The NL - Volume 3 Issue 5 (The May Issue)

╔════╤═════════════════════════════════╤═══╤═══╗
║ ── │ May 1996 │ v │ ^ ║
╟────┴─────────────────────────────────┴───┴───╢
║ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ ║
║ │ \ │ │ │ │ The Year of ║
║ │ \│ │ │ │ MEGAZEUX! ║
║ │ │\ │ │ │ ║
║ │ │ \ │ ┌─┐ │ └────┐ ┌─┐ ║
║ └──┘ └──┘ └─┘ └───────┘ └─┘ ║
║ ──────────────────────────────── ║
║ ║
║ Volume 3 "Stylin' Profilin" ║
║ ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╝

ZZT-MZX Newsletter Issue 5 (The May Issue)

Head Of Staff: E. CyberBRO

THE STAFF: ChrisK2018, DeadPhrog, Owcp, and STRIKESOFT

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Kevin Vance
Kevvance@aol.com

NEW ZINE ** This is my new article for the ZZT / MZX Monthly Newsletter.
It's like the old one, but better somehow. The header looks much
better in color ANSi, but that's er... text.

GAMEZ ** AOL sure took long enough putting games out. I don't have that
much to review. And it's really mixed ,too. Things ARE getting better
out there. One game, MotherShip Assault, uses a completely new (to me,
anyway) technique of player controlled ships and a new way of using stars.
On the other hand, the other game I dl'ed, BloodWar, really sucked. Not
that the boards sucked, the game itself did. Some moron decided to break
every damn copyright law and throw together some good games into his
crappy game. People like that really piss me off. BTW, if you see any
games from Vandamme67, or something like that, they're mostly boards ripped
from my ULTIMATE TEST Preview. Someday, I'm gonna finish that game.

MY STUFF ** Here's a more in-depth view of my projects. First of all,
STRANDED is the working title of my game only. It may change in the future.
I just call it this because I always seem to be stranded on one point or
another trying to write it. Anyway, you're this stick figure type guy who
gets lots of weapons. Lots of 'em. Items, too, like the personal
transporter. The bosses are very unique, like Surge, overlord of Tronix, who
is constantly zapping himself into electric wires. It's a huge game with
many locations and phun scenery. The other one, GALACTIC ZOO, is a sci-fi
game where you're captured by aliens to be put on display on the Galactic
Zoo. Escaping was easy enough, but then in anger, the aliens blow up Earth.
Now it's time for revenge. The other one, MY 3D GAME, simply called that
because it's only an engine. This is a standalone DOS-Based game, but it's
way too slow and I have to unroll a lot of loops and translate more into
(shudder) ASM. Don't expect anything from this in a while.

REVIEWZ **

Possible Ratings .∙. Sucked
OK, If It Was By Your 3-Year Old Cousin, Sid
Pretty Almost Good
Good
Almost Real Good
AWESOME KICKASS GAME

I didn't even DL HorseRace, because it sounded like it sucked. That wasn't
a review .

BLOODWAR Phile: BLOODWAR.ZZT
Author: Don't know and don't care to find out
Rating: Sucked
Reason: This game incorporated some of the author's crappy
maze boards with boards from really good games
like DogFight. I'm actually including a parody
of this game with my ZZT game that I may finish that
makes fun of lamer ZZT's.

BLOODWAR Phile: ASSAULT.ZZT
Author: RoboJim
Rating: Almost Real Good
Reason: Imagine this: Your Armor-piercing Micro Missile
Offensive systems (AMMOs) are rapidly decreasing,
your High Energy Absorbing, Layered Titanium-alloy
Hull (HEALTH) is critical, and to top it off, your
enemy is firing another round of plasma at you.
Could this be ZZT? In RoboJim's MotherShip Assault,
it can. This one brought some new ideas to the world
of ZZT player-controlled ships. The ship constantly
accellerates while being controlled by left and
right turns, allowing two types of firepower. The
main part of the game, ripping apart giant MotherShips
the size of the screen, was kewl and challenging. The
only problem was that at the end, there's a big ship
you board, and there's lotsa errors on it.

Just some junk....

COOLNESS!

I'm sure all of you know about COOLNESS. A really COOL game by
Spectrum12. Some people don't understand some stuff about COOLNESS. Here's
some things that people don't understand about COOLNESS: (1) Some people
thing Greg Janson made it. Not true! (2) Some people think that Spectrum12
is now a part of SV. Not true (I don't believe he is). All SV did was
give it their seal of approval and distribute it. (3) Some people can't
find COOLNESS. COOLNESS is not on AOL. It's at the FTP of SVZZT. It has
been uploaded to AOL, but it'll probably be five years before it gets put
up.

How to tell if you're a good ZZT game maker!

1. Do you like to have the plain old yellow boarders?
2. Did you read the entire ZZT help file?
3. Is Evan Darrow your most favorite person on earth?
4. Do you copy everyone else's ideas just to make your own game?
5. Do you base your game on a movie, TV show, video game, etc.?
6. Did you have someone beta-test it (other than yourself)?
7. Do you only have 1-3 objects in your entire game?
8. Do you put perverted stuff in your game?
9. Do you take someone else's game, put only one new object in it,
call it yours and upload it?
10. Is it your first game?

*NOTE:* Give yourself five points for each question right.

1. No. 2. I hope not, or, at least, not all of it! 3. Hell no! 4. Bad idea.
5. Hey, Beavis, look at this dill weed that's copying shows and junk!
6. You had better. 7. If so, you SUCK! 8. Hey, Beavis, this butt-hole is
back! Whoa! He has perverted stuff in his game! Let me play it! (Anyway,
you should have put NO!) 9. For the love of God, no! 10. We can only hope
it's not.....

If you got:
0 points - =( HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Go back to pre-school!
5-15 points - ;) You might have some hope, yet.
20-40 points - :) Most people are at about 30 or 35.
45-50 - =) Very few make it here. If you made it here, you're awesome.
10000000000+ - Your the next Greg Janson!

What Happened to OWCP????

Okay everyone, I know OWCP moved to another service and all, but
what's happened to him? He said he would interview me for the NL that came
out two months ago. But he didn't :( He promised ! I wanted
to be interviewed! I E-Mailed him when he was OWCP and asked him to interview
me! But he didn't. OWCP, if you're out there, then interview me, DAMN IT!

New E-Mail Address!

You guys can now reach me at: dbwilli@scsn.net You can still get
me by Comthought@aol.com, but if you want a faster reply, send it to the
other one. I check my mail more often on that one. Anyway, I have unlimited
hours! HAHAHAHAHA!

Here's my part of the NL.

╔════╤═════════════════════════════╤═══╤═══╤═══╗
║ NL │ Nl NeWz NuMbEr SiX │ _ │ ■ │ X ║
╟────┴─────────────────────────────┴───┴───┴───╢
║ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ as always truely ║
║ │ \ │ │ │ │ fer Windows '95 ║
║ │ \│ │ │ │ (If you don't count ║
║ JOy?│ │\ │ │ │ that it's in DOS) ║
║ │ │ \ │ ┌─┐ │ └────┐ ┌─┐ ║
║ └──┘ └──┘ └─┘ └───────┘ └─┘ Zzt/Mzx ║
║ ──────────────────────────────── reports ║
║ NL NeWz & updates ║
║ By DeadPhrog of Newz that don't║
║ SHATTERED PERSPECTIVES GAMES bore you? ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Alrightythen! I finally have some actual news to report! Yay! Some of you
may already know about this, but too friggin bad if you do!!!

MZX 2.50 is coming! One really annoying thing for those of us without large
cuantities of RAM (8 meg or lower) has been fixed! Yes, that's right, MZX
2.5 actually lets you use EMS for music! And speaking of music, let's go on
to the biggest part of MZX 2.5, extended music support! MZX 2.5 supports
good old MOD, S3M/STM, 669 (has anyone ever heard of these formats?) MTM, and
other unknown music formats. :) And I'll be able to use my brand spanking
new SB Pro, too! Oh, one catch, ya need a 386 fer yer muzac... MZX 2.5 also
supports all protracker effects, and the thing should crash less!

Now, here's the offical list of new stuff in MZX 2.5, straight from the
horse's mouth-er, from Janson's mouth, make that keyboard...

* EMS memory for music
* Following module formats- MOD, S3M/STM, 669, MTM, and others (not XM as
planned...)
* Output devices- SB 1/2/Pro, GUS, PAS-16 (including stereo)
* 32 channels including up to 4 simultaneous sound effects channels
* 386 required EMS recommended for Music support
* Should be more stable
* Supports all protracker effects, etc.
* Should be faster for standard 4-channel .MOD w/1 SFX channel. Add more,
and you may start to slow things down... :) We'll see how the performance
turns out.

Plus some minor bug fixes and small features (no big deals here...)

TA-DA! Don't know bout you, but I can't wait! (The main music programmer
for my company, SP Games, works best in midi, I just pray I can find the
S3M/STM to midi converter thingy.)

Hmmm.... What else is going on in the world of ZZT/MZX?

I decided to surf on over to Yahoo! and see what I could see in the way of
ZZT/MZX. Last time (bout two months ago) I searched for ZZT in Yahoo! I
found nothing. Same with MZX. And MegaZeux. This month, I was shocked to
see several listings! To everyone who's got a ZZT/MZX web page, and hasn't
already, REGISTER IT WITH YAHOO!, LYCOS, etc.!

I, DeadPhrog, have written a working large char engine for MZX that is
smooth, the character stays together! The engine is first showcased in my
new game, Flight, which is nearing completion. Flight is a role-playing
flight sim. You not only take over the pilot while he's flying (you have the
option of being a female pilot in the registered version, Flight IS shareware
) you control his entire life. The pilot is in flight school, so if you keep
him out all night drinking, the next day he will have a hangover, and will
perform poorly.

Sorry there's no company updates this month, but I had so much going on this
month I forgot to ask for companies to send them in. Sorry!

No MZX games means loss of momentum for E.CyberBRO
──────────────────────────────────────────────────
by E. CyberBRO

Megazeux games have not been appearing on AOL lately. I've informed PC Roger
of this and he said he will talk to someone who runs the Megazeux uploads.
Meanwhile I work on games based on the momentum of other games. Link's
Adventure Part 2 caould have came out sometime in mid 94 instead of early 95.
Why, because my game was not being posted and by October of that year, neither
was anyone elses. PC Sylva kept telling me that they're backlogged when
they're really just "Half Steppin'". Support to keep the games going is what
brought them back online. And more support to add the Megazeux library the
following year.

Though It may start to happen again since this staff that
puts up the games is not doing a very good job. Thanks to the miracle of
easily uploading your very own games to the WWW Member/User web page like:
"ftp:/users.aol.com/" or "ftp:/members.aol.com/"
which can be made by well....I forgot that part. FTP as keyword, I'm not
sure. But a portion of you won't care since you get this NL via the internet
way. I haven't touched my game in several weeks because of the lack of
momentum. I've got school to worry about and homework N' stuff, something I'm
sure most of us can relate too. On reason it is harder for me to get back to
finishing the game is because of the complexity and the size.

With the
elements of and actual Zelda game it can be quite difficult. Yea, much less
have to worry about the book cover, you know, graphics and animation.
Those two elements make the book cover of the game but do not make the game
itself let that be a lesson to you all. That's why people upgrade the game
they made a while back to make it even better instead of doing that right on
the spot. And it is also true that some people think ripping off other major
company games by redoing them is just silly. If it's good, it's good.

Speaking of which, those of you who can't upload games to AOL but want to
can send your games to me to upload. Just send me the game and the
description you would normally put on AOL and I will upload it. Though I'm
not familiar with pipeline and other things like that so I'm not sure if you
can get on or you can't so bare with me.

Well that's it for this month's NL. There is no Critic Corner this month,
there ain't no cames to critique. Until next month, later, gators! :-)

E. CyberBRO

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