complete. I only have to do some more description messages and check the game play again. I will have the finished game at the convention in a few weeks. Andrew has been working on a version of ACE that will run the games under Windows rather than Dos. This only has a little way to go before completion and I am pressing Andrew to have a demo ready for the convention as well. @~Peter sent me the DOS version and I'll write about it next @~issue. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Finally, Brian Burke has also been gaming. Brian Burke, by email On the gaming front I'm enjoying MM9 still. Just had a tough spell in the Chasm of the Dead. The 'mummies' were pretty tough, so I lured them back to a building at the base of the path, led them down two levels to a grating which slides back when you walk on it, pop, pop, pop in they went - then you can hit them from above without any damage to your party, dive down afterwards into the poison mist & pick up the goodies quickly, then back up & jump out via the 'X' key. So now I must travel on to reap my promotion awards & sell all my treasure. I'm chocker block full of stuff :-) - o - - o -