-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS ~~~~~~~~ Page(s) Feature Function Key ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1 Titlepage F1 2 Editorial F2 3 - 7 Messages F3 8 - 11 Diskmagazines F4 12 - 13 The Random Bit F5 14 The End F6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MENU -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RAISTLIN'S MESSAGE-BOX ISSUE 5 : AUGUST 91 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Coding .. Kreator / Anarchy Font .. Kreator / Anarchy Music .. 4-Mat / Anarchy Logo .. Mystik / Anarchy Text .. Raistlin / Genesis Project -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Use LEFT/RIGHT cursors keys to move FORWARDS/BACKWARDS a page, and use function keys F1 - F6 for fast access to the different sections. Press HELP at any time to show the fast-access menu. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Raistlin's message-box is a copyrighted release of Genesis Project. All rights are reserved. No part of this product may be copied, reproduced, translated or reduced to any electronic medium or machine-readable form without the prior written consent of Raistlin/Genesis Project, 42 Browfield Terrace, Silsden, Near Keighley, West Yorkshire, BD20 9PT. ENGLAND. PS. Only joking! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EDITORIAL ~~~~~~~~~ After a long abscence from the Amiga scene (and computers in general), I'm back! (Hey, I'm not that bad am I?!?).. I heard from Mr.Big of Anarchy that many more groups are starting to do these "Message-box" things - personally I haven't seen any of them, but it's nice to think that I might have started off a craze!! (But on the other hand, if as many people start making these things as there are people making REAL magazines, I imagine that you will all start getting sick of these minizines!)... Originally, all I intended to use my message-box for was to give Messages to my own contacts and friends, but now I think I will also use this as a way for me to express my own opinions of the whole Amiga-scene. Hopefully that should make this 'MINIZINE' (as I like to call it) interesting to a much larger public. I know I did that in the original Raistlin's Message Box, but I was very limited as to what I could write about then - being a member of a group that wanted to be successful in the 'Crusaders Eurochart' and all the other charts, I had to be careful not to upset potential voters... But now that I am a member of Genesis Project (again), a group that hasn't even got off the ground on the Amiga, I can write anything I like... And I will! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MESSAGES ~~~~~~~~ Marc Panther... Hi Marc!, thanks a lot for all the videos, disks, etc... You are without a doubt my best contact, please keep it up! Hopefully Deek will send you the cordless joysticks soon... I've given him your new address, so he has no excuses now, right?!? While I remember - it's great to hear that you're going to release some new music disks soon! It sure has been a long time since I last heard some of your music! I don't suppose you have any new pieces that would suit this message-box, would you?? Deek... Yo Richard!, don't you think it's about time you started making some music on the Amiga?.. Has JCH done an Amiga music-routine yet or what??? Anyway, I hope you liked "Delirious 10" - I will not be making any more C-64 demos, which is why I tried to make that one something special! Well anyway, hope we can meet at the CES show this year! Pioneer... Hope you had a great time in France! Good luck with your A-Level results (not that you'll need it!), I bet the dreadful thought of going to the same University as me really helped you discipline yourself into revising for the exams, eh?!? Anyway, see you soon OK... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr.Big... Hey John, thanks a lot for the constant supply of new warez! Hope you can visit us again in Silsden in the near future... Well anyway, keep up the good work!.. Anarchy is doing pretty well for itself these days! Banger... Thanks for putting up with my lame sendings Gareth! Will you be going to this year's CES-Show? I expect so, you never seem to miss any of the major events! I will probably be going to the CES again this year, but that depends on whether my C-64 friends are going on the same day as all the Amiga-guys! (Everyone seemed to turn up on different days last year!) Zarch... Hi Mick!, your recent intros were very nice! They worked perfectly on my ECS machine as well... I saw your intro for Anarchy - that was pretty good too! Maybe the coding wasn't "State Of The Art", but the styling of your intros were great - which is more than can be said of a lot of intros these days! Oh, by the way - Kreator tells me your new intros don't work on HIS Amiga now!... Wierd eh? Mole... Yo Adrian!, how are you doing at learning to code?.. Hopefully we'll be seeing lots of intros and demos from you in the near future! Anyway, thanks a lot for all the cool sendings etc... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kreator.. Thanks a lot for coding this cool new Message-Box outfit for me! With any luck I will have this text written in time for you to release this issue at the Anarchy-meeting on Sunday! Your new game is looking pretty cool so far, hope you get a contract with Core Design (or whatever company you decide to sell the game to!).. Good luck at Leeds OK... The Chief.. Yo Tony! Hopefully I'll be able to visit you very soon... I won't have many (if any) new warez for you though, because I haven't been swapping on the C-64 at all lately! Sorry.. Flamingo.. Hi Oskar, are you planning to code any Amiga demos in the near future or will you be sticking to the C-64??.. Personally I think that the C-64 demo scene has just about dried up. The only good remaining groups are Crest and Light!.. What do you think? Judge Drokk.. Long time no see, Mark!... I've got a question that I've always wanted to ask you : were those Obscene Phonecalls for real or what?!? Some of the calls seems a little hard to believe! (like the one where you phoned your mother!...) Anyway, hope to see you at the CES-show this September, or before then if you and John visit again... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bustman.. I'm back! I hope we can swap again now that my A-Levels are over!.. Maybe you could make a logo for this new Message-Box outfit? Hope so, you're a very cool artist! If ever you visit England, give me a call and we can arrange a meeting! Dr.Awesome.. Hey, Marc tells me you left Crusaders and started working legally under your real name... Does that mean you won't be writing any more demo tunes or what?!? Anyway, please write back soon OK? Mystik.. Hi Alan!, sorry I couldn't make it to your little meeting! I think the RMB logo of yours (above) is very cool!... Also, all your recent graphics for Anarchy have been SUPERB! You must be one of the best Amiga graphic-artists on the scene at the moment! Mediator.. Shame to hear about your 'seeing the light'! Are you sure you weren't being given drugs when you went to that Christianity thing?!? Igor.. Your graphics have been really cool lately Scott!... Your new style of logos/fonts is very nice! Hope we can see some new works from you in the near future! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kid Video.. Yo Alan!, haven't heard from you in a long time!.. Maybe we can swap now that I'm back on the scene?? I don't have your address, so please phone me or something OK?? Anyway, hope to see you at CES this year! Dan.. Hi Dan!, your demo-previews looked very cool, can't wait to see the demo when it's finished!! Well anyway, I hope you get good A-Level results next week! See you at the CES... Antichrist.. Are you coming to the CES again this year mate? I missed you last year because you were there the day before me.. (I was there on the last day) You won't get to see this Minizine, which makes me wonder why on earth I'm writing this to you... Hmm... Hope to see you soon OK! Well anyway, that's enough messages for this time! Hopefully this section will get bigger and better when I get more contacts... But we'll just have to see about that, won't we?!? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DISK-MAGAZINES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I know that I've covered this subject in the past, but I think the problem of Disk-Magazines is getting worse by the minute! So I thought I'd write a bit of text to express my views about the magazines currently on the scene... Firstly, I think that there are FAR too many magazines on the scene. Too many groups are releasing magazines - it wouldn't be too bad if there was a bit of variance between each magazine, but basically they are all the same! The key features of every magazine being:- 1. The Charts 2. News/Gossip 3. Interviews (and lots of them!) Fair enough, those sections seem necessary for ALL magazines.. But ARE they?? The "Crusaders Eurochart" was once the only REAL chart on the scene... Being so popular also meant that the charts would represent the scene much better, due to the large number of voters. But now there are a million different charts, many of which will be cheated... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I myself think that any groups who insist on publishing charts in their own magazines should be prepared to disclude their own group from the charts. That is where the problem lies - many groups make the excuse that their charts would not be "true" charts if they were not to include themselves... But the truth of the matter is (as I discovered when I wrote my own disk-magazine on the C-64 many moons ago), the voters tend to vote for the group that is publishing the magazine in a higher place than they would usually. That is particularly true if the voters in question swap with members of the group that is publishing the magazine... While I was making my own magazine, "ENDEMIC", when I counted the votes for one issue, Endemic was rated as the 3rd best magazine on the scene.... How could this be (honestly) possible when no other magazine even FEATURED my magazine in the charts?!? Moving on... The "news" sections of most magazines seem to be just long lists of "xxx left xxx and joined xxx", "xxx was kicked out of xxx for being lame", "xxx quit the scene", etc... Who is honestly interested in all that?? Most mags these days seem to be competing for the longest news-sections, and they do that simply by collating all the group-changes, and pad out each one into a paragraph - come on guys, how about doing something original for a change?!? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Then there's the "Interviews"... What a laugh! Far too many magazines seem to use photocopied "Interview-sheets" with STANDARD questions on.. I mean, all the interviews seem to be the same! Standard questions are:- "What music/films/food/drinks/magazines do you like?" "Do you have any hobbies apart from computing?" "What computers have you had?" "How many years have you been computing?" "What were your previous groups?" "Who are your favourite coders/musicians/artists?" "Have you any enemies in the scene?" ... etc. What is the point of having interviews if the interviewers ask the same boring old questions EVERY time??? Think about it, OK guys?? A fourth standard section of every magazine (which I almost forgot!) are the "Adverts"... Well, maybe this section is useful to some people, but what is the point in padding out adverts when they might just as well be a long list of addresses for people who want to swap? Then all the REAL adverts (sales, wants, etc...) could be placed at the end... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I know it is beginning to look like I have something against all disk-mags at this point, but believe me that there are a few which I actually enjoy reading!! (I won't mention which ones though..) But what I think would help the present state of disk-magazines is for the editors to write things that they know will be of interest... Is there any point in typing out loads of news / adverts when nobody is going to read them?? Try to make interviews more interesting... And why not make your charts more BELIEVABLE by discluding your own group (and all groups who co-produce your magazine) from the charts... And, as I said in a previous Message-Box, why not help reduce the number of disk-magazines by joining forces with another diskmag. The new magazine would be better, more likely to be read, and will be distributed to a wider public... Finally a note to the people who just read disk-magazines... If you have any views, new ideas for articles, or whatever - tell the people who write the mags! But please don't go starting another new diskmagazine just because you have ONE new idea!!! If there are things that you don't like about disk-magazines, tell the people who write them... Lecture over... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE RANDOM BIT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TETRIS ~~~~~~ Has anybody coded a good version of this game yet? The best versions I have seen are "TWINTRIS" and "TETRACOPY" (!)... Please send me a copy of any good TETRIS conversions- it is still one of the best games ever made! Find my address at the front of this minizine! MINIZINE ~~~~~~~~ As far as I know, I was the first person to make one of these "Message-boxes" and so I thought I'd better give it a name!... I thought "Minizine" was quite appropriate.. It will save me from having to write "Message-box" everytime I refer to this, erm, Minizine! Oh, the title Minizine isn't copyrighted, so feel free to call any similar productions of your own the same... But please don't just copy my "Message-Box" idea, unless you have some original ideas of your own OK!!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GENESIS PROJECT : A brief story ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Genesis Project" (or Genesis for short) has been active on the C-64 for over 5 years now - as a cracking/demo group. The group has around 30 members, with 25 of them being what I like to call "Stable"- the other 5 member places constantly changing (for various reasons). Although a couple of members of Genesis have made Amiga demos (Veda made one a long time ago, and so did x-member Pioneer) the group has been pretty inactive on the Amiga... But a while ago a group was formed, called "Genesis", and they cracked a lot of games... Obviously this group didn't know that we existed, but anyway, try not to confuse us with them OK... A while ago Genesis had some problems when some lamers joined the group- they started allowing people to "Join" Genesis (without permission from any other of the Genesis members) for MONEY! In addition, they cheated the charts in their own magazine, and this really made Genesis look bad! Anyway, these lamers have now been kicked out of Genesis - but many guys (all over the world) still think that they are members of Genesis!!! It's really a mess, and needs sorting out.. I think 30 members is too many as it is!!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE END ~~~~~~~ Well, that's it for this issue... I know there weren't many pages this time, but please understand that I have a lot on lately, what with finishing my demo on the C-64, swapping, and still having spare time for general lazing around! Hopefully the next issue of RAISTLIN'S MESSAGE-BOX will be released sometime in September - and will definitely have more pages than this one! Anyway, here is my address once again:- Raistlin / Genesis Project, Robert Troughton, 42 Browfield Terrace, Silsden, Near Keighley, West Yorkshire, BD20 9PT. ENGLAND. Bye for now, and I'll see you all at the CES show in September!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 --