Eye on the Scene Issue 2 - by the Admirables and friends

A Diskmag retro-review type of thing..

I was introduced to 'Eye on the Scene' via issue one. A former Maggie Team member who is still around these days, but prefers to concentrate on things Atari Jaguar related, sent it with a bunch of other disks. He was particularly keen to promote it, as he had contributed towards it.

It was duly read and merited a review in Maggie 17. It was assessed at a reasonable seven out of ten, but with a warning that article scarcity could be an issue. For some reason, I didn't get around to seeing issue two, or realising that it got out. Or if I did, I've managed to effectively blank it from my memory?

However, issue two did escape and a chance link via Pouet.net located this prize file. So I resolved to download it and take a closer look, the details of which I'm sharing with you all today.

So what have we got?

For all intents and purposes, this does actually come on a disk. If auto- booted, a little intro with a big vertical scroller, wobbly fractal and side border removal starts up if you're running from an Atari ST or STE. This has a pleasant classic Mad Max tune, but is soon done with a dab at the space bar, if you wish to get to the diskmag action.

A green GEM desktop is presented, with an invitingly clicky program file. This launches with a big red 'ADM' logo, painted in a strangely familiar style. Could that be a 'K-Klass of the Lemmings' work, otherwise known as Sh3 in a slightly later pseudonym, why yes, it could! A satisfactorily nineties styled thumping bassy mod file starts playing. It just takes a keypress to bring up the main shell menu.

Fractals were very popular in the mid-nineties demo scene. I wish that they could have been a little more restrained and happy to not be the centre of attention here. This fractal is a bright garish example using reds and oranges and sears your eyeballs, which are frantically searching the overwhelmed menu entry texts. In the foreground is the menu selector, which is wobbling gently in the computer generated breeze. I personally would have liked something a little more solid, but then again, I'm getting old. Also I've committed more than a few cover picture gaffes in my time as a diskmag editor, so my scope for complaint is limited!

Up and down arrows are marvellously quick, possibly a bit too much for ease of selecting a specific textfile. Once you've managed to line it up over the selected article, you press space. This shell runs on any flavour of ST, STFM, STE, or Falcon with 1 meg of RAM or over. I'm not going to test it on the CT60 though.

The text displayer is easy on the eye, a good reading area and has some nice features selectable from a control panel at the bottom. The 'adjust' button lets you fiddle with a number of parameters, including fonts, text/window colours, music on/off and size of the RAM buffer for mod files. It even tells you the nationality of your keyboard!

Another menu option 'disk' offers the chance to load and save textfiles, and to load and save Protracker 4 channel mod files. There is a handy selection of five with the issue, they are Ice-packed and the shell will handle decrunching those and also Atomik and Speed packed files too. Even better, the menu shell permits you to roam your entire disk directory to load in other mod files of your own (subject to memory buffer limits.) This is a brilliant move not imitated by other diskmags. This is a trick that Maggie missed for sure.

(There is also an 'off' button if you get totally fed up with a wall of noises and prefer the sound of silence.)

There is also a picture displayer button available from the text displayer, but that option appears to have been unused here, which is a shame.

The text displayer is clear and legible and offers a good reading experience with 8-pixel scrolling. After the slightly unpromising start with the menu, the text displayer redeems things to produce a shell which is a fair way above the generic menu shell programs that most other wannabe diskmag makers were using back then.

So we've got a promising shell from an interesting team, what has been written for this issue? It's not as if the text is important, right?

Refreshingly, we do generally have original articles from a number of different contributors, although there are some sections dominated with filler scooped up from the world wild web. Will Netscape Navigator be required to view it? Only time will tell?

The menu is divided into various sub-menus, and we start with 'Regulars' at the top.

The editorial is the logical starting place. It is a little bit confused with its function, managing to combine thanks, credits, greetings and a user-guide to the shell, but not much of anything "editorial" in nature at this stage. Still, it's nice to know who was involved, and there are some familiar faces in there, some of whom are also working for peer diskmags of the era.

Moving on to Scene News, we are invited to 'Go ahead and be shocked'. Well this was twenty years ago, I think I'm hardened to most shocking things by now, so I'll take the risk. The scene news from back then is presented in alphabetical order, covering people as diverse as 16/32 Bit PDL, through the pre-Reservoir Gods Lemmings, The Reservoir Gods, even Maggie gets to check in with issue 16 released in early 1995. There is gratifyingly quite a bit to read there.

Some 'Whatever happened to's' to ponder:- Animal Mine's ST version of FUTURE COMPOSER, which let you compose your own Future Sound tunes - Hackbear's demo under the Digital Chaos label, consisting of old unreleased Delta Force code for the Falcon - Inter/Independent's Jaguar game - Jochen Hippel's works on the Jaguar - A new STE soccer game from a group called 'England', actually, not a group name, but the country of origin, and I think this was referring to 'Team'.

'Falcon news' is next, a straight net-grab from Toad Computing about the C-Lab re-release of the Falcon 030 under the C-Lab brand.

'Active Crews on ST' - A list of names of the currently active groups on the Atari scene. Not so much an article, but more of an attempt at self- reassurance?

'ADM Greets' - Nice letters, good swaps, great support, thanks guys.

'Contacts Wanted' - A couple of very fancy ascii fonts, with things and people wanted by the authors of this text, namely Mug UK and Tronic of Effect.

'Advert' - We're into ascii font overdrive with the makers of Undercover Magascene, with some understandable self-promotion for issue five of one of the most interesting Atari publications out there. Say a big Hi! to Moondog!

To culminate this first part of the menu, we have a '!!! MEGA CONTEST !!!' - At this stage, the annual production of exclamation marks hadn't been consumed by the monster that was eBay, as this hasn't been invented yet.

The prizes are a stack of original games, supplied by their close friends Vectronix, presumably after they had finished with them. The competitions were a cunning attempt to promote and guarantee material for Eye on the Scene issue 3. Different categories including an intro competition, cover picture and module composing, even article writing gets in there. With respect to the article guidelines, we even have the rudiments of a style guide, (no big ascii logos to consume space, article has to make sense and not %*$!, all articles must be original and not ripped to be eligible.)

So with these clever incentives, I wonder why nothing came of issue three?

We move on to the next sub-menu, 'Programming'.

Here is more of a mixture of material, with some nice articles written by Lithium of VLA digging into the technicalities of 3D programming. Lots of maths and examples are given, it's a bit like some of the things that Tat wrote for Maggie.

Then there are some internet culled lengthy texts on subjects such as 3D ray casting from 'Doom', everything you might ever need to know about Fractals, and even the .MOD mod file format.

Hard on the heels of 'Programming' is 'Science'.

This is an intriguing section, not really seen anywhere else. An unkind reviewer might suggest it is another excuse for net grabs, but how can you fail to be charmed by a comprehensive space calendar, with all the activity from 1995-6 due from the Satellite launching and space community.

There is even 'Physics News' with the discovery of the free quark announced. Finally, there is a very lengthy piece on cognition drugs, presumably for hardcore coders who opt to 'super-connect their brains'?

'Miscellaneous' fills the void for articles that aren't easy to categorise. we had something called 'Various' in Maggie for that purpose.

There are more net-grabs, including a very large text cut into three sections from something called Chaos Industries. I won't say any more about the nature of those texts, as I quite like my bottom as it is, namely unsearched by the authorities, but if you are reading Eye on the Scene issue 2 after being inspired by this review, I would suggest you heed the warning at the start of the text.

"The processes and technologies SHOULD NOT BE CARRIED OUT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!! SERIOUS HARM OR DEATH COULD OCCUR FROM ATTEMPTING TO PERFORM ANY OF THE METHODS IN THIS PUBLICATION."

A mood change comes from a Simpson's FAQ, with some more nice ASCII drawings at the start. Also we are treated to some 'Virtual Sex', courtesy of the typing fingers of Punisher of Energetic. Well a description of the state of the art in 1995, including 'Virtual Valerie' on interactive CD-Rom!

To round up this section, we are treated to Nirvana warming up some jokes for his stand-up comedy spot. Sample Nirvana joke.

"How can you tell that a male wasp is sexually aroused? By his stiff upper lip."

We're back into some original textual input with 'Opinions'. Firstly some reactions to the first issue of Eye of the Scene, or Eye One. Feedback is sparse, but favourable.

A short unfocused article attempts to point out the difference between stopping a group's activities because of various real life factors, and physically dying.

A longer unfocused article gives various shout-outs for the ST scene and STE in particular, various genres of music, and some nice freshly cooked spaghetti. The author self-consciously proclaims that he's got to 100 lines of text, and finishes shortly after.

One which missed its chance in 'Reviews' and landed here, a serviceable but title-less and paragraph-less review by Matt of the adventure game 'Towers' (The first one, not 'Towers 2' on the Falcon.)

There is a rather unhappy article about the scroll text in the Vectronix cracktro for the Unique Developments game 'Obsession'. It take issue with their plea for people to purchase the original, at some length.

There are some actual reviews in their own dedicated section. These cover a diverse range of material.

It's Moondog, with a review of Faith by Dune. Interestingly, he likes this a lot, in view of his later reputation as a harsh (but probably fair for the most part, looking back) critic. The article reads like early Moondog too, eager to please and wanting to establish himself in the world of Atari scene diskmags.

Nirvana of the Admirables picks up a number of production reviews for a group called the Golden Dawn. Yes, before they became Greek nazi's, the Golden Dawn had a range of public domain disks, mod file collections, and even their own diskmag! (That might be some other 'Golden Dawn' here? - Ed) Nirvana breaks down the component parts of the Stosser diskmag in his next review, finds them tasty. But no sign of the 'New sex restaurant' hinted at in his text.

TKK treats us to lots of spoilers in his two articles featuring 'Videos' and 'Uncutted Videos', the latter with an axe-blow by axe-blow account of some (in)famous horror exploitation movies or 'video nasties' as they were known back in the day.

"If you weren't satisfied with this, then get hold of yourself either Cannibal Holocaust (R.Deodao) or Cannibal Ferox (U.Lenzi) which are the extreme versions of cannibalism with lots of gore parts, blood, panic, rituals and many more sick and horrible activities not forgetting animals!"

So, don't forget the animals.

Valiantly bringing up the rear for reviews, and with a complete 180 degree mood-flip, it's Tronic of Effect and Kuba discussing the Star Trek Next Generation TV series finale, 'All Good Things'.

Getting near to the end, my friend with 'Interview'. Just the one, but a very lengthy chat with Moonfall of Vectronix. We learn a little bit about him, and something of the activities of his group at the time, especially the issues with incomplete cracks that some people had with a high profile game.

And that is your lot for issue two.

On balance then, it's still a young diskmag, slowly growing, writers still gelling, style and content wise into more established definitive forms. There is a high proportion of filler material, but some unusual and possibly inspired choices there. We're still short of the 'elusive X-Factor' that makes people desperately clamour for the next issue. Maybe issue three would have got it all together, a couple more interviews, a big party report or two, the Fried Bits 3 demos reviewed in avid detail? Who knows what might have been?

But it wasn't to be.

Retro-Rating:- 70% - A good shell and average articles, had potential to be one of the all-time greats, but sadly faded away.

CiH - For Maggie, March 2015.

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